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Ryan Jones is the Director of History & Interpretation at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. He is responsible for ensuring the historical accuracy of the museum’s interpretation and reviewing scholarly historical content shared by the museum.

A native Memphian, Ryan attended the University of Tennessee at Martin. He serves as the museum’s subject matter historian and is an expert on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the subsequent investigations. Ryan also played a significant role in research related to reopening civil rights-era cold cases that ultimately led to convictions for hate crimes committed during that period.

Ryan has presented at numerous conferences and has appeared in several documentaries and podcasts. His areas of expertise include the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 20th-century African American history, and the rise and influence of Black popular music from the mid-1950s to the present.