Deborah Gray White

Yes, we have, you know, the Harlem Renaissance cohorts going forward, Black intellectualism and the growth of that here in the U.S.

But we have, you know, I listened to your episode with Deborah Gray White, like I told you a couple weeks ago, I think.

And it was just so important for me to listen to that and reread through her landmark piece on Our Now Woman and just think about what it means to be a Black woman who is... doing Black women's history and research, you know, in the 70s and 80s and in the 90s, when 90% of the profession are, like, lost cause enthusiasts, right? Like, how are you doing that work and, like, trying to interrupt being an academic and using the word interrupt, interrupt that kind of Rhetoric, right? What does it mean to say, actually, I don't think enslaved people were happy on plantations? Like, I know that sets people on fire, but my goodness.

And that cohort, the Darlene Clark Hines and the Deborah Gray Whites, they are retiring now, if they haven't already.

And they are looking back on their lives to say, this is what I've accomplished.

And for those who are in women's and feminist studies and Black women's studies in general, they're looking back and saying, my goodness, we're still attacking these same questions that I addressed 50 years ago.

I was still in high school, I'll just give my age away, but it was something that I would really encounter for the first time.

When I got to college and graduate school, And really, it's the pioneers of people like Deborah Gray White and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham and Darlene Clark Hine, the sort of pioneers of Black women's history on whose shoulders I stand.

And I made the decision that I wanted to spend my time as a scholar focusing on the lives of early African-American women, meaning those born and calling America their home in the 18th and 19th centuries.

And so really I've spent the last, this is my 20th year of teaching and I've spent the last 20 years reading, writing and teaching about their experiences.