Lincoln Group Howard Fellow Presenting at Universities Studying Slavery Conference

By Jeffery Boutwell

Columbia, Md

Friday, September 18, 2026

The Lincoln Group of DC is pleased to note that one of its fellowship award participants, graduate student Ebonee Davis-Hayes of Howard University, will be participating in the upcoming 2026 Universities Studying Slavery Conference being held October 22-25 at the University of Maryland in College Park.  Open to the public, the theme of this year’s conference is “250 Years of Freedom and Unfreedom: Truth, Liberty, and Justice for All” and is being organized by the university’s 1856 Project, whose members include archivists, librarians, and community members dedicated to interpreting the history of slavery and the African American experience at UMD.  

Ms. Davis-Hayes, shown above, will be participating on a panel discussing "Reparations at the Virginia Theological Seminary" on the morning of Friday, October 23. Ms. Davis-Hayes is Director of Reparations at the seminary.

Ms. Davis-Hayes is pursuing a Ph.D. in history at Howard University, with her research focusing on the memorialization of Black burial grounds in nineteenth-century Alexandria, Virginia, a city that was a center of the slave trade right up until federal forces occupied it early in the Civil War. She has written, “Throughout my dissertation I highlight the ways in which the city of Alexandria’s history as a major port city for the domestic slave trade, an incestuous locale of urban slavery, and a Union-held contraband stronghold informed the collective memory of Black Alexandrians. This memory, I argue, ultimately became the foundation for their identity in the years following emancipation.” 

The fellowship awarded to Ms. Davis-Hayes in 2024 is named in honor of Dr. Edna Greene-Medford, professor emerita of history at Howard University in Washington, DC.

Photo furnished by Ms. Davis-Hayes