Her primary research interests include slavery and the transition to freedom, and African American women's labor and political activism. Her current work focuses on Black/Indian relations in the nineteenth-century United States. She has published a number of articles on: slavery and emancipation in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, black women in the Creek nation, and runaway slaves in the southeast. She is currently completing a book manuscript that examines the history of African Americans' slavery, emancipation and struggles for citizenship in the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations. It explores the makings and meanings of race and citizenship within these Indian nations and also in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century, an era in which federal efforts to establish Black people's freedom coincided with policies to erode Indian peoples' tribal autonomy and land claims.