Panel Descriptions
Monday, March 22, 2021 12:00 p.m.-1:15 p.m. EST
Women and Slavery
Moderator: Dr. Susan Kern, Executive Director, Historic Campus
Elsa Mendoza, ““Only God and Trusty Black Women”: The life and labor of enslaved women at Georgetown University and the Jesuit plantations in Maryland”
The following paper places women at the center of Jesuit slaveholding in Maryland and Washington DC. It examines their place as laborers and their experiences of displacement, violence, and resistance. Women have remained invisible in the historiography of Jesuit slaveholding. In response to these genderless analyses, this paper examines administrative records, correspondence, diaries, and financial ledgers to reconstruct the past of enslaved women under Jesuit rule. Its main argument is that that enslaved women were essential to Jesuit slaveholding. Their bodies allowed the Jesuits to depend on an exploitative labor system that purported to save enslaved families. The profits from their sale helped allay their debt-ridden schools. Finally, their labor made possible the operation of schools such as Georgetown, where they were the majority of the enslaved workforce. The women enslaved by the Jesuits survived abuse, concubinage, and displacement. This paper is a call to action to bring to light the experiences of women such as Sucky, Susannah, Nelly, as well as many other nameless women who lived and labored under slavery in Jesuit estates.
Candace Jackson Gray, “collective defense”
The Chickasaw Affair was second page news in the Boston Morning Post on August 2, 1836. The newsworthy trial and rescue of two black enslaved women from Baltimore caused a “riot” at the new Suffolk County Courthouse. Unlike many runaways that found places and spaces to live in the urban environment of Baltimore, Ann Patten and Mary Pinkney, chose to escape to the freedom port of Boston. The ship’s captain, opined Chief Justice Lemuel Shaw, could not hold the women captive on the ship in Boston Harbor legally. During their seaboard escape, John B. Morris, the wealthy Baltimore banker, sent a slave catcher to recover the women as his property. As the Justice stood to declare his decision, members of the Boston Anti-Female Society surrounded the two women and forced them out to the street and into a carriage to freedom. Centered by the scholarship of Manisha Sinha and Damian Pargas, my paper reveals a significant legal history of old and newly discovered research in which I construct a microhistory of Commonwealth v Eldridge to provide the significance of the escape and rescue of two courageous women.
Caroline Watson, “A History of Archaeological Work at William and Mary”
Description forthcoming
Monday, March 22, 2021 4:00 p.m.- 5:15 p.m. EST
Not Everybody Knows My Name: Negotiating Identities
Moderator: Dr. Monika Gosin, Sociology
Dr. Michelle Harris, “Black Superwoman Syndrome”
"Through the idea of the strong black woman, African American women are subject not only to historically rooted racist and sexist characteristics of black women as a group but also a matrix of unrealistic interracial expectations that construct black women as unshakable, unassailable, and naturally strong." (By Nia Hamm, Huffington Post, 2014).
Several statistics report of black women who are most educated, yet have a wage in gap in pay equity, more likely to be single, deal with stigma and are presented with barriers in seeking help. Lastly many black women cope with stress, anxiety, and depression by attempting to ignore the emotional toll that comes along with it. In this session we will identify statistics for black women in seeking self-care and mental health, identify some strategies for self- care, and discuss some ways that the community can provide healing and support.
Anjail M. Haqq, “There Wasn’t No Song”: Generational Trauma, Lynching and Black Mental Health
This presentation will determine if an individual or community has experienced or witnessed slavery, lynching or racialized violence and depression-based disorders by way of intergenerational trauma. This paper will examine intergenerational trauma and lynching in the 19th and 20th century in Mississippi.
This research on intergenerational trauma and lynching in the 20th century will attempt to answer the question, ‘How does the pain in my family affect who I am?’ Using empirical data from the American Psychiatric Association and National Institute of Mental Health, and a theoretical framework-based Freud’s Psychodynamic Theory and Erikson’s Ego Psychology Theory, this presentation will utilize quantitative studies to evaluate current depression and anxiety diagnosis of black people in Mississippi. This analysis will also include qualitative data from The Works Progress Administration (WPA) slave narratives impact of documented accounts by African Americans in Mississippi throughout the 19th and 20th century. The theoretical frameworks of Freud will assist with connecting the symptomatology of anxiety and depression disorders to traumatic events. This research can add to the larger discussion of trauma that stems from slavery.
Tuesday, March 23, 2021 12:00 p.m.-1:15 p.m. EST
Organizing on The Front Lines: Examining Power through Networks
Moderator: Ghana Smith, Finance Systems and Cost Accounting, William & Mary
Dr. Phyllis Slade-Martin, “International Anti-Apartheid Activism in the U.S.: Black Women on the Front Lines”
Black South Africans were at the forefront of resistance to apartheid, leading to its eventual demise. International anti-apartheid movements also contributed to the downfall of South Africa’s apartheid regime. Passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA) of 1986 represented a significant legislative achievement in the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. Black women were influential in the founding and shaping of the decades-long international anti-apartheid movement in the U.S. From the earliest anti-colonial and anti-apartheid group, the Council on African Affairs, to the leaders of the Southern African Support Project, black women conceptualized, organized, and implemented strategies that ultimately influenced U.S. foreign policy. Their activism challenged U.S. support of the apartheid system in South Africa. This paper will show how women like Eslanda Robeson, Cecelie Counts, and Sylvia Hill (and more) built networks of support within and outside of black communities using lobbying, civil disobedience, grassroots activism, and collaboration.
Dr. Alexandria Russell, "“The Mary Clubs: Named Memorials of the National Association of Colored Women in the Early Twentieth Century”"
The National Association of Colored Women (NACW) was the most significant organization in African American public history in the early twentieth century. Their strategic organizing built a national infrastructure of named memorials that were the primary medium of memorialization in the Jim Crow Era. Inspired by their leadership, African American women created clubs named for NACW presidents that included Mary Church Terrell, Mary B. Talbert, and Mary McLeod Bethune. The living memorials named in their honor were a part of the culture of recognition, a practice that acknowledged and celebrated both namesakes and clubwomen’s contributions to their communities. Black clubwomen in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century prided themselves on recognizing African American women that embodied the best ideals of black womanhood. As national club leaders and philanthropists, Terrell, Talbert, and Bethune represented the work that black women were doing all over the nation. In recognizing their great deeds through named living memorials, black women were also recognizing themselves. This presentation highlights the significance of African American women as memorializers and pioneers in public history. Recovering this history is essential to understanding the overall evolution of memorials created for African American women in the United States.
Tuesday, March 23, 2021 4:00 p.m.- 5:15 p.m. EST
The Fight for Civil Rights: Mary Rice Hayes Allen, Mattie L. Humphrey, Theresa A. Walker, Helen Palmer Howard, Elizabeth Johnson (Rice)
Moderator: Dr. Adrienne Petty, History
Dale F. Harter, “"We will not stop until we have full freedom”: The Unusual Life and Civil Rights Journey of Mary Rice Hayes Allen"
Among the 230 names inscribed upon the new Virginia Women’s Monument in Richmond, Va., few are lesser well known than Mary Rice Hayes Allen. Despite her relative obscurity, this daughter of a former Confederate general blazed a unique trail as a woman and as an African American woman between her birth in 1875 and her death in 1935. From serving as the president of a seminary and college in the early 20th century to helping found two NAACP chapters, she lived a life of courage, boldness, love, and activism. Mary Rice Hayes Allen is a natural fit for this year’s theme, “When and Where They Enter.” Through her deeds and her dignified manner, she lifted herself and the entire African American race and helped lay the groundwork for the Civil Rights victories of the 1960s.
Steven Gayle, “Valuing African American Humanity and Self Study: The Life and Work of Mattie L. Humphrey”
This presentation will focus on African American activist and local public figure Mattie L. Humphrey July 15, 1926 -November 12, 2001). Humphrey lived and worked for the majority of her life in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, and her work spanned the gamut of city planning, health care administration, education, broadcast media, prison reform, youth initiatives and public legal affairs. Beginning with a brief biographical sketch, this presentation will evaluate some of Humphrey’s organizational and theoretical frameworks as it relates to non-governmental organizations, structural violence and protracted ethnic conflict. Particularly, the focus will center on a reinterpretation of her efforts with her Urban Self Study Institute, Healthy Block Campaign and related urban engagement projects as international conflict management initiatives. This paper would then conclude with an exploration of such programs’ compatibility with theoretical concepts in international relations. This includes components related to international political economy such as human security as detailed by Caroline Thomas, and development underdevelopment as described by Amartya Sen and Walter Rodney, respectively. This will further conclude how Mattie Humphrey’s approaches are applicable currently on national and international scales.
LaTika Lee, "In Her Own Words: An Intimate View of Unsung Women in Virginia Civil Rights"
This presentation explores the lives of three African American women—Theresa A. Walker, wife of Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker, Helen Palmer Howard, a Petersburg school teacher, and NAACP activist and Virginia Union University student, Elizabeth Johnson (Rice), a member of the “Richmond 34”—whose journeys through the modern Civil Rights Movement are uniquely entrenched in American history. Often mischaracterized as having quiet voices, these-not-so familiar names had little attention paid to their full life stories. This presentation will reveal women how these women were seasoned advocates with independent spirits forged over decades of challenging inequality and injustice. Through personal writings, reflections, photographs, and memorabilia, this session will immerse participants in moments throughout their lives, allowing her to tell her own life story
Wednesday, March 24, 2021 12:00 p.m.-1:15 p.m. EST
Revolutionary and Cultural Impacts
Moderator: Dr. Jay Watkins, History
Lee Ann Timreck, “A Visual Narrative of the Black Emancipation Experience: The Sculpture of African American Artists Mary Edmonia Lewis and Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller”
The emancipation themed sculpture of African American artists Mary Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907) and Meta Vaux Warrick Fuller (1877-1968) are a visual expression of the powerful, but seldom-heard narrative of the black journey to freedom. These artists accomplished unprecedented achievements, but their sculptural representation of the emancipation experience is exceptional. These rare artifacts bring to life a newly emancipated people, pursuing freedom despite substantial economic and political obstacles, and the unique contradictions and inequalities levied upon black women. Our national debate on social injustice and inequality has exposed the inaccuracies in our collective knowledge of black history. Timreck contends that these sculptures serve as powerful tools for educating the public on the historical reality of black freedom by connecting us visually and emotionally to those who lived it. By publicizing their powerful narrative of black emancipation, we can begin to change public misconceptions on what historian Eric Fonner called “the darkest page in the saga of American history.”
Lindsay Gary, “Cecile Fatiman: Entering the Haitian Revolution”
This paper will explore the contribution of Cecile Fatiman to the Haitian Revolution. An agent of African change and revolutionary leader, Fatiman’s story is often overlooked. The story of the Haitian Revolution is often told from the perspective of male leaders Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Dutty Boukman, but this paper will specifically highlight the woman who ignited the entire revolution, challenging the male-dominated story. Fatiman was the acting mambo (vodou priestess) at the Bois Caiman (Bwa Kayiman) ceremony that started the Haitian Revolution. Although the military leadership of the revolution is of great importance, it was this ceremony that enabled it. African spirituality and communication with the ancestors was fundamental as the African people of Haiti (Ayiti) relied on their guidance for this strategic meeting in which this revolt was organized. Not only was Fatiman’s role central to what would ultimately become the first black republic, with her later serving as the nation’s first lady, she embodies the phrase “only the Black woman can say when and where I enter.” She provided both the permission and pathway for what would become the most successful slave revolt in world history and most importantly, liberation.
This paper will highlight her life and her methods to achieve liberation--the creation of an island-wide codified network of covert communication, the organizing of the meeting at Bois Caiman itself, and the use of Vodou including ancestor divination and the mounting of Erzulie Dantor (Ezili Danto). Ultimately it is a call to action to argue the essential role of African women in African revolutions and in African spirituality, but also to discuss the role of African women throughout America’s Diaspora.
Monet Timmons, "Beyond Kitty’s Cottage: Exploring Contested Commemoration Practices to Remember Catherine “Miss Kitty” Boyd"
This paper examines the complexities of public memory and commemoration surrounding an enslaved Black woman named Catherine “Miss Kitty” Boyd. Miss Kitty was enslaved by Bishop James Osgood Andrew, the first president of the Board of Trustees at Emory University. Following the 1844 split of the United Methodist Episcopal church over Bishop Andrew’s role as an enslaver, he “gifted” a cottage to Miss Kitty, where she lived until 1851. In 1939, this cottage becomes Kitty’s Cottage, a museum celebrating the Confederacy and Bishop Andrew. The 2011 “Slavery and the University” conference at Emory was an attempt to acknowledge this past, but it did not produce any sustained efforts at commemoration or redress. Miss Kitty’s story remains obscured at Emory. This paper utilizes correspondence, newspaper articles, and conference archives to map when and where Miss Kitty appears over time and how her narrative changes depending on who tells the story. While discussions following the 2011 conference were short-lived, the conference reveals how Black citizens of Oxford, Georgia found alternative methods to celebrate their ancestors. My paper reveals the complicated narrative formation of Miss Kitty and Black commemoration practices, both private and public, that allow space for re-envisioning this history.
Wednesday, March 24, 2021 4:00 p.m.- 5:15 p.m. EST
Remembering Those Who Came Before Us: Enslaved Families of Fontainebleau and Civil Rights Activist Nellie Jane Hinderman McLeod
Moderator: Dr. Jajuan Johnson, The Lemon Project
Jackson Cantrell, “The Enslaved Families of Fontainebleau”
When Fontainebleau Plantation was carved out of Louisiana’s woodland, the girls Bonnine and Violette were babies. Born into slavery, they toiled and raised their own children there in bondage. These young mothers were among 153 enslaved individuals whose names have recently been uncovered in banking records. Their stories are illustrated by archeological finds, letters, and relationships. Noted for accomplished engineering skills, enslaved men at Fontainebleau worked with little supervision. Ten of these husbands and fathers crewed a delivery schooner which sailed across Lake Pontchartrain for decades. That this ship’s crew, captained by two enslaved pilots, never attempted escape begs the question, “why not?” Because some of the 57 children and their mothers awaited the mariners’ return, the answer lies with family – families like those of Bonnine and Violette.
Dr. Charles McLeod, “Mama’s Boy--The Untold Story of Virginia Civil Rights Activist Nellie Jane Hinderman McLeod and Her Influence on Her Son’s Zeal for Social Justice”
Nellie Jane Hinderman McLeod was a civil rights activist who led the movement to integrate Chesterfield County schools and other public institutions throughout Virginia. Beginning in the 1960s, she led voter registration drives and championed the fair treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system. Mrs. McLeod and her children participated in civil rights marches and department store lunch counter sit-ins and they picketed such places as the bus station, the library, as well as the courthouse in Petersburg, VA. She was the recipient of awards from organizations including the NAACP (Trailblazer Award), SCLC, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, and many others. She represented the State of Virginia at several Democratic National Conventions. Her civil rights story is chronicled in the United States Library of Congress. Through firsthand accounts, Charles McLeod allows the listener to experience the highs and lows of the struggle for freedom and human dignity during the early 60s as the South transitioned from a racially segregated society. Despite personal accomplishments and many societal “firsts,” he speaks to a rarely told feeling of being caught in a “no man’s land” – rejected by whites, while misunderstood by blacks who often considered integrationists as abandoning the race. This family’s story is one of triumph over tragedy and one of achievement despite adversity. Dr. McLeod makes use of homespun humor and true grit to tell the amazing saga of his personal journey as a young African-American male and product of the Civil Rights movement coming of age through lessons learned and examples set by his courageous mother, Nellie McLeod.
Thursday, March 25, 2021 12:00 p.m.-1:15 p.m. EST
Finding Sources, Telling Stories
Moderator: Dr. Meghan Bryant, W&M Libraries
Rachael Finch, “We Bid You Enter: Slavery, Resistance and Freedom of Enslaved and Free Women of Franklin and Williamson County, Tennessee”
Little, if any, remains about the lives of ‘her story; ‘the enslaved and free African American women written by their own hands who labored and lived in Franklin and Williamson County, Tennessee prior to the American Civil War. However, much has been written about them, hidden in plain sight, entering details of their lives in court cases, manumission papers, bills of sale, deeds, probates, inventories, and pension records. This presentation explores how the third largest slave holding community of Franklin, Tennessee’s enslaved and very small community of free African American women utilized the law to secure their freedom, defend their rights as individuals, protect their womanhood, and promote their independence, purchasing power, and security. In doing so, their significant contributions shaped values within their communities and how “…then and there the whole Negro race enters…” with them.
Greg Crawford, “Narratives of pre-1866 Black Women found in Library of Virginia’s Virginia Untold Digital Collection”
Greg Crawford of the Library of Virginia will share narratives of courage, Perseverance, and sacrifice displayed by pre-1865 black women in the face of great adversity that are found in LVA’s Virginia Untold: the African American Narrative Digital Collection. The Library of Virginia houses local court records, state records, personal papers, business records, newspapers, special collections, books, journals, etc., that date back to the 1600's. Collectively, these records contain the names of millions of African Americans both enslaved and free. The names are access points to the individual stories of African Americans who lived in Virginia from the establishment of slavery in the 1600's until its demise in 1865. They include stories of black women such as Rachel Viney who, despite having won her freedom in court in 1791, remained enslaved and forcibly taken to western Virginia. There is also the story of the Cullins sisters of Powhatan County. They were emancipated in the late 1830’s; however, their niece was not. This presentation will share the courageous efforts of Rachel Viney and the Cullins sisters to gain freedom for themselves and their family members no matter the cost.
Thursday, March 25, 2021 4:00 p.m.- 5:15 p.m. EST
Zelophehad's Modern Black Daughters: Black Female Suffragettes Who Enhanced the Power of the Black Vote
Moderator: Dr. Jody Allen, The Lemon Project
Dr. Margaret B.S. Bristow and Dr. Gail Taylor
If one peruses the Old Testament one will find Zelophehad, an Israelite whose five daughters petitioned Moses, etc to allow them to inherit their father's property. They won! We have five black suffragettes who had a similar fight: trying to incite America to see the need for the black female vote to be included with the white female vote. Just as Giddings posits that we would not have had a civil rights movement if women had not started the ball rolling, so is the case with these black suffragettes who enhanced the power of the black vote: Sojourner Truth, Charlotta Rollins, Mary Ann Shad Cary, Ida B. Wells and Harriet Forten Purvis. We will tie in their work to be included in NAWSA with later "daughters of Zelophehad like Fannie Lou Hamer, Mary Church Terrell , Ella Baker and Septima Clark who saw the need to fight to carry that 19th Amendment out in the midst of Jim Crowism and other ways our vote was mitigated even in the 1960's up until the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Using the research of the late Dr.Rosalyn Terborg-Penn in her 1998 canonical text African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote 1850-1920; the voting accomplishments of the Alpha Suffrage Club, first of its kind for black suffragettes, started by Ida B. Wells and two other white colleagues in 1913; and the research of Bettye Collier-Thomas in her text Jesus, Jobs and Justice, the two presenters will show how these early daughters of Zelophehad led the way for Senator Kamala Harris' bid to be a democratic presidential candidate.
Friday, March 26, 2021 12:00 p.m.-1:15 p.m. EST
“Lucy Bocock, Daughter of Men Who Played Key Roles in Establishing and Implementing Slavery in America, and the Manifestation of When and Where I Enter”
Moderator: Andre Taylor, W&M Libraries
Clarence M. Dunnaville, Jr.
Peter Gunner Dunnaville
Lucy Bocock was the daughter of Thomas S. Bocock and the panelists’ matriarch. Like Anna Julia Cooper, “[her] mother had been a slave, and her father, her mother’s master”; and her enslaver as well. Bocock was a United States Congressman and one of the most powerful men in the nation. He joined the Confederate cause and became Speaker of its’ House of Representatives. Her mother, a field slave, died when she was an infant, and she grew up in the Bocock home, but was never acknowledged to be a daughter. Lucy was a direct descendant of Colonel John Page, an exclusive agent for African slavery, who received a commission of seven percent on slave sales for many years. Included among her other ancestors was a key legislator of the racist laws that made slave women the source of the nation’s wealth. William and Mary, and most of the city of Williamsburg lies on land donated by Page; who also was a co-founder of the university.
Friday, March 26, 2021 4:00 p.m.- 5:15 p.m. EST
Branch Out: Four Centuries of Black Women in America: Freedom, Activism, and Justice for All
Moderator: Molly Shilo, The Lemon Project
William & Mary Branch Out Students who participated in Branch Out in January 2021
