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Recent Publications

  • “Caring is Activism: Black Southern Womanist Teachers Theorizing and the Careers of Kathleen Crosby and Bertha Maxwell Roddey, 1946–1986,” Educational Studies: A Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, 48, no. 3, (May, 2012), pp. 244-265.
  •  “Of Culture and Conviction: African American Women Non-Fiction Writers and the Gendered Definition of Class,” The Southern Middle Class in the Long Nineteenth Century: (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2011).
  • Reading, Writing and Segregation: A Century of Black Women Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, (Champaign-Urbana, Il: University of Illinois Press, 2008).
  • “We Are Ready [To Desegregate] Whenever They Are: African American Teachers and the Desegregation Of The Public Schools in Nashville, Tennessee, 1954-1966,” Journal of African American History, 90, Nos. 1-2, (Winter, 2005), pp. 29-51.

Research Interests

African American Gender History, History of Education, Oral History, Women’s and Gender Studies, Southern History, History of The United States Since 1865

Courses Taught

  • HIST 3151 Southerners
  • HIST 2151 Women’s History Since 1867
  • HIST 4600 Nineteenth and Twentieth Century United States Social Movements
  • HIST 2000/3000 Topics in American History: African American Women’s History to 1865
  • WGST 4050/5050 Topics in Women’s Studies: Race, Sexuality, and the Body
  • LBST 2101 Western History and Culture
  • HIST 1161 United States History Since 1877

Biography

Education

Ph.D. United States History – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2000.

Current Projects

  • “The Destiny of Our Race Lies Largely In Their Hands:’ African American Women Teachers’ Effort During the Progressive Era in Memphis and Nashville.” Chapter in an Edited Volume of Essays on Tennessee Women during the Progressive Era. Mary Evins, Editor, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2014).
  • After the Marches: Bertha Maxwell Roddey’s Educational Activism, Reconfiguring Civil Rights in the Desegregated South
    I wish to examine the educational, cultural, and civic activities of Dr. Bertha Maxwell Roddey. She was the founding chairperson of the National Council of Black Studies, the first director of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s Black Studies Program, a co-founder of the Afro-American Cultural Center, now the Harvey Gantt Center, and the first black woman principal of a white elementary school in Charlotte, North Carolina. Maxwell Roddey’s story critically exposes the continuing impact of the Civil Rights and Feminist Movements and the influence of Black Power. Her actions reflect upon the efforts of other African American women activists fighting in their universities or schools, on school boards, and in their communities to improve black children’s lives as the nation’s sentiment turned away from alleviating poverty, school segregation, and discrimination after the 1970s.
  • Women’s Leadership and Educational Activism After Desegregation, 1960s-1980s  This project explores the lives and experiences of women who worked to empower young people and women by participating in non-profit volunteer organizations but were not recognized as traditional civil rights activists.  They did not hold large protest marches, but they worked to better race relations, eliminate illiteracy and poverty.  I plan to examine the efforts of women members of national  organizations such Women in Community Service (WICS) and the Literacy Volunteers of America to develop independent economic and cultural service programs while also supporting government-sponsored federal programs.