Celebrate Black History Month with us at our February Fifth Third Community Day, filled with talks and activities that honor the courage, resilience and legacy of African Americans in U.S. history.

Historians, researchers, and living-history experts will share stories from the Revolutionary era, the Civil War and today’s work to preserve family and community histories.

In the morning, you can hear from Dr. Karen Sutton (The Nickens Nine: African American Patriots of the Revolution), Dr. Mark Attucks (First to Defy—First to Die), Muriel Roberts (Living History: Reenacting African American Heritage) and Nikki Williams Sebastian (Researching and Preserving African American Family History).

Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black is Professor in the Department of History and Director of the Dietrich College Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research specialty is the trans- national history of West African rice farmers, peasant farmers in pre-colonial Upper Guinea Coast and enslaved laborers on rice plantations in the antebellum South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry. Throughout her career, Fields-Black has used interdisciplinary sources and methods to uncover the voices of historical actors in pre-colonial West Africa and the African Diaspora who did not author written sources.

Fields-Black won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History, the 2025 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, the 2025 Tom Watson Brown Book Award, and the 2024 George C. Rogers Jr. Award for COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War (Oxford University Press, trade list, February 2024). This narrative history tells the untold story of the Combahee River Raid from the perspective of Tubman and the enslaved people she helped to free based on new sources not previously used by historians, as well as new interpretations of sources familiar to Tubman’s biographers. It is the story of Harriet Tubman’s Civil War service during which she worked as a cook and nurse in Beaufort, SC, and gathered intelligence among freed people and enslaved Blacks. It is the story of enslaved people who labored against their wills on seven rice plantations, ran for their lives, boarded the US gunboats, and sailed to freedom.

View her full bio and profile on the Carnegie Mellon University website.

Dr. Mark E. Attucks, Sr. has over 35 years’ experience in the military, corporate, and federal sectors. He held various positions within security and resource protection, financial management, human capital management, diversity & EEO, administration, logistics, and facility maintenance. Dr. Attucks is a retired member of the Senior Executive Service and former Deputy Director, Budget Staff for the Department of Justice. In that capacity, he was responsible for Operations & Funds Control of a $35 billion dollar budget and 42 components.

Prior to that position, Dr. Attucks was the Director, Education and Training Institute for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In that capacity, he provided leadership and oversight for federal and private sector fee-based training for the agency. He was also a Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs. He led teams providing accounting, administrative services, cash management, and logistics support for 28 VA Medical Facilities and 12 Community Based Outpatient Centers throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Before becoming a CFO at Department of Veterans Affairs, he was a Regional Manager for Target Corporation, where his main responsibilities comprised of overseeing the market entry of Target stores throughout Hawaii.

Dr. Attucks holds a juris doctorate; a doctorate degree in Sociology; an MBA with a concentration in Finance; a Bachelor of Science degrees in Legal Studies; and Associate degrees in Applied Sciences in Security Management and Financial Management. Dr. Attucks is also a proud Air Force retiree and a native of Winston-Salem, NC. Dr. Attucks resides in La Plata, MD with his wife Niya their two children MiKayla and Mark Jr. (MJ).

Muriel Dorothea Roberts, Family Historian and Genealogist, attended Jersey City State College as a Performing Arts/Theater major. A fourth-generation resident born, raised and educated in Jersey City, New Jersey with ancestral locations in Colonial New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia. The Girl Scout organization was an integral part of her life, a legacy of her mother's membership from the age of 10 to 92. She was a girl member through the ranks, a camp counselor, volunteer leader, and a local Council employee serving as Program Manager/Field Executive for 23 years. She was an Original member of the Kennedy Dancers and Dance instructor at Docampo's Music and Dance Academy, Union City, NJ. She also served as a Lay Eucharistic Minister, Chalice Bearer, Lector and Intercessor, Altar Guild and Vestry member in the Episcopal Church of St. Paul and Incarnation.

Organizations: AAHGS Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society (New Jersey Chapter former President, New York Chapter member; New England Chapter member), BCHS Bergen County Historical Society, Trustee; BAR Brigade of the American Revolution; Lincoln Association of Jersey City, President; SDUSMP Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage; SOFAFEA Society of the First African Families of English America; Associate member of Bergen -Paulus Hook Chapter. She became a DAR member on April 5, 2021, honoring a new to DAR Forgotten Patriot, Plato Turner of Parting Ways, Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The DAR, founded in 1890 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a non-profit, non-political volunteer women’s service organization dedicated to historic preservation, education, and patriotism.

DAR members volunteer millions of service hours annually in their local communities including supporting active duty military personnel and assisting veteran patients, awarding thousands of dollars on scholarships and financial aid each year to students, and supporting schools for underserved children with annual donations exceeding one million dollars.

As one of the most inclusive genealogical societies in the country, DAR boasts nearly 190,000 members in 3,000 chapters across the United States and internationally. Any woman 18 years or older regardless of race, religion, or ethnic background who can prove lineal descent from a Patriot of the American Revolution is eligible for membership.

Nikki Williams Sebastian is originally from St. Louis, MO where she graduated from Rosati-Kain High School for girls. She graduated from Tulane University in 1995 with a degree in American history and she received her Master’s degree in Public Health Informatics (MPH) from Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta, where she currently resides.

Nikki’s second career is genealogical research into long lost stories. Nikki’s other projects include investigative research at the historic Bellefontaine Cemetery and Arboretum in St. Louis, MO where she was able to publish an article about an illustrious members of a family plot in the St. Louis Genealogical Society Quarterly 2020. She is a member of the National Genealogical Society (NGS), the St. Louis Genealogical Society (StLGS), the Old Darlington District Chapter (ODDC) of the South Carolina Genealogical Society (SCGS), the Sons and Daughters of the United States Middle Passage lineage society, (SDUSMP) and she is a member of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR), in the Atlanta chapter.

Nikki holds associate membership in the Manor House Chapter in Washington, DC, the O’Fallon Chapter in St. Louis, MO, the Phyllis Wheatly chapter in Virginia, the DAR France Rochambeau Chapter and the recently formed Attucks-Lee-Banneker Chapter in Cincinnati, OH. Nikki is completing her term as National Vice Chair of the Community Service Awards Committee, led my National Chair Michelle Wherry. Nikki is also currently serving on the Lineage Research Committee in the Specialty Research Committee-African American Research. Nikki can be reached at Nikki@lineagelogs.com.

Karen E. Sutton, Ph.D., received her Doctor of Philosophy degree in African American History from Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland, in December 2021. Her dissertation, entitled “THE NICKENS NINE: Free African Americans in Lancaster and Northumberland Counties, Virginia during the American Revolution,” examines the lives of nine African American men from one family whose lives encountered enslavement, freedom, mixed-race marriage, business, and industry. Dr. Sutton’s dissertation is a continuation of the final paper for her master’s degree. Her myriad research interests are steeped in African American life, history, and culture. She conducted research and published on the American Revolutionary War, quasi-free blacks in colonial and revolutionary Virginia, cultural tourism/local history, Indigenous populations of Virginia’s Northern Neck, migration patterns, and estate planning. She is an active member of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR) and joined NSDAR in 1993 through a free black ancestor from Northumberland County, Virginia. Dr. Sutton was the first African American member of NSDAR in Maryland and the first to qualify for NSDAR based on the service of an African American from Virginia.

She holds memberships in several organizations: the Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society, Inc. (AAHGS); Baltimore-Agnes Kane Callum Chapter (BAAHGS); the Middle Peninsula African American Genealogy & Historical Society (MPAAGHS); and the Association for the Study of African American Life & History (ASALH). These memberships include being a charter member of the Baltimore Chapter of AAHGS and serving in leadership positions throughout other organizations. Dr. Sutton currently serves on the board of the Northern Neck Hidden Histories Trail, and served on the Lancaster Virginia Historical Society (LVHS) [formerly Mary Ball Washington Museum (MBWM)] board from 1998-2001, participated in the original “Closing the Gap” Project, and contributed to the late Carolyn Jett’s Lancaster County History Book. She is also a member of the Northumberland County Historical Society (NCHS), the Northern Neck Historical Society (NNHS), and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. Dr. Sutton’s love of history, genealogy, and scholarship spans the gamut of volunteer and employed service. After obtaining her MA degree, she worked at Colonial Williamsburg as a Historical Interpreter in period costume. She taught courses in African American History and Introduction to the African American Experience in the Africana Studies Department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and as an Adjunct Professor in the History and Government Department at Bowie State University, Bowie, Maryland, and Bowie State and Morgan State Universities in Maryland.

DAR, founded in 1890 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., is a non-profit, non-political volunteer women’s service organization dedicated to historic preservation, education and patriotism. 

DAR members volunteer millions of service hours annually in their local communities, including supporting active duty military personnel and assisting veteran patients, awarding thousands of dollars on scholarships and financial aid each year to students, and supporting schools for underserved children with annual donations exceeding one million dollars. 

As one of the most inclusive genealogical societies in the country, DAR boasts nearly 190,000 members in 3,000 chapters across the United States and internationally. Any woman 18 years or older, regardless of race, religion or ethnic background who can prove lineal descent from a Patriot of the American Revolution is eligible for membership.

The Attucks-Lee-Banneker Chapter, NSDAR was chartered on November 5, 2024, in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Attucks-Lee-Banneker Chapter is one of six DAR chapters in the Greater Cincinnati Area with two more close by in Northern Kentucky. 

The Attucks-Lee-Banneker Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution proudly honors the brave contributions of three distinguished male Patriots of African Heritage.  Their service before, during and after the American Revolution helped secure the freedom we cherish today. The courage of Crispus Attucks, William (Billy) Lee and Benjamin Banneker and their unwavering dedication to the cause of liberty exemplify the highest ideals of Patriotism.  These men, though often overlooked by history, stood shoulder to shoulder with fellow Patriots in the fight for independence. The chapter celebrates their legacy, recognizing their vital role in shaping the nation and inspiring future generations. Let their memory be a beacon of strength and unity as we all continue to strive for equality and justice for all.

• Crispus Attucks, 1723-1770
  Attucks, a free man of African and Indigenous heritage, led fellow colonists in Boston to stand against British soldiers. He became “the first to defy, the first to die.” The Boston Massacre sparked the American Revolution and Attucks is known as the “first martyr” of the American Revolution.
• William “Billy” Lee, 1750-1810
  Lee was the enslaved servant of George Washington before, during and after the American Revolution. He would have accompanied General Washington on every campaign and been part of every skirmish. Mt. Vernon and Valley Forge are two well-known locations that chronicle Mr. Lee’s life with General Washington. Only upon Washington’s death was William emancipated.
• Benjamin Banneker, 1731-1806
  Banneker was born a free man of African heritage in Baltimore County, MD. He was a naturalist, mathematician, astronomer and almanac author. Banneker is known for his many inventions and achievements: the first wooden clock in the colonies that kept accurate time for decades, his almanac and being part of the survey team that carved out Washington, D.C.

The diverse members of the Attucks-Lee-Banneker Chapter are committed to our DAR purpose of Education, Historic Preservation and Patriotism. For more information on joining our chapter, email attucksleebannekerchapterdar@gmail.com or follow us on Facebook.

Fifth Third Community Days are made possible through the generous support of the Fifth Third Foundation. Museum guests receive free admission and the opportunity to experience special programming activities. Reserve your tickets online or in-person.