Lucas Somers, a doctoral student in history and the 2020-21 Baird Fellow in the Center for the Study of the Gulf South, will present his Baird-supported research titled "Imperfect Allies and Angry Mobs: The American Missionary Association and the Battle for Black Education in Post-Civil War Kentucky." His research focuses on the establishment of schools for the formerly enslaved in Kentucky and Tennessee during the decade after the Civil War.