E. James West is a UK-based historian and writer.

​His work focuses primarily on histories of the Black Press and Black Chicago. More broadly, he's interested in the connections between popular history, race, media, and visual culture in the US and Black diaspora.

He is the author of Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America (Illinois, 2020), A House for the Struggle: The Black Press and the Built Environment in Chicago (Illinois, 2022), and Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr. (Massachusetts, 2022).

You can find his writing in scholarly and popular publications, including the African American Review, The American Historian, American Journalism, Black Perspectives, The Black Scholar, the Journal of African American History, the Journal of American Studies, Slate, and the Washington Post.

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How Budweiser Pioneered the Year-Round Use of Black History to Sell Stuff
Slate, March 17, 2022

Meet the Buildings that Housed Chicago's Black Press
Nieman Reports, January 24, 2022

Highways, High-Rises and Food Deserts
Black Perspectives, January 19, 2022

Race, Environmental Justice, and DOCUMERICA at 50 
Black Perspectives, November 10, 2021

The Missing Element in the Democrats' Battle over Biden's Agenda
Washington Post, October 22, 2021