Transcripts For CSPAN3 African American History Conference 20160521

American history. The opening session is on africanamericans and religion. While we wait for the conference to begin, a look at a 2011 trip to a storage site in a washington, d. C. Suburb with the director of the Smithsonian National museum of African American history and culture. He showed us some of the artifacts that will be on display in the new museum, opening on the national mall, september 24, 2016. Right now, we are in the Storage Units of the National Museum of African American history and culture. In essence, this is the heart of the museum of. Because whats behind me, and what we will see today are many of the objects that are going to be the soul of this museum. This is an opportunity to sort of preview some of the material that the public will see when the museum opens in stores. The story of the africanamerican experience is both a story of resiliency at achievement, but its also a story of struggle. Parts ofe hard exploring this history is that were athe people who the worst tended to be other americans. That makes it hard to interpret this, because americans are used to being the bad guy. One of the things that is powerful is objects like this. Strongnvey the sort of antiblack sentiment. This is a ku klux klan banner four ks1920s, the stand for knights of the ku klux klan. It goes underground and then bursts a new as result of the film the birth of the nation, and the client becomes a National Phenomenon in the 20s and 30s. This kind of banner is the kind of thing that people would use to celebrate their investment and their participation in the ku klux klan. These are the kinds of things we tell the painful stories as well. And then, i think one of the things thats really interesting to me is to recognize that so much of what shapes a communitys work. We wanted to make sure that we found things that would give people an understanding of the way black america works. One of the most important stories, often a story that is not fully understood is the story of pullman porters. This is a wonderful item. Come to ays, we have point where pullman porters were seen may be a stereotypical way, as people only served. Who actually worked on the railroad to make the travel of elite White Community comfortable. But the pullman porters played even a more important role. They were, in some ways, the communicative heart of the African American community. They began to bring to different regions of the country and understanding of what was going on in the south, what was going on in california. They became one of the earliest black unions, so they were very successful in the early 20th century in unionizing, and establishing a pattern that many africanamerican businesses would follow in the future. For us, the pullman porters both the story ofwork, the limits of what people were able to do because they reference in american, but its also a story of how people transcended the limits of their job and created a way to help the entire community. And then, in some ways, the whole notion of struggling against racism, battling segregation is really at the heart of trying to understand the story. These two artifacts we are about to look at speak volumes about segregation. Hand, we have what was something that was ubiquitous throughout the 20th century which were colored drinking fountains. Thats that were insured the separation of the races were enforced. And as we know, that segregation was the law of the land throughout part of the 19th century and all of the 20th century. So colored fields good morning. The executivean, director of the American Historical Association. I want to join my friends and welcoming everyone to this conference on the future of the African American past. For those of you who were here yesterday, and thursday, they did the welcomes. I especially want to join lonnie in helping thank the National Endowment for the humanities. Not only chairman adams, but former interim chair carol lawson, who is here, and you had the faith in what we were doing, i think in many ways before lonnie and i did. And judiciously entrusted our nehaboration to the director of Public Programs, karen milton. And a team of Public Program staff and others who offered advice throughout the project, i see christie is here. I appreciate all the help we got. I also want to join lonnie in emphasizing that dana schafer at the American Historical Association and deirdre across at the National Museum of African American history and culture are the people actually made this happen. [applause] those of you who are the speakers and bloggers for the conference are well aware that they have continued to make it run smoothly. Not only was at the beginning. We are also grateful to john of thed the staff National Museum of American History for loaning us their facilities for the weekend, it was very generous of them. We had intended originally to be in the building across the way, which i recommend that everyone at least, even in the rain, go outside and take a look at. It sometimes took a little longer. Anyone who is running to their home, they know sometimes construction takes a little longer than you expect. Renovating their home, they know the construction takes longer than you expect. This is of special importance to lonnie and me. He worked here for a long time. In my case, this is where i first participated in the sort of small, specialized conference that establishes lifetime friendships in our business. Adria petty, yesterday, mentioned the landmark exhibition in this museum. What she didnt know that a conference associated with that exhibit is where lonnie and i first met, and where i first encountered a Remarkable Community of scholars, many of whom have become lasting friends and colleagues. I will always be grateful to the National Museum of American History. I want to knowledge the support of history, formally known as the history channel, and in particular, Senior Historian and Vice President kim gilmour, who can be with us, his back visiting with family in kansas city. It has asked me to remind everybody that the remake of roots will air on memorial day and 9 00 p. M. The website is roots. History. Com. I have seen the first episode, it is not the same as last time. It is very much not the same as last time. I also want to thank the universities who have sponsored their students to attend, and im now going to sheepishly thets that i left in my bag names of the universities, so i cant name them. But we appreciate your support, and i apologize. I have a question for everybody. Because its one of the things were curious about. Are just forle typical of the area local people . And how many traveled . Ok, so its about half and half. We were curious. Theyre all sorts of other things were curious about, but im not going to conduct a survey here. I do want to remind everybody that there are many people tweeting. Futureaaash tag past. We have had the huge numbers of people using the hash tagged manually 400 tweets have been sent yesterday. What was interesting was they were not as often happens just coming from seven or eight different people, they were coming from many, many different people. Many of whom are not even here. The conference is also being live streamed, and is being archived on the conference website. If you go to that website, which future and past, you can also see an ongoing blog about the conference. The first piece is already up, which is on the session yesterday morning thursday night. The other ones will be going up very soon. People have told me they have written them, they are being edited. We are trying to get these up as quickly as possible. These blogs are very short pieces, responses to the session. Wonderful notis a only summary of the session, but some ofy sharp take on the interpretive aspects of it, which is what we asked people to do. I encourage you to go take a look at these. About 80stream, we had to a couple hundred people watching yesterday from cities around the United States and beyond. Have a lot oft we interest, which is very gratifying to us. When i got here this morning at a quarter to 8 00, there were people waiting outside in the rain. I cannot begin to tell you how happy it makes historians that there are people waiting outside in the rain to come to history conference. Next week, im going to a meeting that is focusing on the relevance of history to everything. There is a hash tag, everything has a history. This is something that we deeply believe. It is a matter where you are interested in, it has a history, and that history matters. It is wonderful to see this many people realizing this is the case. Im going to turn the morning to the Medford Aetna Edna medford, who is when you get a started for today. Who is going to get us started for today. Medford thank you for joining us on this beautiful, rainy day in washington, d. C. Im honored to be the chair of this panel, which attempts to answer the simple and in many ways, complex question what is africanAmerican Religion . Africans in america, at least the vast majority, were, by law, sold,l, to be bought and exploited, apologetically, and often cast aside once every ounce of value had been extracted. Unlike the livestock that was listed alongside them on the state inventories and auctions, this peculiar brand of property fought to assert and preserve their humanity. And their relationships with each other, in the establishment and operations of their social institutions, and especially in their sacred beliefs. Peoples of african descent adopted a belief system that reflected their diverse ethnicities, and the particular circumstances that shaped their lives and labor. Altered anderiences redefined the beliefs and practices familiar to the ancestors. The descendents of these men and women adopted new ways of looking at the world and their place in it or it unlike those before them, they embraced religion as a means to challenge as well as cope with the realities of their existence in america. Institutionalized religion represented by the black church constituted the core of the Africanamerican Community and freedom. It was the center of training for black leadership. The First Responder in a time of crisis. The linchpin that connected black people in common cause, including in protest of their oppression. Growing up in rural virginia in the 60s, i could scarcely imagine if there was any religious experience the on my own. For me, African American religion was christianbased, maledominated ashman comprise the leadership, but women were the worker bees. As they still are today. It was church centered, and emotionally charged. Experienced, rooted in the Southern Baptist tradition, meant to our sunday two hour sunday service. Our ministers had never heard the message that no souls were saved after the first 60 minutes. There was preaching, hellfire and brimstone to be exact. Older ladies being overcome with the holy ghost. And music that would inspire godly behavior, at least for a day or two. I had graduated from high school, and enrolled at hampton institute, not hampton university, so you know how long ago that was. Before i ever heard of the ame church. Methodism was for white folks. Churches 11 black churches in my county. Every single one of them was a baptist church. Black hebrews did not exist in my sacred world. Nor did their perceived alternative groups, such as those founded by daddy graves and bob devine and elijah mohammed. You can imagine how far in the backwoods i was. We really didnt have that muslim presence there. Of course, my experience was one of many narratives that helped to define African American religion. This morning, each of our panelists either extends or challenges the traditional narrative. Is chair ofnelist the department of africanamerican studies and willm s todd, profession professor of religion at princeton. His discussion of the category of africanAmerican Religion will be followed by judith the professor of religion at Princeton University who will discuss sites and sources for the study for the African American religious past, now the lineup was a little bit different, but we have a panel of very feisty rebels here. They have decided that it didnt make a lot of sense to have the order that i had placed them in, and i agree with them totally. There is to always ask your panelists what they think, dont assume that you know. Be ird presenter will let me just indicate professor weidenfeld will talk about sites and sources for the study of African American religious past. She will be followed by a goat atprofessors of history harvard university, who will address bible politics of the black freedom struggle. And last, but certainly not least is a via butler. Anthea butler, associate professor of religious studies at the university of pennsylvania. She will discuss africanAmerican Religion outside of the black church, rethinking the framework. E will start [applause] welcomes Early Morning service. [laughter] the organizers for thinking of me and inviting me to this extraordinary conversation. We have learned a lot. Comingbeen a long time to see this happen. Im delighted, words cant really expect. Thank you for everything that you do. Of you for being here. You just jump into this. Let me just jump into this. Prof. Glaude i was thinking when i got up at some ungodly hour in preparation for this amount lumbers and splitters. I was thinking about the great isaiah berlins this tension between hedgehogs and foxes. I tend not to identify myself as either one, i like to take myself to be more attentive to what hedgehogs and foxes do. What splitters and the lumpers do. This is what im going to try to do today. What is African American religion . And informative body of religion has been written about the difficult is in the study of religion, generally. Aboutf the debates whether religion is reducible to some other more fundamental notion like the unconscious and the lot. Our adjusting the complicated when we think about religion in tandem with race. More specifically, the issue becomes even messier when the modifier black or africanamerican describes religion. These adjectives bear the unusual burden of a difficult history that colors the way religion is practiced and understood in the United States. They register the horror of slavery and the terror of jim crow, as well as the richly textured experiences of a captured people, for whom sorrow stands alongside joy. It is in this context, one characterized by the everpresent need to account for world inence in the the face of White Supremacy that africanAmerican Religion takes on such a distention. I want to make a distinction between africanAmerican Religion and africanamerican religious life. S not reducible to those wheres walter. Its not reducible to those wounds, that life contains within it avenues for solace and comfort and answers to questions about who we take ourselves to be in relation to the mistress of the universe. Moreover, meaning is found i got it all backwards. Meaning is found for some and submission to god in obedience to create and dogma commented ritual practice. Here, evil is accounted for and hope at least for some is assured. In short, African American religious life is as rich uncomplicated as the religious life of other groups in the United States. But africanAmerican Religion emerges in the encounter between faith and all of its complexities and whites of privacy. The main explain what i mean. My approach assumes that the political and social context in the United States is a necessary though not sufficient condition of any study of something called africanAmerican Religion. If the phrase African American religion is to have any descriptive usefulness at all, it must signify something more than African Americans who are religious. In fact, African Americans practice a number of different religions. There are people who are black people were buddhists, jehovah witnesses, mormons, and bahai. But that africanamericans just these traditions does not leave us to describe them to describe it as black buddhism or black mormonism. AfricanAmerican Religion singles out something more substantive than that. This something more does not have to be an idea of religion which stands apart from social and historical forces that impinge on the lives of African Americans, nor does it refer to a definite kind of experience that is itself religious or religious consciousness as distinct from other forms of consciousness. My aim here is not to secure the unique status of the category of africanAmerican Religion. The adjective refers instead to a racial context within religious meanings have been produced and reproduced. It all alright . Of howfor consideration religion has produced particular racial meanings, but the history of slavery and racial description United States, first particular religious formations among africanamericans who converted to christianity in the context of slavery most only white denominations to form their own after experiencing racial prescription in pursuit of a sense of selfdetermination. Some embraced a distinctive interpretation of islam to make sense of this in the United States, given that history, we can reasonably and accurately describe certain variants of islam as and africanamerican and mean something beyond the own interesting claim that black individuals belong to these and ritual traditions. African american religious practices can be understood apart from the social and local context that in some ways called them into being. There are numerous studies that do just that. Attention to context helps to hasain why the scholar called a particular religious formation africanAmerican Religion. The phrase is the invention of those of us who, with aims and purposes a particular aims and purposes, seek to describe, analyze, and theorize the religious practices of African Americans under a particular racial regime. Im going to do this really quickly. This is what you get for inviting a philosopher. The words black or African American work as markers of difference. The way of signifying tradition of struggle against whites of premises practices in a helpful repertoire that reflects the unique journey as evidence in religious meanings produced under certain conditions. The phrase calls of a particular history and culture in our efforts to understand the religious practices of a particular people. When i use the phrase African American religion, not referring to something that can be defined substantively apart from the thicket of various practices, rather, my aim is to orient you, the reader in a particular way to the materials under consideration, to call attention to the social political history that forms the topic at hand of the single out the workings of the human imagination and spirit under particular conditions. Sentences that begin africanAmerican Religion is or rather simply descriptive transitively convey certain norman of normative the symptoms about without religion is, has been cut and ought to be, like African American religion is prophetic or africanAmerican Religion is emotional. But to understand the sense African American religion is, only in this way risks the redefining a particular understanding of black religious practices, of denying complexity, ambiguity, and contradiction by snatching. Practices out of the messiness of history. Understandetter to these as procedures of differentiation and indication. As a way of saying you want to give more attention to this, as opposed to that. And a recollection of history that makes the distention worthwhile. Thurman, the great 20 Century Black theologian declared and displayed, dear to redeem the religion profaned in as midst, he offered particular understanding of black christianity. This expression of christianity was not the idolatrous embrace thatishan doctrine justified the superiority of white people in the subordination of black people. Instead, blacklisting entity embraced the liberating power of all weres sense that children of god. He sought to organize a specific inflection of christianity in the hands of those who lived as slaves. Think about the negative formulation. This aint africanAmerican Religion, this aint black church. The personore about who utters them than the actual religious practices. What is being noticed is the absence of something, that some essential element of what constitutes African American christianity is missing. Im trying to make a distinction between however in American Religion works, how we need to understand the way in which these categories take us into the thicket of actual practices. They bring certain things interview, they keep other things out of view. One im thinking about is what happens when the category isnt doing the kind of work that we expected to do. How do we think of black christianity with nigerian pentecostals . Thewe think about the ways African American religious landscape has changed with this protestant highest they keep this from singing, all the complexity on the ground. I think we need to think carefully about the descriptive or analytic work that the category is doing, where is it guiding us and leading us to . If its getting in the way, its about time we get rid of it. Thank you. [applause] ms. Medford im going to switch this powerpoint. Thats not what i meant to do. I think with images, and i wanted to offer you some images for my work. Weidenfeld weis enfeld my suggestion today is to broaden our scope beyond the traditional focus on practices of protestantism and black churches. Vietnamese we miss the full scope of the sister if we attend only to a dominant religion. In framing my remarks this way, i certainly do not mean to argue this dominant tradition of protestantism as located primarily in black denominations is not worthy of scholarly attention. Future of the the africanamerican religious past, i believe its vital that we expand the scope of inquiry, and his work technologies in part the african religion diversity. Attention toore catholics, jews, muslims, practitioners of voodoo and santeria, humanists and secularists, for example. The on charting a more diverse set of traditions and centering women, gender, and sexuality are worked, for example, and adjusted in what new understandings of and perspectives on African American religious history emerge when we bring sites and sources other than churches and clergy interview. I offer three sources i have encountered in my own research on early 20th century African American religious history that have led me to broaden my view of the social actors of that history. Veteran actor and director Spencer Williams released the blood of jesus, the first in a set of three religious movies he planned it to make in the course of a decade, and he did make go down death and whether martins service of jesus. Its a trailer, unclear whether he made it or was lost and he never got to make it. These films were part of the broader landscape of films produced for black audiences, and that by this time, had begun to decline in production in popularity. Jesus,e blood of williams struck out beyond his comedic specialty as an actor, in seeking to deliver a message of christian redemption in an entertaining package. Well not unique in mobilizing this, nation of entertainment and evangelization on screen, williams was while accounts uniquely successful in appealing to African American viewers who saw his films. Is about of jesus gender, sexuality, family, urbanization, smalltown church life, and Popular Culture. Williams places the character of martha, played by catherine cavenders at the center of the story. Although set in a christian context, the narrative and visual focus on marthas trials and redemption highlight women a central figures in black religious life, and williams presents a complex portrait of theology and religious community with only passing reference to church or male clergy. My work to analyze this film itself, the materials he is advertising, the careers of the director and actors, an exhibition and reception rented the Movie Theater a productive site for the study of African American religious history. Thinkrces called on me to about the cinema not only as a cultural, social, and political environment as many scholars of early black films have demonstrated, but also a religious one that viewers of williamss films and other early century films20th engaged as such, bringing media and Popular Culture more fully into African American religious history opens up new ways of thinking about the production and dissemination of ideas about religion, but also the mediation of religious experience. In the course of researching a recent project on the black new religious music movements of the great migration, i turned to an online database of visual records to learn more about wentworth arthur matthew, an immigrant and rabbi at a hebrew congregation. Because first of racial and religious origins were central to how black hebrew leaders in harlem promoted their theological identity claims, i was interested in his assertion of various points that he had been born in nigeria. The result of my search showed that in the official records, he often gave his birthplace as st. Kitts, but his world war ii drafters ration card from april 26, 1942 raise a host of other questions for me about individual and collective understanding of the relationship between religious and racial identity for blacks in early 20 Century America. We see on this card that matthew considered his clerical title a rabbi to be so important that he squeezed it in above his name, and also included in his signature. On the other portion of the registration card, matthew asked for amendments to the government supplied list of racial designators, requesting that hebrew the added to represent properly his sense of his linked religious and racial identity. Matthews request let me to wonder whether he was alone in this. The draft frustration records turned out to have hundreds of documents from members of what i have come to call religion you racial movements, who challenge the power of the state to define them solely according to race, and from their perspective, the wrong race, and insisted on being represented according to what they understood to be an intertwined religious racial identity. Within the archive, i found members of father defines Peace Mission movement, such as perfect endurance, and migrate to harlem from georgia who, in keeping with father defines theology that race is a negative construct of the mind asked that he be listed simply as human. The registrar complied, but wrote his requested designation above the supplied category of negro. Migrant fromy, and South Carolina insisted that he was moorish american. The registranted to characterize his complexion, hair color, and i color as all of, a theological term many moorish americans used to describe themselves. We also see that the registrar pushed back in a section where he had to affirm the truth of the information. He wrote that he believed he was actually negro. In the course of my research, i came to see such bureaucratic paperwork, vital records such as marriage and death certificates and government documents like census sheets, draft registration cards, and immigration paperwork as rich and complex records of aspect of life within the religious racial movements. Through, and against such documents illuminates the race mainly best race making and Maintenance Work these people undertook in daily life and called on sites like the draft board and Immigration Judges and military bases as one both of exercise of state power, and religious expression and experience, sometimes in challenge to state power. Enforcement and medical officials decided that mary f wood, a 40yearold missouri native living in northcentral california should be committed to the stockton State Hospital for the insane. The commitment paperwork indicates that would, in methodist, had walked the streets, crying glory be to god, singing, reading scripture, preaching, and would not sleep night or day, wanted to be appointed as a preacher in the local church. Was of insanity, accompanied by fixed religious delusion, and the intake psychiatrist listed religion as a predisposing factor. Street preaching, evangelizing, and the desire to preach at a local church are not obvious indicators of Mental Illness. [laughter] although itfeld seems to me the gendered and racial understanding of religious leadership may have played a role in the deputy sheriffs sense that would was disruptive somehow. In woods case, these religious expressions were situated in the context of an ongoing manic state to produce sleeplessness and exhaustion, leading to her death eight days after admission to the hospital. On its own, this document is not particularly revealing aspect of the African American religious and individuals expression and psychological distress. But placed in the larger context of earlier 20th century psychiatric discourses and practices about race and a seton, it directs us to of sources and new sites for inquiry. Would was among many early 20 century African Americans who were remanded by courts were committed by family members to psychiatric institutions and diagnosed with some form of religiously grounded Mental Illness. Scholars of the history of race was asian of Mental Illness in a variety of contexts in africa have emphasized the use of diagnosis, institutionalization and treatment as a mode of containment of individual and group active resistance. Few scholars have attended to the way the discourses about black religion shaped the diagnostic allegories site digest psychiatrist created. Early 20th century psychiatric literature about africanamericans is filled with assertions about injuring negro savagery, manifest particularly that manyn psychiatrists understood to continue to shape africanamerican traits of character, habit, and behavior. While such discourses about African American religion were commonplace and early 20th theury american culture, stockton State Hospitals have led meegister to examine psychiatric literature that might reveal more about the intersection of African American religious history and the history of disability in the form of Mental Illness. Mary woods life, religious commitment and aspirations, and her experience in the stockton State Hospital also require that i turn to the Mental Institution as a site for the study of the africanamerican religious past. Might her diagnosis as suffering from an religious insanity have guided the treatment she received from doctors, and ideas about race and religion play a role in her commitments, treatment, and eventual death . In putting these three documents for my research before you, and hope to highlight the rich possibilities of engaging sources of sites beyond the scope of the conventional ones through which we have told traditionally the story of African American religious history. As is clear, resources and sites sometimes emerge from or have these connections to those traditional arenas of religious life. But they raise new social actors. In addition to turning from the almost exclusive attention to black protestant churches and political struggle in the past, turning from this helps us to interpret the texture and complexity of the current religious landscape that includes theological developments like the prosperity gospel that influenced beyond black communities, varieties of islam, among africanamericans, the impact of immigration from caribbean and africa. Religious choices that center black clear preference, and more. More textured understanding of the African American religious path helps to situate these in a much longer history of writing, creativity, and change that has already is has always characterized black religious life in america. [applause] good morning. It is indeed an honor and pleasure to be here. I am so appreciative of jim grossman and lonnie bunch, and all who have made this possible. As someone else said the other day, ive seen friends i havent seen in 40 years, so its really wonderful to be here. I want to talk to you about the bible politics of the black freedom struggle. Today, most americans, upon hearing the term bible politics with associated with the religious right. With the conservative evangelical wing of the republican party. Etymology tells of different routes. Specifically, that of radical abolitionists in the 1840s and 1850s. Who believe that gods laws and justice lay at the very foundation of civil government. And laws. Williamhe followers of lloyd garrison, who disdained the constitution and who sought the immediate end to slavery suasion, the abolitionists who followed all of politics professed the gospel of liberty through political discourses and institutions. Like James Brewer Stewart and most recently, many should somehow observe the term of bible politics that was coined by these abolitionists, specifically those in thirdparty politics. , and itsty party successors, particularly the radical Abolition Party. These abolitionists proclaim the gospel of liberty in order to end the sin of slavery. Coinage inspite the this specific context, bible politics so precisely captures the fusion of religion and , it so succinctly comprehends the interlocking discourses of religion, race, law and rights that i argue for its analytical usefulness over a much more expansive period. It rests on the distinction between obedience to natural, divine law, and civil, manmade laws. It rejects his artificial the binary between the religious and the political. By emphasizing gods law, a higher moral law, as the basis of civil law. Reference foral evaluating the validity of civil laws. What makes it distinct is the centrality of religious ideas, and bring about religious equality and justice through the american governments ideals, documents, processes, and institutions. When you see it online, i talk about where you can see religious language in the declaration of independence, you also see religious language in the enlightenment thinkers like john locke. Attention to religious language reveals the perceived linkage between the universal ideal in the bible and the natural law ideals of the american nation. As presented in the declaration of independence and the constitution. It also reveals the centuries long contestation over the meaning and application of laws and rights. In which both sides, both the antislavery side and the proslavery side, but the civil rights workers and the segregationists are validating their perspectives by using the same foundational texts. Declaration of independence, the constitution, and the bible. For much of American History, the fusion of religion and politics has undergirded White Supremacy and the subordination of black people. , for example,laws use racial purity laws to expose the most fundamental expression of the longstanding inseparability of race, religion, politics, and natural law. But we give you an example from the state of virginia. Because in the state of virginia, as early as 1662, virginia legislators fought to curb interracial sex and the colonies growing mixedrace population by increasing a punitive fine from yet another earlier law. The laws actually predate 1662. The laws of 1662 says if any christian shall commit fornication with a black man or woman, he or she is so offending shall pay double the fine supposed by the former act. In the law was really meant to curb the law does, and it was very much targeted to women, because if you were a white woman and you had a mixedrace child, that child would not be a slave, he would inherit the status of the mother. Its also interesting that this law uses the word christian for white people. While you might think thats interesting, and maybe black people didnt go to church, thats not true. Some of the cases are black and white churchgoers. More importantly, i would like you to think about the postbrown decision, when many schools and counties in virginia closed. Virginia closed Public Schools to resist the brown decision. When they opened their white schools, often they were called christian schools. 1662, you can go until the loving case. Many of us know about the loving case, richard and Mildred Loving word interracial couple who really took their marriage to the Supreme Court in 1957. It was validated as a legal marriage. In 1965, this is on the way to the Supreme Court, the circuit judge in Caroline County said their marriage was illegal. He talked about states rights, but he also added this dictum almighty god created the races, white, black, yellow, malay and red. And place them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix. This is actually in the legal document of 1965. They were actually in jail. Its been some time in jail, until in the process of fighting for this. Let me get back to my other page. The bible politics of the black freedom struggle offers a counter narrative. It offers the competing normative universe that exists as accommodation of principles that also continued over the centuries, and i would edify them as follows. One is the bit. Ly validated onenessically validated of humanity, based on the book of acts in the bible, chapter 17 verse 26, god has made the nations of one blood. And based on that, the argument goes from literally a colonial time until today, that because of that, humanity is one, and so freedom is a natural condition of all persons. The second point is the sacred quality of the declaration of independence. In the liberating spirit of the constitution. Number three is the recognition of just laws and unjust laws, with emphasis on obedience to just laws. And number four, the essentiality of a Multiracial Coalition for lasting success, and five, the moral obligation on the part of africanamericans to make america a up to its ideals. Paper,ve examples in the the first is from the revolutionary war era, and the early republic. Time of the the abolitionists, and finally, from the 20th century. In the earliest time, i draw from the public addresses in writing of the black new englander lemuel haynes. He was a soldier in the continental army. An ordainedologian, cover initial minister. In 1776, the war is going on. Essay called liberty further extended. What he argues is that the revolutionary war could not usher in true american liberty until freedom was extended to the black slaves. All of these narratives, theres a story about the Unfinished Business of america. He bases antislavery argument on the bible, and the declaration of independence, when he wrote that freedom was the natural condition of mankind, and i quote him liberty and freedom is an innate principle, which is a movably placed in the human species, and to see man aspire after it is not enigmatical, seeing he acts in no way is incompatible with his own nature. , which is a jewel handed down to man from the cabinet of heaven. It proceeds from the Supreme Legislature of the universe. And so, building on this rationale, he goes on to explain why slavery is an unjust system. He distinguishes between just and unjust laws to the rights of blacks by saying every privilege that mankind enjoys have their origin from god. And whatever acts are passed in any Earthly Court and which are derogatory to those edicts that are passed in the court of heaven, the act is void. Martin luther king will use that same just and unjust laws 100 years later. The language is very similar. The appeal to the moral even liberating context of the constitution, in the face of perceived unjust law can be seen in december 30, 1799, in a petition to congress by free black citizens of philadelphia, itse petition of color, called a petition of the people of color, freeman within the city and suburbs of philadelphia. Signatories, some of them just put axes by their name it. S by their name. They were conscious of exercising their rights as citizens. They knowledge their own enjoent of the national right to liberty, and their sense of duty to speak for the slaves. I reflected brethren, suffering under various circumstances in different parts of these states, but deeply sympathizing with them. The scholarship in the last decade or so on abolitionists moving to the second time, scholarship on this thirdparty radical Abolition Party also shows that you have the same kind of sentiments. Although overwhelmingly white in membership, the Liberty Party, the radical Abolition Party welcome to blacks as members and delegates to their meetings, for example, the 1844 platform made fort its invitation our fellow colored citizens to fraternity with us in the Liberty Party. Both parties not in black persons for office on the national tickets. , in her conference of study of abolitionism, identified a number of leading black abolitionists within the Liberty Party. Africanamericans were a minority in that party. They were a minority in United States. And therefore, they formed their own conventions at the state and national levels, while also participating in the Political Parties like the Liberty Party and the radical evolution parties. Campaigned for the Liberty Party. However, its interesting that in the same time they are doing this campaigning, he is probably identifying with the Liberty Party, hes also remembered for his fiery address the National Negro convention in buffalo in 1843, where he urged the slaves to rise up against their masters mannermatter in the of others. He was longer numbered for his fiery resistance, resistance, resistance, and at that very speech also included the familiar rhetoric of the bible politics of black freedom struggle. He admired it, talking about the declaration of independence or it sages admired it. The declaration of independence was a glorious documents. And the patriotic of every nation reverenced the godlike sentiments which it contains. He then proceeded to condemn the Founding Fathers for their limited embrace of universal rights. When the power of government returned to their hands, did they emancipate the slaves . No, they added new links to our chains. In every mans mind, the good season liberty are planted. If you bring cisco fellow down so low as to make him content with the condition of slavery commits the higher crime against such laws. Expression in the radical Abolition Party. John stauffer talks about, for example, douglas, friendly ,ouglas Frederick Douglass who became after 1850 a radical abolitionist, he writes in his newspaper, we want men at this crisis and cannot be frightened from the advocacy of our radical doctrines as of their unpopularity. Let us not then grow weary, but believing whatever is right is practicable, go forth with renewed determination to conquer, though we die in the conflict. At that inaugural radical Abolition Party meeting was john brown. Who would go on to kansas, and then a few years later, to harpers ferry. The civilounding of rights, activism of the 1960s, the bible politics of the freedom struggle have continuously maintained the theme of purifying america, of making america live up to its ideals, or as monolithic king stated, with regard to the constitution, on april 3, 1968, the day before he died always say to america is to be true to what you said on paper. Bible politics have been pursued through overwhelmingly black organizations, and through alliances on a multiracial basis. The scum of the southern leadership conference, which was led by Martin Luther king, dr. The slogan to save the soul of america. Same time, a promoted nonviolent disobedience to unjust laws of the 1950s and lc, along with other civil rights organizations, also believed that the gains toward Racial Justice must come through laws, executive orders, and judicial opinions. This would entail that only interracial, allblack efforts, but also alliances across the races. Despite the complications and the setbacks occurring in each context. I want to end the paper with examples for women. Betty Collier Thomas in her book, jesus, jobs, and justice discusses the fusion of religion and politics. Activities of black church women, who engaged in electoral politics and infighting for the passes legislation such as antilynching laws and the civil rights laws. Identifiess, she familiar names, one is a woman named florence spearing randolph, who was an ame zion minister, she pastored a church. She was very much involved in public and Womens Organizations, black womens and white womens from the 1920s to the 1940s. I will also mention jennifer scanlons new biography on anil , whow anna hedge fund was involved in the interracial Christian Organization in the 1960s. These organizations lobbied for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I conclude that we need to see more about the political of the religious people in america, and black people in particular. Of the blackitics liberation struggle is undoubtedly an important intervention in africanamerican and American History. An important intervention and africanamerican and American History. Thank you. [applause] good morning. To thank everyone for inviting me. Every time i passed the museum, i think this is the jewel in the crown on the mall. It is gorgeous. Looked at my paper online, you can think of that as the essay to go with what i am going to say now, but you dont know what i am going to say now, which will probably make people nor make people nervous. I want to start off with a story that shows the way africanAmerican Religion is always present whether you recognize it or not. I gained my love of history from my mother and my High School History teacher. He was a dapper dresser, came to school sharp, briefcase organized. He was patient with me when i too many questions and harassed him with questions after class. Once graduated from high school, he told me he was retiring and would the buying a drugstore in texas. He said i should visit him. I thought sure, i will come over. Traveled tond and i his drugstore. I was stunned to see wax candles parts. Shape of body oil, powders, and my history teacher standing behind the counter, waiting on a customer. Hoodooory teacher was a man. I didnt even know it. He probably put something on me and i did not know. My mind was blown. I had to rethink everything i knew about dr. Ford. This a business of oil and powder and candles that we he ing surrounded by was excite to me. If you think this is an aberration, look at l. A. Times. Stanley j k is still going strong. Stanleys drugstore is still going strong. You think of a choir, a preacher, women in hats. Of you who have relatives who would not eat at somebodys house, or had someone who told you not to comb your hair in certain places, or had different practices you thought were but youl in nature, paid little and thought about where they came from. I have been thinking about the alternative narratives to get at africanAmerican Religion. Thank and explore in which we consider a different trajectory and writing about black history. So many take the establishment churches i call this a triumphant narrative of freedom. Sometimes, the freedom you think you get is not really there. Should stopk we doing the history of black churches, but i think it is time to destroy this idea of the black church that has held africanAmerican Religion in thrall. If we take the narrative about the spiritual lives of african aericans and frame it within specter of protestant black churches, then we miss the entirety of what black religion is all about. Miss the story. We make the people who have these stories, we put them in a second place, in a second category. That is not what we should do. ,e think about protestantism things reinforced by scripture. In part, that narrative got implicated within the works of anthropologists. A lot of those representations have influenced historians. Religion about black is always seen as other. It is primitive. Way to thinkher about that arc of African American religion. It was proposed the study of africana religions must disconnect itself from the previous debates posited by Franklin Frazier and others, and they theologians range of encounters and exchanges that have produced them, secular historians have much to offer. That is true and the case. Historians have pointed us to stories we did not know. Those of us who do religious firmry have a responsibility to do this work in a different way. Instead of the narrative from slave to slave religion to freedom, we must connect to the african past. We have not talked about the as ain which africa looms present and we need to think back about how we are going to do this narrative again and make. He narrative connect canrings into that we cut into a different way if we eliminate this black church thing. Following the trajectory can tell us more. Another way, considering this christianity, African Americans use it as a way to create a Creative Space and connect to the dias borough and manage their lives and give them selfdetermination, worth. I want to talk about three stories this morning that i think speak to the narrative of difference. You might be surprised about a couple of them. I have chosen make a representation of stories. It is about ch mason. The second is a story about black maurice marceau, a priest. The third is johnny coleman. First, Charles Harrison mason. You probably know him as the founder of the church i wrote about in my first book. He was the first presiding bishop. Many people dont know outside of those who study pentecostalism, there is a picture of mason. In this picture, he is holding treerent potatoes, branches, things like this, that all spoke to him that were part of gods wonders of creation. He used them to heal people. Wrote about people him as someone caring for slave religion. We might think of the antecedents going back further than slave religion. They go back to africa. They also talk about how he used preach from scripture, to talk about the wonders of god and jesus. It is a way to think about what is actually happening. We need to think about this in a different way because it is a fusion of spiritual tradition, a fusion of catholicism. It has many things going on. Mason talked about reading entrails to talk about the signs of god. This is not a normal protestant sermon. You will see spirituality and all of these things. People being confused about the holy spirit and what another spirit is. We have to look at in a different way to speak about the way traditions pop up. Second, maurice was one of the first black men who went into the seminary in biloxi, mississippi. A prominent family in new orleans. Went into the seminary at the age of 14. In 1934. Dained in 1941, he was sent to st. Martins, louisiana, to notre dame. Established by mother katharine drexel. You might think, why are you telling a story about a black priest . This is a story that went to the Supreme Court. He was willie franciss confessor. This was a young man who had been accused of killing a pharmacist in louisiana. When they sent him to the electric chair for the first , the electric chair did not work. He was shocked, he was not killed. This case went to the Supreme Court. The fatherf fought for his life. Kinds of about the racial things happening. There was no black church Strong Enough to save anybody in say martinsville, louisiana. It was a black priest to had to testify. We dont look for where these other stories might pop up and see the ways the different kinds of clergy are working. We miss the story. Death francis was put to and the second time he was electrocuted, he died. But the father was in the middle of that story. Johnny coleman, some of you might know that name. She preached the science of mind. We talk about people like father divine, reverend ike. Theny coleman should get credit for having a church with over 20,000 members. Was probably one of the first megachurches past 1950. As she had a profound experience with illness and decided to study what her mother had been passing out to her in pamphlets and became a preacher. We dont talk a lot about africanamericans who embrace science of mind and have decided to turn away from traditional ways of thinking about christianity. We should think about the way this religious history is not the traditional story of the preachers, the music, and the frenzy. Though i love his work, there has been a narrative that has cut out the voices of many others. If we miss the stories, we miss the point about what religion is in america. About henryht mcneal turner. He says god is a black man. How do you go from a black man saying god is black to the black man saying he is god . Need to consider and deconstruct and reconstruct our narrative so we can have a clear perspective about what africanAmerican Religion is. It is not just Church Mothers that i have written about. Whole complex of religion that can connect us to diasader world of african borough and beyond. Thank you. Borough diaspora and beyond. Thank you. As high school teachers. A novel concept. I would the remiss if i did not mention our bloggers this ofning are the professor religion and africanamerican studies at preston at princeton and paul harvey. I deliberately abbreviated the introduction about speakers to make sure we had enough time for discussion. Before we open this up to the audience, i have a question for each of you. Eddie, i would like to start with you. I understand what you are saying about categorizing. FricanAmerican Religion one you have a black congregation and white leadership. Is this an authentic , or isAmerican Religion it just africanamerican life or it is an africanamerican religious experience . To what extent does the white presence change the experience . [indiscernible] part of what i am trying to do by troubling the category is to say it is those sources of experiences and institutional realities that complicate some assumptions about africanAmerican Religion, because what we are trying to do is fit it into a prior what annding of africanamerican religious life entails. When we look at the complexity, we will see that. What is at work in the part of the historian or the cultural critic to fit it into a category of africanAmerican Religion is what i am trying to interrogate. What gets lost in that moment when we have to ask ourselves is it that, or is it not, as opposed to looking at the experiences themselves in what is going on, what is happening. Happening. Instead, we are trying to fit it into something called africanAmerican Religion or black church. Something gets lost there. Let me say something, because i did not go over 10 minutes. I felt my mother popping the upside my head. reference. Boys i talk about the reference. It is really deliberate. We read it as the definitive statement on africanamerican religious life. At the end of the chapter, he calls for a new religious ideal. What he isng part of doing is thinking about treating africanamerican churches, christianity, doing and institutional history and then he is calling for a new religious ideal and it might be embedded in the way he deals with death. Interesting happening there. There is contestation there. I am thinking about the ways in which bible politics reflect a commitment to america living up actually iss and it the ground to reject america as such. The other element is the rhetorical value of the bible. Invested in not be the truth claim of the bible, but like emerson and others, they learn how to speak. Is James Baldwin engaging in bible politics . I dont know. Vein, does there have to be a connection to institutionalized religion . We know a lot of black men and white men who are pursuing this our ministers, but not all are. Does there have to be an affiliation . Or just because you know the bible and you know you think you know what gods plan is. For me, i would not include the ethiopians as bible politics take, literally, this idea of the abolitionist who are saying we are going to stay in america. That is one of their themes. We are going to stay in america. Our blood is made of country and were going to make it better. Call on the is sacred documents of the nation. The different groups that dont fit into this type of bible politics, i want people to understand looking back at the time looking before that and right up to the present, you can go to North Carolina for more monday. This is a tradition. It is a tradition worthy of talking about. You do not have to be a minister to have bible politics. Systemage the political writings, you challenge the system to live up to what it is supposed to do. Frederick douglass was not a minister, neither was james mcewan smith. Used the language of the bible. Used bible passages, they invoked god. God, itare not invoking is not as narrow. Here. Somewhat narrow it is a tradition that has a long history. Much, think about it so that we do not realize how the tradition has been used as a counter narrative to this other way the bible is used politically. Edna i am intrigued with the case of marywood. The idea that religion can be linked to Mental Illness, though i think some of us recognize that connection. This is a racial is asian of the whole thing. Racialization of the whole thing. Did you find being diagnosed with this . Judith there was in the assumption that a man who calls himself god was of course crazy. The psychiatric literature was very distinctive in rehearsing a likey that goes something the negroes, three generations removed from savagery, and when i looked at when i think about a broad context, i found a large set of psychiatric literature that does the same thing. It links diagnostic categories and practices to this cluster of religion. T savage case, it wasis the common in 19th Century America for whites to be diagnosed with religious insanity. 20th century, it is a common interest in the disciplinary frame, another get you to religion contain things about africanamericans. I am just at the start of this. When you locate that in the larger psychiatric space, i was very excited. You mentioned something in your paper that i think is important to emphasize here. You talked about the fact that we have records that could help traditional that narrative that everything is privatized and is churchbased and all the west. People who are tasked with having to clean out grandmas home after she passed away are predisposed to know the documents we should be preserving. To theuld be your advice audience to ensure we do not lose the important records . Know someone who is ill and is about to clean up the house, go over there and grab everything. I cannot tell you how much is being lost right now. Paper and the the plan. If you see a bottle of holy water oil oil, that is part of the story. We need those stories. I want to bring up something that has been a point for all of us. This project that started back in the 1990s, a long, torturous thing. There are documents from 1444 to the 20th century that no one has looked at or touched. There are so many dissertations and books that have not been written because the project was not out. It is past time for these stories to come out. To have an are going African American museum on the mall, we need to think about the next generation. Looking at a handful of people who teach in the area of africanamerican religious history. Two of us sit next to each other. We wonder what our legacy is going to be. We need a legacy, but the work needs a legacy. If we do not have the materials we need to train people, the stories are gone. That is it. Lets take some questions from the audience. Thank you. Fornt to thank the panel muchneeded attention to the practices ofigious people of african descent. Beautifully presented this morning. I wanted to ask a question that is more semantic. I was thinking about it yesterday. I wanted to ask a question about freedom, whether it is we talk about the religious practices folks are engaged in. Is there a way the freedom of the one right that africanamericans have been able more than and use others, even with the legal constrictions we have talked about and if so, why or why not. Asking about the freedom of religious practice. I want to put that there is a way of talking about africanAmerican Religion and the state and the laws on representation of that. The second is to say, on black protestantism, the vera gated nature vera gated nature of it, in terms of trying to get down to , lets not throw all of that out. Is most likely in your attic. The final thing has to do with all of this variety of religious practices among black people. Has anyone given thought to interracial religious conflict and tensions. The conversations we had yesterday, how are black People Holding themselves together as a political unit . Who would like to answer that . One could argue, whether there is a church and state difference. To acknowledge that the slaves were not free to worship the way they wanted to. To sneak away and in theseor to worship white churches we are telling them to obey their masters, and idea of freedom of religion did not apply to them the same way it applied to other people. Later, there is validity to it. What was your last question . Idea of the split. One ofhurches splitting, the biggest fights in the National Baptist convention occurred over their publishing company. Killed. Was but when they split, it was about not being incorporated. There is a big fight. It began in the formation of the National Baptist convention. Not onlyts of huge denominational levels, but when you hear about the church living, that is what you hear about. He goes into the Holy Movement and then he becomes pentecostal, but he started off baptist. I have never read anything about real fights between him and these other groups. That does not mean they do not exist. Judith freedom of religion, one has to have a religion. The ways in which the state defines what is religion states whether or not africanamericans are able to express religious freedom. Earlyreading some of the newspapers. One of the things that is said, there is freedom of religion in america. We will pursue that. He calls on other africanamericans to respect freedom of religion. He is invested in that sort of thing. The scope ofand the religion. I was interested in the way the black press took up the role of arbitrating what is appropriate religion in public. Beyond the question of whether one can exercise freedom of religion or not. It gives us a better case and beyond for civil rights. Atie this establishment is the heart of american denominationals. Done interesting were talking about how that in forms denomination. We are part of the story. Here i am pretending to be a historic. The kind of religious marketplace is where we see it in as people try to compete for various places. Go to your church and you can come the mine after you leave yours. A point of entry into understanding how the competition is happening and how it can become constant. I appreciate this discussion, one thing i noticed is a lot of the focus is on the tradition of looking at the black freedom struggle or against Corporal Punishment in one case. Could you talk about the importance of conservatism and what you might [indiscernible] i did not something bring up. I have been thinking a lot about this because of the election cycle. A longer history about conservatives. I think this is a story we are missing. Part of this is how you construct the world. On one hand, we have talked about black churches being the freedom bringer. Notk churches are progressive on some issues. Apart, we are going to see a lot of Different Things. Some of that is the political work. Like the workwork on black republicans. We need to connect black republicanism and the kinds of religiouse have concerns. There is a rich history that could be written here. The book remains to be written however historically. The hardest thing is the ways in which there is one kind of conservatism and there is another kind of freedom. I keep saying bill clinton got dont ask dont tell from black churches. Unfortunately, because it is the thing. I hate that. This is something we need to get at historically. There is starting to be good work on that. He says the churches are differentiated. Theyre moving into those places that are sites for entertainment. The distinction, seeing as early as 1903. Portions of the biography on his own. Asare thinking about these polar op the but they are not. This is christian network. This is the kind of way we have to understand. I am not saying stop looking at black churches. If you are going to go to the ground and look at what is going on, you will see christianity everywhere. It is what is getting in the way of us understanding the complexity of the practices. Evelyn often in the black church, you have a designation of progressives and conservatives. In the context of their perception of who is and conservative, usually the conservative people see the church as a spiritual place. You dont get involved in all of this other stuff. Issue that isr different from the black tradition. Your questions short and your answers even shorter, so we can get more people. I dont have a question. My comment is, when i saw the question, what is africanAmerican Religion, i wondered if there would be anyone who would talk about religion from not a christian concept. I thought that because i was not raised a christian. What it would be like to talk about religion and then africanamerican in front of religion and not use christian terminologies. To imagine a religion that does not have an image of god and god is not a man and to imagine being in a space where worship does not have sound, or very little. In response orl to run imagine a religion that does not have music in that body. Then, to imagine i am one of faithwho grew up in the of islam. Whenhink about is religion is put in front of their, there is a body of people who are missed. I am from a family of muslims whose greatgrandparents were muslims, whose grandparents were muslims. My nieces and nephews. This is not a religion. This is not a religion we come through through the nation of islam. What are the possibilities historians writing black lives into the center of American History but downplaying the religion part and emphasizing political, making it black politics. Related to that, the not turnerl in this, thought he was a messenger of god. An agency sometimes to be at odds. What happens when the seems mostl disposable to historians . History problem. Nat turner would not have used the word supernatural. It will be one of the things you will be able to see. When john brown is at this convention and talks about we have to do this through shed that religious talk is there. What does it mean to think about religious political movement. That is something i am interested in. I think it is an important question. As part of the political work, that people might be doing more people might not be doing. Fory question is primarily professor claude. Does the professor were does the professors work influenced your work and do you think it is relevant . It is an object of intellectual curiosity. I tend to read black liberation theology. It is trying to translate the traditionblack church into the idiom of black power. It is dealing with other pieties in its midst, pieties like cultural nationalism and the pieties of a certain lack national imaginary. It emerges in that context. That, you see he is engaging in a translation project in order to ensure the relevance of a black prophetic trends just tradition in a moment that is not secularizing in the traditional sense of religion moving into the private. The sense where you have completed competing vocabulary and the language has to emerge that can talk across these differences. You can be baptist, methodist, whatever. He is trying to enter into that moment. Fail to read black liberation theology, you will fail to see how its historical consciousness over determines its theological consciousness. A history indebted to black power and it shapes how he thinks the logically. That is just me. [laughter] we only have time for a couple more questions. Part of what the conference is about is looking at areas we will try to research as we move forward in terms of reexamining the past. Americak to early because i do the early American History, the colonial period, the first 200 years. How do you feel about the examining of early merging of africaneligion with religion, specifically eastern North Carolina and southeastern virginia. Natave been talking about turner in these different events. African americans claim nat turner as their own. The relationship between the eastern North Carolina, William Barber mentioned earlier, tuscarora heritage. Andou know iroquois , you know shape shifting roots and herbs, all that is part of their culture. Research is in my mistook native religion and how African Americans had merged native religion into the baptist tradition or voodoo into African American religion when it was not true. When we go to the modern period, the 21st century, we talk about the baptist tradition in the black church, the power of women. You cannot stay at the church if women do not want you at the church. You have to go. The women select the chiefs and if they do not want the chief, the chief has to go. The preacher became like the church. The last thing you need to eastern or carolina can we give them the opportunity to answer . We are running out of time. This is an important area. I have a student working on this early 20th century and the what is happening. We need more people working in an africanAmerican Religion in early america anyway. Especially the cross between native america and africanAmerican Religion. There is a regional question in this. What playeded about out in louisiana. That has regional variants. We dont think about the geography very much. Edna we are out of time. I am sure our panelists will be around the rest of the day. [applause] going to take a 15 minute break. We will be back at 10 35. We will come back for more of the conference in just a few minutes. Up next, we will see the Panel Politics anderican culture. That will start at 10 35. Cspan as they explore the history of hattiesburg, mississippi. States what i think about hattiesburg. It is an unfit place to live that make the people up this town. The whites have their way. If they kill one of us they get away with it, but if we kill one of them, they kill us. What are we going to do about this . Nothing but take away our rights. Part of the University Libraries here. Today, i am featuring rightsions of civil materials. You have your president s and governors and they know to keep their papers. Normal, everyday person like us who do not realize what we have is valuable and people can learn from it. Because of the nature of the collection, we are the only institution in the world who has these. You had the white citizens council, which was the uptown klan. These are your Prominent Community members. In addition, youre not going to have the you are going to have the mississippi sovereign commission, whose sole purpose was to prevent integration. These organizations, along with and other groups had an impact on mississippi and others groups. Hattiesburg, we have had voter registration. Verything was segregated a lot of the businesses and restaurants and hotels were under these old jim crow laws. , tothing i want to show. How the things that happened you have the story of these two boys. This is edgar and randy williamson. They were in jones county. Were eight and nine years old and never attended school. Johnson was the governor at the time of mississippi in 1964. This is about this letter. This is a condensation of a voluminous file. Boys are shown to be white, male, possessing an amount of negro blood believed to be between 1 16 and one 32nd. They had never been to school because they could not find a school who would take them. They were legally white, but ofause they had one drop blood, they were discriminated against. Eventually, they did get into school. This is a perfect example of the daytoday of how people were freedom summer. Mississippi was chosen because help and theeed of Race Relations in the state was not the best. You had various organizations , core. D, including naacp these groups came together to brainstorm and organize. Prior to freedom summer, the summer of 1964, 12 weeks during ,he summer of 1964, volunteers started advertising and getting people to come to mississippi to set up freedom schools to help the register African Americans to vote and to help with other initiatives to confidence in a voice to africanamericans of mississippi. Once the volunteers were brought together, they went to what is now Miami University in ohio and sessions. Ng this is where they were taught selfdefense, drop and roll, to do that. They were also given different documents and materials. Ofh person was given a list freedom songs. These you have shall overcome, or this little light of mine. The volunteersng were given copies of the lyrics so they could participate in different singalongs. This is a Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party meeting. Holding handsre and singing before or after a meeting. May, people started coming into town. Hattiesburg was one of the main locations for freedom summer. There were several things they were tasked to do. One was to set up freedom schools. Africanamerican children and adults who would attend the schools to learn about voter rights. AfricanAmerican History. Tohad never been taught people of mississippi. To be able to learn about context within the race was important. They broughts, copies of ebony magazine. Never seen these before. A lot of these publications were banned or not sold. This picture shows a group of men looking through the magazines for the first time. Imagine being surrounded by images that dont look anything like you. An important move to see there are these publications for africanamericans. Within the schools, you would have different homework activities. They would have students who would get around and write essays about what they like about hattiesburg. They would write about their experiences with Race Relations. A lot of the writings were cut into newsletters. When of the churches in town had ared freedom summer newsletter written by students or students. For students. What i thinksay about hattiesburg. Prominent people who would come into town to help spread the movement, a lot of this was linked to folk tradition. In this picture when you see him speaking to students. Talking to them about what they were going through. This just shows how someone is nationally prominent, is going to come into town and work on issues relating to Race Relations. One of the things people of hattiesburg were given was handouts for the hattiesburg power structure. This is a wonderful document for people to get a sense of the fact that the newspaper publisher reported directly to the mayor. This was a way for the city , some may say, to control what was in the media. And kind of make sure that at least was that hattiesburg was viewed in a positive light. The hattiesburg power structure was the White Community. Africanamericans did not hold any kind of elected office. They were not in the chamber of commerce or anything like that. Graph, with the chamber of commerce, directly reporting to it is the white citizens council. That goes to prove again about how the segregationists were really entrenched in every day kind of prominent white society. The Mississippi State sovereign spies. Ion did have they would follow people and infiltrate activities and hattiesburg in hattiesburg. N undercoverwas a officer who posed as a Civil Rights Activist and volunteered in hattiesburg with the freedoms number offices freedom summer offices. The first sentence reads the h between the naacp and e gives a report on what is happening between the different groups that were involved with freedom summer and how that played out. He did a little editorializing. He would make judgments about how black men and white women were hanging out a lot. All they do is Smoke Cigarettes ike communism, Different Things like that. There were different gettogethers and different events to bring people together. Not only the volunteers, but community members. Volunteers were staying with local residents, which could often prove dangerous or many of who haddents here bullets shot through their and vehicles shot up and various other things. This particular picture takes vernont burning damer damers farm just outside of hattiesburg. He owned a general store and was very active in registering africanamericans to vote. He would have these great parties where they would have hayrides and pick next this picnics. Hayrides and sign, which was left on a tree outside the home damer shows you how the intimidation the people in hattiesburg that experience. Three years after freedom summer, vernon damers house was firebombed and he did die later from the effects of smoke inhalation. This was after freedom summer. Even though it made a lot of headway, there was still this inlence and intimidation hattiesburg and much of the state. The freedom summer had a large impact on hattiesburg and the state. We had encouraged people to stand up for themselves, to be a little more sure in their protest. Different programs came out of freedom summer, such as head start. That became very important to mississippi schools. People willing to push for integration in various schools in the area. Because of the confidence and the tools people are during freedom summer, they were able to change lives in the community. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] we are back now at the Smithsonian National museum of American History for more of the africanAmerican History conference. [indiscernible chatter] you can see the Panel Gathering there. David, carol patterson,iffany barbara savage and james. The panel on internationalization of African American politics and culture. If the audience would begin taking their seats, please. This morning, i had something of benefit in a getting on the bus in the heavy rain. We went to the wrong entrance, so we had to swerve around. A panoramic view of the structure in which we will soon be the next time we have a conference, but it is simply magnificent to see the National Museum of African American culture and history. A phenomenon that will speak through the ages. We will all give lonnie a thunderous ovation at the end of the conference. The sixth session come internationalization of African American politics and culture. I learned this morning that there was some confusion in the mandate to my panel. That may have been the case with others. Preparedof people rather more full documents and have now geared them back. One of them was really quite wonderful and would have been a internationalism in africa from the battle to the end of trade that would have been splendid. It prompts me to say what i thought i would say about what for this morning i thought one of the things we what hadh to entertain been the pan african movement. The seven Pan African Congress es, with the fifth meeting in manchester, england with all the cast of characters. At that point, what had been a concept, and ideology became a moving phenomenon that would have literal impact in the history coming with colonization. Sixth pan to the thenan congress and uganda. Were ratherences parochial. In the very first pan african with ho chi minh , they expand and become. Ruly global what is the essence of being a person of color in the the ora and undersp colonialism. Ention of the conference under investigated still in the scholarship, i think, generally, that that conference would have there. E dubois it had Adam Clayton Powell defending american democracy as the hope for the world. One of the most obvious showings of pan africanism, ghana republic itself. There was a comingling of pan dubois marxism ala and black nationalism ala marcus garvey. The pendant and self penn garveyism defined ghana. As much, if not more than dubo is. Our papers here are a feast, indeed. Of them, getting inning beginning alphabetically, hang your conscience on a peg. To end apartheid in we neednta usually think of the Boycott Movement beginning at a later within 1955 in london julius and others with a mandate to speak out against our apartheid. The first mobilization of concerns of the South African regime. And then we are running to the Antiapartheid Movement with this there is another chapter. And that chapter we will experience through the presentation of carol anderson. Forging freedoms come internationalization of African American history, that is a large topic for tiffany pattersons paper. Is thatreally is attention we would welcome and expect to the role of women and gender in the global experience. Attention paidan rather by a graphically to women who have not had their voices , though significant they were. Hunton senior and Catherine Johnson, these women to served so meaningfully the africanamerican troops in france and world war i. And then fast forward to a recuperation of an extraordinary personality, vicki garvin. I had the great pleasure of meeting her when i began my academic career at the university of ghana. , very much a force of nature and the force of address and a force of progress for those ladies. Woman doeslletin cosmopolitan woman a cosmopolitan woman. It is going to be a geopolitics of a life. An exquisite praising of a biographical project. Take his tate is a phenomenon. More than aproduced halfdozen books in diplomatic history. And yet, who served in the most misogynist of universities, except for harvard how word. Ard. s how word how she writes meaningfully about these things. She played the stock market and became a norm is the rich at the end. Thats enormously rich at the end. Howard,not give it to she gave it to other causes. Here, we have what i suppose is the translation of what america could have been like had those people stayed. They chose the losing side in the American Revolution. From nova scotia, they are transported to sierra leone where they try to realize the had theyy could have stayed in postcolonial america. I read one of his sentences which i think is so probative of his argument. Beliefslusion of their that a just society should be constituted on the basis of a commitment to social justice and the commitments should receive equal billing and the mental law then fundamental law meant battle to include their descendents in the promise of american citizenship have religious procedural fish privileged privileged procedural inclusion over. Ndamental inclusion , i will try to keep time. We are off and running with carol anderson. Thank you. [applause] good morning. First, i would like to thank lonnie and jim for conceiving this incredible conference and giving us a space to really think through what the future of the africanamerican path looks like. Thank you. When the world bank began to contemplate loading millions of dollars to apartheid south associationnational for the advancement of colored people work with other organizations, including the African National congress to shut off the flow of capital. Of course, we are familiar with the power of the Divestment Movement of the 1980s, but this was the late 1940s. And early 1950s. When key elements were toppling four toppling apartheid were first developed. South africa brought a considerable package to the post ar world. It was seductive to the west. The naacp did not possess enough clout to overcome the strategic thatals and standards staunch anticommunism the South Africans had to offer. Many scholars have therefore pointed to the seeming futility of this battle, the dangers of the cold war and the heightened the trumans reward administration dangled before the naacp as key moments in the decline of International Activism for black liberals. Historians have deduced that as the association turn inward, the africanamerican response to only havecould emerged in the radical black politics of the 1940s. Case. However, was not the the naacp understood that while the Apartheid Regime was a leviathan backed by enormous resources and powerful allies, it still could be taken down. The association had defined itself as a david operating against many strongly supported, loud talking goliaths. We never forget that the original david won. In 1949, a year after the onset of apartheid, the associations Foreign Policy consultant related that south africa had withdrawn its application for a 100 million loan world bank does from the world bank. There were seismic tremors in the investment world as the nationalist party had openly praised adolf hitler and came to power in 1948. Unsure what to make of the advent of Prime Minister david and the policy of apartheid, capital poured out of south africa. Well those fears and had quelled. Thatis despite the fact the regime passed a number of laws designed to reinforce White Supremacy. Strip africans, indians and theyeds of the rights possessed and launched a primitive strike to and the International Territory of south west africa. Current day namibia. In march 1950, the world bank Vice President at the invitation of the nationalist regime visited the union of south africa to gain firsthand information about conditions in that area. That initial assessment of the nations economic viability required that the banks ignore the brutality of apartheid and come as the state department advised its own emissaries from tame your conscience hang eg whennscience on a pa you visit south africa so you can really enjoy it. That suspension of reality meant the conditions had nothing to do with the deplorable state of human rights. Instead, the bank was drawn to the gold. The world banks visit was to ensure that the unions economy was to build upon a solid basis. The naacp also wanted that assurance. Its just that their definition of what constituted a solid basis for a Strong Economy was fundamentally different. Nelson mandela did not equivocate. Hades in south africa consolidated their power and settled africans with a load of oppression. Low wages, bad housing, Inadequate Health celebes come inadequates services they launched a day of protest scheduled for may day. Security forces answered that peaceful demand for human rights with a hail of bullets that killed at least 18 demonstrators. The response of the world bank and u. S. Financiers was to loan south africa a total of 80 million. Discussed did, walter white gusted, walter white urged the world bank to reconsider. Black countered that it was not possible to reconsider such a loan. And there were no grounds to contemplate such a move the world bank meet its loan decisions without regard to political or not economic influences or considerations. Lack tried to assure white black tried to assure white that it was their view that the project will benefit all of the South African people, regardless of color. The loan will raise the standard of living of their peoples as a whole. This is in the land of you cannot make this stuff up. [laughter] white could only scoff at that assertion. Certainly the president of the world bank could not be that uninformed. The groom in bloody truth of history is that the native population enjoys nearly none of the benefits of government. The dangerous apartheid doctrine will snatch away the few crumbs which have been given to the native population. Even the world bank had to recognize what continued, that the economic aid to bolster the unashamed not see philosophy of the present government nazi philosophy of the present government only strengthened the banks assessment of that was not asn apolitical as eugene black tried to convey. Ne collision michael leju acknowledged years later that from the very beginning, the banks recognized that apartheid and the racial tensions made south africa a less than ideal place to invest. He outlined the reasons. The regime would have to shoulder an enormous financial burden to pay for police and military forces large enough and ruthless enough to impress more than 80 of the population. Oppress more than 80 of the population. White supremacy could trigger a series of trade thatuts trade boycotts would strangle and destabilize the economy. Because the South African government could not indefinitely refused to invest in this indigenous population, the cost of finally developing the african sector of the economy would require heavy expenditure. In short, some officers at the bank were worried that south africa could not internally generate enough savings or revenue to finance the full cost of apartheid. Instead of letting that structural oppression collapse under its own weight, eugene black publicly insisted that the racially polarized nation was , but thatredit worthy in making these loans, the bank was acting prudently in the the union ofoth south africa and the members of the bank as a whole. , the u. N. Ry moment had just completed a review of Economic Conditions in africa, led by william dean, the soninlaw of channing tobias. As the chief of the african unit for the u. N. , dean immediately sent white a draft of the report. It dismantled all the cliches about rising tides raising all boats. While south africa had the highest per capita annual income on the continent, most of that went to the white minority population. Union made 75 75 ar that per year less per year. Miners only earn 4. 12 or week. The report reinforced whites position as he made the case to the media for cutting off all funds to south africa. This was dangerous and shallow thinking, he argued. The world bank loans did not help. Catererered a racist a undercut moderate forces, saved just as walter white predicted, the regimes minister of finance waived the world banks funds in front of critics as proof that not only the strong the government was strong and viable, but that it was respected and supported internationally. As the noose of the regime launched thee amc defiance campaign. They defied the laws, they defied the regime. They defied. Pretoria countered with brutality. Finance andcided to organized the picketing of the South African delegation at the u. N. To demonstrate by action rather than resolution to the people of south africa that they are not alone and friendless. In the midst of this turmoil, the world bank offered a very different, decidedly more milanse portrayal with government as an excellent steward of the 80 million loan. The only government they had encountered so far that problem the government had encountered so far was a shortage of skilled labor. Problem the government had encountered so far was a shortage of skilled labor. The regimes determination to keep africans unskilled and uneducated caused the very shortage that threatens the multimillion dollar investment. Posted, eugene black boasted toed walter white that africans had more fromeconomically this growth in other sections of the community. In exasperation, walter white turned to the head of the amc in cape town. Many of us have vigorously imposed any further loans to the union of south governmentl that observes orderly and democratic government. Eugene black had now painted a portrait that the loans had benefited africans more than anybody else. Matthews suspected the government would open his mail. I have noly replied hesitation in saying that it is unwise to assume anything that helps the whole economy to grow actually create more Job Opportunities and higher pay for everyone. South africa was not your traditional capitalist economy. With the strangling control of labor flows into the city, the refusal to educate the majority of the population, to be prepared to take full advantage of industrialization, with all the roadblocks against africa, racialists bolster policies which violate basic economic principles or sacrifice them on the altar of a political ideology which is diametrically opposed to the main trend of events in the civilized world. Long,ld take decades of hard work to bring south africa into the civilized latter half of the 20th century. This strategy to choke off the funds that propped up a very inland and racist regime virulent and racist regime, to pick it official South African outpost in the u. S. And stretch across the ocean to apply pressure from all sides began to take shape in the late 1940s and early 1980s. Laterrprisingly, 40 years , with the demise of apartheid becoming a reality, Nelson Mandela gave a rousing keynote at the naacps annual convention. The amc turnedf to the association faithful and todayy said we are here not as guests, but as comrades in arms who have fought for the emancipation of black people everywhere. A thank you. [applause] tiffany good morning. Manye add my voice to so voices in thanking lonnie and your staff for such an incredible gathering over these last few days. I am the ones, it wased a project a massive piece of work and i did get into it, but then i learned that the arm at changed format changed. I had to shift gears per die was not sorry about that. I had to shift gears. I was not sorry about that. I turned my attention to the question of lack international thats black internationalist women. Theres been a Seismic Shift in the writing of africanAmerican History. Scholars and diplomatic labor the impact of International Movements on africanamericans. I wanted to add parenthetically, there is among some Young Scholars to believe that we just discovered this. Year, a youngast man from the u. S. Stood up and cynically said those of us in america just discovered that black people were global. Let me correct that. Black people became global 1000 years ago on the eastern side of with slavery into the indian ocean and weve been inund since the 15th century terms of globality and we were aware of it. Begin to write in the 19 century. They do not always have the tools or resources to go deeply, but we now have this explosion in terms of international intory, internationalism africanAmerican History. These studies build on the work of scholars to understand their struggle for freedom as one acted to the struggle term in common use in the early 20th century, including all african people, asians and other groups and people of color. Poor had to fight visions of transnational resistance that the not relegate them to the shadows. Yearis a very interesting european powers partitioned africa. 1896 where they defeated the italian government. Womens clubs were formed in 1896 as well. International perspective became. Art of the naacp 1920, Mary Margaret washington along with many of these women had founded the International Council of women of the darker races. Early beginnings flourished into robust activity among women who combined their concern with Racial Discrimination with the wellbeing of women. These women were undoubtedly elite and well educated, deeply committed to action on behalf of the darker races. It was time for action come a time for women. To shape, mold and direct the thoughts of their age. A time to organize female resistance. The members solve the problem as workedred by if they for the poor, they worked for black women. If they workedor black women, they worked for the race. Many of these women expanded their work to the international stage, becoming part of a colored cosmopolitan world. It was increasingly defined and redefined by women. This point. Rst make black internationalism was not something that was created simply by the writings of intellectuals. There is a missing piece. Wask internationalism grounded in a consciousness of european Global Expansion and material condition of millions forcedk workers whose labor was remarkably similar to regimes in africa. Of africa was initiated by the same economic forces that created the development of the American South. There are persons between the Belgian Congo and mississippi comparisons. A native of arkansas described the Mississippi Valley as the american congo. The african congo in the late 19 with this empire was the face of science and progressivism, yet was underwritten by Labor Conditions that were anything but progressive. Leopold is well known for his brutality. People,cred 1. 2 million mutilated them in trying to get ,hem to work to create rubber hunt for ivory and gold. Africane pictures of people with their children with their arms cut off. Duringntation economy the years of u. S. And european capitalist control of economies around the globe. Capitalists joined with the british and dutch in search of raw materials. Classthy planter converged on the area. Beatings were a part of the experience in the delta. I will jump ahead from some of this but at quickly, in my work on turpentine workers in florida, these were extracted industries whose labor controls and practices were very similar to the slave period. When we talk about black internationalism, we have to remember colonialism in europe and the u. S. I want tojump to sharecroppersthe and day laborers who worked in the American South were well aware of the congo. They understood what was happening to people in the congo. Once, someone told me they could not read and write, so they could not understand that. The term illiterate assumes people dont think. Black people knew what was going on. They knew from the ame church as they attended, they knew from the baptist churches, they knew from missionaries what was going on. In areas where they could not read or write, there was someone who could read in the community. They would get the chicago defender and church documents and they were well aware that they were being treated like people in the congo. I chose two women to look at their life to determine how learning about the colonial experience shaped their politics. The first is ann hutton. Educated, shee married Alfred Hutton and they bore two children. Worked for the ymca. Im jumping ahead in her biography. Her husband died in 1916 and she work for the white w ywca. The u. S. Had begun to deploy troops in the segregated units to germany. Life for these men was no better than life in the u. S. Hutton was determined to go and do her part. She and Catherine Johnson arrived in bordeaux and were initially welcomed by the french people. It was the first full breath of freedom that ever had come into their limited experience. Almost a measly, their lives americanlated by the command and they found themselves in the same jim crow system, but on french soil. The ymca was complicit in this discrimination. Johnson realized that racism and follow them for 3000 miles across the atlantic to the very heart of the worlds sorrow. Started to minister to the soldiers. They felt an obligation to communicate to the french what it meant to be black in america. Officials were courteous to the soldiers but the white secretaries were terrible. The black women believed they had to care for the soldiers. The huts they lived in were segregated and overcrowded and yet, they did their best to not only bring education to the soldiers, many of whom were nonliterate moment also to the ymca with only send about 25 cap can americans to do this job for hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Effort about 25 africanamericans. They were also suspected of being radicals from the dubois faction and were under constant surveillance. Any protest over their treatment was viewed as disloyal. All of this compounded with the fighting in war, creating a sea change in soldiers and secretaries alike. They racial consciousness developed in france that could not have been gained in a halfcentury of normal levied in america. Hutton was angry. When she returned to the u. S. , she decided she wanted to devote as shee to doing as much could to address the question of racism and connected racism to the struggle for international peace. The president of morehouse college, in charge of the ymca i would be compelled to say it was southern and northern, it was american. The great pity is that our boys should have had some much to crush them at a time when they thought they would have the freest chance to serve their country without color ever being with them. Oh hutton was sobered and angry. Johnson told an audience at carnegie hall, the war is over and no miracle has happened. If loyalty to the nation in could gives battles the negro is full rights, he would have had it long ago. Activists were involved in the red summer of 1919. It was not just an american experience, it also occurred in england. When soldiers return from the war, they were met with vicious attacks by white english people in several port cities. Aware ofmericans were this kind of color. Violenceis kind of against people of color. Movements arose to challenge these power structures. Membership to the naacp increased. Went to work for the naacp. She reduced her time in the Womens Organization and the white w and the ywca. Many joined the african blood brotherhood in the u. S. Hutton and africanamerican women like her committed themselves to working nationally and internationally for more charity and justice. Garvin to compare to hutton, because she was a communist. She was a remarkable woman who was born in 1915. , her parents had moved from virginia to new york city. Her father was a labor, a pastor. The unions were closed to him in new york. Her mother found herself working in the labor. They labor. Day labor. College to work after for a labor organization. Inlings of embarrassment what she experienced in watching. He exploitation of her family thatlabor organization as a labor organizer, she joined the communist already and became active in the cio. She worked with powell in his campaign. That theto understand failures of u. S. Democracy reflected in the plight of black women workers who were forced into the dirtiest, least desirable work. Radicals, along son. Addie huttons she was active in a labor union formed by ferdinand smith. By the 1950s, she was persecuted by mccarthyism. She had a hard time getting jobs. A friends adjusted she go to suggested a friend she go to nigeria. Light wasg difficult for garvin and marked by disorganized work conditions americand for an living alone in africa. After two years there, she noted that nigerian colonialism was disillusionment. Garvin had high hopes or 80 dlonized africa for a colonized africa. Political sympathy between the usborn activists was not enough to bridge the realities of that cultural difficulties led her to spend more time with u. S. Women working with the state department. She made a stop in ghana on her way home and this really changed her life. He welcomed africanamericans to ghana. Dubois was living there. His leadership of the Pan African Congress had shifted to him in 1945. Of unity amongcs Continental Africa and solidarity with ruggles struggles against Racial Discrimination faced by the diaspora. She also came into contact with malcolm x, an interesting chapter in her life. She was charged with escorting malcolm around to all the activists. She introduced malcolm to the algerian delegation which will be important to his future. She met the chinese ambassador. This was very important. In ghana bydeclined 1966, she saw the handwriting on the wall. She got an invitation to go to hena in 1964, just before was dethroned from his position. She ended up in ghana in china. There, she felt alone because there was not as many activists. She became friends with Robert Williams of the activists from the south and his wife, who were in beijing. She was able to teach english at a school in china. Her embrace with china reflected not only her continued commitments to socialist revolution and her broadvision of international solidarity, but politics that led her to frame herself as a Pan Africanist. Addie hutton became a Pan Africanist as well. Endve more, but i want to with garvin and addie hutton. What i found with these two women is that if we look at womens lives and look at their politics, we stop putting them in narrow containers in terms of being conservative or radical. Garvin was a communist addie hutton was not. Well educated, fluent in french, but vicki garvin was well educated as well. Their fight led them to similar conclusions. 1943,ddie hutton died in that was the same year her son was thrown in jail for his left activities in harlem. She produced a son we need more research on. I will end with this. Already he is referring to activists in 1960. Fidel castro and latin america, malcolm x, the muslim leader in new york. Not because of the political theirophy, but because former colonials who have achieved independence. This too many africanamericans is a science that is truly revolutionary. He went further and argue people domesticng under colonial conditions, and their struggles must be seen as part of the worldwide anticolonial movement. We willa big topic, one continue to write about. It is one that places the africanamerican struggle in the global world and connects to the struggle of other people of color in the global world. I hope to have a great conversation when these papers are done. Thank you. [applause] on june 18, 1931, a 26yearold indianapolis High School History teacher wrote in her travel diary in french, which i will translate into english, because my french is not as good as hers was. Canadianh she wrote a pacific line left montreal at 11 in the morning, i am the only going it alone, accompanied only by confidence, curiosity, courage, and often her camera. Landed, where a train was taken to paris to explore the city in the colonial exposition of 1931. She then travel to switzerland, where she entered a program of study in the Geneva School of international relations. By the end of her eight weeks she visited 18 countries touring historical sites and museums. She noted that her status as a colored american had made her quite a curiosity. He ended her trip in liverpool whether she was the only negro perhaps because that status had become to feel so very normal to her. In many ways that trip held that she was inventing for herself, inspired by the world she wanted to discover and driven by the intellect and ambition that would lead her to doctors for international relations, and to a professorship in diplomatic history at howard from 1942 through 1977. She traveled all over the world twice and to an extended stay abroad in india in 1951, for a year when she was a fulbright scholar. She was a prolific scholar who published five groundbreaking books. And dozens of journals on imperialism. She moved from one specialty to another, publishing pioneering and a native work on the Disarmament Movement and imperialism in the pacific. Also a philanthropist, who at the time of her death had to aed over 1. 6 million variety of educational institutions. Was a very true stock market investors. I will have more to say about i want tond work area say why i bring her to us here today. First her life and travels are important. Second, the intellectual work and labors of black women, whether scholars or not, demands more attention demands more attention. Required took sam the contours of many categories that we use. Category ofe very black internationalism or cosmopolitanism. Finally we must also consider how the opportunity to travel, both within this country and outside of it, influences the ideas and lives of so many black writers and scholars. Us to move beyond the narrow trope of black travel as a relief from the day to day racism of the United States. It is much much more than that. Also published as a short essay of an and the volume history of black women. I have come to see my work as writing the gop politics of life. Lifesitics drive her story. The world in which he lived, worked, and traveled but also held the many joys taken from those worlds. Professor lewis had us think thet what it is to write biography of an idea or biography of a race. Im grappling with what it is to write the gop politics of a black womans life. A life where as well as mastic, gender, and racial politics. Quickly,ummarize this she was born on 1905 in rural Isabella County michigan in the middle of a blister in the middle of a blizzard. They were among the earliest for maternal and paternal great grandparents. One of a handful of free black inilies who immigrated covered wagons and ox cards from ohio to Central Michigan in order to take it vantage the homestead act of 1862. Born on one of the large farms settled by her greatgrandparents. Black pioneers who call themselves michigans old settlers. Upbringing spared her from a childhood steeped in racial segregation or deep discrimination. Later, iuld say much was born in michigan, not in mississippi. That has made all the difference in my life. Would carry her in one to another, graduating first in the High School Class in what is now western michigan university. Forced to leave michigan because that state would not hire black she movedls teachers, to indianapolis in 1927. She was when she went to paris in 1931. She then received a study abroad fellowship for her recently joined sorority. With that she would become the first black woman to win a graduate degree at oxford. States. Ck to the united teaches at Bennett College until 1941. Then goes to harvard and received her phd in government. And finally in 1942, she comes to howard. She is there at a time when the universitys stellar cohort of brown,or sterling abram harris, and a bunch to name a few. Remainder respect the of her 35 year academic career in howard. Married and had no children. But she had a vibrant social life and a wide Diverse Community of friends in washington and around the world. The worlded around during the turbulent decades of the 1930s through the 1970s. Her accomplishments did not go unnoticed during her lifetime, even if they had escaped subsequent attention. Africanamerican newspapers and journals, and she received many awards. She bequeathed us something very few black woman are able to do, and that is an extensive archive , both at howard and her graduate alma mater in michigan. I cannot summarize her entire life or even the work in the time allotted. Im just going to focus on a couple of aspects. She tate came to howard, achieved the ambition she described in her application to oxford. Women scholars were few and far between, and women in positions of power, fewer still. The few faculty members, she found herself outside of the protections and assistance that could be offered by senior women or even other women faculty and administrators. That because her career depends on the support of women and in annapolis at oxford at radcliffe, where she did her graduate training. It becomes a prolific versatile scholar, despite career long struggles against rampant discrimination, salary and equities, and the demands of heavy teaching and university services. This may sound familiar to some of you. Overlapping. The fact she was one of the few email scholars trained in the field of Publishing International relations and made her ahistory rarity. She established her reputation with two books on disarmament. The disarmament of illusion, the movement for limitation of armaments in 19 oh seven was published in 1942 in the middle of world war ii. And had an engineers mind a facility for the technological and algebraic aspects of armaments area armaments. Mechanisms to be deployed in ongoing ideological and political battles. She knew armaments were ultimately about power. In her second book she expanded from 1907 forward and focused on the United States. Featured wars that were much more assertive expressing a greater sense of urgency after the ferocious destructiveness of world war ii. Conjoint nexus of scientific research, technological advance, and new weapons, which he describes so ably in her book, becomes known as the militaryindustrial complex. She lays all of that out here in a cautionary tale. Tate also relied on black publish notnals to only domestic and racial issues but international affairs, especially on imperialism and colonialism, which were consistent themes in their work. Their language is not close to the objectivity and a voice that is direct and powerful, as one would expect with her confidence and bravado. Color are no longer willing to accept the white mens exalted view. Who bring them the white mans god, but a god whom the white man doesnt believe. No longer art the trinkets marvelous to them. Interested in the marvels of the white mans guns. She also reminded readers that black americans note there are elements in this country where they practice not see is some long before adolf hitler celebrates his first birth day, and dominates the federal government and the army. Tates ambition to travel the world had to be put on hold by the war. In the 1950s she was able to resume a solo travel itinerary that would take her well beyond to europe and lay the groundwork for future research. International travel and extended stay outside of the United States continues to dominate pages professional life in that decade, starting with her full ride to india. Teaching,avels and she managed to write articles and reviews on here on an array of topics. Yielding a vast body of work that does not lend itself as easy to summary as her earlier work on disarmament. Thatublished two works became standard and its conversion to a new york colonial status until statehood. Whole lie am controversy was more of a partisan issue. It actually initiated the great debate in American History over the merits of imperialism. Relying on records kept by the she told thenment, story of 19th century struggles in a strategic location from the point of view of the hawaiian people and its leaders, which was a very unusual move at that time. Not just focusing on the United States and other nations, but that would have been the normal purview. She essentially read the sources against the grain. Workpelling aspect of her was her analysis of the role of looming lend missionaries the role that new england missionaries played in 1819, which led her to be one of the tot one of the earliest theorize about imperialism in the 19th century. Tate also details how the missionaries created new networks of private, elementary, and secondary schools in hawaii, but were reserved for their own children only. The descendents of those private preparatory schools still exist. President barack obama graduated from one of the oldest of them, founded in 1841. After competing her work on the ,acific, she turned next africa of which she had written and taught about for decades. She finally made it there in two trips in the 1970s to research the extraction of the Mineral Industry and the private web of railroads and port that were under construction in southern and east africa to transport those minerals. Tate characterized her work as the study of european imperialism. Railways are more efficacious than guns. History indicates railways have been a better means of settling a country that have military enterprise. The fact these two manuscripts never made it was not her lack of trying. I think this is another reminder of how difficult it had been all along. In some way it is a miracle much of her work made it into print as it did. Perhaps more miraculous is she never stopped researching and she continued to write and revise long located mesh scripts even after she retired from teaching in 1977. To say she was driven to do that work seems a profound understatement. After she retired in 1977, she reserved that she served on the both an committee as interviewer and interviewee. She lingered a in her own conversations, but she complained vehemently about the inequity directed at her based on her sex. And the combined and segregated world of which she lived at a startling isolated sting of sexism repeatedly registered plainly and painfully for her. Is full ofarchive evidence that starting in the early 1950s, she had argued that her male colleagues made more money and received more favored treatment than she did. In her view they were less welltrained, had done less, and published fewer books and articles. Again, that may sound familiar. She had been very clear about that and wrote, the saintly approach would be for me to accept silently and inferior status and salary and still carry the heaviest burden. She refused that path, arguing for me to accept and nicks arguing, for me to accept an inferior status and salary would be a quiet the geopolitics of her long life as a pioneering black woman scholar and world traveler raises many compelling interpretive questions. I also want to say she would be especially honored by this occasion, as am i. She lived in washington dc better than anyone else. As i did when i lived here for 15 years for a , requiring me to move. Sometimes we dont recognize the enormous educational work. You never know who is sitting out there. I used to be one of the people sitting out there, and it encouraged me to do want to do more of this work. I want to add my thanks to all of those at the smithsonian. I want to say i could talk all day. My friends have been in that unfortunate position. Mostly i want to say by honoring her life and her work, and so many other black women and intellectuals, that remains a compelling narrative. We do not do that, we will have failed them, failed ourselves, and failed our own history. Thank you. Good morning. It may seems point like im echoing the facts of others. To havesed and honored been included in this and thank you for work have done on this. Im also happy to part of a panel on the internationalization of africanamerican politics and culture. I think much of the exciting work establish an African American has focused on the 20th century. And we pay less attention to the earlier history of black americans engaged beyond the United States. That is not the say the historians of the 18th and 19th centuries can ignore International Angles to their work. There is something inherent in the term africanAmerican History that is at the very least transnational. And scholars have spent a great exploring the relationships between the cultures of people of the west and West Central Africa and the cultures of the enslaved in america. Slavery institutions soft to constrain the worlds of this of the enslaved. All involving questions that would trend toward a regional perspective. Been an obvious exception. Historians recognize the link between the british and antislavery movement, and they have traced the roles black abolitionists played in the struggles. Even hear internationalization was part of the study that was a peculiar interest to African Americans asked africanamerican, rather than be part of an effort to explore the perspective abroad. There is, im suggesting, a difference between exploring heroic efforts, traveling to england to fight and abolish slavery, and to draw on the papers that we just heard. Of course that difference is not that one was more or less progressive or more or less admirable. Africanamerican in the 20th century to look out a way that come into racial inequality was tangential to the fight against racial oppression. Links between the transnational histories of the preemancipation era and the internationalization of africanAmerican History. It involves 1300 men and women, most born in British Colonial north america. The American Revolution offered not on theo freedom, side of those who proclaimed all men were created equal, but for the british who fight for the crown. They escaped the new United States to build lives in nova scotia. Less than a decade they had discovered the freedom they thought would be respected was not in nova scotia, and they asked to be transported to a new colony being organized on the west coast of africa. December they set up december they set sail for sierra leone. Once in freetown, they began calling themselves nova scotias. That brief account should make clear the story of these men and women is very much a chapter in the angloamerican struggle to end the First Atlantic slave trade and then slavery. If you want to tell one story that would be it. I want to tell a different story, one that the centers nova scotia from slavery and focuses on what their experience tells the constitutional history of the United States. In order to do that i need to return to nova scotia and and sierra leone. Months r couple of the ships that carried them away from canada to her to arrive at the mountain of the sierra leone river. They gathered together and saying that notwithstanding that hopeful start, they struggled throughout the 1790s with a brutal disease environment as they saw to build homes, clearfields, and establish a community in africa. These were standard challenges faced by people in that era. The standard challenges were by sierra leone. In fairness, the company extended more rights and powers to the nova scotia ands than any contemporary or european white colony did to its black residents. Nova scotia voted, they sat on at a different times they served as the colony sheriff. Important decisions, especially involving things like remaineduse of land, in the hands of the governor appointed by the company and his council of advisors. At and floated until 1800, when a group of settlers rose and rebellion. They soft not to expel the company and its officials, but to draw a firm line, dividing as a commercial enterprise from the colony of black settlers. They themselves were divided among nondemand nondenominational lines. There you see some of the inter denominational fights that were brought up in the last panel. And the company also benefited from the unexpected arrival of a ship carrying the battalion of Royal Marines and several hundred jamaican resettled in sierra leone. They pledged their allegiance to the king. The rebels were dispersed, their leaders dispelled. Companies were to were restored. The leading moment, rebels posted a list of what were called settlers law. I want to spend my last few minutes discussing the strange and interesting document. That might seem like a odd choice. Survived in the british archives because the governor britishopy to the colonial officers, where they sat unnoticed until the 1960s. They might seem insignificant, until you realize they represent a rare moment in the American European revolution. When we see people who experienced slavery in what became the United States, joining together to constitute themselves as people, this brief document offers a glimpse at the conceptions of law, society, and community that enslaved americans might have brought to the table had they been among the people who came together to form a more perfect union. Offer inversion i reading these laws, the places the general and legal constitutions of the time, but rather than walk through that evidence im going to ask you to believe me when i say one of the aboutnteresting things the document is it mixes categories of law that elite americans would have separated. Ands combined criminal laws, civil laws, and western jurisdiction the settlers outlaws settlers laws outlawed things like and the institute of regulations designed to foster a moral economy, by justifying prices and acceptable trading partners and conditions. Such laws were more common in american jurisdictions in which nova scotia had grown up and were produced by legislatures. Also includedaws language that could be understood as fundamental or constitutional law. That all that come from nova scotia shall be under his law. And that the governor and Council Shall not have anything to do with the colony, no further than the company affairs. The documents authority rested t it was just before man just before god and man. And to return to the earlier el, they are very much that the entire way they understand themselves. In this mixing mixing that i think its most important, not just for what it for nova scotia but what it says about the predisposition of the almost 700,000 enslaved people. Nova scotia and had battled company officials, they came to see themselves as a people and came to believe that it rested not just on procedure about how those who govern each other. But on a decision of substantive fairness. They insisted the laws under which they lived would not be made by their own representatives but also that their society would be decided and defined by engaging in commerce. They instituted a regime of moral economy. They ensured it would do so without falling to the tenting profits that could be found by selling to the highest bidder. At that time the highest bidder would almost surely have been andmixing of statutes fundamental law, the belief that substantive justice was integral to what constituted the nova , as was procedural justice, stands intention to the constitutional founders in a way that cast interesting light on the exclusions of the constitutional era in the United States. It suggests we may have overlooked in the racially restrictive meeting of we the people. If we insist if we assume enslaved americans closer to the nova scotia ands than those of james madison. Notice native americans throughcome to pontiac, distributive and procedural, if we remember not elite whites thought to infuse a revolutionary movement with a greater commitment to lookantive justice, if we and notice that the constitution that emerged in 1801 out of a slave revolution, mixing explicit guarantees ofs labor rights, iff slave or we recall all these dispersed constitutional fragments, then it becomes probable that the constitutional thought of most people would encompass a different mix of substantive and procedural justice that existed in most of the dominant ideology of the age. To a claim that the united constitution would have excluded had the people been more broadly inclusive. Ought and largely forgotten incident should remind us that when some were excluded, their ideas were excluded as well. The exclusion of those ideas is not a flaw in the document that the nation has remedied by passing the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendment. Those amendments have provided constitutional remedies to many of the problems. Too rigid to the devotion of the constitution produced by people we all recognize this representatives has the effective it helps ensure the nations amental laws remains a conception we all recognize. It is my hope the trip across demonstrates we should continue to utilize early american fairly africanAmerican History. Do it by exploring cultural lengths across the atlantic and transatlantic slavery, but also has more and more people are beginning to do, by tending carefully to the groups of africanamericans to escape the shackles of White Supremacy. Analyzing what they thought and did buy no longer being constrained in the same way by slavery and racism, offering one way to respond to the call yesterday, by trying to overcome some of the silences. It can allow us to balance their analyses of what they did within slave for public and what they might have chosen to do had that republic not constituted it can help direct attention not just to the fact that africanamericans were excluded from the citizenship during the civil war, but to the ways the political system was shaped by the ideas of their exclusion. We have enough the time the eaten upenough the time. Scalia, it is perhaps a significant demise in terms of individualism. I would just like to ask a question about the patriotism , and a largere question. That would be the patriotism that motivated the absence of pacifism in world war i. The organizations that spoke for africanamericans were pacifists, but they were overwhelmed by a paradigm that said patriotism through the loss would result in recognition of citizenship rights. In the book they had left us, if one can tease out any awareness that theyadox rendered, it may not have been necessary by the pacifism shared by many him africanamericans. What is interesting about that is that he supported going to war. She thought like others we could be patriotic, it would benefit the returning soldiers. It was driven home to her most dramatically. The ofned the womens womensreedom league of peace and freedom. Particularly around the italians they the italian at the thee ethiopians italians invaded ethiopia, the government wanted to Institute Sanctions against both countries. The women thought that was appropriate. The black women didnt. Should besanctions against italy and not eto pf. It was in those debates around a that thean perspective contradictions and patriotism versus pacifism and peace emerged. It was probably too much to do. Was beginning to try to have us think about what we gain by who is ane like moderate and put them in conversation with each other. Certainly the conversation is one of the one of those places where you can find question, it is argued it will be we have a minority position. Is it morally driven or a read that south africa is a bad deal to invest in . Case, it seems the minority position was wrong. It was a terrific investment. There was no morality in the world bank papers. I would say one of the things i find fascinating about going yournationally is it moves into a archival collections you dont naturally think of as being where the lives of africanamericans are. In the world bank papers, this is where i saw some of this. The minority was right, it is not a good investment when you are looking at if you have to expend the bulk of your resources on keeping over 80 of your population down, then you cannot sustain that because that population is often not generating revenue. Figured out by going through the list is this thing cannot be sustained by internal funds alone. Have resources. That is why the Development Movement works so well. If those funds were cut off, apartheid would collapse. There must be any number of questions. So off we go. I am from the university of sydney. Like to begin by invoking the spirit of my friend , author of black culture and black consciousness. Laid on from that to tell you what my favorite moment in American History is in sydney in minstreln a touring show put on black and performed a benefit concert in order to keep the chinese out of australia. One ofstrel show was many forms of culture, jazz, blues, grass, that took africanamericans around the world. Many people many decades older than me some performances from perhaps music is the easiest form of cultural transport. Suit suit visit uit mean Something Different in detroit and it does i would like to comment about that quickly. Into he things iran is my onlineinto account telling me how many books i bought to i have i bought. I bought a lot of books already. A significant number of those books was about culture, and it was about global culture. It had to do with music and literary work and so on. In some ways you probably need a separate panel on just culture. I agree with you, culture is important. I live locally here in washington dc. I am concerned about a textbook currently used in mcmillan publication coming out distributed is now throughout the United States. In addition to that, the state legislature has passed laws that teachers cannot question what is in the text. Ismy challenge to this group what can we do to bring about that deceitful document . You take two or three questions at one time . A ballot box that remedies good morning, im a curator here at the National Museum of African American history and culture. I think all of us are eagerly waiting for your longer paper. The most simple comments is one of the most complex, and that is the notion that transnational or internationalism is inherent in the term africanamerican. Ofng a curator and working the National Museum of African American history and culture, im wondering if the panel might comment on the need for internationalism within an institution, within a national , to reinforce patriotism and what constitutes africanamerican i am a scholar of the association. Good afternoon to my president im wondering about persons who identify as International Citizens within the Africanamerican Community. Iasked that question because fear being an internationalist comes up when we look at the Association Time and time again. But we see people in ersation and they all have a semblance of identity or commonality but they never physically left the place they are in. My last question has to do with gender. Two of the papers here focus heavily on women who travel. Im wondering if gender plays a role in any way in terms of black travel during precold war United States. Do you want to try to take some of those . I will say couple of things. Question, and i think david alluded to this already, textbooks are very important. Her love for traveling came from her geography books as a child, which captured her imagination. Done by thes being illinformed history and those textbooks. To thealso points us importance of local politics and state politics. Different states have different rules and mechanisms for selecting statewide coverage. That is where that battle has to be thought, and that is another egregious case. That, forou raised those of us who call ourselves historians. Transnationalism is included in the term africanamericans. But africanamericans, black americans, using terms that were not as nice as those. Thethe internationalism and connectedness that black people in this country have felt, both not only to africa