Combining her skills as a social scientist with a passionate interest in humanities scholarship and a flair for graceful writing, Lois gained national and international recognition as a gifted interpreter of nineteenth century America, especially on matters of race, African American culture, gender, and Abolitionism. Along the way, she also became an innovative practitioner of public history, lending her wisdom and talents to numerous museums, government agencies, media platforms, educational institutions, and social justice organizations. During her long career, Lois taught sociology and history at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia (1979-2008) where she was a full professor and a popular and highly effective departmental chairperson. She was a visiting scholar for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History from 1990 – 1993, she held the John Adams Distinguished Chair in American Studies at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands in 2003, served as the Mellon Distinguished Scholar in Residence at the American Antiquarian Society in 2010-2011, and served as a visiting professor at the University of Munich in 1988 and 1989, and at the University of Hawai’i from 2006 through 2009. Her most recent book, Harriet Tubman and the Fight for Freedom, published in 2013, led the National Park Service to seek her guidance on their presentation of the underground railroad and Tubman’s legacy. Just prior to her death, with the assistance of their granddaughter, Danielle, Lois completed revisions of the Hortons’ landmark two-volume survey of African American history, Hard Road to Freedom: The Story of Black America, originally published in 2002, which in many ways was the culmination of their career-long efforts to more completely present African American history. While Lois was deeply committed to her scholarly work on African Americans and to the social justice implications of exploring race and civil rights throughout American history, she was also a dedicated and highly effective teacher who never allowed her scholarly activities to get in the way of her efforts to guide, nurture, and enlighten her students. Lois was a brilliant and generous scholar whose kindness and consistent support was, and is still, appreciated by many.