My name is Andrea Miles (she/her), and I am a PhD Candidate at the University of Louisville. My dissertation entitled, Black Rebels: African American Revolutionaries from North Carolina During and After the War of Independence, examines the factors that motivated free Blacks in North Carolina to join the Revolutionaries in the Southern Campaign, who sought to preserve slavery, instead of British forces, who offered liberty to the slaves, during the American Revolution (1775-1783). My dissertation explores North Carolina’s political climate and class divisions to examine the relationship between race and class in the Revolutionary Era.
I have won short term research fellowships at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Huntington Library in San Marino California, The Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois, the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and the Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library in Winterthur, Delaware.
I have presented my research at national conferences including the Society of Military History Annual Conference, the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1850, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the McNeil Center for Early American Studies.