History professor harnesses the power of memory

Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders came of age in a tiny community just north of Charleston, S.C.—a place steeped in Civil War history. 

“When I was young, I loved history. I grew up around a lot of Black history in my life,” says the CU Boulder assistant professor of U.S. and African American history. 

So, while pursuing her PhD, she wrote her dissertation on African American perspectives on the Civil War. Now, she is turning her dissertation into a book, tentatively titled They Knew What the War Was About: African Americans and the Memory of the Civil War. 

Lawrence-Sanders says she loves teaching history—and Civil War history in particular— because of its importance to understanding current events: “Anything you want to know about what’s happening now—the answer is history.”