Education & Research
I received a B.A. in History and Anthropology from Penn State University and an M.A. in Public History from Howard University. In 2019, I completed a Ph.D. in Humanities from The University of Texas at Dallas. My primary research fields include American Presidents and Civil Rights, 1789-Present; 18th-19th Century African American Literature and Criticism; and American History Through Film.
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I examine how the Civil Rights Movement intersects with the American Presidency. My book, The Trinity: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Civil Rights in African American Memory, explores the ways perceptions of Kennedy and Johnson’s civil rights leadership developed, hardened, and still circulate within the African-American community.
I take a highly interdisciplinary approach, using oral histories, memoirs, letters, music, films, newspapers, magazines, public polling data, photographs, and visual art to illuminate how memories serve as hidden transcripts that communicate which aspects of the past are worthy of reverence, and which are not.
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My work has appeared in Time Magazine, American Quarterly, and in Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, ed. by Lindsay Chervinsky and Matthew Costello (University of Virginia Press, 2023).
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Photo: The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
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