Participant Biographies
Christy Coleman, “Reclaiming the Narrative at the American Civil War Museum”
Christy Coleman is the Chief Operating Officer of the American Civil War Museum. She spent much of her childhood in Williamsburg, Virginia. She began college at William & Mary and graduated from Hampton University. A long-time museum professional, Coleman worked as Colonial Williamsburg’s Director for Public History, where she oversaw historical interpretaters. She then worked as the director of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit, Michigan, before moving to Richmond, Virginia. As the CEO of the American Civil War Museum, she oversees three sites: Historic Tredegar, the White House of the Confederacy, and the American Civil War Museum in Appomattox. In August 2018, Time named her one of "31 People Changing the South."
Moderator: The Rev. Dr. Joanne M. Braxton, Frances L & Edwin L Cummings Professor Emerita of English & Humanities, William & Mary; CEO and President of the Board of the Braxton Institute
The Rev. Dr. Joanne Braxton, CEO and President of the Board of the Braxton Institute, is an ordained minister with full ministerial standing in the Eastern Virginia Association of the Southern Conference of the United Church of Christ. She is also a writer, educator, scholar, administrator, public speaker and workshop leader. Braxton is the author and/or editor of several published books, including Black Women Writing Autobiography. Driven by the desire to serve, Dr. Braxton has earned degrees in ministry from the Pacific School of Religion and Virginia Union University, offering the practice of life-writing as a spiritual discipline for those in ministry as a tool of self-care and bulwark against depression and burn-out. Her seminary training included work in organizational systems theory, Social Ethics, Aging, Pastoral Care and end-of life issues. In addition, she has sought and received continuing education in narrative healing practices at the Duke University Center for Integrative Medicine and from Columbia University Medical School.
Nkechi Taifa, Esq., President and CEO, The Taifa Group, LLC; Convener, Justice Roundtable
Nkechi Taifa is President and CEO of The Taifa Group, LLC. She convenes and directs the Justice Roundtable, an advocacy coalition advancing progressive justice system transformation, and serves as Senior Fellow for the Center of Justice at Columbia University. She serves on the board of the Corrections Information Council, which provides oversight over District of Columbia residents imprisoned throughout the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Taifa served as Advocacy Director for Criminal Justice at the Open Society Foundations for 16 years, focusing on federal sentencing reform, law enforcement accountability, prison reform, reentry, executive clemency, and racial justice. Over the course of her career she has also served as legislative and policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Women’s Legal Defense Fund; founding director of Howard University School of Law’s award-winning Equal Justice Program; staff attorney for the National Prison Project; Office Manager and Network Organizer for the Washington Office on Africa; as a private practitioner representing adult and youth clients; and as a first grade teacher.
Taifa has spoken extensively across the country on justice reform and human rights issues, and has testified before the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the Council of the District of Columbia and the American Bar Association Justice Kennedy Commission. She has served on the boards of numerous organizations; as consultant to various groups and projects; and as an appointed commissioner and chair of the District of Columbia Commission on Human Rights. A native Washingtonian, Nkechi Taifa received her Juris Doctorate from George Washington University Law School, and B.A. from Howard University.
Constance Paige Young, anti-racist activist, crime victim advocate and writer
Constance Paige Young is a rising voice for equality and a long-term advocate for survivors of sexual violence. As a survivor of multiple violent crimes (including the car attack in Charlottesville in August, 2017), Constance has found purpose and healing as a strong presence for others in crisis and recovery. Her work with community organizations, including RAINN's Speakers Bureau and the DC Rape Crisis Center has motivated her to help survivors find justice outside the often re-traumatizing criminal court system. To this end, she is exploring social entrepreneurship. A Louisiana native, she currently resides in Washington, DC. Contact: info@constancepaige.com
Panel 1. “Beyond Research: Practical Repair Remedies for Universities Studying Slavery”
Moderator: Felicia Davis, HBCU Green Fund
Jumoke Ifetayo
Jumoke is an activist, event planner, leader, entrepreneur, father, educator, dancer, priest and visionary. He currently serves as the SE Region Representative and Atlanta Male Co-Chair of NCOBRA (National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America) where he works with the largest grassroots coalition of organizations and individuals working towards achieving reparations for African descendants ( African Americans) residing in the USA. Being active his entire life in the Afrikan liberation movement, Jumoke has planned, coordinated, and facilitated with individuals, groups and organizations events, conferences, ceremonies, and gatherings. Jumoke graduated in 1987 with a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee with a double major in Economics and Third World Studies and minor in French.
Felicia M. Davis
A staunch advocate for achieving measurable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions through energy efficiency retrofits, green building and an array of sustainable practices, Felicia M. Davis established the HBCU Green Fund to help finance green infrastructure projects for historically black colleges. She serves on the leadership team for the NSF funded Science Education Resource Center InTeGrate Geoscience program advancing interdisciplinary teaching about Earth for a Sustainable Future and on the boards of Green 2.0, Chattahoochee Riverkeepers and the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. In addition to a student led HBCU sustainability campaign, Davis appeals to well-endowed institutions, particularly those with a history connected to slavery, to invest in the well-being of their under-resourced sister institutions. An author of the critically acclaimed Air of Injustice Report (2002), she also produced the UNCF MSI Green Report (2010), Sustainable Campuses-Building Green at Minority Serving Institutions (2012) and the 2014 HBCU Green Report.
Henry Lancaster II
Henry is the principal and manager of Lancaster, Craig & Associates, a lobbying, association management and community relations firm in downtown Raleigh. He is a graduate of the Northeastern University of School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts and Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. Henry’s North Carolina legislative and policy experience include his having served in former Governor Jim Hunt’s administration in the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. He served as department legislative liaison, assistant Secretary for Natural Resources, and deputy Secretary. After leaving state government, Henry worked at the North Carolina League of Municipalities as their Director of Intergovernmental Relations. LCA opened its doors in February of 2001. The firm’s client base includes local governments, trade associations, non-profits, public universities and private business concerns. He has served as a board member of the North Carolina Professional Lobbyists Association and Audubon NC. Henry is a former Chair for the North Carolina Arboretum Board of Directors and a former member of the Institute for the Environment/UNC Board of Visitors. He currently sits on the Board of Trustees of his alma mater Lincoln University.
Dr. Guy Emerson Mount
Guy Emerson Mount is an Assistant Professor of African American History at Auburn University and one of the organizers there of the Slavery and Its Legacies (SAIL) project---a collaboration between scholars and community members utilizing the principles of restorative and transformative justice to contend with Auburn’s historical ties to slavery. Previously, Professor Mount co-founded the Reparations at UChicago (RAUC) Working Group which first uncovered the University of Chicago’s ties to slavery and mobilized a wide span of community organizations on the South Side of Chicago to demand reparations. His academic work focuses on the intersection of Western modernity, Atlantic emancipations, and American empire. He is also an Associate Editor of Black Perspectives—the online magazine of the African American Intellectual History Society. His work has been honored by a number of other prominent organizations including the American Historical Association, the Eisenhower Institute, and the Mellon Foundation.
Panel 2. “Transcending Narratives of Trauma”
Moderator: Dr. Arthur Knight, American Studies & English, William & Mary
Frederick Murphy, “Utilizing Film to Better Understand Historical Trauma in The African American Community”
Since Frederick Murphy was young, he always enjoyed talking to his elders and hearing stories of family history. In 2016, he founded History Before Us, a project centered on capturing, preserving and advocating influential history. In the beginning of 2017 he started traveling the Southeastern region of the United States interviewing survivors of Jim Crow, the courageous individuals who didn’t make the headlines. These untold stories prompted him to complete the award-winning documentary The American South as We Know It. Frederick, a Licensed Professional Counselor by trade, utilizes tactful questioning, empathy and reflection to obtain relevant information needed to produce a true narrative of African-American/American history. Frederick also has a Masters in Transformative Leadership. Currently he is filming his second documentary titled The Other Side of The Coin: A Reconciliation of Sorts. The film focuses on the complexities of race relations in America, highlighting the wants and needs of historically marginalized communities.
Jeremy McGinnis, “Interrogating the Structures: Examining the Role of Theological Practice as Civilizing Force in America’s Construction of Race”
Jeremy McGinniss is the Coordinator of Research and Instruction at Liberty University, Virginia. He received his MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh and is currently pursuing a MA in Humanities at Salve Regina University. Jeremy has published and presented on the topics of critical pedagogy, solo librarianship, philosophy of maintenance in library practice, affect theory, student staff development, and the ACRL Framework.
Dr. Arthur Knight is the Robert F. & Sarah M. Boyd Term Distinguished Associate Professor of American Studies; Associate Professor of English and Literary & Cultural Studies; Director of Film Studies, William & Mary. He serves on The Lemon Project Steering Committee.
Panel 3. “Seeking Abraham, Fostering Joy”
Moderator: Dr Brandon Inabinet, Communication Studies, Furman
Dr. Gregg Hecimovich, Logan Britt, Catherine Byrd, and Emily Little, “First Year, Writing the Ancestors’ Story”
Logan Britt, Catherine Byrd, and Emily Little are freshmen (undeclared major) at Furman University.
Gregg Hecimovich is Professor and Chair of the English department. He is the recipient of numerous teaching awards including the University of North Carolina Board of Governors Distinguished Professor for Teaching Award and the Max Ray Joyner Award for innovative teaching with technology. Hecimovich is the author of four previous books. His most recent work includes contributions to a new edition of Hannah Crafts’s best-selling novel, The Bondwoman’s Narrative, for which he co-wrote a new introduction with the work's editor, Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. He is also a contributor to the forthcoming To Make Their Way in the World: The Peabody Museum’s Daguerreotypes (Harvard UP, 2019). Currently, Hecimovich is working on The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman’s Narrative slated for publication by Ecco/HarperCollins in 2020.
Dr. Brandon Inabinet, “Independent Filmmaking with Black Geography”
Brandon Inabinet is an Associate Professor of Communication Studies and was co-chair of the Task Force on Slavery & Justice, which published Seeking Abraham. Winning his field’s early career research award, his work tries to determine how persuasion can be made intergenerational, so that arguments in the present take into account the broadest sweep of their ethical impact. He has served as President of AAUP-SC, Chair of the Humanities Development Fund at Furman, and has published in a dozen of top-tier journals and books in his field of rhetorical studies. His current book project is Reconstructing the South, a co-authored edited collection with Christina Moss (University of Memphis) about rhetorical scholarship in the American South, from the vantage of critical regionalism.
Deborah Allen and Emilee O’Brien, “Alternative Spring Break and New Sisterhood”
Deborah Allen serves as Associate Director of Diversity Engagement and Manager of the Center for Inclusive Communities at Furman University. In her role she is responsible for advising the Student Diversity Council which oversees Furman’s seven multicultural and identity-based student organizations and coordinates Diversity and Inclusion programming within the Division of Student Life. She received her BA in Sociology from The Ohio State University, and her M.Ed. in Student Affairs and Higher Education from Wright State University. With 10 years of experience in Student Affairs, has experience in various functional areas including Student Conduct, Multicultural Services, Student Programming and First Year Experience.
Emilee O’Brien is the Post Baccalaureate Fellow for Social Justice and Community-Engaged Learning at Furman University in Greenville, SC. Originally from Connecticut, Emilee is graduated from Furman in 2017 with a B.A. in Political Science and Poverty Studies. She now serves the campus and local communities through her two-year fellowship with the launch of an intergroup dialogue program and an alternative spring break experience. In her own time, she is a Victims Advocate at the local rape crisis center, an avid cook, and a decent golfer. Emilee plans to pursue a Master’s in Education Policy next year.
Panel 4. “Building Institutions, Building Power”
Moderator: Dr. Hannah Rosen, History and American Studies, William & Mary
Elizabeth Mejía-Ricart Guerra, “The Sustainability and Longevity of Pioneer Black Banks: Banks originating from black fraternal enterprises in Richmond, VA”
Elizabeth Mejia-Ricart is a junior from Dominican Republic, majoring in Economics and Mathematics. She is a Boatwright and Oliver Hill Scholar and has been involved in the Race and Racism project at the University of Richmond since her freshman year, a project that brings to light stories of minority groups on and off campus. As part of this project, she has presented in conferences such as Imagining America, National Humanities Conference and the Lemon Project Symposium in 2018. On campus, she is a tutor at UR’s Academics Skills Center, a Data Analyst for VCU Education Professor Dr. Jesse Senechal, a member of the ETF Investment Fund and an Olympic weightlifter for Total Training, Inc. She is currently interning at the State Council of Higher Education (SCHEV) and will intern at the Finance Department of Allianz Partners this summer.
Rev. Dr. Elwood Lewis, “The Origins of the Black Church and the Related History of the First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, Virginia”
Rev. Dr. Elwood Lewis serves as the Palliative Chaplain Fellow, Bon Secours Mercy Health Memorial Regional Medical Center. His career path includes being a teacher, assistant principal, and principal in Alexandria City Public Schools and a lecturer at Northern Virginia Community College. He served as superintendent in several school districts in Virginia and South Carolina, including Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools. He was educated at Bruton Heights School, Hampton University, The Catholic University of America, and Virginia Union University.
Steven T. Corneliussen, “What explains inattention to self-emancipation's preeminent historic landscape?”
Steven T. Corneliussen retired as Physics Today Online's media columnist following years as a Jefferson Lab writer and editor. He also taught English and served as a naval officer. He has two English degrees (Duke, BA 1970 and Tech, MA 1980). For the last fourteen years, he has participated in the effort to save Fort Monroe from overdevelopment, currently as spokesman for the Save Fort Monroe Network. He has presented on his research at the 2017 Lemon Project Symposium and the Virginia Forum in 2017 and 2018. He also published numerous Fort Monroe op-eds in Virginia dailies from Norfolk to Richmond and the Washington Post.
Dr. Hannah Rosen is the Director of Graduate Studies in the American Studies Program and an Associate Professor of History and American Studies. She received a B.A. from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Her research and teaching have focused on the social and cultural history of the nineteenth-century United States, and particularly on African Americans and the intersection of race and gender in histories of slavery, emancipation, and postemancipation society.
Panel 5. “Preserving Boydton Institute: An African American School from Reconstruction into the Jim Crow Era”
Moderator: Dr. Lenneal Henderson, Government, William & Mary
Ms. Ann Keeling, a board member for the Old Brunswick Circuit Foundation, has degrees in biology from Emory and Henry College and the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Her career followed a health and science track including various positions in chemistry, and health care quality, promotions and informatics. After earning a degree in Public Administration from Old Dominion University, Ms. Keeling served as an analyst in a joint military healthcare organization. Her last position prior to retirement was as an analyst working under the Comptroller of Navy Medicine. Ms. Keeling got hooked on history working on family genealogy. She has enjoyed applying her analytical skills to historical research leading to writing histories of local communities, setting up historical exhibits, transcribing a handwritten Civil War diary, and composing and presenting a monologue in period costume depicting the life of an early 19th century, socially prominent woman through her three strategic marriages.
Ms. Faithe Norrell, a retired media specialist from Richmond’s public schools, is a proud student of African-American history and Richmond’s history in particular. She was formerly married to the great grandson of Maggie L. Walker. Maggie L. Walker was the first female bank president of any race to charter a bank in the United States. Ms. Norrell, an artist herself, was a member of the Public Arts Commission’s Site Selection Committee for the placement of the Maggie L. Walker statue in Richmond. That statue, which is now located at the intersection of Broad and Adams in Richmond, Virginia was dedicated in 2017 after many years of planning and work. It is a successful use of public art to tell one of the missing and yet significant stories in history honoring a civil rights hero.
Dr. Lenneal Henderson is currently an Adjunct Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary. He is also Assistant Dean for Civic Engagement and International Affairs, Distinguished Professor of Public and International Affairs and Senior Fellow, William Donald Schaefer Center for Public Policy at the University of Baltimore.
Panel 6. “Constructing Home, Constructing Self”
Moderator: Dr. Adrienne Petty, History, William & Mary
Alyson Lindsey Taylor-White, “Early African Virginian Philanthropy: Lucy Goode Brooks and the Friends Association of Children"
Alyson is a Certified Instructor at the University of Richmond School of Professional and Continuing Studies and Osher Foundation Institute. She has a professional background in journalism and museum education. She’s researched and written about Richmond and Virginia history and politics for many years as the editor of the Virginia Review magazine. She is passionate about sharing these stories with others. She creates and teaches courses featuring Virginia’s richly diverse history for students of all ages. She writes for a blog based at the James Branch Cabell Library at Virginia Commonwealth University, and she is the author of the book Shockoe Hill Cemetery; A Richmond Landmark History.
IBe' Bulinda Crawley, “The ‘Her Story’”
IBe’ Bulinda Crawley- storyteller, lecturer, educator, and writer, conveys details that reveal the importance of an inclusive life. IBe’ provides a view into the greater context of life in the struggle for American freedom, by blending descriptions of pertinent locations from historical documents and references. IBe’ is a retired Fairfax County Public School history instructor. IBe’ researches the Virginia State Library collection for authentic local stories which she performs, adding regional context and emotion.
Dr. Adrienne Petty is Associate Professor in the Lyon G. Tyler Department of History, William & Mary.
Panel 7. “A Legacy of Family: Disrupted and Rebuilt”
Moderator: Zann Nelson, History Quest
Ric Murphy, “A Case Study: The U.S. Middle Passage and the Arrival of the First Documented Africans”
Mr. Murphy is an educator, historian, noted public speaker and award-winning author of several historical publications, and is currently the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society's National Vice President for History. He has presented throughout North America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa. Ric has served in elected and appointed positions within federal, state and local governments, and has taught and lectured at the post-secondary level. He has served as Chairman of the Board of several private and community-based organizations; on numerous national, local and not-for-profit Boards of Directors; on countless Advisory Boards to community-based organizations and not-for-profits; and has received numerous national awards for his public activism and community work. His family lineage dates to the earliest colonial periods of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and of Jamestown, Virginia. Mr. Murphy’s lineage has been evaluated and accepted by several heredity societies, including the Daughters of the American Revolution; the National Society of the Sons of Colonial New England; the Sons of the American Revolution; the Sons of the Union Veterans. Mr. Murphy was a Senior Executive Fellow at Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government; and he has a Master’s in Urban Affairs from Boston University, and a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Massachusetts.
Zann Nelson, “The Domestic Slave Trade: the forced migration of more than one million people: A Case Study”
Zann Nelson is a Historical Investigator, Writer, and Public Speaker with a concentration on African American history sharing findings via articles, exhibits, events, and public presentations. An award-winning freelance columnist since 2006, her work appears regularly in the Culpeper Times, the Orange County Review and on an online Blog: www.historyinvestigator.net
Mary Helen Thompson, “The Post Emancipation Migration North: A Case Study”
For nearly two decades, Mary Helen Thompson has been researching her paternal roots in Culpeper and Rappahannock counties, Virginia. From early childhood, she learned of her father’s people and their rich Virginia heritage but was always captivated with the stories of family members who left Culpeper to migrate North to the small farming communities in upstate New York near Rochester—Scottsville, Batavia, Le Roy, Livingston, Chili, Mumford, Caledonia, Belcoda, etc. To ascertain their motivations for leaving Virginia for an uncertain future, she has expanded her research to encompass the larger community of Culpeper emancipated families who began that journey immediately after the Civil War. Ms. Thompson lives in Washington, DC and is retired after a long career in government, political and public affairs. She is a volunteer in the Robert F. Smith Family History Center at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Panel 8. “Reconciliation through Public History”
Moderator: Dr. Jeffrey Klee, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Dr. Woody Register and Tanner Potts, “Within the Pale of the Plantation States: Using Interactive Digital Humanities Strategies to Demonstrate Slavery’s Importance to the Founding of a Southern University”
Woody Register is the Director of the Sewanee Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation and a Professor of History at the University of the South. Tanner Potts is the Research Associate for the Sewanee Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation.
Dr. Juan Garibay, Christian P.L. West, and Christopher L. Mathis, “A University’s Legacy with Slavery and Implications for Constructing Inclusive Climates: Evidence from a Pilot Study”
Juan C. Garibay is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Virginia Curry School of Education and Human Development. Using critical quantitative methods his research focuses on issues of campus climate for students of color and undocumented immigrant students in higher education. His scholarship has been published in leading education journals including, the Review of Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, and Journal of Research in Science Teaching.
Christian P.L. West is a Doctoral student in the Higher Education program at the University of Virginia Curry School of Education and Human Development. His research focuses on the experiences of students of color at predominantly white institutions, institutional racism in higher education, and cross-cultural competency development in college curricula.
Christopher L. Mathis is second year doctoral student in the Higher Education program at the University of Virginia. His scholarly interests are grounded in the intersection of law and higher educational policy, with a focus on access, diversity, and equity in higher education, and the use and influence of social science research in the law.
Kelly M. Westfield, “An 1812 Jail Record and the Incarceration of the Enslaved: Challenging Slavery Myths with Historical Documents in Savannah, Georgia”
Kelly M. Westfield, M.A., is a Teaching Assistant and Doctoral Student in the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee. She holds a Master of Arts Degree in History from Georgia Southern University in Savannah with a concentration in Public History. Her research interests include the public historical geography of slavery as well as historical GIS. In particular, her research focuses on expanding the knowledge of enslaved life at house museums in Savannah and applying this research in both the academic and public history sectors.
Paige Elizabeth Watts, “Loud Money: a Mural Shouting Students’ Concerns”
Paige Watts is an Art History Major and Education Minor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who plans to graduate in 2021. She works as an intern at the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill where she performs archival research, designs museum tours, and presents them free to the public. Her research interests revolve around contemporary racial relations in the American South and its relationship to art education. She intends to pursue a Masters in Museum Education and then a career that broadens educational opportunities in art museums and their surrounding communities.
Dr. Jeffrey Klee is the Shirley and Richard Roberts Architectural Historian at Colonial Williamsburg. He received his Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Delaware.
Panel 9. “Objects and Places: Telling the Truth and its Consequences”
Moderator: Dr. Carroll Van West, Middle Tennessee State University
Katherine C. Hughes, Dr. Torren Gatson, Tiffany Momon
Katherine Hughes is the 2018–2020 Peggy N. Gerry Research Scholar, supported by the Decorative Arts Trust, with the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. An alumna of the College of William and Mary (B.A.’12) and Sotheby’s Institute of Art (M.A.’14), Kate continued her education with graduate courses taken through the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts and the University of Virginia. She was most recently the Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Intern at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, and previously held positions at Historic Charleston Foundation, Ralph Harvard Inc., Christie’s, and New-York Historical Society. Kate’s primary duties at the Met center around the upcoming exhibition Stories in Clay: Stoneware from Edgefield District, South Carolina, scheduled to open in 2020. Her research on potter Thomas M. Chandler’s earliest-known signed piece, a stoneware butter churn, was published earlier this year in the Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts.
Dr. Torren Gatson is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His research focuses on 19th and 20th century United States history with an emphasis on African American material culture, historic preservation, museum studies, southern history, and African American history in specific housing. His primary research chronicled the efforts of the NAACP to combat unfair housing and how those efforts coupled with the Federal Administration shaped the southern landscape for African Americans. Dr. Gatson was formerly a nationally selected dissertation fellow in 2017–2018 at Middle Tennessee State University. His ultimate research endeavors include conceptualizing the impact of 19th and 20th century African American material culture on the current cultural landscape. Moreover, his interest includes demonstrating how housing can be used as a vignette to depict the everchanging dynamics of the physical, spatial, and cultural landscape.
Tiffany Momon is a Ph.D. Candidate in Public History at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) and works as a Visiting Research Professor at the MTSU Center for Historic Preservation. Her doctoral dissertation “Constructing Traditions: Architecture, Material Culture, and the Higher Education Experience at Spelman College, 1881 - 1925” examines the objects of Spelman Seminary as seen through the lenses of materiality, architecture, and education demonstrating how Spelman College effectively created a culture of acceptable refinement for African American women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Her research interests include the architecture and material culture of historically black colleges and universities, African American architects and architecture, and post-emancipation African American communities. Momon holds a B.S. from Tennessee State University, a B.A. from The University of Memphis, and a master’s degree from Middle Tennessee State University
Dr. Carroll Van West is the Director of the Center for Historic Preservation at Middle Tennessee State University. Since 2013 he has served as Tennessee State Historian, is Director of The Tennessee Civil War National Heritage Area, and is the co-chair of the Tennessee Civil War Sesquicentennial Commission. West serves on the board of advisors for the National Trust for Historic Preservation and continues to work extensively with the National Register of Historic Places program. Since 2012 West has served as the University of Virginia Visiting Scholar of the Summer Institute at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts at Old Salem, North Carolina. He has written numerous articles and book reviews in southern and western history, and regularly speaks to history, museum, preservation, and civic groups and conferences. A native of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, West holds a B.A. from Middle Tennessee State University, a master’s degree in history from the University of Tennessee, and a doctorate in history from William & Mary.
Panel 10. “Four Hundred Years of Black Community in the Peninsula”
Moderator: Dr. Susan A. Kern, Historic Campus & History Department, William & Mary
Josue Nieves, “Accounting for the "Things" left behind: A Report on the Lemon Project's Archaeological Database, Year 1”
Josue graduated from Boston University earning a B.A. in 2012, double majoring in Archaeology and History. While at BU, Josue participated in two field school programs: The Mohegan Archaeological Field School in Uncasville, Connecticut (Summer 2011) and the Proyecto Arqueológico San Bartolo-Xultun in the Petén, Guatemala (Spring 2012). While attending the College of William and Mary, Josue has worked for various local archaeological projects and historic preservation institutions, including George Washington's Ferry Farm public archaeology program, Fort Eustis' Cultural Resources Department, the Kiskiack Archaeological Field School, Colonial Williamsburg's Archaeological Field School, and James Madison's Montpelier. Additionally, he is currently coordinating archaeological eexcavations at the Camden Historic District in Caroline County, Virginia.
Burnell K. Irby, Keith E. Irby, & Carol Miller, “Picking Up the Pieces: Rippon Hall to Grove”
Burnell Irby, Keith Irby, and their mother, Carol Miller, are all in the field of education. They love history, and each pursues their own special interests. They have come together to present through family pictures, documentation, and memories what happened in Magruder, the birthplace of their grandmother. While many descendants had migrated, they maintained their connection to Magruder by caring for the families they had to leave and the land they thought would always been home. That would all change in 1942.
Zach Meredith, “Urban renewal in Virginia’s colonial capital: contextualizing the Williamsburg Redevelopment & Housing Authority”
Zach Meredith is an undergraduate student at William & Mary majoring American Studies and Urban Studies. Zach is interested in how exploring the history of the built environment allows us to link contemporary social issues to larger political trends in order to both inspire and inform justice-minded action. Zach is particularly interested in the practice of local history and, as a William & Mary Honors Fellow, has spent the past year researching the history of the Williamsburg Redevelopment & Housing Authority. Outside of academics, Zach volunteers with Housing Partnerships, Inc. Zach is originally from Durham, North Carolina.
Ric Murphy, “1619: The Story of America’s First Africans”
Mr. Murphy is an educator, historian, noted public speaker and award-winning author. He is currently the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society's National Vice President for History. He has presented throughout North America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa. Ric has served in elected and appointed positions within federal, state and local governments, and has taught and lectured at the post-secondary level. He has served as Chairman of the Board of several private and community-based organizations; on numerous national, local and not-for-profit Boards of Directors; on countless Advisory Boards to community-based organizations and not-for-profits; and has received numerous national awards for his public activism and community work. His family lineage dates to the earliest colonial periods of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and of Jamestown, Virginia. Mr. Murphy’s lineage has been evaluated and accepted by several heredity societies, including the Daughters of the American Revolution; the National Society of the Sons of Colonial New England; the Sons of the American Revolution; the Sons of the Union Veterans, and the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage. Mr. Murphy was a Senior Executive Fellow at Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government; and he has a Masters in Urban Affairs from Boston University, and a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Massachusetts.
Dr. Susan A. Kern is the Executive Director of Historic Campus and an Adjunct Associate Professor of History at William & Mary. She serves on the Lemon Project Steering Committee and the Lemon Project Committee on Memorialization. She received her Ph.D. from William & Mary and her master’s in architectural history from the University of Virginia.
Panel 11. “Critical Commemoration”
Moderator: Ravynn Stringfield, Lemon Project American Studies Graduate Assistant
Brendon Boylan & Sharon Kim, “400 Years: Remembrance, Reparations, and Reconciliation”
Kelsey Wright, Ahlexus Bailey, Abigail Fitzsimmons, “A Century of Coeducation”
Isabella Lovain, Jioni Tuck, Kamryn Morris, “Creating Community Spaces: A Legacy of African Americans at William and Mary”
Angela Rose West & Emily Maison, “Breaking the Glass Ceiling”
Meg Jones & Matthew Thompson, “Memorials and Their Significance on College Campuses”
Ravynn Stringfield is the Lemon Project Graduate Assistant and is an MA/PhD student in the American Studies Program at William & Mary.
Panel 12. “Dismantling a Jim Crow Archive: Reimagining our Responsibility to Surfacing Black Lives”
Moderator: Jay Gaidmore, Special Collections, Earl Gregg Swem Library, William & Mary
Laura Hart, “The Problem of a Jim Crow Archive”
Laura Hart is a technical services archivist with Wilson Special Collections Library at UNC Chapel Hill. She has also held positions at Louisiana State University, University of California Irvine, and the American Dance Festival at Duke University. In her twenty-five years in the profession, Laura has participated in nearly all phases of archival work including collecting, processing, digitization, reference and research services, grant projects, exhibits, outreach, and teaching. In her current role, Laura chiefly writes and edits archival description, and she is leading a conscious editing initiative to address cultural insensitivity, implicit bias, and exclusionary language in existing archival description. In every role, Laura has sought to connect people with collections that will help them tell the stories they want to tell, share the stories that still need to be told, and amplify voices that should be heard.
Chaitra Powell, “Dismantling a Jim Crow Archive: the Why”
Chaitra Powell is the African American Collections and Outreach Archivist in Wilson Special Collections Library at UNC Chapel Hill. In addition to outreach, curating collections and exhibitions, Chaitra is serving as the project director for a three year, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded grant designed to develop tools and strategies for institutions and individuals to pursue community driven archives. This approach is intended to de-centralize the institution and expand notions of why an item has “enduring value”, who makes the call, and how/if those community curated collections can be preserved and made accessible. Chaitra’s passion for this work stems from previous positions at Johnson Publishing Company, The HistoryMakers, Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum, and her time as an archival consultant in Los Angeles. She is a certified archivist and graduated with her master's degree in library science from the University of Arizona in 2010.
Lydia Neuroth, “Dismantling a Jim Crow Archive: the How”
Lydia Neuroth is a first-year master's student in the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at UNC Chapel Hill. She currently serves as a Carolina Academic Library Associate (CALA) in Wilson Special Collections Library at UNC. Previously, Lydia served as full-time staff for Wilson Library’s Southern Historical Collection. She also worked at James Madison’s Montpelier in Orange County, Virginia conducting documentary and genealogical research to interpret the site’s enslaved community. She worked closely with members of the African American descendant community collecting oral histories. Born and raised in Charlottesville, Virginia, she holds a BA in History from the University of Virginia. Lydia is interested in the ways people discover and document their personal stories. She plans to use her library science degree to investigate ways in which cultural heritage institutions can facilitate documentary research and historic preservation by providing open access to records and streamlining research tools.
Panel 13. “Moving Histories: Untold Stories from the South”
Moderator: Dr. Jerry Watkins III, History, William & Mary
Dr. Eugene DeFriest Bétit, “Civil war heroism of African American soldiers, their performance on the battlefield, and evaluations of their service”
Dr. Bétit just completed a 400-page study, Collective Amnesia: American Apartheid, African Americans’ 400 Years in North America, 1619-2019, to be published in January 2019. He is an independent researcher from Cross Junction, Virginia and holds a Ph.D. in Soviet Area Studies From Georgetown University.
LaTika J. Lee, “Native Sons: The Impact of The Great War on Gullah Culture”
LaTika Lee is a community member who works at Reynolds Community College as an education support specialist.
Steven D. Gayle, “Unraveling the Spiral: Epistemic Entanglements within the Study Afro-Amerindian Heritage in the Southeastern United States”
Steven D. Gayle is a PhD student at Kennesaw State University’s School of Conflict Management, Peacebuilding and Development studying International Conflict Management. His area of focus consists of evaluating the historical and contemporary interactions of African and Native American populations in the United States from an international perspective. In addition He has presented aspects of this research at the University of West Georgia, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University. Steven earned his Bachelor’s in History Education from The University of North Carolina at Pembroke and a Master of Arts in Media and Communications from Norfolk State University.
Linda Quarles Arencibia, “Through a Glass Darkly: African American Presence in Horsemanship”
Linda Arencibia has pursued the study of African and African American history since her first (and unusual) exposure to these areas as academic disciplines in high school in the 1970s. The appetite that was whet by her parents and Dr. Don Housley then was further stimulated as she pursued African American Studies at the University of Virginia. As she has worked on her family history and genealogy, Ms. Arencibia has interfaced with regional historical societies and organizations. She most recently served as a volunteer with the Petersburg Preservation Task Force in the capacity as a docent for The Blandford Church. Ms. Arencibia currently resides in Louisa County, Virginia just miles from the plantation on which some of her ancestors resided.
Panel 14. “Learning from the Bray School: An Interdisciplinary Approach”
Moderator: Dr. Terry Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English, Emeritus, William & Mary
Dr. Antonio T. Bly, “Class of 1760: Gowan Pamphlet and the Early African American Literacy Tradition”
In 2006, Antonio T. Bly received his PhD in American Studies at the College of William and Mary. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of History and Director of Africana Studies at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Bly began his study of African American literacy and education as a graduate student and his publications include articles slave education in eighteenth and nineteenth century Virginia, the education that enslaved and free children of color received at the Bray School, runways and literacy in colonial America, and slave literacy and orality. He is also the co-author of Escaping Bondage: A Documentary History of Runaway Slaves in Eighteenth-Century New England, 1700-1789.
Nicole Brown, “Teaching Visitors About Religion, Slavery, and Education as Ann Wager”
Nicole Brown has been a performer, researcher, and interpreter at The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation for the past 5 years. Mrs. Brown graduated from the College of William & Mary in 2013. Over the past two years, the topics of religion, education, and slavery in Colonial Virginia have been the focus of her research. Her work as a public historian has taken her across the globe. In 2017, Nicole was awarded a short-term Fellowship at the International Center for Jefferson Studies in Charlottesville to research women’s education in colonial Virginia. Last year, Mrs. Brown spoke in Reims, France at the National Association for Interpretation’s annual conference regarding the efficacy of using character interpretation to discuss challenging topics. This past January, she was awarded a Gonzales Grant by Colonial Williamsburg to study the Associates of Dr. Bray and the Church of England’s involvement in enslaved education in the United Kingdom.
Dr. Julie Richter, “Education and the Bee Family of Williamsburg”
After receiving her PhD in History at the College of William and Mary, Julie Richter worked in the Historical Research Department at Colonial Williamsburg, focusing on learning about the lives of the enslaved men, women, and children who labored and lived in eighteenth-century Williamsburg and using her findings in training classes for interpreters. After working at Colonial Williamsburg, Richter returned to William & Mary to teach classes for the National Institute of American History and Democracy (NIAHD). Currently, Richter directs the NIAHD Internship Program and serves as NIAHD’s Interim Director.
Dr. Terry Meyers is the Chancellor Professor of English, English, William & Mary. He served as The Lemon Project Co-Chair from 2011-2015 and currently serves on the Lemon Project Steering Committee.
