Dr. Medford is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History. Specializing in nineteenth century African-American history, she also teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses in Civil War and Reconstruction, Colonial America, the Jacksonian Era, and Comparative Slavery. Dr. Medford was educated at Hampton Institute (VA), the University of Illinois (Urbana), and the University of Maryland (College Park), where she received her Ph.D. in history. She lectures widely to scholarly and community-based groups and has presented to international audiences on topics from Alexis de Tocqueville to community building among American free blacks in Civil War-era Canada.

Professor Medford was the Director for History of New York’s African Burial Ground Project and edited the project’s history report. She has published more than a dozen articles and book chapters on African-Americans, especially during the era of the Civil War. Her publications include the forthcoming co-authored work, The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views—Social, Political, and Iconographical.

Professor Medford serves as a faculty mentor to the Ronald McNair Scholars and has been the faculty sponsor for the campus chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society, for the last 16 years. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of National History Day, Inc., a member of the Lincoln Forum and the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, and serves on the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission’s Advisory Council. Dr. Medford also serves on the Editorial Board of Washington History and was a member of the Scholars’ Advisory Panel for the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. She has appeared on several segments of the History Channel’s “Civil War Journal” and on a number of C-SPAN programs, including its “American Presidents” and “American Writers” Series.