The Untold Stories of Black Women: Insights from Authors of A Black Woman's History of the United States

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Hello, hello.

Hello, everybody.

I am so excited about tonight's conversation.

You have no idea.

But first, a little bit about me and our organization, our bookstore.

My name is Ramunda Young, and I am owner of mahogany books, along with my amazing husband, Derek, and our daughter, mahogany.

We've actually been in business, believe it or not, 14 years.

And about three and a half years ago, we opened up our first physical location in the historic community of anacostia in Washington, DC.

Before that, we were online.

So ten years online in about three and a half years, in our first physical location.

I'm excited because we're opening up our second physical location this summer at National harbor.

So if you're ever in the Washington, DC area, please come out and see us.

We would love to hug your necks, kind of socially distance hugs, I guess.

Would love to see you in our store.

But of course, you can always visit us online@mahoganybooks.com.

we actually created the hashtag hash blackbooksmatter, where a little bit over 50,000 people are using that hashtag, which we're so honored and excited about.

Just, just excited to be selling books that are focused on people of the african diaspora.

So we sell books that are for, by and about people of the african diaspora.

So this conversation tonight is right in the pocket of who we are as booksellers and community leaders here in Washington, DC.

So enough about me.

Let's get to the main event.

We are here to talk about a black women's history of the United States.

And if you all know of the book industry, last year, this book went crazy for us.

It was one that always kept flying off our shelves, one that customers always kept asking about.

And so it's an honor for us tonight to be able to have this conversation.

It is now released in paperback.

So if you don't have the hard copy that's all right.

You can get the new paperback release that just came out last month.

So onto our two doctors, you talk about extra black girl magic.

I am thrilled to have two women who are really about their business and are experts when it comes to history and women.

So first up, we have doctor Callie Nicole Gross, who is a professor of african american studies at Emory University and creative productions director for the association of Black Women Historians.

Her latest book that we're here to talk about tonight, co authored with Diana Ramey Berry, is a black woman's history of the United States.

Her previous award winning books include Colored Amazons, crime, violence and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love and Hannah Maritabs and the Disembodied Torso, a tale of race, sex and violence in America.

You all need to get your hands on all of those powerful, powerful publications.

And then we have Doctor Dinah Ramey Berry.

She's also an author and historian.

Doctor Berry is the Oliver H.

Radke Regents professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin and the history department chair.

She's actually the first person of color to take this role.

Doctor Berry is a scholar of the enslaved and specialist on gender and slavery, as well as black women's history in the United States.

She is the award winning author and an editor of six books, not two, not three, but six books.

Her most recent publication, as we mentioned earlier, is a black woman's history of the United States who she co authored with the Amazing Kelly Nicole Gross of Rutgers University.

The empowering testament.

The book is an empowering testament of black women's ability to build communities in the face of oppression and their continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism.

Professor Barry completed her BA, MA and PhD in african american studies and us history at the United University of California.

Please help me welcome to the stage these amazing doctors, these amazing ladies to the stage for this powerful discussion tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you both for being here.

I had to read the BIOS because I wanted to make sure I get all those accolades included because you all worked so hard for that.

Thank you so much for having us.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

My pleasure.

And we're excited to be part of this conversation.

I'm going to minimize my view so I can be full on with this conversation.

So again, thank you.

Thank you.

So, Kelly, this is one of the first times that we get to just talk to each other.

I think since the book came out, we've talked at people, but we haven't really talked to one another that much.

It's true.

I was thinking the same thing.

Do I sound echoing to you?

No, you sound good.

Yeah, as long as it's clear.

No, it's true.

I'm excited about this.

I was thinking, where do you want to start?

I think we should start with the background about how the book came about.

And I think we should also talk a little bit about how it's been received and a little bit of our experience over the last year.

Maybe that's.

And we can see what we go from there.

See where we go from there.

Okay, so let me interview you.

So how did you come up with this book?

Okay, so actually the origins of this book, there are many origins.

Ina and I worked together at UT Austin, and we have actually been sort of talking off and on about the need for a newer kind of historical survey of black women's history.

At the same time, you were contacted by an editor from Beacon Press, Gayatri Patziak, about the possibility of doing such a survey.

So it seemed like everything just sort of aligned and it came together.

So that's like the simple origin.

Yes, but I really feel like the project got legs when we were like, struggling with our outlines and our dress.

And we threw ourselves on the mercy of our sister scholars who we convened for this workshop.

And we just basically spent a day with these brilliant, generous scholars hashing it out.

Right?

Absolutely.

This thing really look like.

That was great day.

Yeah, no, that was a great day because, you know, we were at, when you were at Rutgers, you're now Emory, but we were at Rutgers and there was a snowstorm.

People's flights were getting canceled.

So one of our colleagues, Doctor Rhonda Williams, who's at Vanderbilt, was not able to come.

I was traveling with my mother and we were, you know, wasn't sure if we were all going to make it, but we got there and I think it was like almost a twelve hour day where we just sat around a table in this beautiful space.

And to have ten other, you know, sister scholars there looking at what, you know, we really put ourselves out there because some of the versions of what we shared, I can say were pretty rough.

Like, some parts were like rough cut, like that should say, should have stayed on the edited, edited floor, editing room floor.

But we had some chapters were outlines.

Some of them were actually fully drafted chapters.

Some of them had like, sections that were there.

And then others went, we lost Cali for a minute, but im going to keep talking.

We had some connections that were there and the chapters were doing fine.

And then we had others that we just kind of weren't sure where we were going.

So we'd have part of a chapter and then part of an outline.

And so it was a great conversation because we sat around with all of these other scholars, and they gave us ideas.

They talked about things that we had missed or, you know, you made assumptions about the audience in this way.

You know, one of the things that we were really proud about to bring this really, really rough draft of these sister scholars, right.

Remember, was that we had all these women that nobody would have heard of.

We were trying to find, like, all the gems of black women's history, names that people would have never known, that hopefully would then become famous, right?

Like, and the first thing that they said to us was, you need to put in Harriet Tubman, you need to put in Ida B.

Wells.

You need to put in, you know, Shirley Chisholm, all these names of women that anchor folks so that they know who their contemporaries were.

So we had all the women that worked in their same communities with them, but not the actual anchors.

So it's really, really interesting.

That was not a criticism that we were expecting, but it was really, really valid, valid advice.

And I think also we spent some time talking about the timeline of the book.

Right.

Didn't we talk about the periodization?

Right.

We did.

I mean, that was the other piece.

One of the things that was this challenge was we wanted to do a really good job, and we wanted to.

On one hand, it was not meant to be, like, the end all, be all history about black women.

It was supposed to sort of pique people's interest and be kind of a broad strokes, but we still wanted to represent all kinds of black women's experiences that we wanted to incorporate themes that we don't normally discuss, and we wanted to center black women's experiences.

And so that is how we got onto this whole periodization discussion, how we frame these chapters.

On one hand, we wanted them to be legible in case people wanted to use them in courses.

But on the other hand, we also wanted to have black women's history drive that the narrative, from start to finish, rethinking how we structure these chapters, what this periodization was going to look like.

It was just.

It was a really intense, generative day.

It was completely transformed the manuscript.

And I think from that, we really started to have black women at the forefront with the vignettes of black women who represented these periods, naming the chapters after the women themselves.

Yeah.

Like, really just going.

Taking every possible step to have black women's experiences really kind of drive and shape the whole book.

And also it was important to include, you know, the experiences of black queer women and women who have been incarcerated, but also every kind of have a book where folks could pick it up and recognize themselves or folks and their family or people they're allies with.

Yep.

Absolutely.

I think I remember one of my favorite parts of that was, like, figuring out and never going back and forth with you so much.

Like, we would over email, over phone about deciding, like, who to start the chapters with, like, who represents this chapter?

What's the best opening?

How can we bring the reader into this time period in american history?

Does this woman or girl or young lady tell the story that we want to tell in this chapter?

And that was fun, because we had, like, you know, lists of people.

We were going back and forth and talking about why different people would work.

And I remember just enjoying that part of it, and then just the discovery of so many remarkable young black women, girls and mothers and just remarkable women that sprinkle our history books or that haven't sprinkled our history books, that we hoped that this book would actually add to that conversation.

I think one other thing I think we should say, too, is that we not only sat on the shoulders of the ten women that were in that room, but we sat on the shoulders of a team of scholars, generations of scholars, who have been doing black women's history, you know, from starting in the 1970s with Angela Davis, publishing an article on black women in slavery, and then moving forward to other scholars like Gerda Lernere, Darlene Clark Hine, Paula Giddings.

You know, we could go on and on.

There was always, you know, these generational sort of studies that were sort of found.

Deborah Gray White.

I mean, we had the benefit of them in the workshop.

We did.

Yeah.

Roslyn.

The late Rosalind turbo.

Penn was at Morgan State for a number of years.

So there was all these.

And we both were trained by black women scholars.

So we had.

We had, like, a legacy of women to lean on and their scholarship to lean on.

And we just kind of felt like.

Like it had been about, what, 20 years since the last sort of general study.

Kathleen Thompson and Darlene Clark Hines book, a shining thread of hope, was published.

And so then we thought, okay, it's time for us to come up with one right now, and let's see if we can do it for this generation.

Right?

Sure.

So the other thing that I really like about the book, and this is your genius idea, Dinah.

I really like that.

We started with Isabel de Olvera.

Talk a little bit about Isabel.

Oh, my gosh.

So Isabel is someone that, like, historians of the american west, probably have heard about.

So we're not the first people to unearth her story by any means.

Deidre McDonald and Quintard Taylor have both written about her.

But we felt like we wanted to start the story of black women that were free, because so much about what we learned about american history has african american people or people of african descent as enslaved.

And that's how we've come to this country.

That's how people have marked our space for the first 245 years.

And that's not how we came into the world.

Right.

For the most part.

And so we wanted to start off with people that were free first, before they were enslaved.

And when we found Isabel, we thought that she was great.

Isabel Deovera.

We open up with her in chapter one.

This is a woman of african and indian descent.

She goes to her local, I think it was her mayor of her city in Mexico.

And she files a petition to go on an expedition.

I mean, this is amazing.

So you have a black woman explorer, and, you know, that's how we would characterize her.

It might be an exaggeration, but, you know, this is someone who, on her own, she says she's not bound by marriage or slavery, which we think is hilarious, and that she wants to go on this expedition to, which is later becomes New Mexico.

And she wants to make, she knows that she's going to annoy people because she's a mulatta and she wants a piece of paper.

And she ends her testimony by saying, I demand justice.

So for us, here is a woman of african descent who's free, who's advocating for herself, who asked for a petition and is demanding justice.

And we believe that black women started off in this country demanding justice.

And I would argue, and we both would argue that we are still demanding justice to this very day.

Absolutely.

That was one of the through lines, really, throughout that history.

Thinking about it, we have these themes that we organize the book around, like sexuality, violence, art, resistance, labor, experiencing a criminal justice system, migration movement.

Right.

All these themes.

But that drive, that passion, that demand for justice is also this sort of consistent theme, I think, in black women's history, in the book.

And we encountered it in ways great and small, you know, just blown away by that.

You know, we're both historians.

We do black in this history.

But in writing this book, I mean, I still was blown away by some of the histories that we, you know, learned about it.

I learned a lot in the process at points, I was, like, devastated.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, it was an intense process, but that spirit, that passion, that demand drive for justice.

Yes.

And the ability of black women to collectively organize.

Yes.

Seemed like this just sort of overarching kind of characteristics that have sort of made me think a lot about how I reckon black womanhood.

You know, it's pretty amazing.

So let me ask you this.

We get this question a lot, like, two questions for you.

One is, who is your favorite person in the book?

And the second is, who.

Do we not include that if we were to write another edition, which, you know, who would we include?

Oh, gosh, that second question hurts.

You know, it's like, oh, we have a story about that, too.

But, you know, I'm gonna start with a painful question first.

Okay?

So if.

So, as I said in the beginning, right.

We.

This was not meant to be, like, the exhaustive end all the book on black women's history.

Right.

You knew we couldn't get everybody in.

We try really hard.

But I do wish, in retrospect, that we had a little bit more about, like, black women who work in, like, stem.

Yes, we do.

You know, I think it's, like, one.

Or two examples, but it's, like, short.

It's in passing, too.

It's not even.

It is.

You could have done a whole chapter on that.

Right?

Really?

So that's one piece that I definitely think.

I wish we could have gotten some more in.

Yeah.

And in terms of the people, I mean, there are so, so many.

I usually talk about Francis Thompson just because I'm blown away by her that, you know, the woman who went to jail because she demanded that this white sudden judge refer to her as, like, Miss Hamilton, not by her first name, like in the fifties.

That's hilarious.

Really.

I love her.

Right.

Like, just that demand.

Yes.

Yes.

Those are some of my favorites for sure.

So now turn that question over to you, Doctor Barry.

Who are your favorites?

Well, I already talked about my favorite, which was Isabel.

But I.

Yeah.

Isabel de Avery.

Would you add it?

Oh, boy.

I mean, I think one of the things we did with the paperback, we did add a very sort of another thousand words.

Not a whole lot, but we did add some to the epilogue.

I think right now, given everything that's happened since the book has come out, the role of black women in politics.

I mean, we do talk about it with women that are running for office.

We talk about, you know, Carletta Bass, and we talk about other, you know, other black women in there, Shirley Chisholm.

But I think like, to bring it forward.

You know, there's like something like eight, don't quote me.

I think there's eight black women mayors right now.

I mean, that's huge.

That has happened since we begin of major cities.

And so I think that's worth noting.

Black women have really moved into the political arena, to me, in similar ways that we saw black men during reconstruction have that moment where they were in the political arena and had legislative roles in office and stuff.

So I feel like we're kind of in a watershed moment right now.

And I think if we could work that in towards the end of the book, if we went past the Obama election, I think we could have done that.

That's the one thing.

But.

And then I think I'll just say this, and this is, I probably, I don't know if I should say this, but I remember when I was getting on an airplane once.

Should I tell the story, you know, or.

No, no, I don't want to get in trouble.

Yeah.

Well, let's just say I saw a famous person that we had forgotten, and that person will remain, shall remain nameless.

And I called Doctor Gross on the cell phone on the plane.

I was like, before we took off, I said, okay, do we have her in the book?

She was like, no.

And I was like, ah.

Because I was, I had copies of the book and I was going to bring it to her and say, oh, thank you for your work.

And I was like, okay, I can't even say anything.

I can't.

That's so embarrassing, saying, I can't.

We here, we do a black woman's history.

We see this person.

I can't say anything.

So she's in there now.

She's in there now.

But I mean, that was also a part of our struggle.

We were trying to elevate voices of women heard of before.

Yeah.

They're asking us to tell them, I don't know because I don't want to get in trouble.

I don't want to ever.

Yeah, yeah.

Another time.

Another time.

Yes, we will.

We will.

It was an illuminating moment.

So.

Yeah.

I do have a question for you, though.

What was the hardest part about doing this book?

You know, I always go to the dark part.

Yeah, I know.

Well, I got, well, you know, I can sit in the hull of a slave ship.

So, you know, that's where I live part time when I'm not working, functioning in the 21st century.

So I think the hardest part was trying to find, and we talked about this a lot, like, ways to really bring the experience of the middle passage forward into the book so that the reader doesn't.

I mean, we struggled because we were kind of going chronologically, and I didn't remember talking to you about.

We were like, well, how far do we go into this space and this experience?

We don't want to lose the reader, but also, we don't want to.

We want to be true to the history.

And so going into that was really hard.

But I remember trying to find ways to let the reader experience the middle passage in a way that would be important to understand how that first ship, you know, where Angela was on, you know, the 1619 voyage that so many of us have been talking about for the last, you know, year and a half or so, really, that that was a much longer journey.

And to try to go back.

Remember when we were looking at the research to try to understand where they may have come from, and there's other scholars that are doing that work, but just trying to.

To bring that 20 odd Negroes that were disembarked at Jamestown, Virginia, or Point comfort, Virginia, you know, bringing that piece forward, I think that was challenging.

And then also all the.

All the black women in wars that we were trying to uncover.

It was easier as we got later, like, we got the Civil War, but we were looking at American Revolution, the war of 1812, and trying to find ways to show black women's presence when we didn't have their names, we didn't have all details of their stories.

I think those were the hardest parts for me.

And then just not wanting to lose the reader because I can handle and talk about slavery all day, but not all readers can.

And I didn't want to lose anybody in that space.

What about you?

You know, so I think the hardest part, I agree with everything that you said, definitely all of that would echo all of that.

And certainly keeping the narrative accessible and engaging enough so that people want to push through all the way.

Yeah.

But I still think the hardest part for me is transcribing Emmett Till's mother.

Yes, yes.

Description where she recounts what she saw the first time she viewed his body after she got it back from the phone.

Yeah.

To him.

And just, like, the detail in it, listening to her kind of describe what she saw and acknowledge it and just the level of carnage that had been done to his body.

Yeah, I was.

I had to listen to it over and over because I wanted to make sure I got it right, you know, the pauses, you know?

And so it was, like, super intense.

Like, I was crying, stop, then come back, you know, yeah, I wanted to make sure that I got it.

It felt like this duty, like, you know, this mother can sit here and describe these injuries in detail because she wanted to make us know.

Right.

This history that I felt like I had to honor her to get it right.

But it was.

It was intense.

I definitely felt the effect of that.

Yeah.

And I think the other thing is that we've said before is that we both were writing this book, and we were mourning the loss of parents.

So I had lost my father.

Kelly had lost her mother.

And then.

Right.

Not too long after that, her cousin, her first cousin.

And so we were writing through a state of mourning.

And some.

And the book should have come out a lot earlier, but it came out when it was supposed to.

Right.

But we were really going through that and trying to figure out, like, when we were going through the painful periods not only of our own pain and our own grief, but also reading about the grief of mothers like Mamie till Mobley and others that we were.

We were like, okay, if they could muscle through and be in front of, like, an audience of, you know, I don't know how many people at a funeral and.

And to do that in the midst of their grief.

And then we were also, at the same time, writing when there are other contemporary black women mourning the loss of their children, their daughters, their sons, that are being, you know, murdered and abused by the.

By law enforcement and citizens.

You know, that's, like, all of that violence and writing at this time was sometimes hard to swallow.

And just also, it just puts you, as a writer, puts you in a different state of mind.

Like, I had trouble, and I've had this before with writing, and we've talked about this.

I had trouble interacting with some people.

I was around.

Like, it just in general, some days, I just was nothing.

Wanting to be social.

You know how that is.

Definitely.

Yeah.

So, definitely, definitely.

All right.

What was the triumph for you in the group?

Oh, I know the triumph.

This is going to be sound.

This is.

This is the nerd.

This is the archive rat.

But this is when, remember, that was we were trying to find women in the American Revolution.

And I was working with the student researcher, and I found a document that on the website, it said that there was an enslaver who went back to bring back people from the American Revolution, that he had allowed them to go in the war, and that there were seven men and one woman.

And so we called my student, called the archive, and we went back and forth, and they're like, oh, there was no woman.

There was no woman in this group.

This enslaver didn't own any women.

I was like, well, your descriptive inventory on the website says, long story short, they're like, well, no, that's wrong.

I said, okay, well, I'd like to have a copy of the document.

So I bought it.

Remember this?

We bought it, and then they sent it, and literally as big as day, and I have to find it.

It was huge.

It said seven men and one woman.

And so, just like the level of erasure that happens to black women historically also happened while we were writing this book.

There were black women that were in archival spaces that people were trying to not allow us to see.

But we felt like, even though we don't know her name, it was important for us to tell her story and to say that she was there.

And this is a black woman that we know.

Her enslaver sent them to be a part of the American Revolution, and we wanted her story to be told.

So that was.

That was triumph, because I was like.

I felt like we would claim somebody even though we don't know her life, who she is.

I feel like we were able to tell her story.

She's a part of american history.

What about you?

I think I know yours.

Hands down.

Finding the engraving of Francis Thompson.

Yes, that was huge.

For folks who don't know Francis Thompson was this woman who had testified about being attacked during the Memphis riots in 1866, just after, you know, folks were newly freed.

They were trying to access the right to citizenship and, you know, just like racist white mobs intent on inscribing the racial hierarchy of home.

So she testifies about being brutalized and sexually assaulted.

For Senate committee is one of these pivotal moments, because it's sort of.

It marks this powerful moment where black women are, again going on record to officially say that they did not consent.

Right.

Like, reclaiming their bodies in this different way.

But then after that, she kind of just became, like, Persona non grata.

She was harassed by the police a lot.

There were all these accusations against her for running like a house of disrepute.

Also accused her of being a man in women's clothing.

And so they finally, like, arrest her and subject her to these medical examinations, and they say that she is that.

You know, she says that she was of double sex and chose to live as a woman.

They said that she was the man and put her in prison.

And so she still, you know, maintained her fight.

People ask rude questions to her.

She would tell her none of their damn business.

I love that.

None of your damn business.

She died shortly after, and I was, you know, looking around trying to find her.

And I tell this story all the time.

Like, I never.

A lot of people who use, like, ebay archives for documents, rare documents that people have that they sometimes auction off.

Like, I never looked at it before or since, and I somehow randomly, like, found myself on the site, typed her name, and lo and behold, somebody with a copy of the dean's doings from 1876 with the etchings of Francis Thompson in there.

That's crazy.

I know, but you know what that's like?

Isn't that weird how black women, or black history in general, is, like, in thrift shops, at auctions, like, you know, literally, I mean, like, again, right, right.

In your auntie's basement, your family Bible, all these things, right?

People have these documents.

So it was super.

That was one of the big moments for me.

Like, yes, I know.

And to have the two images was really important, too.

Yes, it was huge.

So I know that now we're supposed to zip it and engage questions.

So, friends, over to you.

We will look in the chat, or here we go.

See what questions we're supposed to entertain.

Yes, yes, yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I actually love this format.

There's no one in the world who has the type of insight, back behind the scenes stories that the two authors have.

So we haven't done this.

So thank you.

Yeah, yeah.

We try to shake it up a little bit here at mahogany books, for sure.

So that was awesome to really hear what you were thinking and feeling as you were writing different parts of the books.

So one of the questions I have here is from, and I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly, Vidya or Vidya Barnett.

Her question is, is there any one particular story or woman that you were able to draw strength from as you were researching their story?

Do you want to go first?

No, I want you to go back.

I think about it.

Okay, so I'm always going to go to slavery because that's.

I'm a scholarly enslaved.

There are a number of women that I would say.

One I would probably go with is Monima.

I might be saying it wrong.

I always get.

I always get tongue tied on her name.

This is the McCoy twins mother who fought to have her daughters back when they were taken, you know, around two years old.

These are the two conjoined twins that were put on circus and stage and all kinds of people made money off of their bodies and freak shows and all kind of stuff, but their mother never stopped trying to get them back into their possession, into their family.

They had, you know, several siblings.

She even went to Europe and went to court.

So here's a black woman in the 1830s, 1840s, I think it was.

I don't remember the date right now, who went overseas and went to court to reclaim her children.

And I think that was pretty powerful, and it wasn't something that was at all easy to do.

So I gained strength from that, like, how to continue to fight.

We didn't tell her story too much in here, but sojourner truth is another black woman who went and fought in the court system to get her child back.

You know, so there's just those kinds of, like, the ride or die kind of attitudes of black women who are not going to stop and not, and also use the law and use the court system and try to operate within that system to gain their rights.

So I think that's really motivating.

Not that I necessarily have a lot of faith in our injustice system, but I'm just saying, whoa, that was a.

Deep word right there.

So, I mean, I definitely am.

I'm in awe of Mamie till.

Just, you know, we'll always be in awe of her having sort of the presence of mind to make this heroic decision and then just learn sort of the backstory.

Like, we all know what happened to Emmett Till and that his photo, like, helps sort of jolt.

But, you know, she had to, like, deal with the loss of her son.

She had to mobilize local politicians to fight just to get his body back.

She had to go down there.

You know, they had the cats get nailed shut.

She was getting ready to get a hammer and open up herself.

But she had to do all this fighting even before just even laying him to.

And then going to the trial every day, dealing with the harassment, death threats, just, you know, an incredible, incredible human being.

And I teach.

They used a documentary, the untold story of Emma Lewis till, because she's in the documentary talking, right.

You know, this thing came out in 2005.

She passed a couple of years earlier.

But it still gives you a sense of the proximity when you talk to students about, like, Emmett Till.

I think it was, like, 150 years ago, right?

That's cause they're young.

See his mom talking about this in this documentary.

And so that.

So that is really empowering for me.

And then also, it's another mother, actually.

It is Nanny Helen Burroughs motherhood, right.

Who actually was formerly enslaved and basically was largely a single mom.

She scraped and scuffled and moved her family from Virginia up into the DC area to try to get, like, a better sort of educational access for, you know, her children wanted to lie.

The father was an itinerant preacher to put away from long periods of time.

You know, Nanny Helen Burroughs goes on to get her education, to found a school to help educate other generations of folks.

She organizes the National association of Colored Women.

So I'm just.

Those two women, I think, are like these anchors for me about what is possible.

Just incredible.

Good, good.

That's powerful to hear.

You know, their story, especially the one about Mamie, we just see this very veneered type story about her.

And so to be able to go deeper and kind of get that behind the scenes aspect of who she was as a woman, we don't.

We just hear about em.

But to hear about her is huge.

One of the other questions I have here, it says, what do we need to do to make the study of black history, and in particular black women in history across the diaspora, a more persistent part of high school curriculum and not just an elective or during Black History Month?

What do we need to do to do to make a change there?

Like, it's all on y'all.

It's all on y'all.

Well, we try, and we're trying in our own ways.

By one, we're making this book into a young adult version.

Yes.

Is that the news?

That's one of the news is.

One of the news is.

News is a word.

I don't know if it is tonight.

Okay.

It is.

It is for me right now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we are.

That's going to come out probably in the fall of 2022.

Tanya Bolden is the adapter, and some of you may be familiar with her work.

So that's one way.

But I would say that that's a loaded question.

That's going to take the kind of organizing that we saw in the civil rights movement that we're seeing now with black lives matter, with the anti, you know, looking at issues of.

Of police reform and all of that.

Looking at.

So how do we get the stories and the history of black folks in school?

One, we are slowly becoming electives.

So at the k twelve level, there are states that are allowing the ethnic studies requirement.

That's a one credit course.

That's now an elective.

You can do Mexican American and African American.

In Texas, where I am, other states are allowing that, and some of them are three credit courses.

So that's good.

That's a starting point.

But really, where we need to go, there's a couple of things.

One, we need to get with our state boards of education.

We need to get with the standards, the teaching standards, and make sure that black women and black people as a whole are included in the standards of what students need to learn about american history, and that black people have been a part of american history in almost every time period that we have documentation for outside of indigenous people populated before Europeans arrived.

Okay.

Predate the pilgrims.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

So I think that there's that.

So dealing with the school board, getting people to recognize it.

And right now, you can take a us history and some professors and some teachers incorporate the african american experience in that.

I give all credit to those that do.

There's others that they consider that that should be a black history course and not a us history course.

So there's a way where we have to look at telling american history from multiple perspectives.

That include black people, that include black women.

That's what I would say for that.

The only thing I would add is, is that we've also been doing more and more work with teachers themselves, like workshops, with teacher training, and also trying to introduce them to this history to really kind of demonstrate how they can also incorporate it and use it.

But, I mean, I would just echo everything that Diana said.

It's gonna be a prolonged kind of battle, but it's definitely one that we have to do.

Yeah.

And I agree with that, too, as a black bookstore owner, just to touch on what Dinah's saying.

A lot of people think, oh, it's just black history.

And we get comments all the time by people that say, oh, these.

These books are just for.

For black people.

No, this.

These books are for every single person to have this knowledge, this history, you know, it creates empathy and knowledge and a whole different base that we're not working with, to be honest right now.

But people want to relegate it to just this.

This community or this audience when it should be for everybody.

You know, I think we had to read so much of everybody else's history, so it should be.

And we had to develop.

Right.

Had to develop this sense of empathy towards, you know, so it's not just, oh, black history month or just for, you know, this little extracurricular aspects.

It's for everyone.

So you hit a nerve for me.

There, but I agree.

Another question here is, it says, I recently received a research grant for this summer.

How do we navigate the archives and gatekeepers in the midst of a pandemic with this type of information we're looking for.

Kelly, you want to go all right.

So I have a couple of thoughts about this.

First is that I do think that there are archivists.

Archivists in general are unique people, right?

So you learn to kind of.

You got to find a rhythm with them in general.

Sometimes I think there's legitimate gatekeeping happening.

And other times I think it's just like you haven't found the language that's working with the archivist.

So I sort of highly recommend reaching out to the archivist early, respectfully introducing yourself.

It's great if you have, like, one of these residency research things.

I don't know.

I think the question said they had a research grant or something like that.

Yes.

One of the things I would recommend is, very early on, even if it's just like a little outdoor brown bag lunch session, if you just talk a little bit about your project and what you're interested in and what you're looking for, just before the archivist, it's like a little presentation.

Could be 1520 minutes.

I did that when I was in residence for weeks after.

Different archivists would be coming up to me with records that I hadn't thought about or that they knew, you know, because they know these collections, right?

They know where some of these things are.

So that's one of the approaches that I would just sort of say.

The other thing is you have to also take, you know, Doctor Berry's sort of example, the heart, too, and just keep doggedly pressing forward to see the documents.

Look through it yourself.

Double and triple check.

But it is going to be intense with the pandemic now.

I think some of them are opening up.

They are.

So you can get in some.

It will be interesting to see, as summer progresses, how much more open they will go.

But I know, Diane, I'll just add.

That, you know, there's some of the.

Some of the blame that archivists get is unfair, because if you look at when an archive was created, the problem is for, at least for black history, we just weren't part of the inventories.

Like when they were describing, when they were drafting these documents, they weren't saying that.

Oh, yeah.

They were looking at the donors and the donor families.

And maybe in there was buried a story of a black person, you know, the housekeeper or the enslaved person, you know, what have you.

They're buried in there.

And so I would say you have to look at the original records.

Don't.

I mean, they might send you the digitized, but you want to see what's in the margins.

Because sometimes black history is just in the margins.

And sometimes we find our stories in the margins of these records.

And when you look at digitization, because it may be not a part of the original record, that they won't scan that part.

So even if you have a document and they say, oh, well, we have it on microfilm, or we have it.

Here's a.

Here's a copy.

I say, I'd like to see the original, please.

Unless it's out of circulation, they can't let you see it.

Push to see the original.

That's something that both of our advisors trained us to do.

Always ask for the original and then writing ahead of time, giving them as much detail as you're comfortable with before you come, so that they can have stuff ready for you if you can physically go there.

If not, ask if they can loan or send or send you the digital copy until you can get there.

But communication is key, and most archivists, sometimes they're learning with you.

The best archivists are those that go on the journey with you.

Like Doctor Grosso keeps.

Like, they'll be thinking about it after they've met with you, and they'll keep bringing you stuff.

And, like, I have some really great relationships with archivists all over the country, both of us do, from just working in the archives and being there and letting them know that we're serious researchers.

So letting them know.

Let them know.

I'm on fellowship.

I'm here for this.

You know, I'm not big to drop names or anything like that, but let them know that you're a serious researcher when you come and that you're there and you want some support.

Have you gone back to any of those archivists and held up your book and said, look what I did with all this time that I've been here.

I can't wait.

I can't wait.

I am ready to get on an airplane when it's safe and go do that.

Yeah.

I can only imagine what they may feel just being in communication with you throughout that journey like that.

Yeah.

Another question that I personally have.

So, you guys, I'm going to put on my Cali hat.

Just referencing what you said earlier.

She kind of goes to the dark side.

But we talked about the women who, you know, were triumphant to you.

What, was there any story here that really infuriated you?

Was you uncovered the research?

Was that.

Was there any of those feelings as you went on this journey?

Or was it all just like, okay, this is good.

No, my black female enslavers or slaveholders, I think.

And I, you know, remember really struggling about writing about that, because I think people misunderstand and they over exaggerate, and they blame black people for slavery because we.

Because if any of us owned any of us, then we're responsible, and slavery is known void.

So I was like, we remember we talked about this.

We were like, we gotta find a way to have this discussion.

And somebody didn't like the fact that we said, you know, maybe it was an editor or something, not our editor, but we said something like, this is a hard conversation to have.

And they're like, take that out.

Like it's too commentary.

I was like, no, but then the reader, we wanted the reader to know that this was a hard part for us to write.

I think that's it.

And just.

But then trying to teach the readers that there's a variety of ways in which black people own black people or enslaved black people.

And some of it was about reclaiming family so that they couldn't get out of slavery.

And I'm still trying to figure out the numbers.

That's just, we don't have the stats on how many.

But people use that one fact and say, hey, you know, why are black people mad about slavery?

They enslave themselves.

And that's just something we wanted to try to address.

So that was hard.

Particularly the ones that did own large amounts of enslaved people and treated them as chattel slaves.

That was hard.

Sure.

I think mine is the story of the black wax, the women's army corps.

Once they open up and women are allowed to serve, you have recruiters and black women who were interested in nursing actually going to enlist, one.

Right.

To support the country.

They imagine that they're going to serve, and also because they're told that they'll obtain training, right.

Medical training and things.

They're interested in nursing that they could use even after they test.

Of course, the white women wax are the ones receive the medical training.

And the black women's arbitrary officers are basically left to, like, mop up the floors, change bed pants, and this sort of thing.

So they are infuriated and actually go on strike.

You know, they get threatened with the court martial.

A bunch of them go back.

But there's a core of the black women who say that they'll suffer and they'll face a court martial.

They actually are court martials.

And then the black community is enraged because these are, you know, young women who do this admirable thing that, you know, is joining the serve.

They told that they're going to receive this training, then they're relegated to this other work.

So Thurgood Montrose actually had signed on to present them on an appeal.

So the army at that point is having, like, you know, they're trying to just get out of this thing.

It's a pr nightmare, right?

You just want to wait out.

So they find, like, a technicality to basically void the court martial.

Right?

So.

But the women just go back to the exact same conditions that they had been fighting and protesting.

My heart broke for them because, you know, they joined in this thing, you know, signed on with this optimism and this earnestness to serve and to learn, and they just were totally exploited.

Even after they fought an uphill battle and faced the court martial and everything, you know, they still ended up being returned to those positions where they were basically like the cleanup crew on the.

It's crazy.

So we have time for just two more questions here really quickly.

One from Sabrina.

She asked, did you split the chapters between the both of you, or did you both work on each chapter from research to writing?

What was your process?

We worked on it together.

The thing that was nice about the book is that we have two different areas of strength.

Like, my work is obviously early 19th century, and hers is late 19th century forward, so that really helped.

But we both have been teaching black women's history throughout the whole time period.

We teach us history throughout both time periods.

So our expertise in black women is more specific to specific time periods.

But we worked together.

It was collaborative.

We would share stuff back and forth.

There were parts where one person would write a paragraph, the other person would tighten it up, and then vice versa.

So it was very, very collaborative experience for us.

What are two or three of your favorite history books?

You know, you guys deep into history.

This question is from Derek.

Two to three of your favorite history books or historians that inspired you?

Golly, I know.

Okay, I can say one.

One.

Well, I'll say one, then.

That'll give you time to think of two others.

I think what inspired me.

Deborah Gray White's.

Aren't I a woman?

As a graduate student, that's what I.

Wanted to meet you.

No, I think every black woman in grad school that went through, you know, when we did that book was earth life changing because we saw ourselves 200 years ago.

So that's.

That's what I would say about.

I would say Deborah Gray whites.

Definitely.

Deborah Gray whites.

Also.

Paula giddings, when and where I enter.

Yeah, yeah.

Classic.

It's a primary source, but Anna Julia Cooper's original work, a voice from the south yes.

1893 really sort of lays out.

I was thinking about.

It's like an early intersectional, kind of feminist view about the role and the position of black women in America.

So those two are my favorite.

I also really like, this will be the last one, and I'll shush.

You got me talking books now.

Hey, I know.

Don't get us started.

I love it.

Is Tara Hunter also, I think, a really, really great history, but learned a lot from the book and a lot from.

That's good.

That's a great book.

I would go back to a primary book, primary source, the incidents in the life of a slave girl by Harry Jacobs.

I think that should be required reading along with Frederick Douglass, one of his three autobiographies, or narratives.

And then I would say Ida B.

Wells Red record, even though that's not.

Yeah, those are.

Those are, like, foundational for us.

Very foundational books for us.

And when and where I enter was another one.

So those are the ones, I would say powerful.

So, in closing, thank you for sharing that.

There are some I need to write down.

I'm going to watch the replay and go back and get some of these books that I need to add to my own personal collection.

But what do you.

Someone's like, please list the books.

We will.

Well, watch the replay.

Miss Butler.

Pam Butler.

So.

Oh, Dinah's putting them in.

She's so good, professor.

But I was going to say, just in closing, what do you want young women to walk away with once they read this book, when they get this book in their hands, whether they're teens or not, but.

Or young, you know, what do you want them to walk away with when they read this powerful book.

I'm typing?

So I'm going to let you go first.

You know, it's a great question.

So I wrote this book with my own daughter in mind.

And how old is she, Callie.

How old is she?

Eleven.

Okay.

Eleven.

And so I really do want.

I really thought a lot about what I wanted her to learn.

And basically what I want them to see is the beauty, the beautiful expanse of black womanhood, right.

In every iteration.

And I mean that literally from, like, phenotypically, right, the beautiful, blackest berry.

Right, to all the other gradations on that.

I wanted to embrace that.

I wanted her to see beautiful images of dark complexion black women.

I wanted her to see images of women who were educated, who were athletes, who are artists, women who had been incarcerated, wanted queer.

I just wanted it all.

Women who were holiness creatures, right?

Women who were sex workers.

Like, I just wanted her to see the expanse of black womanhood because it was important for us to include the triumph as well as the people who didn't, because that represents the joyous totality of our experience.

Even when someone isn't able to overcome an obstacle, we still learn from that.

So I guess that's the thing that wanted her to just be able to read this book and see the full expanse of all that we are and what we can accomplish when we organize what we've come through.

Mmm.

That's good.

Good.

That's good.

Mine's easy.

I think I wrote it thinking about the book that I wish I had read as a little girl, because I grew up in a predominantly white community in northern California, but my family was from the east coast, and, you know, I had black culture, and I'm very confident of who I was as a black person, as a young black girl.

But I never saw myself at school.

I never saw myself at the career day.

I never saw myself in the books that we read.

So I have a son, but we.

At his school, I've always talked at his school, and I've always made sure that his classrooms had books that.

With people that looked like me and just multiracial, multi.

I would buy books for his school classroom so that there wasn't just, you know, so they would.

So that all the kids in his classroom would see people that look like them, people that had two moms, people that had two dads.

You know, I would try to find reading at that grade level for them.

And so I think that would.

That was, for me, I was thinking, like, what would I have done to have had a book like this?

And that was where that motivated me.

And so now, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of girls and boys will have access, especially for the young reader version, I think will be just so powerful.

And I do hope that a lot of schools pick up that edition and put it into these kids hands and make it required.

That's the kicker.

And somebody asked a question earlier, how do we make this text required?

But even if the schools don't require it, as parents, how do we get it into the kids hands and know how powerful it is?

So I'm excited that you guys are doing this.

I can't wait to get that into the hands of all of our readers that come into mahogany books.

I'm just honored to have both of you here in conversation tonight.

So thank you both.

Any last words that you have?

I just.

I'm honored.

Just want to say thank you for having us.

Thank you for celebrating our work and black women's history.

And you know, we're going to support.

We've always supported black bookstores.

I'm happy to know that you have a second location.

Congratulations.

And the next time, my husband's from DC, so the next time we come to DC, we will definitely come and see you all.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Thank you both for that.

Thanks so much for this opportunity.

Thank you for supporting black women's history, and thank you for making black books matter.

Hey, absolutely.

Thank you, everyone, for coming tonight.

Thank you, you so much.

Have a great evening and a great week.

Take care.

Take care.

Take care.

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