Dr. Felicia A. Bell’s 27-year career in public history and academia includes several key leadership roles and benchmarks. Most recently, she was the Senior Advisor to the Director at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. In that capacity, the Smithsonian Institution recognized an exhibition team on which she participated with the Special Achievement in Audience Engagement Award for Reckoning with Remembrance: History, Injustice, and the Murder of Emmett Till.
In 2016, the legislature for the State of Alabama recognized her excellence as the Director of the Rosa Parks Museum at Troy University in Montgomery, Alabama. While in that role, she was awarded Citizen of the Year (2020) by the Montgomery (AL) Alumnae Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated.
While directing education and programs at the United States Capitol Historical Society, she provided expert witness testimony to Congress (2007) based on her doctoral dissertation research about the use of enslaved and free Black craftsmen to construct the United States Capitol building. As a former Assistant Professor of History and the inaugural Director of Honors at her beloved alma mater, Savannah State University, Dr. Bell was delighted to return to deliver the 199th (2021) commencement address.
Dr. Bell’s most recent scholarship includes her contribution to Landscapes in the Making (Harvard University Press, 2025), where she delivers a concise analysis of the essential labor of enslaved craftsmen on the early American built environment, specifically at the U.S. Capitol building. She is looking forward to developing her manuscript as a 2025–26 fellow at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon.
Dr. Bell earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Savannah State University (1998), a Master of Arts in historic preservation from Savannah College of Art and Design (2002), and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in U.S. history from Howard University (2009) in Washington, DC.