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Imani was born in Birmingham, Ala., and reared in Cambridge, Mass. She is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she also teaches in the programs in law and public affairs and gender and sexuality studies and is affiliated with the University Center for Human Values and the program in jazz studies.

After graduating from Concord Academy, Imani attended Yale College, where she earned a bachelor’s degree with a double major in literature and American studies. She went on to earn a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, both in 2000. As a postgraduate fellow at Georgetown Law Center, she earned an LL.M. in the history of property and contract law.

Imani was a professor at Rutgers Law School until 2009, when she joined the faculty at Princeton. She is the author of numerous articles and book reviews and of six books, including Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 2018 and winner of Pen America’s Pen/Bograd Weld Award in Biography and the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction. Her book May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem was a 2018 finalist for the NAACP Image Award in Outstanding Nonfiction.

Imani lives outside of Philadelphia with her sons, Freeman and Issa Rabb, ages 15 and 13.