Adam Xavier McNeil, Ph.D.

Adam Xavier McNeil, Ph.D. Profile Photo

Ph.D. Candidate

Adam Xavier McNeil completed his Ph.D. in Early African American Women’s History at Rutgers University and is currently a Predoctoral Fellow at the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Pennsylvania State University. During his fellowship year, McNeil will complete his dissertation “Contested Liberty: Fugitive Women & the Shadow of Re-Enslavement and Displacement in Revolutionary Virginia.” McNeil’s scholarship has been supported by the College of William and Mary’s Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, the University of Michigan’s William L. Clements Library, the American Philosophical Society’s David Center for the American Revolution, the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s John D. Rockefeller Library, the University of Pennsylvania’s McNeil Center for Early American Studies, and the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

May 31, 2025

Episode 15: The Heavens Fall

The detainment of a West African-born enslaved Virginian named James Somerset in London leads to a court case decided by England's most powerful judge that challenges the foundations of slavery in the British Empire.
March 7, 2025

Episode 13: The Massacre

In response to rioting and protests over the Townshend Acts, the British deploy four regiments to Boston, leading to a deadly shooting on March 5, 1770, a massacre that wounds a family.