Major Ulysses Grant Lee Jr., Ph.D. was a U.S. soldier, scholar, professor, writer, editor and American military historian. He contributed to the Federal Writers' Project, co-edited The Negro Caravan with Sterling Brown and Arthur P. Davis, and wrote the official U.S. military history of African-American service in World War II, The Employment of Negro Troops, published in 1963 by the United States Army Center of Military History. In addition his own service, Lee was connected to the military history of African Americans through his grandfather, who served in the U.S. Colored Troops, and his father, a Buffalo Soldier.

Sterling Allen Brown was an American professor, folklorist, poet, and literary critic. He chiefly studied black culture of the Southern United States and was a professor at Howard University for most of his career. Brown was the first Poet Laureate of the District of Columbia.