Participant Info
- First Name
- Rebecca Capobianco
- Last Name
- Toy
- Country
- United States
- State
- rebeccactoy@gmail.com
- Affiliation
- College of William & Mary, National Park Service
- Website URL
- https://www.wm.edu/as/history/gradprogram/graduate-student-bios/capobianco_r.php
- Keywords
- memory, U.S. Civil War, Reconstruction, memorialization, public history, National Park Service, reform, race, prison reform, historic sites, monuments
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
Rebecca received her PhD in history from the College of William & Mary and presently works in the Interpretation, Education, and Volunteers Directorate, part of the Washington Support Office of the National Park Service. She has previously served as the Supervisory Park Ranger for Interpretation and Education at Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park and as acting Chief of Interpretation at Maggie Walker National Historic Site and Richmond National Battlefield. She earned her M.A. in U.S. and Public History from Villanova University. Before returning to graduate school, Rebecca worked in education and interpretation for the National Park Service and as an adjunct professor of history.
Rebecca’s areas of research include memory, commemoration, emancipation, and the U.S. Civil War. Her book Landscapes of Freedom: Restoring the History of Emancipation and Citizenship in Yorktown, Virginia, 1861-1940, focuses on Black Americans’ efforts to define freedom and citizenship after the Civil War and how they leveraged federal lands as spaces of political discourse. Additionally, it details how and why the National Park Service displaced descendants of Black freedom-seekers in order to “restore” Yorktown Battlefield in Virginia.
- Recent Publications
Landscapes of Freedom: Restoring the History of Emancipation and Citizenship in Yorktown, Virginia, 1861-1940, University of South Carolina Press, July 2025.
“‘We Can Take Care of Ourselves Now:’ Establishing Independent Black Labor and Industry in Postwar Yorktown, Virginia,” Civil War History, September 2024.
“Southern Women and Emancipation,” in Women and the American Civil War: North-South Counterpoints, edited by Judith Giesberg and Randall Miller, Kent State University Press, 2018.
“‘She is the Beauty of this Place:’ Elizabeth Velora Elwell and the Role of Prisoner Participation and Deviance at Eastern State Penitentiary,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, January 2018.
Co-editor of Emilie Davis’s Civil War: The Diaries of a Free Black Woman in Philadelphia, 1863-1865. Penn State University Press, 2014.
- Media Coverage
- https://whyy.org/segments/19th-century-love-letters-between-eastern-state-inmates-document-story-of-resistance/
- Social Media
- beccalcap
- Country Focus
- United States
- Expertise by Geography
- North America, United States
- Expertise by Chronology
- 19th century, 20th century
- Expertise by Topic
- American Civil War, Emancipation, Gender, Government, Material Culture, Military, Museums, Public History, Race, Slavery, Women
