51¹ÙÍø.

I have a Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; M.A. in History from Tufts University; and B.A. in History with minors in Africana Studies and Pre-Healing Arts from Franklin and Marshall College. Prior to coming to 51¹ÙÍø for the Vann Professor of Ethics in Society, 2020-2021, I worked as an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at The University of Alabama.

My work explores the intersections of race, class, and gender in pre-1920 African American history, Reconstruction Studies, and Civil War Memory.

My first book, Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865-1890 (Fordham University Press, 2016), explored how African Americans and their white allies created, developed, and sustained a system of African American education schools during the transition from slavery to freedom in Richmond, Virginia and Mobile, Alabama. My in-progress second book focuses on how African Americans remembered and commemorated the American Civil War and its legacy.

In addition to these projects, I have published an array of journal articles, book chapters, book reviews, encyclopedia entries, and public history publications. In January 2015, I also created the Hallowed Grounds Project for exploring the history of race, slavery, and memory at the University of Alabama and the post-emancipation developments in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

I have several published and forthcoming publications drawing from this research. I am an active member of several professional organizations where I currently serve as the book review editor for the Journal of North Carolina Association of Historians and Digital Media Editor responsible for Muster, the blog for the Journal of Civil War Era.