EDNA GREENE MEDFORD

Edna Greene Medford was educated at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in Virginia, the University of Illinois Urbana, and the University of Maryland College Park, where she received her PhD in United States history. She is currently a professor in the Department of History in the College of Arts and Sciences at Howard University where she has also served as chair of the Department. Specializing in nineteenth-century African-American history, she teaches courses in the Jacksonian Era, Civil War and Reconstruction, and African-American History to 1877. Medford has served as the Director for History of New York’s African Burial Ground Project and edited the volume Historical Perspectives of the African Burial Ground: New York Blacks and the Diaspora. She has published numerous articles and book chapters on African Americans, especially during the era of the Civil War. Her books include Lincoln and Emancipation as well as co-authored books The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views. She is a former member of the Board of Trustees of National History Day, Inc., a member of the Executive Committee of the Lincoln Forum, and chairperson of the Scholars Advisory Council at President Lincoln’s Cottage at the Armed Services Retirement Home in Washington, DC. She serves on the board of the Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation, the Ulysses S. Grant Association, the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, and the Abraham Lincoln Institute. She was the 2009 special bicentennial recipient of the Order of Lincoln, an award given by the state of Illinois, for her scholarship on the president.