By Scout Gunn 

This fall, the University of Montevallo welcomed Dr. Kathryn Tucker to its history department. I sat down to talk to her and discussed what sparked her interest in history, how she ended up at the University of Montevallo and projects she’s worked on. 

Tucker explained that she went into college with many ideas on what she wanted to do. 

After taking a history class at Wake Forest University, however, Tucker explained, “It was just amazing. I just loved everything about it and I went to her office and said I wanted to change my major to history and I’ve just been on this path ever since.”  

Tucker explained she soon fell in love with teaching as well, saying, “When I got to grad school and started teaching, turns out I loved teaching more than I love history.”  

Before coming to the bricks, Tucker taught at the University of Georgia, where she also attended graduate school. Tucker then taught at Troy University for ten years.  

So, what brought her to Montevallo? Tucker explained, “I was very clear at seventeen that I wanted to go to a liberal arts college. It was always at the back of mind that I would love to teach at one as well. So, when this opportunity came along, I was just so thrilled and excited because it’s always what I had in the back of my mind as my ultimate goal for myself.”  

Tucker said she has found Montevallo amazing so far.  

“I love everyone here–my colleagues my students. Y’all are just so excited about the material and engaged in it and I can tell that it really is the kind of place I’m looking for–where it’s a community of people,” Tucker said. 

When asked what area of history she finds the most interesting Tucker said Southern history, specifically, studying race relations from Reconstruction to the Civil Rights Movement.  

Tucker explained, “But one thing that I always tell my students that’s so important is looking at resistance to the oppression as well, which is one reason I love studying the Civil Rights Movement so much.”  

While her specialization is in Civil Rights, Tucker is also teaching introductory ancient history courses at UM.  

When asked how teaching ancient history compares with teaching Civil Rights, Tucker responded, “It’s just given me a new perspective on how recent all of this history is. I think that is the value of teaching world history, is that large perspective where you can see similarities between humans, wherever they are. It’s amazing how many similarities between all these completely separate cultures as they started developing. The differences and what does that tell us. I’ve really been enjoying it.”  

Tucker’s research projects have mainly focused on the usage of local and oral history. One research topic was integration at Troy University and the other was with the Equal Justice Initiative on lynchings and racial violence in the Troy area.  

When asked how she chose her research topics, Tucker said, “Those were the kind of projects I loved doing. Local history and looking at how those local dynamics and trends that aren’t really in a lot of textbooks or on the internet, but how important they are telling us about larger things and history.”  

Tucker finished the interview by saying, “I always think it’s important to document not just the powerful leaders–the presidents, the people we hear about. But ordinary people’s stories tell us so much about the larger trends of history. It’s so valuable to get those stories down before we lose them.”