MATTHEW WASHINTON

 

I am currently a first year Ph.D. student in history here at Morgan State University.  I am originally from Southeastern Pennsylvania.  I received my Bachelors of Arts degree in Sociology from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania in May of 2011. I then received my Masters of Arts in history from West Chester University of Pennsylvania in May of 2014. At West Chester University in April of 2014, the Nu-Sigma Chapter of Phi Alpha Theta inducted me into its honor society.

 

Research wise, my particular interests are slave rebellions in the United States of America.  I have focused mostly on Nat Turner’s Rebellion. In early April of 2014, I presented an essay entitled, “Nat Turner’s Rebellion and the Role that Terrorism played in It,” at the Phi Alpha Theta Regional Conference in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.  I used an extension of this essay for my writing sample here at Morgan State, which first started as a seminar paper at West Chester. In addition to slave rebellions, I am also interested in the institution of slavery and its functioning in the Antebellum South.

 

Outside of my scholarship on Nat Turner’s Rebellion, I have done work on local black history—in particular to Southeastern Pennsylvania.  In the summer of 2012, I did several oral history interviews with the first black judge in Montgomery County Pennsylvania, Horace A. Davenport  More recently, I have been working on an essay about Jim Crow segregation in the borough of Pottstown, which is about 45 minutes outside of Philadelphia; this essay focuses on Jim Crow in Pottstown during the 1950s.