Darin J. Waters

Ph.D. Student
dwaters@email.unc.edu

Major Field: U. S. History

Other Fields: Latin American History

Advisor: Harry Watson

Research Interests: U.S. Race Relations, and African American Identity.

My current research interests are centered on the nature of race relations in the Southern Appalachian Mountains. For my doctoral dissertation I will examine the experiences of African Americans in mountains of North Carolina during the era of Reconstruction. Since this was the period in which African Americans began to forge their identities as a free people, one of the primary goals of my study is to determine what freedom meant to the freedpeople who lived in North Carolina's Appalachian mountains. Among the questions that my research seeks to answer are: how did mountain blacks view themselves in relation to blacks in other parts of the state and nation? Did the fact that they lived in the mountains lead them to feel that they were isolated from events that were occurring elsewhere? Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, how did they interact, both politically and socially, with their white neighbors? In short, my research seeks to explore the political, social, and cultural consciousness of the African Americans who resided in Western North Carolina during a time of great and often radical change.