PLENARY SESSION

Saturday, 24 May 2025, 8:00 a.m. ET

Recovering Louisville’s African American History Using Genealogical Research

Felicia Jamison, PhD, Assistant Professor History & Comparative Humanities, University of Louisville

Dr. Felicia Jamison (Courtesy University of Louisville)

Dr. Felicia Jamison starts the conference by exploring the importance of genealogical research in the university setting to shed light on family histories and better understand broader trends in American history. Genealogy is an excellent tool for students to use when doing community-engaged work. In this lecture, Dr. Jamison will discuss how she uses biographies of African Americans in her research on enslaved and free Black people in the nineteenth-century South and how University of Louisville public humanities students incorporate local family histories into their research on African American history in Louisville.

Dr. Jamison is an assistant professor of history at the University of Louisville. Her research specialty is nineteenth and twentieth-century African American history, United States history, and public history. Her current research project analyzes the strategies southern Black women used to accumulate property during slavery and purchase land during the Reconstruction period. Dr. Jamison received her BA at Mercer University, her MA at Morgan State University, and her PhD and Graduate Certificate in Public History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.