She specializes in African American gender history, the history of education, and southern history. She is the author of several historical works including Reading, Writing, and Segregation: A Century of Black Women Teachers in Nashville (2008). She currently is completing her upcoming book manuscript, After the Marches: Bertha Maxwell-Roddey’s Educational Activism, Reconfiguring Civil Rights in the Desegregated South, which is under contract with the University Press of Florida.