Jessica Anne Krug (born c. 1982) is an American historian, author, and activist who taught at George Washington University (GWU) from 2012 to 2020, eventually becoming a tenured associate professor of history.
[15] Krug has stated that she lives with unaddressed mental health issues,[16][17] and that she began to present herself as a light-skinned person of color as a juvenile to escape from trauma and emotional difficulties.
[20][21][22] Krug received financial support from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture that led to the publication of her book Fugitive Modernities.
[27] In Fugitive Modernities, Krug engages in a "rigorous examination of identity formation" of Kisama,[28] a mountainous region in Angola that became a destination for those fleeing the slave trade in the late 16th century.
She argued that "Kisama allows us to imagine a more humane and less brutalized form of interpersonal relationship in which the structures erected by states to constrain us are overcome in favor of shared liberation.
Word of this discrepancy reached Professor Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez of Michigan State University, who, upon researching the matter, discovered that Krug came from the Kansas City area and had Jewish parents.
By the close of that day, "a now-infamous video of Krug calling herself 'Jess La Bombalera' and speaking in a D-list imitation Bronx accent was all over the internet".
[37] Duke University Press, the publisher of Krug's Fugitive Modernities, said that all proceeds from her book will be donated to a fund that will assist black and Latino scholars.
[38] Krug had told her colleagues at GWU that she was Afro-Latina, and that she had been raised in the Bronx by a Puerto Rican mother who was abusive and addicted to drugs.