Jody Lynn Allen, Ph.D. – Associate Professor of History, The College of William & Mary

Jody Lynn Allen, Ph.D. is a native of Hampton, Virginia, and an Associate Professor of History at William & Mary. Her research interests cover the broad span of African American history with a focus on Black agency. Her first book, Roses in December: Black Life in Hanover, Civil War to Civil Rights highlights the resilience Black Hanoverians showed in the hundred year period following the end of slavery in this country and the onset of the era of disfranchisement. She is also working with a colleague to produce The Green Light, a documentary film on the school desegregation case, Charles C. Green v. the School Board of New Kent County, VA. This little-known 1968 Supreme Court decision led to the desegregation of public schools throughout the South. She co-authored “Recovering a ‘Lost’ Story Using Oral History: The United States Supreme Court’s Historic Green v. New Kent County, Virginia, Decision,” which appeared in The Oral History Review. She has also written articles for Slavery & Abolition (“Thomas Dew and the Rise of Proslavery Ideology at William & Mary,” in the Forum on Slavery and Universities, May 2018) and the American Historical Association’s Perspectives on History (“Changing the Landscape: Creating a Memorial to the Enslaved at William & Mary,” November 2022). As the Robert Francis Engs Director of The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation, Allen works to uncover, make public, and address William & Mary’s 332-year relationship with African Americans on the campus and beyond. During the 2017-2018 academic year, Allen was a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, where she taught African American History and consulted with Sewanee’s Roberson Project on Slavery, Race, and Reconciliation. Committed to serving her community, Allen was appointed by Governor Northam to the Commission to Study Slavery and Subsequent De Jure and De Facto Racial and Economic Discrimination Against African Americans. She is also the Vice-Chair of the State Review Board for the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

Note: the second half of this episode is a re-aired interview with Stephanie Arnold, M.D. See the original show post from her interview here.

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