VITA

Education

Full Vita, updated April 2020.

Ph. D., August 2010, History, University of North Carolina, Chapel, Hill, NC
  • Dissertation: Educational Reconstruction: African-American Education in the Urban South, 1865-1890. Advisor: Heather A. Williams
  • Major Field: United States History with concentration in African American, 19th Century United States, Civil War and Reconstruction
  • Second Field: Global History with an emphasis on Africa, African Diaspora and Atlantic World
M.A., May 2003, History, Tufts University, Medford, MA
  • Thesis: “I feel so anxious to learn”: The Role of African Americans in Virginia’s Educational Reconstruction, 1865-1877. Advisor: Gerald R. Gill
B.A., May 1999, History with Departmental Honors, Africana Studies Minor, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA
  • Senior Thesis: Free Black Resistance in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 1804-1851.

Teaching Employment/Experience

Associate Professor of History, Department of Gender and Race Studies, The University of Alabama, August 2018-present.
  • 19th Century Black Women’s Activism (undergraduate and graduate)
  • 19th Century Black History (undergraduate)
  • Black Intellectual Thought (undergraduate)
  • Black Reconstruction in Tuscaloosa (undergraduate)
  • The Civil War Lives: Race, Memory and the Politics of Reunion (undergraduate)
  • Introduction to African American Studies (undergraduate)
  • Memory, Identity and Politics (graduate)
  • Myth of Absence (co-teaching with UA Honors College undergraduate students)
  • Power and Resistance (graduate)
  • Slave Resistance (undergraduate)
  • Slavery, Emancipation and the University of Alabama (Blount seminar)
  • Slavery and Emancipation in the United States (graduate)
  • Slavery and Emancipation in the Atlantic World (graduate)
  • Southern Black Education History (undergraduate and graduate)
  • Doctoral Dissertation Committees (non-chair)
  • Masters’ Theses Committees (non-chair)

Assistant Professor of History, Department of Gender and Race Studies, The University of Alabama, August 2014-August 2018.

Assistant Professor of History, Elizabeth City State University, Elizabeth City, NC, August 2010 to July 2014.

Book Manuscript

  • Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865-1890, New York. Fordham University Press, April 2016.

Book Manuscript In Progress

  • Lest We Forget: African American Memory of the Civil War, in progress
  • The Confederate Monuments Reader, co-edited with Kevin Levin, in progress

Articles and Chapters

  • “Revisiting African Americans’ Struggle for Public Schools,” Journal of Urban History 44 (November 2018): 1287-1293 (Published online on August 21, 2018).
  • “Destination Navy Hill: Tourism and African American Education in Post-Emancipation Richmond, Virginia,” Journal of the North Carolina Association of Historians 26 (September 2018): 67-96.
  • “Persistence of Memory: African Americans and Transitional Justice Efforts in Franklin County, Pennsylvania,” in Reconciliation after Civil Wars: Global Perspectives, ed. Paul Quigley and Jim Hawdon (New York: Routledge, 2019), 131-149 (UK release in July 2018).
  • "Typhoid Fever: Failure in the Midst of Victory in the Spanish-American War, 1898,” in Epidemics and War: The Impact of Disease on Major Conflicts in History, ed. Rebecca Seaman. (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2018), 97-109.
  • “At Freedom’s Margins: Race, Disability, Violence and the Brewer Orphan Asylum in Southeastern North Carolina, 1865-1872,” Journal of North Carolina Association of Historians 24 (October 2016): 1-22.
  •  Spragley, Kelvin, Hilary Green, Rebecca Seaman, "Engaging Students in the History Classroom: More Than Just Documentary Research," Journal of North Carolina Association of Historians 23 (November 2015): 19-28.
  • “African Americans’ Struggle for Education, Citizenship and Freedom, in Mobile, Alabama, 1865-1868,” in Confederate Cities: The Urban South During the Civil War Era, ed. Andrew L. Slap and Frank Towers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), 215-236.
  • Reed, Charles, Rebecca Seaman, Hilary Green, and Ted Mitchell, “Technological Trends in History Education,” Journal of the North Carolina Association of Historians 20 (July 2012): 29-48.

Articles in Progress

  • “Women in the Civil War Era,” Companion to American Women’s History, 2nd edition, ed. Nancy Hewitt and Anne Valk, Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming.
  • “Implementing Public Schools: Competing Visions and Crises in Postemancipation Mobile, Alabama,” in Freedoms Gained and Lost: Reconstruction and Its Meaning 150 Years Later, ed. Adam Domby and Simon Lewis, under review at Fordham University Press.
  • “Education in the South during Reconstruction, 1865-1890,” in Oxford Handbook on Reconstruction, ed. Andy L. Slap, revised draft submitted.
  • “The Slave Cemetery at the University of Alabama,” in Last Bivouacs: Reflections on the Meaning of Civil War Graves, ed. Brian Matthew Jordan and Jonathan W. White, submitted March 4, 2019.
  •  “Built by William: Slavery and the University of Alabama,” in progress
  • "Toward a Third Educational Reconstruction," Legacy of Slavery in Savannah, ed. Melissa L. Cooper and Talitha LeFlouria, in progress.

Scholarly Blogs

Select Encylcopedia Entries, Sidebars and Other Publications

  • Contributor, Tuscaloosa Civil Rights History Taskforce, Tuscaloosa Civil Rights Trail, brochure, ed. John Giggie (Tuscaloosa: Tuscaloosa Civil Rights History Trail, 2019).
  • “’Three Cheers for the Red, White, and Blue #17’: Reflections,” in Freedom? Selections from the Paul R. Jones Collection, exhibition catalog, eds. Dalila Scruggs, and Stephanie Kirkland (Tuscaloosa: Paul R. Jones Gallery, 2017), 40-41.
  • Green, Hilary and the Dictionary of Virginia Biography, “Ralza Morse Manly (1822-1897),” Encyclopedia Virginia. Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, January 14, 2015.
  • “Beach Institute/American Missionary Association,” Slavery and Freedom in Savannah, edited by Daina R. Berry and Leslie Harris (Athens: University of Georgia Press, February 2014), 174-175.
  •  “Education,” Enslaved Women in America: An Encyclopedia, edited by Daina R. Berry and Deleso Alford (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, June 2012).
  • “Full Circle,” An Icon Transformed: The Metamorphosis of an Old Cary School into a New Arts Center (Cary, NC: Town of Cary Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources, 2011).

Recent Published Book Reviews and Review Essays

  • "The Georgetown Slavery Archive, http://slaveryarchive.georgetown.edu." Digital History Reviews, American Historical Review 125, no 2 (April 2020): 587-589.
  • Review of Slavery in the North: Forgetting History and Recovering Memory. By Marc Howard Ross. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 50, no 4 (Spring 2020):  611-613.
  • Review of Educating the Empire: American Teachers and Contested Colonialization in the Philippines, H-Empire (February 2020).
  • Review of Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War's Slave Refugees Camps. By Amy Murrell Taylor. Journal of Civil War Era 9 (December 2019): 660-663.
  • Review of Litigating Across the Color Line: Civil Cases Between Black and White Southerners from the End of Slavery to Civil Rights. By Melissa Milewski. Nineteenth Century History 20, vol. 2 (September 2019): 221-222.
  • Review of Making Black History: The Color Line, Culture, and Race in the Age of Jim Crow. By Jeffrey Aaron Snyder. History of Education Quarterly 59 (February 2019): 154-156.
  • Review of Facing Freedom: An African American Community in Virginia from Reconstruction to Jim Crow. By Daniel Thorp. The Historian 80 (Winter 2018): 818-819.
  • Review of Rochelle Riley, ed., The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery. Michigan Historical Review 44, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 138-139.
  • Review of Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom. By David W. Blight, The Civil War Monitor, October 17, 2018.
  • Review of Maintaining Segregation: Children and Racial Instruction in the South, 1920-1955. By LeeAnn G. Reynolds. West Virginia History 12 (Fall and Spring 2018), 125-126.
  • Review of Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio. By Nikki Taylor. Journal of Southern History 84 (August 2018): 742-743.
  • “Reconciling Race, Slavery, and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy,” (Review of Denmark Vesey's Garden), Tropics of Meta, May 28, 2018.
  • Review of Schooling in the Antebellum South: The Rise of Private and Public Education in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. By Sarah Hyde.  Journal of Civil War Era (March 2018): 134- 136.
  • Review of Gender and the Jubilee: Black Freedom and the Reconstruction of Citizenship in Civil War Missouri by Sharon Romeo, Journal of Southern History 84 (February 2018): 184-186.
  • Review of Sarah H. Case, Leaders of Their Race: Educating Black and White Women in the New South, H-SHGAPE, H-Net Reviews, February 2018.
  • Review of Color and Character: West Charlotte High and the American Struggle over Educational Equality. By Pamela Grundy. North Carolina Historical Review 95 (January 2018): 103-104.
  • “Educating Imperial Citizens: New Perspectives of Race, Nation, Empire, and American Public Schools,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 16 (July 2017): 368-371.
  • Review of Ku-Klux: The Birth of the Klan during Reconstruction. By Elaine Franz Parsons, Civil War History 63, no. 2 (June 2017): 202-204.
  • “Booker T. Washington High School: Revisiting Education and Black Politics in Atlanta,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 16 (January 2017): 105-106.
  • Review of Too Great a Burden to Bear: The Struggle and Failure of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas by Christopher B. Bean, The Civil War Monitor (January 2017), http://civilwarmonitor.com/book-shelf/bean-too-great-a-burden-to-bear-2016.
  • “Slave Marronage: Space, Identity and Resistance in Early North American Empires,” History: Review of New Books 44 (February 2016): 31-33.

Recent Conference Presentations

  • "The Hallowed Grounds Project and Power of Alternate Campus Tours," COVID 19 affected presentation, NCPH, Atlanta, GA, March 18-21, 2020.
  • "The Hallowed Grounds Project: Recovering the Enslaved Experiences at the University of Alabama," Presented at the Interpreting Landscapes of Enslavement Symposium held at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC, October 25, 2019.
  • "The Hallowed Grounds Project: Revising Narratives of Slavery at the University of Alabama," Presented at History and Reconciliation: Conversation on Slavery, Historic Preservation, and Community in the South, a White House Historical Association and UA Blackburn Institute Symposium, held at the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, October 17, 2019.
  • "Cherry Bounce: A Historian's Journey to Understanding Enslaved Distillers' Expertise," Presented at the 104th Annual Meeting and Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History - Black Migrations, North Charleston, SC, October 5, 2019.
  • "From Alabama to Africa: Missionaries and Cultivating Their Alma Mater's Educational Vision Abroad," Presented at the 104th Annual Meeting and Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History - Black Migrations, North Charleston, SC, October 4, 2019.
  • "Why Public History of Slavery and Memory at the University of Alabama Matters?", roundtable presentation for "Black Public History at American Universities," Presented at the 104th Annual Meeting and Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History - Black Migrations, North Charleston, SC, October 3, 2019.
  • "Recovery and Recuperative Histories: The Hallowed Grounds Project at the University of Alabama," Presented at Fourth Annual Civic Institute: Closer to Home, David Mathews Center for Civil Life, Montevallo, AL, August 16, 2019.
  • "The Past is Never Past: The Hallowed Grounds Project at the University of Alabama," Presented at the First Joint University of Cape Coast University of Alabama and Central University Symposium - Social Determinants of Health," University of Cape Coast, Ghana, August 5-6, 2019.
  • "The Hallowed Grounds Project: Reconciling the University of Alabama's Slave Past," Presented at "Monuments, Memorials, Memory: A Symposium on Remembering the Past in Alabama," Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities at Pebble Hill, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, June 14, 2019.
  • “Colored Teachers for Colored Schools: Grassroots Organizing in Richmond, Virginia,” Presented at the “The Greater Reconstruction: American Democracy after the Civil War,” 2019 Draper Conference, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, April 20, 2019.
  • “’Education Secured to All’: Reconstruction Acts of 1867 and African American Public Schools,” Presented at the 2019 Organization of American Historians (OAH) Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA.
  • “The Europe Sisters: Race, Gender, and Public Education in Mobile, Alabama,” Presented at the 2019 Organization of American Historians (OAH) Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA.
  • “The Hallowed Grounds Project: Engaging The University of Alabama’s Slave Past and its Legacy,” Roundtable - Why Engaging Campus Histories Matters in the 21st Century?, Presented at the 2019 Annual Meeting of the North Carolina Association of Historians, North Carolina Centeal University, Durham, NC, March 22, 2019.
  •  “Lest We Forget the Horsewhipped Negro Wench,” Presented at the 133rd Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago, IL, January 6, 2019.
  • “The Greatest Exposition Ever: Black Richmonders and the 1915 Emancipation Exposition,” Presented at the 84th Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, Birmingham, AL, November 10, 2018.
  • “The Past Is Never Past: The Hallowed Grounds Project at the University of Alabama,” Universities Studying Slavery Fall 2018 Meeting, Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, MS, October 25, 2018.
  • Poster – “Lest We Forget: African Americans and Civil War Memory,” 2018 Faculty Research Day, Presented at University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, April 18, 2018.
  • “Measuring a Black Mother’s Love: Tracing Post-Civil War Reunification Through Digital Humanities,” Presented at the 2018 Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Sacramento, CA, April 11-14, 2018.
  • “Implementing Black Public Schools: Opposition and Shifting Protest Strategies in Mobile, Alabama,” Presented at CLAW 2018 Freedom Gained and Lost: Reinterpreting Reconstruction in the Atlantic World, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC, March 18, 2018.
  • “Typhoid and the Spanish American War,” Presented at the Annual Meeting of the North Carolina Association of Historians, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC, March 2, 2018.
  • “Locating Neal, Crawford, and Gabe,” Presented at “Why Diversity Matters” – A&S Diversity Day, Bryant Conference Center, Tuscaloosa, AL, November 13, 2017.
  •  “The Lane Family: Race, Overlapping Networks, and the Persistence of Civil War Memory,” Presented at the 2017 Annual Conference of British American Nineteenth Century Historians (BrANCH), University of Warwick (UK), October 6-8, 2017.
  • “The Blair Education Bill and the Death of Educational Reconstruction,” Presented at the 102nd Annual Meeting and Conference of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Hilton Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, September 29, 2017.
  • “Roundtable – Decolonizing Methodologies: Recover and Access Amidst the Ruins,” Presented at DH2017, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 8-11, 2017.
  • Participant, Author’s Workshop for Reconciliations after Civil Wars: Global Perspectives, Held at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, August 6-8, 2017.
  • Poster – “Lest We Forget: African Americans and Civil War Memory,” 2017 Faculty Research Day, Presented at University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, April 12, 2017.
  • “Roundtable – Disrupting the Archive: Intersectionality and the Integration of the Digital Humanities in the Classroom,” Presented at Southeastern Women’s Studies Association (SEWSA) Conference, Crowne Plaza Midtown, Atlanta, GA, March 23-25, 2017.
  • “Emancipation Day? Richmond and the Limits of Civil War Memory,” Presented at “Who Are We? Identity and Memory in Virginia,” The Virginia Forum, Norfolk State University, March 2-4, 2017.
  • “Roundtable – Being a Person of Color in the Workplace,” Students of Color Leadership Summit, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, February 3, 2017.

Recent Invited Talks/Workshops

  • "Graduate School Q&A: University of Alabama and the Women's Studies M.A. Program," History Department Colloquium on Pursuing Graduate Studies, Augusta University, Augusta, GA, March 13, 2020.
  • "Where Do We Go From Here?": A Response to "Moving to Repair"-SIHC Keynote Address, 2020 Southern Intellectual History Colloquium, Sewanee, TN, February 28, 2020.
  • "The Hallowed Grounds Project: Revising Narratives of Slavery at the University of Alabama," Elizabeth City State University, Elizabeth City, NC, February 14, 2020.
  • "Cherry Bounce: A Historian's Journey to Understanding Enslaved Distillers' Expertise," How to Eat and Drive to Live: Black Epistemology and Relationship to Food From Slavery to the 1960s, Norfolk State University, Norfolk, VA, February 13, 2020.
  • "Curating and Teaching Hard History," SHA Graduate Student Council Luncheon, Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, Louisville, KY, November 8, 2019.
  • "Confederate Monument Debates-In Black and White," University of South Alabama, Mobile, AL, September 19, 2019.
  • "The Hallowed Grounds Project: Slavery, Memory and Engagement at the University of Alabama," University of Georgia, Athens, GA, September 9, 2019.
  • "Quality Public Schools: A Reconstruction Legacy Worth Remembering," Civil War Conversations, American Civil War Museum - Appomattox, Appomattox, VA, May 23, 2019.
  • "Walking Slowly But Surely: African American Public Schools, 1870-1890," Teach Reconstruction Workshop, sponsored by Zinn Education Project and Southern Echo, Inc, Jackson, MS, May 18, 2019.
  • “Slavery, Lost Cause Commemoration, and the University of Alabama,” Commemorating the Confederacy: History, Memory and Meaning in the 21st Century South,” UNC Charlotte Center City, Charlotte, NC, March 13, 2019.
  • “Slavery and the University of Alabama: A Case for Troubling and Listening to the Archives,” Slavery, Violence, and the Archive, Davidson College, Davidson, NC, February 22-23, 2019.
  • “Hallowed Grounds: Race, Slavery and Memory,” MSU Main Library, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, February 12, 2019.
  • “The ‘Southernization’ of America: What Progressives Can Learn from the US South,” People’s Forum, New York, NY, February 8, 2019.
  • “Hallowed Grounds Project: A Personal Journey into Understanding UA’s Slave Past,” UA Black History Month 2019, Gorgas Library, University of Alabama, February 6, 2019.
  • “The Hallowed Grounds Project and other DH Resources” for the “Let’s Get Digital: Using Digital Resources in the Classroom” K-12 teaching workshop at the 84th Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, Birmingham, AL, November 10, 2018.
  • “Slavery and the Gorgas House,” Black History Month Lecture, Presented at the Gorgas House Museum, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, February 22, 2018.
  • “Stolen But Not Forgotten,” To be Presented at Workshop Series 2017: American History, The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, October 12, 2017.
  •  “Quality Public Schools: A Educational Legacy Worth Remembering,” Black History Month Lecture, Presented at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Huntsville, AL, February 7, 2017.
  • “Brown Bag – Researching Early African American Education History,” Presented at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, Huntsville, AL, February 7, 2017.
  • “Hallowed Grounds: Slavery, the University of Alabama, and Alternate Campus Tours,” Presented at “The Ties That Bind: A Symposium on Slavery in Auburn,” Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities, Auburn University, Auburn, AL, November 11, 2016.

Recent Interviews

Select Service to the Community/Profession

  • Member, Academic Program Committee for the 2019 Annual Meeting and Conference for the Association of African American Life and History to be held in Charleston, DC, Fall 2018 to present.
  • Member, Membership and Outreach Committee, Society for Civil War Historian, June 2018 to present.
  • Member, Program Committee for the 2019 Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting to be held in Louisville, KY, Fall 2017 to present.
  • Member, Committee on Minorities in the SHA, Southern Historical Association, 2017-2018 (one year replacement), 2018 to present.
  • Member, Membership Committee, Southern Historical Association, May 2018 to present.
  • Digital Media Editor, Muster, online blog for the Journal of Civil War Era, June 2020-present.
  • Field Correspondent, Muster, online blog for the Journal of Civil War Era, September 2017-May 2020.
  • Member, Tuscaloosa Civil Rights Task Force, Tuscaloosa, AL, April 2016-present.
  • AP Table Leader, Long Answer, Annual Reading and Scoring of the College Board’s Advanced Placement US History Examinations, Tampa, June 2015-present.
  • Core User, Mapping the Fourth of July in the Civil War Era: A Crowdsourced Digital Archive Workshop and Pilot, Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, training workshop for the Jan-June 2016 pilot to be held September 26-27, 2015.
  • AP Reader, Annual Reading and Scoring of the College Board’s Advanced Placement US History Examinations, Louisville, KY, June 2011-June 2014.

Select Fellowships, Honors and Awards

  • 2020-2021 Vann Professor of Society and Ethics, Davidson College, Davidson, NC.
  • CARI Faculty Fellow, 2019-2021.
  • Finalist, 2019 Hiett Prize in the Humanities, The Dallas Institute, Dallas, TX
  • Autherine Lucy Foster Award, 2019 Black Scholars Day, Black Faculty and Staff Association, University of Alabama, March 24, 2019.
  • 2016 Lawrence Brewster Faculty Paper Award for “At Freedom’s Margins: Race, Disability, Violence and the Brewer Orphan Asylum in Southeastern North Carolina, 1866-1872,” North Carolina Association of Historians, August 2016.
  • Participant and Travel Award, “Visual Culture of the American Civil War,” NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, July 2012.

Current Professional and Civic Memberships

  • Organization of American Historians, 2017-present.
  • Southern Historical Association, 2005-2010; 2016-present
  • Black Faculty and Staff Association, University of Alabama, Fall 2014-present.
  • Society of Civil War Historians, 2014-present.
  • Association for the Study of African American Life and History, 2014-present
  • North Carolina Association of History, 2012-present.
  • American Historical Association, 2005-present.