Tamika Nunley

Tamika Nunley is Associate Professor of history and the Sandler Family Faculty Fellow of
American studies at Cornell University. Along with articles, essays, and reviews, she is the
author of At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington,
D.C. which received the Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Award, the Pauli Murray Book
Prize, and the Mary Kelley Book Prize. Her article, “Thrice Condemned’: Enslaved Women,
Violence, and the Practice of Leniency in Antebellum Courts,” received the Letitia Woods
Brown prize for best article in African American Women’s History and the Anne Braden Prize
for best article in Southern Women’s History. Nunley recently released her new book, The
Demands of Justice: Enslaved Women, Capital Crime and Clemency in Early Virginia with the
University of North Carolina Press. Her work has been featured in The Washington Post,
NewsOne, Smithsonian Magazine, Ms. Magazine, and Fortune Magazine. In 2023, the Librarian
of Congress named her the Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American history.

TOPICS: History, Women and Girls of Color