Winkfield Twyman, a former law professor, was born in Richmond, Virginia. He came of age in the New South in the 1970s. A graduate of the University of Virginia and Harvard Law School, Twyman is the author of the newly acclaimed book, Letters in Black and White: A New Correspondence on Race in America (co-author Jennifer Richmond). His essay in the Pennsylvania Lawyer Magazine inspired the posthumous admission, in 2010, of the first black lawyer in New York state, George Boyer Vashon, to the Pennsylvania State Bar, which had denied him twice, in 1847 and in 1868.