Terry Alford

Terry Alford is an award-winning author and historian specializing in American history, race relations, and the Civil War era. He earned a Ph.D. in history from Mississippi State University and completed postdoctoral research in family history at the University of California, Davis.

His groundbreaking book Prince Among Slaves recounts the remarkable true story of Abdul Rahman Ibrahima, an eighteenth-century Muslim prince from present-day Guinea who was captured and enslaved in the American South. The book was adapted into an award-winning documentary that aired on public television in 2008, reaching more than four million viewers. It has remained in print for decades and has been translated into Turkish.

Dr. Alford is a founding board member of the Abraham Lincoln Institute of Washington, D.C., and is widely recognized as a leading authority on John Wilkes Booth and the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. He has appeared on numerous television programs, including 20/20, ABC News, the History Channel, Discovery, Smithsonian Channel, C-SPAN, BBC, and PBS. His acclaimed biography, Fortune’s Fool, was published by Oxford University Press in 2015.

His scholarship has been supported by four grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he has served as a historical consultant on several films and documentaries, including Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. He is also a member of the Advisory Council for Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C.

His most recent book, In the Houses of Their Dead: The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits, was published in 2022 to critical acclaim. Dr. Alford received the Outstanding Faculty of Virginia Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, the Commonwealth's highest honor for college and university faculty.