Whenever she found herself consumed by teenage boredom, Tamika Nunley knew exactly where to turn: her father’s extensive library.
Growing up in a military family, Nunley spent most of her childhood living on Air Force bases overseas, where her father organized African American heritage clubs during his off-duty hours to celebrate and share Black history and culture with other military families. He also filled his world with books, giving his daughter carte blanche access. She credits “One More River to Cross,” a collection of African American biographies by James Haskins, for impacting her career path.
“I was captivated by that book celebrating the accomplishments of Black individuals,” she shares, “and even though I was thousands of miles away from the United States, there was something special about seeing myself through their stories. It really sparked my interest in African American history.”
The research professor brings her scholarship on slavery, African American women and gender in the early republic and American Civil War to the Department of History, examining these dynamics through a lens focused on individual experiences. For Nunley, looking at the lives of everyday people is a powerful way to see how society operated in the past while understanding how the country, or a particular moment, was shaped.
“We’re moving from the macro questions about the institution of slavery to the micro experiences of individuals for a richer understanding,” she says.
She looks to the South as an example, acknowledging that oftentimes it’s easier to collapse Southern regional identity into a stereotype rather than including the local histories that bring more depth to the larger picture.
“In some areas, there were extreme levels of anti-Black violence and white supremacy, while in others we find more interracial cooperation. This doesn’t mean that racism was absent, but it was much more complex at the local level — and reaching deeper into the archives to look at people who may not have been as prominent in newspapers or historical records deepens our collective understanding of events,” she explains.
Nunley’s deeper dive into the archives has also produced two books. “At the Threshold of Liberty” focuses on the lives of enslaved, free and fugitive Black women in 19th century Washington, D.C.. Turning to Virginia, “The Demands of Justice” shares the legal court cases of enslaved Black women and girls who were brought to trial for violent crimes against their enslavers. And Nunley is currently working on a third manuscript focused on the ethics of mothering and how it manifested in the everyday lives of Black women in the 19th century.
Along with her ongoing research, Nunley will be busy teaching the first-year seminar course, Women Behaving Badly, where students examine women who have transgressed in a criminal way and explore what constitutes a crime. She is also teaching a graduate seminar on African American history, discussing foundational writings and the latest scholarship that have shaped the field of study.
“We’ll be taking some intellectual risks and working through messy questions,” she shares, “but I want to build a sense of community in the classroom so the students can begin to formulate what they think about the past and what they want to contribute to the field.”
But when looking at her own contributions to the scholarship of African American slavery, Nunley is quick to turn from the micro to the macro.
“Whatever I write, I don’t expect it to be the definitive say on a particular place or a time period,” she confesses. “Instead, I'm hoping that it will be a part of a broader conversation that future scholars will build upon.”
