Dr. Frazier's research interests are in the social and cultural history of African American communities and its economic and political implications. Her dissertation research argued that distinctive patterns of forming and maintaining kinship ties among black families shaped the ways in which African Americans organized themselves throughout the twentieth century. Scholars recognize that wide family systems were important to surviving slavery, but have paid little attention to the role of extra-nuclear family groups beyond the antebellum period. Her project identified African Americans’ extended and adoptive kin networks as important resources for combating racism, poverty, and familial dispersion from emancipation to the turn of the twenty-first century.
