Conversation with the Lincoln Group Edna Greene Medford Scholars at Howard University

The Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia has commemorated its 90th anniversary in 2025, by creating two research fellowships for graduate students at the Howard University History Department. We are proud to honor not only our own mission of promoting the study of the life, leadership, and legacy of Abraham Lincoln but also to honor the career of our longtime member and Lincoln scholar Dr. Edna Greene Medford, emerita chair of history at the university.

The first Lincoln Group of D.C. and Edna Greene Medford Fellows are doctoral candidates Ebonee Davis-Hayes and Fahtim'a Yaro. Both are researching aspects of American slavery. Davis-Hayes’ project is exploring the memorialization of black burial grounds in nineteenth century Alexandria, Virginia. This city was a center of the slave trade right up until federal forces occupied it in May 1861. Davis-Hayes intends to "highlight the ways in which the city of Alexandria’s history as…