This week we interview award-winning author and first-time biographer, Barbara D. Savage. Her latest book, Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar, is an incisive examination of a scholar who thrived despite steep obstacles, taking her from a farm in the Midwest to Kalamazoo to London and to the world beyond. Merze Tate was published by Yale University Press in November 2023. Savage is a historian and the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania. Her other works include Your Spirits Walk Beside Us, winner of the 2012 Grawemeyer Award in Religion. Barbara D. Savage was interviewed by BIO member and fellow biographer A’Lelia Bundles.