​​Matthew Norman ’93

​​Matthew Norman ’93 was approached by his Knox First-Year Preceptorial Professor Emeritus of Africana Studies Frederick Hord in the summer of 2011, after just a single class together in 1989. At the time, Norman was preparing to take on a teaching role at the University of Cincinnati. Hord suggested that they work on an anthology of Black historians on President Abraham Lincoln. Norman was intrigued, but skeptical about this idea. 

“I thought the idea would be interesting, but it would be kind of a short book,” he said. “Then Fred asked, ‘Well, has anyone ever done a collection just of Black writings on Lincoln?’ And I said, ‘No, that's a great idea.”

Following this conceptualization, the idea for Norman and Hord’s book Knowing Him By Heart: African Americans on Abraham Lincoln was born. The book has gone on to win the annual 2024 Lincoln Institute Book Award by the Abraham Lincoln Institute in Washington DC, dedicated to promoting scholarship on the life and learning of Abraham Lincoln.

The book is the first anthology of African-American writings on Abraham Lincoln. It begins in 1858 with Fredrick Douglas and ends with Barack Obama's address in Springfield, IL in 2009. Covering this expansive period in the modern world, Hord and Norman faced their share of challenges. The book covers a complicated story with perspectives from more than over 150 different people.

“That has been the real value of the book. It is just not only the period we cover, but just the richness of the knowledge that we've gathered,” he said.

Norman came to Knox with little intention to study Abraham Lincoln and his work. That was until he took the Lincoln and Jefferson class in his first year co-taught by Doug Wilson, George A. Lawrence Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of English and co-director of the Lincoln Studies Center, and fellow co-director, Rodney Davis, late Szold Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of History.

The class opened doors for Norman, who was later hired to help Wilson and Davis with their research into Lincoln’s law partner, William Herndon. Norman was responsible for organizing and filing photocopies of Herndon's papers that were stored at the Library of Congress. This experience inspired Norman to be a history major and finish his education with a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois.

Nearing the end of his graduate program, Wilson and Davis asked Norman to come back to Knox College and direct the Lincoln Studies Center, which was in the process of transcribing and annotating the Library of Congress’s collection of more than 20,000 Lincoln papers. Norman finished working on around half of these items.  

“All I had left to do was to write my dissertation, but my advisor at Illinois said this was a great opportunity and that I should take the job,” he said.

After five years of work at the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox, Norman finished his Ph.D. and went on to work at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. He later accepted a teaching position at the University of Cincinnati on a tenure track, where he works presently.

Norman is planning to work on a collaborative legal history project but wishes to continue expanding his Lincoln collection. “I've got probably two lifetimes worth of ideas of Lincoln projects,” he said.