Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor is a Professor of History at Smith College where she teaches courses on race, slavery and her father, comedic legend Richard Pryor. She is the award-winning author of the article “The Etymology of [N-Word]: Resistance, Language, and the Politics of Freedom in the Antebellum North” and the 2016 book Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War. Her viral TED talk on why it’s hard to talk about the N-word has been viewed over two million times.

Her newest book, Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me (Simon & Schuster, June 2026) is part memoir, part historical exploration of the N-word. In it, she talks about how, fifteen years after her father’s death, she felt closer to him than she ever did.

Elizabeth lives in Massachusetts with her husband Jerry Stordeur and loves to go hiking and watch movies with their two grown kids, Lilli and Henry.