Introduce Nicole Meyers turner and her book. Nicole turner is assistant professor of religious studies at yale university. She earned her ph. D in history at the university of pennsylvania, her masters at divinity at the seminary in new york and her bachelors degree from hairford college and shes the author of this 2020 book soul liberty, postemancipation virginia published this year by the university of North Carolina press and before asking niconicole the first question i want to mention that this book appears in this conventional version of a hard copy, but also has two other versions and part of what makes her work so interesting is that it is so engaged from digital humanities and the book also exists as a conventional sort of conventional as she describes it verbatim, openaccess ebook and also as an enhanced openaccess ebook which shows off what dr. Turner was able to do with mapping and kind of Digital Technology in order to develop her Research Findings and so one of things i hope we get to talk about today is how she worked with those sources and what kind of promise she thinks digital humanities holds in this research into africanAmerican History in particular. Just to start it off, dr. Turner, tell us a little bit about tell us about this book to people who dont know anything about it are its main arguments and what does it accomplish and how do you see it contributing to the conversation. That was a lot of question. Give us your general pitch about this book and what its Central Claims are. First i want to say thank you so much for having me as part of the series and as part of a series of other scholars who will be here and also thank you for talking about my work and in the book soul liberty is the evolution of black religious politics and it is how black churches became political agents. I think there is a very common understanding of black churches as already politically engaged and my the aim of my book was to narrate that process and it wasnt also engaged in the same ways and that black churches are, in fact, historical spaces that have changed across time and were changed in the process of reconstruction and so thats what the main aim of the book is. Thank you so much. Well be bouncing back and forth, so i dont mean to catch you from two different sides. Were really delighted to read the book, and i have 9 million questions and ill ask them all at once and talk really fast. No, im kidding and i want to be patient for all of the things that i want to ask later. Im building off of what you just said i wonder if you can help us understand what you mean by soul liberty. Its not just a lovely title and its also a concept you return to over the book and it seems to speak to some of these intersections that youre so interested in in religion and politics and how theyre shaping each other and i wonder if you can get us started in what that means in your work. Sure. Thank you. So soul liberty actually comes from a quote in the Virginia Baptist State Convention minutes where members of the convention were citing Roger Williams pursuit of soul liberty in the formation of rhode island, whats interesting about the usage of that term is its not only a term that applied to the black baptists as part of the study and it applied to black episcopalians and the Apostolic Church which started in southern virginia and North Carolina, but the term soul liberty is the idea of religious freedom. This idea that black people could worship when, where and with whom they chose and it also points to this idea of equity and justice and righteousness that they were also pursuing in their religious communities and also in the broader landscape. So while it comes from a very particular baptist context, it is something that applies to the Virginia Baptist State Convention and the black episcopalians who attended the Theological School which was the first black seminary for priests in the fiscal tradition and the members of the Apostolic Church. One of the few black denominations that was started in the south. One of the only ones that were started in the south. They all are pursuing this idea of being able to worship and also these ideas of freedom, equity, injustice. Your answer captures many of the fascinating aspects of it. One that particularly struck me and you note in your own notes is that that pursuit of liberty at first glance might read as liberty to worship separate from white interference which is an important part of the story, but also a liberty that allows for quite different types of formation in the religious world, and i was interested in the ways you write about baptist and the ame church sits so centrally in the literature which makes perfect sense and yet other religious experiences that episcopalians whom you mentioned were the africanamerican members of the mec and developed later and others seem to be harder to pin down in the literature. What do you think we gain when we study people who choose as in Saint Stephens who operate in an almost completely of africanamerican space, but remain in a whitedominated denomination. As a historian, what drew you to those spaces, as well . I hear in your question a couple of things and one has to do with the definition of liberty and the differences in the denominations and their approaches, and i would say first, that the ability to see this landscape comes from doing a geographical look, right . A study that begins in a particular place in virginia and sort of not taking the lens in a particular denomination and i didnt come to it through the lens of the baptist and with the lens of virginia, with all three of those denominations and when you start to think about how each of these communities chose to pursue freedom, you know, it becomes really evident and the baptist and part of the trajectory of their struggle goes through, you know, in the beginnings where black baptists are organized already in conventions before the vote is is established by the 15th amendment and theyre already making arguments for their political participation and their skill and its something that was before the emancipation and there were black people organizing associations and so they had demonstrated the skill and the ability to participate as citizens through their own religious communities and then you find a very interesting, you know, story of st. Stephens Episcopal Church in virginia which was started by a black woman who, in consultation with the white priest from the church that her family became members of, establishes an independent black church and one of the first black Episcopal Churches for the community of petersburg and its an interesting story because people tend to associate the high Church Culture and not with roots in an enslaved free black community. Churches with black Women Leadership and in this instance, you have black people like caroline brag who helped establish the church and her grandson becomes in the readjustment movement and another thing that drew me to the virginia landscape, and george brag becomes involved and it becomes a critical agent and narrating black history, and reflects how the struggle was established in their own independent spaces and churches with associations and if its episcopalians that are navigating the landscape of engaging with former confederates as the student at the school as a participant in the readjustment movement and it opens up a way of thinking of how did black people go about forming this type of alliance. Thats one of the things that drew me to this particular case in virginia is how did they form this alliance. One of the things that becomes evidence, and theyre struggling for us and finding ways to achieve it in these various locations. Thats so much, nicole. This is so interesting. The majority, the vast majority of the book takes us into the postcivil war period and youre talking as the title suggest, the emancipation moment, but i wanted to have you talk about the transition to freedom and youre talking about an area in virginia where the vast majority of africanamericans before the civil war were enslaved and how would you describe for us and readers what that transition looked like. What were the aspect of black religious experiences during the time of slavery that informed what people did after emancipation and what were the particular challenges that people faced as slavery came to an end during the civil war and after ward and how do you understand and see the transition. I think the transition can be seen best by having a longstanding narrative by black Church Engagement and the antibe antibellum churches where they were able to worship independent churches and one of the things we start to see in the postemancipation landscape are our debates about Land Ownership and property and so theres this interesting aspect and thinking about Land Ownership as something that came through churches and that black people were trying to navigate the Legal Systems in trying to secure ownership by title and the formal ownership of churches that they had paid into help support and develop economically and didnt have the right to sort of full name ownership on the deed kind of situation. So part of that transition involves a transition to Property Ownership and part of that, in the postemancipation period had to do with gender roles. One of the things i have to highlight is how theyre being established in Church Communities and so part of what you can see or what i try to convey through telling the story is give the church back to petersburg and looking very closely at the landscape is how gender roles were actually being transformed in that moment and so one of the things i focus on in looking at the cases of unwed pregnancy which meetings handled a lot of different kinds of issues and i focus on the cases of unwed pregnancy because there is a clear transformation of how the community didnt hold both parties accountable for wanting to be pregnant out of wedlock for a brief moment in time, and they do allow for both parties to be held accountable and then they shift back to just holding the women accountable and part of perhaps as a result is women move back into this space of being only disciplined in church meetings. In this moment you start to see the rise of a ministerial figure who is male and has a particular gender status. So i think there are ways in which the leadership roles change and expand. How access to land and property is something that changes through the churches across this time and also how gender roles are being transformed on the landscape of religious institutions. And just to follow up on that question of gender roles, i feel like you make reference to the work the work on a later period of for instance, Glenda Gilmore and to some extent barkeley brown about kind of an argument that either gender roles among africanamericans particularly in churches became to understand what we now understand to be conventional and women being a part of the church and not being in leadership roles and gender respectability that that emerged later in the 1890s or so and im just wondering, do you see that what youre finding is suggesting that all of the things that people came about later came about earlier and also i think that raises that question which is interesting and repeated a lot of different places that historians suggested that the emancipation period was a period of greater experimentation around gender hierarchy among africanamericans and just coming out of fluidity and contestation because, for example, so many families and so many marriages had been interrupted by the domestic slave trade and now you have a moment of flexibility. Are you finding something really different from that here . Yeah. I think yes. I think the short answer is yes. I think when you look at the petersburg landscape you definitely see the imposition of gender roles taking place much earlier, and the question is not only one of time period ask its also a place. Its also circumstance and also the leadership model and you know one of the things i talk about in the study and acknowledge is that this is a deep look into a particular communet and we need many more studies. Are they talking to got about this particular gender roles. I wish is part it is Church Records that really revealed what was taking police on the ground is constructive. Was being transformed during that time. One of the places that we see that is in the conventions and conferences and these other organizational and networking levels and well come back to this in a little bit when we turn to mapping, but staying on the level of more your argument and i think one of the joys in reading your book and books of history that have this deep granularity is seeing it take something that on its face a lot of historians rush past because it doesnt seem that interesting. People get why congregations are interesting, but conferences and conventions and theres a lot of who is representing, and to explain why not only has meaningful and also interesting and i do think its one of the magical moments of the book to see you take this thing and i feel the impulse of, like, how do i get to the good stuff and this is the good stuff if you see it right or this networking in connection and also, though, as you say for the ways it ties back to your question about gender and about the ways that these spaces bein, not exclusively, but spaces of a male, ministerial privilege and i want to just tell people who havent yet read it and what you draw from and what you learned and why you think those spaces matter, and if youve got space, you know . What drew you to it . Did you know all along that that would be a telling part or did you know over the course of your study . Thank you so much, because i do remember people cautioning you about a couple of things and one, that there willnt be information, and theres not a lot in and when shoo produced the schedule of the convention, i was, like, wow that was constructive into something i didnt have insight absent reading the book and there was something to do and not be bored by them, and also the baptist Convention Minutes are a treasure trove of information about black, religious and political life, preserved on microfilm. Some of them have whole 30year runs of their Convention Minutes and every year you can find an annual convention and its robust and these exist for every state, almost and its a huge archive if you think about it about black, religious life that needs to be mine. As i got into them there is a lot here to see and it also came out of an investment in using the archive of black peoples lives, right. So in recognition that the archives of black religious life, in many instances can be small and mediated often through the eyes of white people. This is an archive that comes from black people about the experience and so it is really important for me to center those sources and to use every bit and i remember in graduate school, one of my instructors talking about being told that when you find something, you know, about black peoples lives you have to figure out how you can use it in the most robust way possible, and so it was really important for me to get those sources and get everything that i could from them and you cant help, but be struck by what is included in them. I mean, the names of all of the delegates who attended and the names and locations of all of the churches that are there. The different issues that theyre discussing and recording in their minutes and there are financial records and theyre rich and incredibly rich. I saw so much more in them and it was so important to use, and you know, as you read them im noticing, though there are no women initially on the boards of these convention, but they show up, right . They show up in these accounts where theyre acknowledged for their donations of the convention which is the donation of the golden coin and then you see it happen again. Whats going on here that women are showing up this very particular way . To me it started to speak to how women become the central, financial figures and thats one of the ways we see them in the conventions and ask the people who are financially demonstrating the sacrificial giving that so many rely on, and about the role of black women and churches as financial people and im seeing it constructed in realtime as these women are being recognized for their giving and it also, of course, raises a question about how is black manhood being constructed in these spaces and churches and those kind of things which is another aspect of the story that i wanted to tell, and weve had great works that point to the ways that women played a role in the destruction of Baptist Conventions and activism and all these things and they take a step back and how is black manhood being constructed and it was something that i thought was worth trying to unearth. That thats also a construction thats happening in the spaces. And they were able to get through the Convention Minutes and if there was Something Else they can place here, too. Thank you so much. Thats a really good segway into a question that i wanted to kind of follow up on. I think part one of the central book in the beginning of the talk has to do with the relationship between black church organizing and politics in the formal politics sense and the sense of voting, Party Politics and electoral politics and so you talking about being interested and investigating what you can tell about the construction of black manhood through the Church Records leans neatly into the relationship between those developments within churches and whats going on in formal politics where in 1867 africanamerican men are in franchise for the first time and begin to vote. Black people begin to play a totally different and more