Myisha S. Eatmon

Dr. Myisha S. Eatmon is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in African and African American Studies and History at Harvard University, where she has served since 2022. A Chapel Hill, North Carolina native, she specializes in examining how marginalized communities have strategically navigated and transformed American legal systems throughout history.

Professor Eatmon earned her B.A. in Political Science and History from the University of Notre Dame, followed by an M.A. in United States history and a Ph.D. in United States, African American, and legal history from Northwestern University. Before joining Harvard's faculty, she served as both a research fellow and tenure-track Assistant Professor in History at the University of South Carolina, where she developed her expertise in legal history and African American studies.

Dr. Eatmon's research focuses on the intersection of race, power, and law, with expertise in how African Americans have employed their "legal imaginations" to challenge systemic oppression. She is working on her first book, tentatively titled Litigating in Black and White: Black Legal Cultures, White Violence, and Tort Law During Jim Crow, which is under contract with Cambridge University Press. This significant project examines how Black communities challenged white violence during the Jim Crow era and explores the evolution and transformation of "Black legal culture"—the sophisticated networks of legal knowledge and education that emerged within communities with limited access to formal legal training.

Her published work includes "Wielding an Unlikely Weapon: Black Americans, White Violence, and Damage Suits during the Early Days of Jim Crow" in The Journal of American History, “From the ‘Legal Culture of Slavery’ to Black Legal Culture: Reimagining the Implications and Meanings of Black Litigiousness in Slavery and Freedom” in Law & Social Inquiry, and "Fighting Back: Black Civil Litigation for White-On-Black Violence under Nineteenth, Twentieth, and Twenty-First Century Jim Crow" in The Civil War Era and the Summer of 2020: Race, Violence, Resistance, and Memory in the United States, edited by Hilary Green and Andrew Slap.

Dr. Eatmon has received substantial support for her research through various prestigious grants and fellowships. The American Historical Association awarded her the Littleton-Griswold Research in Legal History Research Grant, and she received the Mellon/American Council for Learned Scholars Dissertation Completion Fellowship in 2018. The American Society for Legal History recognized her as a 2018 Kathryn T. Preyer Fellow. In 2019, the ASLH and the University of Wisconsin School of Law recognized her as a J. Willard Hurst Fellow. The ASLH also named her a 2021-2022 Wallace Johnson First Book Program Fellow and 2021 William Nelson Cromwell Early Career Scholar Fellow. Most recently, the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study selected her as the 2024-2025 Alumnae Fellow.

Through her research, service, and teaching, Dr. Eatmon works to illuminate the creative and strategic ways that marginalized Americans, particularly African Americans, have shaped doctrinal law and collective legal knowledge. Her scholarship provides important insights into broader conversations about the role of law in American society and the ideals that underpin it.