She received her BA, MA, Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of African American Actresses: The Struggle for Visibility, 1900-1960 (which was nominated by the press to the NAACP Image Awards). She is the 2011 recipient of the Trailblazer Award Hayti Heritage Film Festival and 2007 Oscar Micheaux Book and Film Award from the Oscar Micheaux Film Festival, South Dakota. She has appeared on North Carolina Bookwatch with UNC-TV 2011; WUNC-FM Radio “The State of Things;” and Turner Movie Classics. Documentaries in which she has appeared include: Movies of Color: Black Southern Cinema (2003, Tom Thurman director), Beyond Tara: The Extraordinary Life of Hattie McDaniel (2001), Madison Davis Lacy director), and Birth of a Movement (2017, Bestor Cram and Susan Gray directors).