Amy Murrell Taylor | |
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 Taylor in 2010 | |
| Awards | Merle Curti Award Frederick Douglass Prize |
| Academic background | |
| Education | B.A., Duke University M.A., PhD, history, 2001, University of Virginia |
| Thesis | The Divided Family in Civil War America, 1860-1870 (2001) |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | University at Albany,SUNY University of Kentucky |
Amy Elizabeth Murrell Taylor is an American historian. She is the T. Marshall Hahn Jr. Professor of History at the University of Kentucky.
Taylor earned her Bachelor of Arts from Duke University,then earned her Master's degree and PhD from the University of Virginia. [1] Her thesis was titled The Divided Family in Civil War America,1860-1870. [2]
Taylor joined the Department of History at University at Albany,SUNY as an assistant professor. [3] While there,she published her first book titled The Divided Family in Civil War America in 2005. Using personal experiences from the Civil War Era,including letters,diaries,newspapers,and government documents,Taylor examines how the war divided nations and families. [4] [5] Following her publication,Taylor received the 2007 College of Arts and Sciences Dean's Award for Outstanding Achievement in Teaching [6] and was granted a 2008 Fellowship with the American Council of Learned Societies. [7] Her fellowship focused on her project An Army of Fugitives:A History of the Men,Women,and Children Who Fled Slavery During the United States Civil War. [8] Before leaving Albany for a similar position at the University of Kentucky,Taylor was appointed to the Board of Advisors of The Society of Civil War Historians. [9]
In 2012,Taylor left Albany for a tenured associate professor position at the University of Kentucky's Department of History. [10] While continuing to work on her project An Army of Fugitives:A History of the Men,Women,and Children Who Fled Slavery During the United States Civil War, she was appointed to the editorial board for the Journal of Southern History and to the selection committee for the 2016 Avery Craven Prize. [11] Two years later,she was promoted to interim chair of UK's Department of History [12] and published her book Embattled Freedom:Journeys through the Civil War's Slave Refugee Camps. The book focused on the everyday life experiences of escapes slaves seeking refuge during the Civil War. [13] [14] ''Embattled Freedom received numerous awards including the 2019 Frederick Douglass Prize, [15] Nau Book Prize, [16] Tom Watson Brown Book Prize, [17] and Merle Curti Award. [18]
On June 19,2020,it was announced that Taylor would be appointed as University Research Professor for the 2020-21 Academic year at the University of Kentucky. [19]
The Underground Railroad was a network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century. It was used by enslaved African Americans primarily to escape into free states and from there to Canada. The network,primarily the work of free African Americans,was assisted by abolitionists and others sympathetic to the cause of the escapees. The slaves who risked capture and those who aided them are also collectively referred to as the passengers and conductors of the "Underground Railroad". Various other routes led to Mexico,where slavery had been abolished,and to islands in the Caribbean that were not part of the slave trade. An earlier escape route running south toward Florida,then a Spanish possession,existed from the late 17th century until approximately 1790. However,the network generally known as the Underground Railroad began in the late 18th century. It ran north and grew steadily until the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by President Abraham Lincoln. One estimate suggests that,by 1850,approximately 100,000 slaves had escaped to freedom via the network.
The University of Kentucky is a public land-grant research university in Lexington,Kentucky. Founded in 1865 by John Bryan Bowman as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky,the university is one of the state's two land-grant universities. It is the institution with the highest enrollment in the state,with 32,710 students as of fall 2022.
In the United States before 1865,a slave state was a state in which slavery and the internal or domestic slave trade were legal,while a free state was one in which they were prohibited. Between 1812 and 1850,it was considered by the slave states to be politically imperative that the number of free states not exceed the number of slave states,so new states were admitted in slave–free pairs. There were,nonetheless,some slaves in most free states up to the 1840 census,and the Fugitive Slave Clause of the U.S. Constitution,as implemented by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 and the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850,provided that a slave did not become free by entering a free state and must be returned to his or her owner.
In the United States,fugitive slaves or runaway slaves were terms used in the 18th and 19th centuries to describe people who fled slavery. The term also refers to the federal Fugitive Slave Acts of 1793 and 1850. Such people are also called freedom seekers to avoid implying that the enslaved person had committed a crime and that the slaveholder was the injured party.
Alan Shaw Taylor is an American historian and scholar who is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia. A specialist in the early history of the United States,Taylor has written extensively about the colonial history of the United States,the American Revolution and the early American Republic. Taylor has received two Pulitzer Prizes and the Bancroft Prize,and was also a finalist for the National Book Award for non-fiction. In 2020 he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
Memorial Hall located at 610 South Limestone Street is a prominent building on the campus of the University of Kentucky. It is approximately 17,012 square feet and 130 feet tall. The building's construction was funded by donations and individual contributions over a ten-year period through a subscription to the university,beginning in 1919. Completed in 1929 as a memorial to those who died in World War I,it is used for lectures and performances,and also serves as a site for graduation ceremonies of some colleges within the university. From 1969 to 1970 major renovations of the interior of the building took place. The additions include new flooring,seating,powder rooms,lighting,and air conditioning. It is located on central campus at the end of Funkhouser Drive.
David William Blight is the Sterling Professor of History,of African American Studies,and of American Studies and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery,Resistance,and Abolition at Yale University. Previously,Blight was a professor of History at Amherst College,where he taught for 13 years. He has won several awards,including the Bancroft Prize and Frederick Douglass Prize for Race and Reunion:The Civil War in American Memory,and the Pulitzer Prize and Lincoln Prize for Frederick Douglass:Prophet of Freedom. In 2021,he was elected to the American Philosophical Society.
The pre-American Civil War practice of kidnapping into slavery in the United States occurred in both free and slave states,and both fugitive slaves and free negroes were transported to slave markets and sold,often multiple times. There were also rewards for the return of fugitives. Three types of kidnapping methods were employed:physical abduction,inveiglement of free blacks,and apprehension of fugitives. The enslavement,or re-enslavement,of free blacks occurred for 85 years,from 1780 to 1865.
The history of slavery in Kentucky dates from the earliest permanent European settlements in the state,until the end of the Civil War. Kentucky was classified as the Upper South or a border state,and enslaved African Americans represented 24 percent by 1830,but declined to 19.5 percent by 1860 on the eve of the Civil War. The majority of enslaved people in Kentucky were concentrated in the cities of Louisville and Lexington,in the fertile Bluegrass Region as well the Jackson Purchase,both the largest hemp- and tobacco-producing areas in the state. In addition,many enslaved people lived in the Ohio River counties where they were most often used in skilled trades or as house servants. Few people lived in slavery in the mountainous regions of eastern and southeastern Kentucky. Those that did that were held in eastern and southeastern Kentucky served primarily as artisans and service workers in towns.
Camp Nelson National Monument, formerly the Camp Nelson Civil War Heritage Park,is a 525-acre (2.12 km2) national monument,historical museum and park located in southern Jessamine County,Kentucky,United States,20 miles (32 km) south of Lexington,Kentucky. The American Civil War era camp was established in 1863 as a depot for the Union Army during the Civil War. It became a recruiting ground for new soldiers from Eastern Tennessee and enslaved people,many of whom had fled their living conditions to be soldiers.
Peter Bruner was born a slave in Kentucky. He escaped enslavement to join the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war,he married and raised a family in Ohio. Collaborating with his daughter,he published his autobiography.
NAACP in Kentucky is very active with branches all over the state,largest being in Louisville and Lexington. The Kentucky State Conference of NAACP continues today to fight against injustices and for the equality of all people.
Eliza Carpenter was a race horse owner and jockey who was born into slavery and achieved success as the only African-American horse racer in early Oklahoma. For more than thirty years she owned and raced a number of Thoroughbred horses in country circuits,winning many races and considerable money.
Lucy Higgs Nichols was an African American woman who escaped slavery. She served as a nurse for the Union Army during the American Civil War. Known affectionately as "Aunt Lucy",her sole photo shows her surrounded by veterans of the 23rd Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment,of the Army of the Tennessee. She was as devoted to the soldiers as they were to her and her daughter,Mona. She lost her daughter and husband during the Civil War,and after the war ended,settled in New Albany,Indiana,where she worked as a housekeeper to several officers and eventually married her second husband,John Nichols. She lived in New Albany with her husband for more than forty years,until her death on January 25,1915,at the Floyd County Poor House.
E. Belle Mitchell Jackson was an American educator,activist,small business owner,and abolitionist from Danville,Kentucky. Mitchell was one of the founders of the Colored Orphans Industrial Home in Lexington,Kentucky.
Eugenia "Jean" Marie Murrell Strode Capers was an American judge,educator,and politician.
Thavolia Glymph is an American historian and professor. She is Professor of History and African-American Studies at Duke University. She specializes in nineteenth-century US history,African-American history and women’s history,authoring Out of the House of Bondage:The Transformation of the Plantation Household (2008) and The Women's Fight:The Civil War's Battles for Home,Freedom,and Nation (2020).
William Caleb McDaniel is an American historian. His book Sweet Taste of Liberty:A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for History. He is also an Associate professor of History at Rice University.
Black Kentuckians are residents of the state of Kentucky who are of African ancestry. The history of Blacks in the US state of Kentucky starts at the same time as the history of White Americans;Black Americans settled Kentucky alongside white explorers such as Daniel Boone. As of 2019,according to the U.S. Census Bureau,African Americans make up 8.5% of Kentucky's population. Compared to the rest of the population,the African American census racial category is the 2nd largest.
African-American neighborhoods in Lexington,Kentucky were established after the Civil War.
I am on leave in Fall 2018, and so the very able Amy Murrell Taylor will take the reins as interim chair until I return on January 1
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