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Join Dr. Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander for this Facebook Live event as she profiles the exceptional Sarah Garland Boyd Jones, a woman who defied conventional expectations of gender and race in late 19th century Virginia.  As the first African American woman licensed to practice medicine in Richmond, Virginia, Sarah Jones was a forerunner during an age of pioneers.  Pious, moral, and imbued with nineteenth century notions of proper gender roles, Sarah was a nascent “race woman” who used the language of protest to advocate for the advancement of her community, women and men.

Cassandra Newby-Alexander

Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander, Ph.D., is Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Professor of History, and Director, Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for African Diaspora Studies at Norfolk State University. A Norfolk, Virginia native, she received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. from the College of William and Mary, May 1992.  She is a professor of history at Norfolk State University and the director of the Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for African Diaspora Studies and has received grants to support her various projects totaling over $650,000.

Her publications have appeared in edited books and major biographical series, such as the Dictionary of Virginia Biography. Her most recent articles published in 2016 included, “Vivian Carter Mason:  The Community Feminist,” in Virginia Women: Their Lives and Times (two-volume collection, University of Georgia Press), “Vivian Carter Mason: Securing Civil Rights in Norfolk, Virginia, 1943-1982” in the Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South (Spring/Summer 2016), and “Malcolm X,” a biographic entry for the edited book, The American Middle Class: An Economic Encyclopedia of Progress and Poverty by Robert S. Rycroft with Greenwood Press, an imprint of ABC-CLIO.  

 Dr. Newby-Alexander 2010 book, An African American History of the Civil War in Hampton Roads, examined the experiences of blacks during the Civil War in Virginia.  Her co-authored book, Black America Series:  Portsmouth, was the first to examine the history of African Americans in Portsmouth.  In 2008, she co-edited book, Voices from within the Veil:  African Americans and the Experience of Democracy and 2009 co-authored book, Hampton Roads:  Remembering Our Schools, have expanded the intellectual discourse on the history of African Americans in Hampton Roads and the nation-at large.

She has completed a book on the Underground Railroad in Virginia entitled, Virginia Waterways and the Underground Railroad with a release date of December 2017.  In addition, two articles are due for publication in 2018 and 2019: “Dr. Sarah Garland Jones:  Beyond Race and Gender in late 19th Virginia” in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, and “Laura E. Davis Titus: Feminine Leadership in Freedom’s First Generation,” in Women Claiming Freedom: Gender, Race, and Liberty in the Americas with the University of Georgia Press.  And finally, a city commissioned work with co-authors Tommy Bogger and Michael Hucles, I Too, Sing Norfolk, will be published by the University of Virginia press in 2019.  

Dr. Newby-Alexander has also appeared on a number of national programs, including C-SPAN3 with Richmond Civil War Museum’s 1865 Person of the Year program “The Freedmen,” Colonial Williamsburg’s Electronic Fieldtrip When Freedom Came, the Emmy winning Henry Louis Gates 2013 series Many Rivers to Cross, Talk of the Nation in 1998, Tavis Smiley Presents: The African American Imprint on America program recorded at the College of William and Mary for broadcast on The History Channel, History Channel documentary on Race, Slavery and the Civil War, and C-SPAN’s 2010 Virginia Sesquicentennial Conference’s “Race, Slavery, and the Civil War:  The Tough Stuff of American History.”

Sarah Garland Boyd Jones (née Sarah Garland Boyd; 1866 – May 11, 1905) Image Wikipedia