Jessica LocklearGraduate Student
I am an enrolled member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, the largest Native American Tribe east of the Mississippi River. My grandmother moved from North Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at age 19 in search of better economic opportunities. While I grew up in Pennsylvania, I have always been deeply connected to our tribal homelands in Robeson County, North Carolina. After graduating high school, I had the privilege of moving to our tribal homelands to attend UNC Pembroke, where I earned a bachelor's degree in history and American Indian studies. I then moved back to Philadelphia to further my education and earned a mater's degree in history with a public history concentration from Temple University. Being the product of a Lumbee migration story, most of my historical interests and areas of inquiry stem from the experiences and stories I have been told by family members and other Lumbee elders.
My dissertation project focuses on voluntary migrations and acts of mobility carried out by Lumbee individuals and their experiences living away from home during the twentieth century. Through this project, I hope to demonstrate the ways Lumbee people used mobility as a tool and strategy to adapt to changing historical circumstances of the twentieth century. Examining moments of voluntary separation from tribal homelands also demonstrates the ways Lumbee people had to reckon their identities within and against the ideas and frameworks of race held by people in the places to which they relocated, revealing the ways national conversations about race, and specifically ideas about racial purity and whiteness, influenced the development of modern American Indian identity in the twentieth century.
I am the 2024-2025 Mellon Foundation Native American Scholars Initiative Predoctoral Fellowship at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, PA. This initiative seeks to promote greater collaboration between scholars, archives, and indigenous communities throughout the Americas. My dissertation research was also supported by the 2023 Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship, which provides support for doctoral students preparing to embark on innovative dissertation research projects in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.
Education
- BA, University of North Carolina, Pembroke
- MA, Temple University
Research Interests
Indigenous History
20th Century U.S. History
Native American Mobility
Race and Identity
Public History
Dissertation Title
"Negotiating Identity Away From Home: Lumbee Mobility, Racial Hierarchies, and American Indian Identity in the Twentieth Century"
