Photo Credit: William Laurence Photography
About Bethany
Bethany Bell is a second-year PhD Student in the history department at the University of Virginia. Bell is a student of African American history and her research explores the intersection of the history of slavery, the Civil War and the built environment in the late 19th and early 20th century. Bethany is currently working on her Master's Thesis titled "Dismantling The Master's House: How Freedom Seekers Reshaped the Built Environment During the U.S. Civil War, 1861-1865". This research explores how unfree and free Black southerners used the Civil War as a catalyst to renegotiate their relationships to the built environment of the plantation.
Bethany also works as a researcher on behalf of the Memory Project at UVA, uncovering the history of the Charlottesville slave trade.
Bell holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Central Arkansas and Boston University respectively.
When not writing or researching, you can find her baking, browsing bookstores and antique shops, and working on new DIY projects.
Why History?
Many of the people who have had the greatest influence on my life are people that I have never met. Their stories are woven into mine like the intricate patterns of a patchwork quilt or a swath of kente cloth. As a child, I eagerly read about heroines like Sojourner Truth and Ida B. Wells. I remember being in awe of how they shone a light on injustice, even at the risk of their personal safety. I wanted to embody that kind of courage; to tell stories that would inspire others to action. Growing up in a small town in the mid-south, I saw southern history represented in a way that romanticized the antebellum south as a place where fallen Confederates were heroic victims and enslaved people had been content with their lot in life. The dissonance between this false narrative and my burgeoning knowledge of Black history laid the groundwork for interests that would continue to take shape throughout my education.
As a college student, my passion for Black history expanded to include Africa and the diaspora. I began by taking an African history course taught by a Ghanaian professor. Every week, in class, figures like Kwame Nkrumah and Yaa Asantewaa came to life as three-dimensional beings with rich and dynamic legacies influenced but not dominated by Euro-centric views. I valued being taught this history with more nuance and depth than I had previously experienced. A year after graduating college, while working on my master’s degree, I jumped on an opportunity to spend a summer in Ghana. I remember so many details about the day trip I took to Cape Coast Castle. When I close my eyes, I can still smell the salty sea air; I feel the claustrophobia of the prison cells; I hear the echoes of the past. After touring the fortress, I stood in the "door of no return" looking out at the ocean, wondering if perhaps some of my ancestors had passed through those wooden arches.
That curiosity sent me on a research journey into my family history for the next several years. More than once, while working, I would look up from a 19th century will or slave schedule and find that I had stayed up until two or three-o-clock in the morning searching for the next piece of the puzzle. What began as a hazy list of names and dates gradually solidified into verifiable events, timelines, and stories about my ancestors and the lives they led. Even as I write this, their names come to mind one after another. Reuben Bell, my 3rd great-grandfather, was born enslaved but registered to vote in Texas in 1867; Jerry Hughes, my 2nd great-grandfather, was born a few years after emancipation and would go on to acquire a Ph.D. from Morehouse; Lucille Pulliam, my great-grandmother, survived the reign of terror by moving her entire family to the Midwest and then to California during the great migration. Each new name and story felt like a vibrant string in a tapestry that I had never seen before, yet was somehow familiar. During my genealogy research, I began charting my course back to graduate school for a Ph.D. in history when the opportunity to spend more time in Africa tempted me to delay for a little longer.
When I joined the Peace Corps, I knew I wanted to go to Rwanda. I had spent a short time there during my college years and the experience was compelling enough to draw me back for a two-year period. Something about being a Black American living in Africa forced me to wrestle with my identity and history in new and challenging ways. I was disconcerted by how diasporic history was represented in history textbooks for Rwandan children. I recall observing a 7th-grade history class where the lesson from the textbook was entitled "benefits of the transatlantic slave trade for Africa." Alarmed at the textbook’s contents, I assembled some supplemental instruction on Black history for the school community. Using a mix of English and the native language, Kinyarwanda, I engaged in rich conversations with my students, friends, and neighbors about the middle passage, slavery in the United States, and some of the pivotal Black figures in the Civil Rights movement. A few short weeks after introducing Black History Month at my school, my Peace Corps service was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic. I returned to the United States in 2020 energized by my experiences abroad and galvanized by the resurgent BLM protests often taking place around symbols of the Confederacy that I had grown up around. I found ways to contribute through writing, protest, and political action. Ultimately, I felt the urge to return to graduate education which has led me to my current position as a Bridge to PhD fellow at the University of Virginia.
From Arkansas to the African continent and back to America, I have crossed the globe many times to arrive where I started; a Black woman, eager to reveal the kind of stories that have inspired me my whole life but that I had to search long and hard to find. Every day when I I write, I periodically look down at a simple brass bracelet on my left wrist that I purchased on my first day in Ghana several years ago. Etched in the center is a small bird with its neck sloping gracefully toward the back of its body. Later during that trip, I would discover the bird is an Adinkra symbol, Sankofa, meaning "to return and get it" or "to remember, reclaim, and learn from the past.” Being a graduate student of history is the current chapter of my story, but it is annotated by the lives of those who have gone before me; from famous figures to members of my family tree. As I move forward on this journey, I aspire to follow in their path, continue their work, and honor their legacies.