Specializes in modern United States history, particularly African American history, race relations, and the history of the Civil Rights Movement.

Professor Sullivan teaches courses in twentieth century U.S. history. Areas of interest include African American History; the South since the Civil War; race, reform and politics in the United States; and the history of the Civil Rights Movement. She teaches a graduate course on modern African American history. She is the author of Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era; Freedom Writer: Virginia Foster Durr, Letters from the Civil Rights Years; New Directions in Civil Rights Studies, co-edited with Armstead L. Robinson, and Civil Rights in the United States, a 2-volume encyclopedia, coedited with Waldo E. Martin Jr. She and Waldo Martin are editors of the John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture, published by the University of North Carolina Press.

Current Activities

I am completing a history of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. A national organization with branches in all parts of the nation, the NAACP led in shaping the process of racial change in modern America. The book explores localized resistance to racial segregation from the early twentieth century through the 1960s while examining the ways in which the NAACP bridged region, class, and race to organize African Americans around a common vision and set of strategies for advancing racial justice. In the wake of the legislative victories of the mid 1960s, the rise of Black Power and urban unrest fueled a struggle over goals, strategies and leadership, testing the NAACP’s ability to respond to the persistence of racial inequality and the shifting currents of black protest.

I am also collaborating with Waldo Martin on an oral history of the Civil Rights Movement, which will be published by the New Press.