Sometimes we give oursel no credit for all the challenges we’ve overcome that’s where our greatest strength comes from you can’t witness the greatness with in within us without also existing within you so we have to have more of us in those rooms where those decisions are being made in places of leadership you
Have to really be strong in who you are that’s the one thing I can say beab that is is missing so much from our young people being able to get that shared knowledge and appreciation for a lot of women there a lot of things that women before us have Done hello everyone um I just want to welcome everyone to a not a special show it’s a spectacular show and it’s something that in honor of black history month last month and now women’s month why not honor the space of me which is a black woman I I celebrate two months but we
Try to celebrate All Year and one of the things that was said in the podcast early on is that we have to honor our history and what better way to honor our history than to have a conversation with women who have dedicated their careers to the
Study of the history of those who came before them and in particularly there are very very very few rare air moments that you have women who are whose expertise is in studying the history of black women so without further Ado because we want to get right
Into this discussion I’m GNA bring in my co-host Dr ingred Who is a phenomenal executive leader entrepreneur philanthropist you name it she wears every hat including co-host hi Dr ingr good evening coach Bev how are you I am awesome good good well thank you so much for allowing uh
Me to be here but most importantly um to collaborate with advancement of blacks and sports uh abis um we have enjoyed being partners with this series and um it’s such an amazing organization that both of us are a part of um absolutely so we’re very
Very fortunate to have you as one of our found one of our founding members um just very quickly before we get started wanted to share that abis um was founded to amplify the voices of athletes and specifically our black athletes um in the sports commun Community we our focus
Is on education representation and advocacy financial literacy and mental Wellness uh we have a financial coaching program that has reached out to over 12 universities reaching more than 200 student athletes um teaching them about financial coaching investment um and is supported by JP Morgan Chase and so we
Are so grateful for that for JP Morgan to really support our student athletes specifically our black student athletes and teaching them about investment and wealth um we also have just recently partnered with enrose and I’m sure everyone is familiar with this organization um remarkable organizations that’s been around since
1970 giving opportunities to young men and women in high school college uh for interning paid internships so to help them get a a jump start with their careers and so those are just a couple of the main programs that we have but the best thing that we have going right
Now um which reaches so many more people is our Gayla uh we have a Champions and legends gay G um each year this will be the third annual Gayla May 31st through June 2nd in uh not Washington DC is at the MGM National Harbor and this year
We’re so fortunate to honor not only coach Beverly Kerney for all of her wonderful things but Ray Lewis Ben Crump Wendell Scott and in terms of his family members will be there Lonnie Ali Dr Dwayne Edwards Paxton Baker and the 1982 Cheney State Women’s Basketball team and
So we have the opportunity each year with our Gayla to honor our own and who best to do that but us and so I encourage you to uh go on our website to weab is.org um so that you can find so much more about our organization our
Watch list we send out watch list of football men’s women’s basketball and volleyball coaches black coaches that and we send these lists to search firms to athletic directors to Commissioners so we are about promoting Us in the sports industry and we welcome all of you to join so thank you so very much
For allowing me to have that time to talk to share about abis coach well let’s get into one of ais’s programs which is not simply Ed educating financially but educating about how to be successful how to be the greatness that we were all designed to be and you can’t get to where you’re
Going without truly understanding and having a true appreciation of the powerful Journeys that went before you because we all stand on the shoulders of those who’ve made sacrifices for us to even have the opportunities to be where we are in the rooms that we’re in right now
It didn’t just happen it wasn’t just laid out we came from a storyed history not just of struggle but most importantly of power of intelligence of wisdom of Love of Spiritual Beings so without further Ado let’s get our panel in here Dr ingret we have Dr Erica Dr Tia Dr Ashley and Dr
Dina wow so even though I had the first question you have to acques to someone whose question is better than the one I was gonna ask Dr ingred let’s get this started I’m so excited yes well I am so honored to be here this evening with
Each of you uh to learn more about your Journeys I’ve been in higher ed for more than 30 years on the Collegiate side but also as a falcon member um as a dissertation chair um just recently and so I really admire all that you do um
I’ve wanted to do so much research and I have a little book on all these things I want to research and talk about es especially for black women in sports and uh black student athletes but I’ve never had the time so but uh so anybody want
To coach me on that just let me know I need a mentor but um just I’m just awesome what you all are doing and I hope that this show continues to promote what you’re doing and more people to to read about uh all the wonderful research
That you’ve done so my first question is very simple can you elaborate or just share what experience or was it someone that led you and inspired you to focus on the research and the work that you do oh gosh I guess I’ll go first um I
Want to say thank you for having us on these are my sister scholar colleagues friends little sisters Big Sisters uh that I’ve been in conversation with and Community with for decades and it’s an honor to be together um with one another um we are all Scholars of black women’s
History and we’ve been doing work in black women’s history for collectively probably more than 30 years for I’m Not Gon to age some of us but I’ll just collectively um I think my inspiration came from a few different experiences and I’ve talked about these before but one having one um negative and one
Positive experience as a as a college student where I took a class on African-American history I was an econ major took a class in African-American history and it was taught by a professor who used the n-word every single day and all the examples that he used were very
Offensive and um I ended up writing him a letter and saying that I didn’t agree with the way he taught and I couldn’t imagine that the only examples he had for African-American history referred to us as the n-word and um I had got put on probation and I had to meet with him
Every Wednesday and in those conversations I real I learned about the field of history and about history being a field of interpretation and about perspective and about experience and the things that you bring to the that you bring to the way you interpret primary documents and
Records and I thought that I wanted to change my major and become a historian and then shortly after that my graduate advisor Dr Brenda Stevenson had arrived at UCLA and I took a class with her on slavery and that kind of sealed the deal
For me to then want to go on and write books and do research on African-American women and the history of slavery wow thank you for sharing that doc Dr Ashley you would you Ashley would you like to go uh sure um so I was born and raised in Nashville Tennessee and I
Grew up with a mother who loved history but the only real option to available for her for a while was actually being a social worker but that doesn’t mean that she didn’t really um kind of leave me breadcrumbs that made me excited about history growing up um both my parents
Went to Fisk and like when I went to um write any research project or do anything they took me like to the Fisk archive you can only work here they were my introduction to um the ways people write history they were my introduction to the archive um and and they were
Leaving me breadcrumbs for how to do this work I truly believe that being said um I was a French and Spanish major in college so I didn’t um follow the breadcrumbs for quite some time and it wasn’t until I met some of the activists that I now write about um that that
Really kind of reinter interested me in um writing this history and then I went to Spelman and I had a teacher um who pulled me aside one day and said what are you doing with your life um why are you writing in French and Spanish and learning this language when
The things the questions you really want to ask the things I hear you talking about are meeting these activists right and talking to them um and so he P me on my path to grad school and since then I have been writing and researching about black women organizers um in the Civil
Rights and black power era Miss Tilly Dr til so um my introduction to the research that I do came through a slightly different path and it was through the stories of my great-grandmother her stories of living and surviving um and loving my great-grandfather in Jim Crow Georgia um
They were both semi- literate they didn’t have college educations on first gen everything and so hearing her tell stories about living near the worst Chang gang in the state of Georgia um hearing stories about you know what it was like to scratch out a living in an environment where you know her mother
Who was a sharecropper her father died when she was 5 years old um you know scratch out a living for them just to feed them and put food on the table really in many ways inspired me to write about workingclass black women in the post of a South but primarily workingclass incarcerated black
Women wow Dr Erica yeah well first let me um thank you also for having all of us on it’s uh it’s a nice kind of moment to sort of hang out with uh friends and people who I I respect deeply um I’m a Philadelphian and so um I grew up in a
City where um you know history was in our backyard and uh you can’t sort of escape the landscape of Philadelphia without thinking deeply about its connection to uh the founding of the United States right the sort of a City of Brotherly Love and sisterly affection
Um and even sort of given that I um I always liked history in high school I kind of I just sort of thought about it as um storytelling like true stories is what I would sort of call it when I was younger and um when I went to college I
You know you you kind of sometimes you tend to major in the things you feel like you do well in and what you do well in is usually the stuff that you like and I liked history but I had no no plans to go into Academia I was gonna be
An attorney and go make some money that was you know that was the expectation because they coming from a very kind of humble background with parents who you know sacrificed to get me where I was and so uh I was going a major in history
But um with the the plan to to go to law school and you know know um similar to Dr Ashley um I you know had this kind of experience with a specific faculty member who actually made me think about being a professional historian and um uh someone who Dr Ashley who everybody on
This uh all my colleagues know Dr Evelyn higinbotham was my um advisor as an undergraduate and um I took every class with her in African-American history and she asked me a similar question to what Dr Ashley got which was you know um you should think about being a historian and
I was like how much money do you make with that like what how do you even do that um and you know these are very real questions I think especially for absolutely for black folks who are going to college whose parents and family members have cobbled together you know
Tuition and room and board and you going to go there and tell stories like what what’s actually going on here and I asked that question what what does that actually mean how do you become a historian and I had no idea you could get a PhD in history I thought you only
Did that in Psychology and so I literally I did not know I’m the first person in my family to have a PhD um and when it was explained to me and I was told that you probably won’t be rich but you will you’ll live comfortably and
You’ll do something that you love and I remember sitting in the classroom and watching uh it was a civil rights history course and watching um the series eyes on the prize uh and this was in the early 90s and I remember saying to myself I want to be that person on the
Screen I want that woman who is telling everyone about this history that I felt like I did not learn in high school at all and I think we’ll probably get into conversation tonight about how we are certain that there are specific states that will make it absolutely clear that
That history is not to be taught right I knew coming from Philadelphia I hadn’t learned that history and it was sort of that encouragement from a faculty member it was seeing the visual it was having an interest in merging both African-American women’s history and like like Dr Dina I focus on slavery um
That I wanted to bring those things together but I also wanted to incorporate television and film in ways that allow the the history and the work that we do to reach the broadest of audiences oh my goodness first of all I want to say thank you all for the
Sacrifices that you’ve made to be in this space because as you said this isn’t a field of study that is highly promoted highly encouraged nor put the financial support in terms of definitely if you’d have gone into law you would have made a lot more money but thank you guys for the
Decision to be comfortable within the passion that you have for our history so with that in mind I’m gonna ask the first question from my perspective is there one instance is there one person that you’ve done research on that totally inspired you I will give you my own personal
Example um definitely my greatest impact Dr Dana knows is Ser Jonah Truth for me um but in recent times when I went through a internationally um publicized lawsuit with the University of Texas at Boston I kept referring back because everyone told me it’s impossible and I kept referring back to what Dr King
Quit what had he quit had he quit I wouldn’t be in a position I’m in now and so I drew I’ve always drawn whenever I ran into racial situations because I was integrating Tennessee I was integrating University of Florida University of Texas and people say oh that’s amazing you are first but people
Don’t realize what comes with that first it was my history it was knowing the sacrifices I would say to myself there’s no dogs here I can go to the bathroom they couldn’t I would think about the women because what we forget during the Civil Rights movement is that
It was a lot of the women who were housekeepers Who had who who boycotted the bus systems in order for us to get on those buses so for me that’s my inspiration is there a specific person or story that really touched you in a way and goes whoa this is
Powerful and I’m going to leave that open-ended on the floor I ain’t gonna call nobody out okay and y’all I want to remind y’all y’all are teachers well somebody for me comes to mind so maybe I’ll start off because this is what I spend my days doing now um but
The woman that I would pick that a lot of people don’t know about but should know about is a woman named Queen Mother oddly Moore um whose biography I am finishing up right now so just to give you like The Cliff Notes version she was
Born in 1898 and she died in 1997 so she lived almost the entirety of the 20th century and Queen Mother Moore was interesting is because she wasn’t a died in the wool integrationist she was actually a black Nationalist and for the better part of a hundred years she
Really worked for black people to have control over their communities to have control over their right to determine their Futures over their economy and most importantly she’s known as being the founder um the modern reparations movement you would not be talking about reparations today you would not be
Seeing these bills passed in California and other places if if Queen Mother Moore hadn’t started that work back in the 1950s um so what she Queen Mother Moore Queen Mother Odie Moore yes yeah um but what I think that she offers me and what I think writing her biography has taught
Me is that what it takes to stay the course right it takes to stay the course when you know you’re probably not going to win when you know that the world that you’re fighting for may never come to fruition right and that you know that your ideas aren’t popular I think
Whether or not you agree with her positions she really is a really a model and how to just decide you have a moral compass point your value system that way and stay the course thank you ladies so I can follow up on that I I was really hardpressed to come up with
An example because there are so many different examples in my head um and I probably worn this one out so so everybody on this call has probably heard this example 20 million times but I opened my book chained in Silence with the woman with the story of a young
Woman named Maddie Crawford and Maddie was sentenced to life in prison when she was 16 years old for killing her abusive stepfather and they send her to the chattah huchi brickyard and forced her to work as a blacksmith um it took several you know they beat her literally beat her out of
Her dresses into a men’s uh suit of you know stripes and she worked at the Brickyard she was the only woman there and then eventually they took her and sent her to um the state prison farm and she was working for the state as a blacksmith and working in the city of
Milleville and they and the state was taking all of her money and she became a renowned you know figure and was actually profiled in the Atlanta Constitution under a headline read only woman blacksmith in America is a convict and the reason why I point to this story
Is because Maddie never was freed um and even in this space where she would spend the rest of her life um as a captive essentially in a new form of slavery slavery which is you know essentially what uh convict labor consisted of after the Civil War and it still does um she
Was able to sort of carve out a space of freedom for herself where she said you know I’m gonna be stuck here for the rest of my life but I’m gonna use my skills as a blacksmith to liberate me from the confines of this space for at least eight hours a day
Even though I’m gonna be exploited I’m not gonna make a dime and um but this is going to this is my way of securing a little bit of freedom taking a little bit of freedom for myself and so um for me she just shows like the power of resilience and
Survival you know that exists among black women for Generations including you know enslaved women that we know a little bit more about but even women enslaved through the carceral system women even today who are stuck you know Behind Bars and will never see um the light of Freedom wow
Dr Dina Dr Erica I’ll let you go Dr Dr Erica I know you got some women I I’ll I’ll be like Dr Tia and um uh do an oldie but goodie um I was finishing up some research on my first book um which talked about the lives of
Free and enslaved women in the north um and I was coming across uh I was look at through newspapers that’s what we do as historians we want to go to primary sources to kind of figure out what’s happening at a certain moment in time and I was interested in knowing what was
Happening in the 1790s I think I was looking for pricing on flower something I don’t even really remember I just know that I was looking through newspapers and uh the newspaper was a Philadelphia newspaper and I came across a runaway slave advertisement and the advertisement said something like
Absconded from the household of the president of the United States and I was like wait wait wait what and I looked at the date I’m like okay 1796 that’s George Washington George Washington has a runaway slave advertisement in a newspaper in Philadelphia and I kept reading and they gave her
Name and this away was named Oni judge or they called her Oni judge I call her Ona judge which is the name that she went by um in her adult life so I do that as a nod to adult dignity so here’s this woman they describe what she looks like she’s slender medium
Build um in her early 20s and she has escaped from the president’s house in Philadelphia and that moment I mean I was working on another book I was finishing my first book and I immediately was like okay who is this woman and why is it that I’m an expert
In African-American women’s history and I don’t know her name and I don’t know what became of her and immediately I think for most of us on this call we we get led to our second projects by projects that we already worked on uh and I promised myself s that I would
Return to her and in some ways I don’t think I had a choice about that I feel like um and maybe historians aren’t supposed to say this but I say it anyway um you know in many ways I feel like Ona chose me I didn’t feel like I was in the right
Place at the right time having done the right work um to kind of ground a story to to step back and be able to tell a narrative about an enslaved woman who challenged the most powerful man man and woman his wife Martha Washington in the nation and how
Her Expos the Washingtons as slave catchers as enslavers as slave catchers and challenge the way we think about the founding of the nation Ona’s eyes and so it was really that advertisement and that 1796 newspaper that led me to own a judge and led me to writing
Um really the only biography of of her life I got to come back and ask you what happened to her but anyway Dr D you gotta buy the book you gota buy I gotta buy the book okay we got to tell everybody what the book is we we’ll go
Through all of you guys’ books later so but you guys gotta read these books amazing so I sitting up here thinking about so many women that have influenced my writing and led me on Wild Goose chases and chased me into the crevices of their lives and the parts that
They’re hiding the parts that they’re sharing um some women that I’ve studied I don’t know their names I never knew their names but there’s something that they did an act that they did in history that um resonated with me because of their resistance um some of them chose
To cover up their names and want to only be called by the name of Ms mrss period um so I’m going to say there’s one person I’ll talk about but I will say that there’s these these nuggets of stories of women where we only get a slice of their experience just maybe one
Quote or one story or one day in their life but I we all write about these women and we all incorporate them in our writings because they have they too have a story to tell and they too contribute to American history so I’m gonna tell you about M because I don’t know her
Last name she just went by the name of Ms she made it to this is in a compilation that has stories of women who made it to Freedom or men and women who made it to Freedom she was still at large right so she didn’t want to give
Her last name but there was a quote in her testimony where she said where they ask her well she says for those who want to apologize for slavery I would ask them to experience it for a while that resonated with me um and I always share that when I can but that’s
All we don’t know much else please say that again for those who wish to apologize for slavery I would ask them to go experience it for a while that resonated with me her story resonated with me um I haven’t done anything else with it but that’s that’s
Just one example of you know someone who um touched me and and that’s why I’m not big on poies for slavery because of her like that doesn’t do much for me but I am um working on a biography of of someone that’s married to probably one of the most famous African-American
Males in 19th century history and the most photographed african- American males in the 19th century and that is Frederick Douglas’s wife uh Anna Murray Douglas and um I always knew I wanted to do a biography didn’t know who I wanted to do it on there was somebody in a
Previous book of mine that I thought I was going to write about but I couldn’t find enough about her story and Anna Murray just kind of kept yearning at me because the way that there’s Douglas biographers hundreds and hundreds of Scholars have written about Fredick Douglas most of them say almost the
Exact same thing about Anna Murray Douglas and it’s very cursory I don’t think anyone’s really looked into her life um to really to to talk about Douglas’s story with but their stories about Douglas would change if they knew Anna and if they knew where Anna came
From and there would be no Douglas if there wasn’t Anna she’s the one that helped him become free she’s the one that married him a few weeks after they after he made it to Freedom she’s the one that financed his his his Escape made his clothing that he used to escape
She’s the one that held down his houses in four or five different cities these were houses that were part of the Underground Railroad Network where she hosted many many people and gave birth to five of his children and was with him for more than 40 years but yet in the
Obituary of Frederick Douglas in the New York Times it does not even mention her name and that’s why I’m writing her biography and with that in mind I’m gonna let Dr ingret take have a question because I’m just overwhelmed right now of how forgotten we are in history and so
Grateful for all of you Dr ingred do you have a question yeah I mean I’ve been writing down each one of the individuals the amazing black women that you all have mentioned um I I just want to know and I’ve been texting all of my friends
To say you all need to get on this and hear about these women um so my question is how do we how do we Inspire our young women and men um to not just raise their voices but to to want that desire to learn and it was intriguing because many
Most of you said it was a it was some teacher right so it that led to this passion and just how do we continue to let let our young women especially know about their past I mean I’m 56 years years old and that never heard about some of the women that you’ve
Mentioned and I feel bad you know so I want my daughter who I sent this to her but she’s in Miami on spring break so she’s not even I know T in but all of these names that you mentioned I’m gonna send to her and I I want her and and my
Oldest daughter who is a teacher now um in the public school system how do we do this you know there’s I want to introduce you all to Dr Raja Raheem one of my former students who’s at appalachin State teaching in African-American history and writing a book right now on the history of women
In sport or the history of the CIAA but it’s just I I I have this I want to connect more people to what you’re doing and although you on a national platform is still challenging for us to get to our people so how do we Inspire other young women and men to
Pursue careers such as yours but also to learn and were age of banning books and getting rid of dib and all of that that was a long question I’m so sorry it’s just I’ve writing down all this stuff and I’m like I have so many questions but we’ll start there I’ll
Jump in first um you know I think it’s actually very difficult these days I think more difficult than perhaps when uh the historians on the panel came age um we have to Value not just history but the humanities and I think as a culture right now there’s very little interest
Or investment really in um the kind of work that we do as historians um if it’s not you know I have a college age son and just about all of his friends are either in engineering computer science uh or kind of what we call the stem right stem Fields the hard
Sciences uh and for those of us who teach in the humanities we see the numbers of our students kind of dwindling every day so I remember when I began in this profession 24 years ago that my African-American history classes were full there were weight lists and
Now it’s lucky I’m lucky if they’re half full and it’s now because it’s 8:30 in the morning because on a Friday because I don’t have my classes in because I know nobody’s showing up unless they have to um but this really has everything to do
With how I think we value or don’t value things like history English the Humanity’s kind of critical thinking and so it’s I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer or I’m no truth speaking truth about the the heavy um lift that will be required to have people truly invest in
Learn and um commit to the study of history I think everyone says oh yeah we respect that that’s you especially February comes and Dr Dina Dr Ashley Dr TOA Dr you know black history mother always takes us out we just everybody were the most popular people there but I
You know I would kind of Usher up call that we need to invest in it as much as we say invest in engineering with the stem fields and to push our children to think broadly there’s no reason you can’t go to medical school and be a and
Major in history as long as you do your requirements for biology and chem you can still major in history be a critical thinker and that will play out over time so I don’t necessarily have a recipe for Add Water spur and then all of a sudden our history becomes something that is
Valued accessible and people flock to other than February I think though it’s a it’s a larger commentary about our society and what our society values thank you I want to just jump in right quickly because you said something that is so critical to the evolvement which which
Is our involvement is because we are critical thinkers but we’re being channeled away from being critical thinkers by quick access to fake information which is why in this day and age Dr ingred it is so important because they’re trying to rewrite the truth of history and it’s sad that if feels like
Uh Dr Dana if you can answer this for me here goes the fireworks I’m sorry y’all I don’t know where it from I know how it does anyway my question is it sounds like they’ve given us permission to celebrate us once a month and we’ve fallen into the routine of once a year
I’m sorry one month a year it’s okay to be black other than that don’t talk about it you’re always bringing up race it’s almost like a guilt about race so I just want to put that out there in the midst of the conversation of why it’s important especially when
Places like Florida Etc are all trying to take black history even attacking sororities and fraternities in the process and um diversity programs on all college campus all educational in tions so I’m I’m just going to throw that in the midst of it as um Dr Ashley Tia and Dr Dina all
Speak so I just wanted to throw that out there and let you guys do your thing with it it’s just amazing I’ll um add something and I think that while every we do have to have a massive investment in the humanities we do have to value our
History I want to remind people that like we have a rubric and we’ve been here before right and what did Black people do you know this isn’t the first time we’ve been barred from this this isn’t the first time people have had to go to other means and really the great
Thing is what history provides us is the Playbook right so one of the things that we’re just going to have to do is stop relying especially in States like Texas right where it’s being outlawed on the traditional measures to do that well good news they never let us in anyway so
We always had all these other methods to do so um none of I told a story about the community history that my mother does there’s a wonderful woman online she gets on YouTube like once a month and teaches people how to Archive you know their family’s history right there
Are wonderful folks that get on Tik Tok and YouTube I know we hate all these things but they’re useful right because they’re accessible and talk about this stuff in um in uh the 60s this period that I study you know most people still were barred from school or were in
Segregated schools what did they do they created Freedom schools they went got somebody that knew what they were talking about and went and set out under a tree and talked about it so I would say that if you find that the school system which has never been great let’s
Be honest um is not pushing it’s never been great for us in particular particular right um maybe stop asking them for it all the time in that sense I’m not saying that we should suggest we shouldn’t fight back against the formal outlawing of it right but it’s got to be
A both and strategy we’ve got to invest in having it in our school because everybody needs to learn it but there are plenty of folks including folks on this call and otherwise that are happy to come talk to a class right in K through 12 or talk to them after school
That it’s not a school thing you know um they happy to you know come talk to a Saturday school about it um are happy to jump on this kind of format and do these things so I think um you know I would encourage us to look back at history and
Our ancestors when they’ve been barred or told that their history is not good enough and take strength from that but also strategy from that I think too um I want to add that all four of us do this kind of work we do work in communities
We do work at churches we do work through fraternities and sororities we do work through Community organizations where we speak and share this history um all the time um this morning I did a talk for a major airlines they had like a book club for a major airlines and I
Didn’t I met the woman literally when I was booking a flight like on the phone and she was like hey we started talking about history she didn’t know anything about who I was and what I did and she was like oh I love history she said I
Said oh I I’m a historian so she starts asking questions she calls me back the next day because she knew my name and looked me up and said we have a book club through the airlines can you zoom call I’m like okay I didn’t know what it
Was I get on the call today there was like 300 people there all over the United States and you can see them sitting at their Gates like on their brakes and I’m up here talking about black women’s history so I think like Ashley’s saying there are other ways
Like sort of grassroot way Grassroots ways that we have to share this history but there’s also institutional and we’re doing that too there’s also through the media there we know we’re doing all of us have done documentaries all of us have done we’re doing stuff behind the
Scenes where you don’t see us you know we’re doing stuff where we’re writing or rewriting we’re working at museums we’re working at cultural centers um you know we are we’re also working on textbooks you know trying to get those stories in and revising US History textbooks um African American history textbooks
Include us but there’s places where we need to to be more present Middle School textbooks High School textbooks you know and college level textbooks so we’re doing all of that work and I think you know Dr Ashley’s absolutely right I mean totha can talk a little bit more about
The work that she does with um people that are incarcerated or formally incarcerated we’re making sure we’re educa even in places where our books are banned where our books are banned in the in the jails and prisons but we’re still getting in there in teaching we’re still
Connecting to those folks but it takes an extra effort and it means that we like Ashley and and and and Erica were saying we have to Value this work as well well so I don’t have a whole lot to add to what’s already been said because I agree with every single thing that’s
Been shared um we definitely have to approach this from a Grassroots perspective because let’s just you know face it our educational system is failing um our children right particularly black children and black and brown children so one thing that I would add to this conversation about investment is making sure that we’re
Investing in young people right and that comes through mentorship but it also comes through um them seeing representation and seeing us in these spaces you know in these K through 12 spaces and um knowing that there’s somebody there that cares about them particularly kids who are don’t
Experienced school is a safe place you know as we understand you know the school to prison pipeline pushes more children through you know the criminal legal system than it does to college so it’s very important that we’re we’re present to um you know to teach our children but also save
Them thank you there’s a saying that do Dina knows I love and it is the a’t I a woman por and what was the meaning behind that why did she feel the need to say ain’t I a woman what those slavery Scholars take take that away same I I’ll let you go first
Erica yeah well you know there’s actually a lot of um there there’s some controversy about whether or not she actually did say that um and uh but I think what um the the broader argument um was that this statement this sort of rni woman um as a black woman right uh
Formally enslaved black woman that don’t I count to don’t I can I not be understood respected as a woman and I think that when we think about the institution of slavery in particular that um for many many years there wasn’t much of a sort of distinction between enslaved men and
Enslaved women at least in terms of the kinds of history that was written and it really isn’t until um the 1980s when my colleague Dr Deborah greay Wright wrote a book with the title aren’t I aw woman um where she actually really did kind of in detail explain how different uh an
Experience of an enslaved woman truly was because of her gender because of her body because that the institution of slavery is is based upon uh reproduction that for those reasons we have to think about the lives of enslaved women with through that lens that their experiences
Are different from men so I was thrilled to hear that um uh Dina that you’re um working on um anamarie Douglas’s um biography and although Douglas was enslaved and I don’t believe she ever was was or she ever was no as a free person living in in
Maryland um she of course saw things uh enslaved women who had a very different existence and I feel like that quote is a reminder and it’s something that we still um think about not just for historians who do um history of slavery but I argue that the work that both
Ashley and titha have done have kind of cracked open these doors and made us think differently okay what does what does it mean to be a woman um in this kind of early carceral system following the Civil War what does it mean to be a woman in the kind of
1960s black panther civil rights um um social activism moment that our experiences our lives are different because of our gender and while that I think is probably going to be a more complicated story in the 21st century as we think about the way we attach gender to um to people I think
At least for the 19th century um you know we’ll there’s a little more ease uh with that but it’s a reminder why the work that that I do and that Gina do does onl women is so important because we have to look at it through the lens of um a gendered understanding of
Slavery Dr Dina I don’t I don’t really have much to add except um when you mentioned you know there’s some controversy around the the question or the word of the the poem The the speech that she gave they say at the the 1848 uh senica Falls Convention
She was we do know she was not allowed to be part of the regular audience she had to stand behind a curtain we do know that but there’s questions because of the way that the speech was written um she you know she spoke in low Dutch and
That that speech was not written in low Dutch It Was Written In Like A um Southern dialect so there’s some questions about that but this is these are the kinds of things that we as historians always have to sift through um but like like Dr Erica was saying
That it’s the point it’s the point of the question it’s the point of the way we understand this and talk about her history um to understand her experience and to understand what it meant to be a black woman at a time when women were already margin ized but now you have the
Double burden of being black and and female I’m going to ask one more question and then I’ll let um Dr ingred ask her next question my next question is divide and conquer we know that there was a concerted effort to break up the families but there’s also a situation
Where I feel like we’re suffering today from a mindset of with white women being a little bit uncomfortable with black women and then the separation the concerted effort to separate the black family so and and then there is the inter fighting among black women lightskinned dark skinned
Thin heavy that normal people go through where does our support come and how does history was there always this because technically they’re putting us at the bottom of the cultural totem pole and and I know we don’t belong there I know we don’t belong there and I don’t understand what happened to The
Sisterhood that we so earnestly fought for throughout Generations I know that um the adversity on these TV shows that they put out where we’re on the show fighting over everything I don’t know if that contribute or whether or not there was a concerted effort that there’s not
The level of support for black women which is why that phrase always stands so who who comes to save us if not us so I’ll that’s an open-ended conversational question please help me out I truly want to know my answer is short I believe that black women are the only ones saving
Other black women you know I think about say her name um which was you know a campaign started by Kimberly kenshaw because of the invisibility or the um you know lack of conversation around the impact of State sanction violence um on black women and I think that black women
I know that black women historically through organizations and um in in through informal measures have always fought for black women have always fought beside black women and we have always been the ones to save the race you know not just black women so um I hate that reality TV right has provided
This very um I think in many ways in this could be a stretch I mean I think that it’s a very inaccurate representation of black Sisterhood and I think that it’s you know very very narrow and a very microscopic um interpretation um that is very skewed in my opinion and I believe
That in Mass you know black women still have black women’s backs for the most part anyone else would like to contribute to that well I’ll I’ll I do think I think about deer white this historian that we’re uh we’ve talked about um you know she wrote a book and
Talks about black women in defense of themselves you know we have always had to defend ourselves at every aspect of our history and I I’m a glass half full person but I have to say not all skin folk are kin folk true you know just in
General just you know but I think like historically we’ve been we we were much more together than we are than we have been in as time has become more modern and part of that I would argue and like I said it’s hard for me to even say this
I’m not a negative person but um part of that was the segregation part of it was you know surviving you know very very difficult times in slavery um part of it was um different movements against us but I do think that um some some of us
Have come out of this history and I’m not that’s not including me but some some have come out of this history not loving themselves not loving their Blackness not loving the history being ashamed of it and that’s where I think you run into a little bit of problems
And that’s maybe some of what we see um you know we always know that dreaded time when they they go to interview somebody about an event or something you’re like why did they interview that brother that sister you know that like the representation piece is always a
Challenge for us um but I do think historically when you look at black women’s organizations like Dr Ashley can talk about this too but like you know just all the organizations of Labor organizing that you find around all kinds of causes where black women came together to help each other with with
Burial rights with you know with um educating themselves with with um all kinds of things you know it’s just been midwives back in the day exactly du we did it all yep exactly Dr ingret yes um you know my brain is already rolling so um I’m sure
You some of you know Dr lynard Moore at UT and in the black student athlete Summit so I’ve already written down how can he get a session for the black student athletes there about this history um and about what you all are doing so I’m gonna I’m on a a board with
Him so I’m gonna make that suggestion but um a couple of my students at marville University are doing their research on black women falcony um and as as well as black women presidents um and so my question is what has been your greatest challenge um as a falcony
Member um at a predominant Pro predominantly white institution they all started laughing every everybody in just in case there’s someone that’s listening right that want to um being you know in a tenure track you know where they are what should they look out for or watch out
For um I think that the best part of the job is also the hardest part of the job and that is the level of black students that depend on you right um when you are one of a few or a handful um they see
You as a friend they see you as a mentor they see you as you know playing a lot of different roles in their lives um and that is great because you want to be the person that helps them succeed perhaps you’re the person that as we talked
About when we first got on the call helps them see both the beauty of history but also makes them feel like they belong in these spaces right and you also want to be the person that perhaps sees them as a whole human being right and offers them some Grace and
Understanding um in a way perhaps that some of our other colleagues don’t but um I would say as a black person and particularly as a black woman um that’s a double burden right and said addition to doing the whole job as it’s constituted for everybody else you’re
Also doing this level of labor um which is a labor of love but no less a level of labor to make sure black students are okay um and so I think that one of the things at least I’ve learned is you know you have to decide where your boundaries
Are with that and and how to share that burden with others in a respectful way so that it doesn’t keep you from moving forward or also just you know deplete you you know as a person thank you Dr toita um so I agree with what Dr Ashley
Had to say and I don’t have a whole lot more to to add to that um besides my current struggle has been enrolling black students in my classes and that’s a wider reflection of the University’s um failure to recruit more black students to the university um I Love My
White students I love my latinx students but um I’m ready to teach some black students and it you know most of my students I mean most of my classes are predominantly white and that I think is has been a little bit of a of a challenge for
Me wow wouldn’t have expected that one yeah I didn’t either I mean it’s okay but it it is what it is but I’d like to it’s it’s yeah like I said it’s a larger reflection of the problem at the university and it sounds like with policies it’s going to get worse before
It gets better so Dr Dina so I mine is uh kind of simple I’m gonna use a quote from ell wisel and also shared by um uh Nelson Mandela um the opposite of love is not hate the opposite of Love is indifference I think the biggest challenge I’m experiencing is indifference indifference to
Underrepresented minorities indifference to people that are differently able indifference to the isolation of campuses on pwi campuses where um black and brown students and um are isolated in classrooms where they’re you know less than 2% of the population my son experienced this at a high school where
He was in less than 2% of a population you know that the IND towards presence the indifference towards diversity the indifference towards the voice the experience I think is very dangerous and I think that is probably the hardest part of my job W um you know I I’ll follow up with that
And and talk a little bit about um the personal um and sort of feelings of often of isolation um when I began this journey as a professor uh I taught at a large State institution and in a history department and I was the first black woman to ever have a faculty appointment
In that department that was in 2000 and I was the first black woman first African-American to be tenured in that department and um I think for all of us us all four of us who have um appointments in history departments in particular they can be very conservative they can be departments
Where you don’t see many of us I mean that’s not my current situation um however uh it can be it can feel extremely isolated and we live lives that are very Um where we walk on eggshell in some ways waiting for the trap door to open uh waiting for the standards the goal points goal post to shift when it comes to things like third year evaluations or tenure that things that may have been acceptable for others who
Come white men in particular no longer are applicable to people who look like us and so there is a emotional toll that it takes on you to always be on your guard you have to be um and I think what allows us to kind of live through that those feelings of
Momentary of discontent of um some anxiety is and I’ll go back to something um Ashley said is we we think about our our um the women that we study and you know I think about you know own a judge and it makes me shut up real fast you
Know everything is relative I understand that but we draw strength from um the experiences the oppressive experiences not only the people that we study but of our kind of foremothers in the field of history when I think about the women like Deborah grey white who’s been mentioned several times
Today you know she kicked open doors there are many others um who we should mention in this um on this uh in this conversation who talk about living through you know walking through landmines they did it sometimes not successfully sometimes they left those those landmine Fields without a limb you
Know and we actually we’re a generation that benefits from the actual recognition of a field of African-American women’s history for the women who came before us just one generation before us there was no such designation until really the 1980s withy whites AR an i woman that’s when we have the first
Library of Congress recognition for um African-American women’s history so you know I will still say that while I I feel incredibly fortunate blessed and um in a position now as a senior scholar um to not complain too much I I very I recognize the um the
Emotional that it can take on us nobody that you’re not really prepared for when you come out of graduate school or even while you’re in graduate school um in terms of the double standards which you’re still there right thank you okay I’m going to wrap this up and allow everyone
To give their last words to our audience of advice for me this has been extremely powerful because it brings to mind two things one we need to be proactive in the type of information that is printed spoken of and and recorded that about us about our history
About our lives about our journey and it’s been amazing listening to all of you women because I go back to all the television news interviews whenever episodes have happened like the Briana Taylor I think her name is being killed nobody asked us our opinions we’re NE we’re we’re rarely they use white
Women white men black men but they rarely go to The Source on issues pertaining to black women um um or or women in general we’re usually not asked to the table so what did they say if you don’t get a chair create your own table or bring your own chair either way we’ve
Got to be we’ve got to know our history and the wisdom and the and and the knowledge of where we come from and the strength and the power and the ability to overcome the need for Unity the but most importantly the need to have a voice so that’s my two cents and I’m
Going to give everyone a chance to leave the audience with something that you think is impactful that you want to tell them Dr Farmer I know you gotta run um I would just say that um one of the great things history tells us is um things happen in cycles and it’s just because
Something is one way now doesn’t mean it has to be that way always so I can know that right now things seem not great in terms terms of black history in terms of black people but I want to remind folks that history tells us that people have
Been here and gotten through it before and we will get through it again wow powerful oh your book please and my book is called uh remaking black power how black women transformed an era and we will put up a list of the books on uh Dr ingr the abis website and the
Pursue greatness website as well so thank thank you Dr Ashley a thank you for your work thank you for your wisdom thank you for sharing thank you next ladies don’t be shy all right um I think I I want us to not be ashamed of our history there’s so much strength and so
Much power and so much love it’s a painful history but it’s a it’s there is joy and there is black joy in our history but I think that like Ashley was saying it does give us a road map and we can draw strength on the stories of our
Ancestors and if you have any older living relatives interview them find out about a moment in time that they lived know your family history um learn about where you came from and as far back as you can and stand on those shoulders and be proud of who you are and my book um
Of did a black women’s History of the United States with Dr Cy Nicole gross and the price for their pound of Flesh the value of the enslaved from womb to grave in the building of a Nation um so I’ll piggy back on that by saying um this conversation is making me think
A lot about you know freedom and about freedom of education and um freedom of education is a privilege excuse me it’s a right not a privilege and something that we’re all um entitled to and so um I think that we have to continue in our fight to um claim that
Right right to learn and to learn what we want to learn and to be able to um teach the Next Generation and my book is chain in silence black women and convict labor in the new South um okay I’ll bring up the rear and um I think what we study and what we
Live currently um we can say that we’re all trying to get free and we’ve been trying to get free um since the first black people walked the shores of this place that we call home um and I think we’re all still trying to Define and find Freedom and I this knowing my
History um moves me one step closer to that freedom that having that knowledge which enslavers always wanted to keep from black people that they hoped underfunded segregated schools would keep from black people that being able to amass knowledge about self about our ancestors about our role in this the building of this
Nation that helps me with my own freedom and knowing value and importance when it’s not assigned from external sources so that the power of knowledge the power of our history helps me wow Dr ingret well I will just say this um in my retirement uh last June 2022 I became I
Went from being authentically filtered to being authentically unfiltered and it’s so liberating but I do know a lot of my colleagues are still in the in the grind um and I would just say we need to my mom has already said to me you are as broad or as narrow as your experiences
And we we must continue to create spaces for our young black women to learn and have those experiences and so um I’m just I’m just floored by all the information I’m amazed by you all and thank you so much for sharing this evening but I would say I’m going to
Challenge my colleagues um to create space for our black women and Young women to learn more about who they are in the history and where they came from absolutely I want to thank all of you for taking the time out of your day and sharing authentically from your heart
You know we’ve this Society is pushing so much hatred to a point where it’s evolving into a self-hatred and I want to say this uh Dana and I spoke last night and um I think I said to you um there was a saying that said I’m
Black and I’m Proud no I’m not I’m blessed to be black I’m blessed to be a woman I’m blessed to have the journey I am on and I’m blessed to be in the company of greatness those that went before me those that walk beside me and those that
Will come after me how we walk in this moment will either repeat history or create history it’s our option but you cannot create and you’re destined to repeat if you don’t know the essence of where you’ve come from the shoulders you’ve stood on the struggles they fought through but most
Importantly the greatness they dis they displayed in the face of adversity you cannot compare Generations but you can always learn generationally so I want to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for being here and I hope to see you all again Ash MADD B the production team
Abis we thank you for all the work in helping put this together ladies if people don’t have you on their campus 12 months a year as opposed to one month a year shame on them that’s on us we’re not March women we’re not February black we’re 247 365
Days of that thank you love you all thank you thank you so much blessing bye bye bye you guys sometimes we give oursel no credit for all the challenges we’ve overcome that’s where our greatest strength comes from you can’t witness the greatness with in within us without it also existing within
You so we have to have more of us in those rooms where those decisions are being made in places of leadership you have to really be strong and want that’s the one thing I can say bab that is is missing so much from our young people being able to get that
Shared knowledge and appreciation for a lot of women a lot of things that women before us have Done
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