Robert Hinton (Associate Producer, Chief Historian) is Associate Director of Africana Studies at New York  University.  Born in Raleigh, N.C., in 1941, he grew up in the city’s historically black Chavis Heights district.  In 1993, he earned his Ph.D. in American History from Yale University.  For his dissertation, Cotton Culture on the Tar River (published by Garland as The Politics of Agricultural Labor), he devoted extensive research to the plantation culture of central North Carolina and plantation-owning families including the Hintons; he believes that his grandfather, Dempsey Hinton, was born a slave at Midway Plantation around 1860.  Dr. Hinton, who will supervise all historical research for Moving Midway, lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the artist and choreographer Annie Sailer, and his daughter Phoebe.   Back To Main Bios Page