ABOUT ME
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I came to history by making mistakes.
History was a natural fit for my curiosity about the "why" and not just the "what" of the past. But like too many of us, history classes were a blur of dates, names, and vocabulary terms. It was Black women’s literature that made the past come alive for me: Toni Morrison, Gayl Jones, Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Cade Bambara. Their words transported me as the worlds of their characters opened up to me. I needed to know more about the real women behind these stories. The historian in me grew: from a spindly curiosity to a deeply rooted commitment to uncovering the voices of Black women who shaped this world.
Our world.
IMAGE CREDIT: ASHLEY ADAMS, mokabeaute.com
I love learning, but science? Not so much. So, when I had to do a science fair project in middle school , I took the easy route: the classic one-plant-in-the-cupboard, one-plant-in-the-sun experiment. The plant in the cupboard was a spindly little thing, but it grew. The plant in the sun? Nothing. It never sprouted. Not a leaf. Instead of seeing it as a failure, I spun creative theories to explain what happened—or, in my case, what didn’t happen. My teacher was so impressed that I still earned an A, but the real reward was discovering my love for digging into the why of how things happen.
Or don’t happen.
PBS (2019)
Boss: The Black Experience in Business
For more information about my research and work, check out the selected media below. Click on the image to access.
DOCUMENTARIES
PBS (2022)
Making Black America
Episodes 1 and 2
Curiosity Stream (2023)
Bessie Coleman: Queen of the Skies
TV & PODCASTS
The Hidden History of Black Wall Street
We Know About Tulsa — But What Happened To Other Black Wall Streets?
Maggie L. Walker’s Historic Mission of Financial Empowerment
Juneteenth Celebrates Independence for All Americans
TALKS
SCHOLARSHIP
Remembering Ida, Ida Remembering: Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Black Political Culture in Reconstruction-Era MS
Southern Cultures (2020)
“A Commercial Emancipation" for the Negro: Financing Black Business in the 1920s
Financial History Magazine (2019)
“What Price Wholeness?,” Review of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans
New York Times Review of Books, February 11, 2021
Domesticating Racial Capitalism: Freedwomen in U.S. Industrial Sewing Schools, 1862–1872—An Opening Foray
International Labor and Working-Class History (2022)
“To Do a Work that Would Be Very Far Reaching": Minnie Geddings Cox [and] the Mississippi Life Insurance Company
Enterprise and Society (2016)
Getting into Good Debt: Race, Debt, and the Pursuit of Freedom
Modern American History (2023)
Why Juneteenth Matters
ASALH News
“All the Other Devils this Side of Hades": Black Banks and the MS Banking Law of 1914
Business History Review (2021)
IMAGE CREDITS: From top, left to right: Andrea Pippins, "Ida B. Wells," flygirlblog.com; Library of Congress, A night-club map of Harlem; collage of images about Evanston, Illinois, reparations; Quilt “Into the Light”; detail from cover of Judge, January 31, 1903; detail from cover of Le Petit Journal, October 7, 1906; Adobe Stock Image; opening of Tri-State Bank, 1946 (Center for Southern Folklore)
