Jody Lynn Allen, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of History and the Robert Francis Engs director of The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation at William & Mary. Her research interests cover the broad span of African American history with a focus on Black agency and resilience. Her current book manuscript, Roses in December: Black Life in Hanover County, Virginia During the Era of Disfranchisement, considers the consequences of and responses to the 1902 Virginia constitution revisions that disfranchised most African American males. She is also working with a colleague to produce The Green Light, a documentary film on the school desegregation case, Charles C. Green v. the School Board of New Kent County, VA. Allen co-authored “Recovering a 'Lost' Story Using Oral History: The United States Supreme Court's Historic Green v. New Kent County, Virginia, Decision,” which appeared in The Oral History Review. She has also written articles for Slavery & Abolition (“Thomas Dew and the Rise of Proslavery Ideology at William & Mary,” in the Forum on Slavery and Universities, May 2018) and the American Historical Association’s Perspectives on History (“Changing the Landscape: Creating a Memorial to the Enslaved at William & Mary,” November 2022).