Panel Descriptions
"The Slave Dwelling Project: Ten Years Later"
Joseph McGill, Jr.
In this presentation, Joseph McGill, Jr. will look back over ten years of sleeping in slave dwellings. "The Slave Dwelling Project envisions a future in which the hearts and minds of Americans acknowledge a more truthful and inclusive narrative of the history of the nation that honors the contributions of all our people, is embedded and preserved in the buildings and artifacts of people of African heritage, and inspires all Americans to acknowledge their Ancestors."
Plenary Panel: “Entering the Past: The Daily Experience of Black Women Interpreters”
Moderator: Eola Dance, Chief of Resources Management at Colonial National Historical Park
Brenda Parker, African American Interpretation and Special Programs Coordinator, Mount Vernon
Deirdre Jones '08, Programming Lead Actor Interpreter, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
Valarie Gray Holmes, script writer & living history performer
Panel 1. "Not Everybody Knows My Name: Negotiating Identities for Black Women"Moderator: Travis Harris, Ph.D. '19
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.
Sharrieff R. De’Johnette, “The Experience of Multiple Identities African-American Women in Doctoral Study”
De’Johnette will explore the experiences of African American, who are entering doctoral study in predominately White institutions, such as William and Mary. The question is: how should faculty understand the experiences of multiple identities of African American women in doctoral study and help to improve their outcomes? African American women can be found enrolled in predominantly White institutions of higher learning pursing doctoral study. African American female doctoral students enrolled in predominantly White institutions have experienced isolation, poor interactions with professors and peers, and perceived race and gender-based discrimination and prejudice (Appling et al., 2018). Loots et al. (2016) found that there has not been much research on exploring the intersectional, class, power, and academic department experiences of African American women in postgraduate studies. The focus will be on the multiple identities of African American Women doctoral students, as mothers, working-class, and in Counselor Education (Appling et al., 2018; Crum et al., 2019; Rogers et al., 2019; Zelingman et al., 2015). The Capabilities Approach will be used help provide a holistic approach to improving the educational outcomes of African American Women in doctoral study.
Moderator: Robert Trent Vinson, Ph.D.
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.
Candace Gray, “collective defence”
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.
Kendall Artz, “Reconciliation in the Records: Uncovering the Names of William & Mary's Enslaved African Americans”
From the moment of its founding through the Civil War, William & Mary was deeply implicated in the institution of slavery. More than 100 enslaved people lived, worked, and created community on William & Mary’s campus. Many of them remain unaccounted for. This presentation will explore the difficulty of rediscovering the names and lives of enslaved people within documents created by officials who had every reason to deny or obscure the nature of slavery and the steps that members of The Lemon Project are taking to make that information accessible and public.
Panel 3. “Revolutions, Resistance, and Writing”
Moderator: Amanda Stuckey, Ph.D. '16
Angelita Reyes, PhD, “When and Where She Enters: The Power of Place, Landownership and Writing a Black Woman’s Auto/biographical Narrative, 1877-1919”
Through the interdisciplinary methodologies of African American history, vernacular architecture, anthropology, and public records, this presentation will focus on the power of place or the “home place” and its relationship to landownership for newly freed African American women with the case study of Vicey Skipwith (1854-1936) born into slavery in Mecklenburg County, Virginia. After Emancipation, black women were significant participants in acquiring land in Virginia. Because most newly freedpeople, however, remained desperately poor after the Civil War, only a small minority managed to acquire the legal title to land they so fervently sought. Remarkably, many black landowners in Virginia were single, ex-slave women who sought to establish the meaning of freedom and economic advancement through landownership. Drawing from the provenance of Vicey Skipwith, this presentation will explore the scope of freedom constructed by ex-slave women from the post-Reconstruction era to the peak beginning of lynching/Jim Crow in 1919. The provenance will be used to create an auto/biographical narrative of a non-literate ex-slave woman, Vicey Skipwith, within the larger historical context of African American womanhood and landownership at the home place.
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.
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). Born in Atlanta, Georgia, 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.
Moderator: Adrienne Petty, Ph.D., William & Mary
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.
Margaret B.S. Bristow and Gail Singleton Taylor, “Zelophehad's Modern Black Daughters: Black Female Suffragettes Who Enhanced the Power of the Black Vote”
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.
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.
Moderator: Jerry (Jay) Watkins, Ph.D., William & Mary
Ravynn K. Stringfield, "(Digital) Black Girl Magic: Magic as a Contemporary Black Feminist Epistemology in Micah Ariel Watson’s Black Enough and Moon Ferguson’s Juju: The Webseries”
CaShawn Thompson coined the hashtag #BlackGirlsAreMagic, which was then shortened to #BlackGirlMagic, in 2013, yet Black women’s connection to magic as an epistemology well predates the hashtag. From the Conjure Woman in Charles Chesnutt’s 1899 collection of short stories to Ntozake Shange’s invocation of the magic of Black womanhood in the first line of Sassafrass, Cypress and Indigo, Black women and girls have used the language of magic as a way to understand the world. In 1982, Shange wrote, “Where there is a woman there is magic.” Today, Black girls (also) exist in the digital and understand their magic as mediated through and in this space. Two webseries, Micah Ariel Watson’s Black Enough (2019) and Moon Ferguson’s Juju: The Webseries (2019), take up the issue of digital Black girl magic in very different ways. Black Enough’s Amaya is in search of a metaphorical #BlackGirlMagicPotion and its ingredients while Juju’s Ally, Gigi and Yaya embrace their power through the discovery of their ability to do witchcraft. They both, however, navigate and negotiate Black girlhood which becomes womanhood through its investigation of burgeoning magic. In this paper, Stringfield will investigate what becomes of Black girlhood when we try to understand it through the lens of the digital space and the language of magic? Further, how is this digital Black Girl Magic a space of infinite possibility? Stringfield encourages participants to consider the ways in which the digital becomes a space of magic for Black girls. Black Girl Magic and Black girl digital content creation together become ensconced in Black girl cultural expression.
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.
Caroline Watson, “A History of Archaeological Work at William and Mary”
As a graduate research fellow for the Lemon Project, Caroline explores the history of archaeological research and excavation on William and Mary’s campus. Official archaeological investigations and ‘ground-testing’ have taken place on university grounds since at least the mid-20th century. Working closely with Historic Campus and William and Mary’s Department of Anthropology, this research aims to locate all documentation of archaeological survey, excavation, and associated findings. Caroline’s larger goal as a research fellow is to build upon a digital database where these site reports can be housed, facilitating future research within and beyond the Lemon Project. This presentation will provide an overview of archaeological work at William and Mary, reveal the challenges to constructing this archaeological database, and finally consider the ways archaeological research can contribute to our knowledge of the history of slavery at William and Mary.
Moderator: Susan Kern, Ph.D. '05
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.
Rachel Basinger, “Seventy Years in the Corps: The Experience of Black Women in the United States Marine Corps from 1949 to 2019”
One area in which the accomplishments of African American females is overlooked is in the Marine Corps. Because 2019 marks the seventieth anniversary of the first African American woman joining the Marine Corps, the Lemon Project’s 2020 Spring Symposium would be a fitting way to honor these women—the very few and the proud. The paper presentation would be a broad overview of the experience of African American women in the Marine Corps, starting with Annie E. Graham, who joined in 1949, and ending with Lorna M. Mahlock, the first black female brigadier general of the Marine Corps nominated in 2018.The presentation relates to the conference’s theme, as it will discuss the impact that black females have had on the Marine Corps. I hope to shed greater light on the experiences of notable black women in the Marine Corps as well as less well-known black female Marines. Finally, the presentation and paper can serve as a call to action to encourage other African American women to join the Marine Corps and make their mark.
Audrey Perry Williams, “The Black Woman: She Was, She Is, She Will Always Be Our Anchor!”
An anchor is a heavy weight that holds a ship in place. Remaining firm and steadfast amid the uncertainty of storms and the elements. An anchor symbolizes such concepts as firmness, tranquility and hope. No matter if you have sea legs or not you can appreciate the deeper meaning of the anchor symbol: security, stability and being grounded. It is a symbol demonstrating that a person is in tune with themselves and hold on to values they believe. Each of these terms describe the many aspects of the Black Woman as an anchor The discussion will focus on Black Women throughout our history and how they have been Anchors.
Luke Campopiano, “African American Women and Polar Exploration: Narratives of the “waiting time” in late nineteenth century black Philadelphia”
Polar exploration has long been conceptualized as a white male endeavor. More recently, however, historians and other scholars have recovered previously obscured narratives of figures such as Jane Franklin, Jo Peary, and Matthew Henson. His presentation will seek to build upon this work by exploring the role that African-American women have played in polar exploration. While I will briefly touch upon contemporary figures like Barbara Hillary, the first African-American woman to reach both poles, my focus will be on Eva Flint Henson. She was the first wife of Matthew Henson, an African-American explorer, who in 1909 would reach the North Pole with Robert Peary and their Inuit guides Ootah, Egingwah, Seegloo, and Ookeah. Their marriage, strained by Matthew’s nearly constant absence (the “waiting time”), ended after six years in 1897. Eva’s relationship with Mathew has been almost entirely omitted from biographies of the explorer and histories of polar exploration. His project will utilize letters and other personal documents from the Robert Peary papers in the National Archives to tell Eva’s story while also exploring broader themes of masculinity, class, and the impacts of separation on marriage in black society in late nineteenth century America.
Panel 7. "Black Women's Cultural Impacts"
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.
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.”
LeKeisha Hughes, "Horrible Imaginings: Monstrosities of Memory in Kara Walker’s Slavery! Slavery! and American Horror Story: Coven"
This paper turns to Kara Walker's 1997 panoramic silhouette installation Slavery! Slavery! as an opening for how we might begin to think about work by some black women artists as staging scenarios of slavery in ways that may be understood as conscious performances or texts of horror. These conscious performances of horror work to recast and defamiliarize the spectacles of violence and black suffering that have become naturalized within a collective, national memory. Hughes argues that Kara Walker's work, by calling attention to quotidian violences on a spectacular scale, continues to push us to question how we are called upon to participate in scenes of slavery and what possibilities there are to give expression to its violent afterlife. Finally, by employing a black feminist reading practice to consider scenarios of slavery and racialized monstrosity in relation to the cinematic perceptions of horror in American Horror Story: Coven—a show that when explicitly engaging with blackness continues to rely on spectacles of black suffering through the representation of the captive black body—Hughes interrogates the significance and productiveness of horror in U.S. culture when being attentive to racial, gendered, and sexual logics through which it operates.
Moderator: The Rev. Lisa Green
Barbara Engs Watson
Bonnie Winston Blayton
In September 1963 a new Episcopal church was founded with a vision to embrace people of all races, backgrounds, ages and abilities; to conclude each weekly Eucharist with a congregational meeting to discuss the needs of the community; and, in the spirit of its namesake St. Martin of Tours, to give away half of all their proceeds. Our panel will explore the lives of three of the church’s founding mothers: Alleyne Houser Blayton (1910-1998), one of the original “apostles”; and Rubye Moore DeWitt (1918-2019) and Myrtle Coger Engs (1917-2018), who joined the church within a few years. These three extraordinary black women—all educators, advocates for children’s rights, and activists in their own ways—had significant influence on their families, congregation and community. We’ll examine what led them to enter (and help create) this unique religious context, and the individual and collective impacts of their passions and commitments. Through interviews with fellow founders and other longtime parishioners, supported by local historical records, we’ll re-member these formidable women and the sacred spaces they inhabited and imagined. Inspired by the West African concept of “Sankofa,” we look to the past within the context of the present to inform the future, gathering strength, as Stanley Kunitz writes in “The Layers,” to proceed on the journey. Seeking to understand the desires and strategies Alleyne, Rubye and Myrtle brought to this new model of church and community engagement, we hope to call forth a renewed determination to honor their legacy and continue their work.
Panel 9. "Slavery, Community, Resistance”Moderator: James Padilioni, Ph.D. '18
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.
Peter Gunter Dunnaville, Clarence M. Dunnaville, Jr.,” 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”
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.
Frederick Murphy, “Aunt Briney and George Washington's Pancakes: “Never mind the rest of her story””
Aunt Briney was an enslaved woman from Warren County, NC who during George Washington’s southern tour was responsible for making him pancakes and did other cooking “for the relish of the father” of this country while on the tour. “Aunt Briney” was my 4th great grandmother. Her real name was Obrina Talley, born in 1784 and died in 1896. Newspapers across the country Identified her as perhaps the “oldest negress”, “in this section of the south” when she passed at 112 years old. While the newspaper outlets harped on her keen memory of serving George Washington and storytelling of the experience to those who entered her cabin, I know her as the birther of USCT soldiers who was beloved by her community and pained from the emotional scars of being separated from the father of her three sons Ishmon Ellis. Unfortunately, Obrina died with no use of her legs, using two wooden sticks to get around per testimony from community members and son who had to affirm she was still alive and eligible to receive the pension. Her legacy lives on through pieces of a family memoir passed down since the late 1800’s, pension records, a family picture and newspapers acknowledging her existence. The survival and resilience of a woman who endured 112 years of oppression should be praised more than being a good cook of “flapjacks”, as it speaks to the significance of African American women from the past to the present.
Moderator: Vineeta Singh, Ph.D.
Alexis Dorsey, Connor Kennedy, Sonia Kinkhabwala, "Black Women Leaders in the Civil Rights Movement"
Maggie Aschmeyer, Marc Charbonier, Laura Kirk, William Ryu "African American Women and William & Mary"
Makayla Cutter, Abraham Lin, Joseph Nguyen, "Power of Nurturing: The Family Environment Created by Black Women"
Panel 11. "Family, Relationships, and History"Moderator: Meghan Bryant, Ph.D. '16
Shené V. Owens, Sheila R. Burns-Owens, “I get it from Momma”
The Black mother-daughter relationship is complex, intimate, ever-changing, and often has intergenerational ties. This presentation will be led by a mother and daughter to explore the following: A Black adult daughters’ perceptions of the impact their mother had on their development of their self-worth, self-esteem, resilience, coping, and leadership; A Black mothers’ perceptions of the impact their mother had on the mothering of their daughter during different stages of her life.This presentation will be based in Black Feminist Thought and the Mother-Daughter Relationship. It will demonstrate first-hand accounts of a mother-daughter relationship between the facilitators. Their relationship has shifted throughout the years from teen, college-age, early adulthood, and life after the loss of a mother. The two presenters will speak from their own experiences, share tips and tools as well as missteps and “shoulda/coulda/woulda”. The title “I get it from my Momma” expresses both the positive and negative traits that are intergenerational.
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.
Carol and Burnell Irby, “She called her…Cornelia.”
This presentation will tell the stories of four women from the Whiting Family, all from Magruder located in York County, Virginia. It was known within the Whiting family, before there was a “#MeToo” movement, that there were the stories of Mary, her daughter, the first Cornelia, her granddaughters, Rosetta and Cornelia. Their stories are not unique. There are many black families with these same untold stories. While public records are few and at times difficult to access, with DNA, family information and persistence, we are slowly putting our history together. Our search is ongoing. Without the information given by two elderly cousins our story might still be locked in the past. For many African Americans it is this information shared on the porch among cousins that is the only clue to finding family history. In 1920, Nellie Grant, a Whiting cousin would attend a UNIA convention in New York and speak of “white hypocrisy” saying “they won’t leave our girls alone”. Her statement was a protest against the perilous environment that black women and girls faced.
Moderator: Andrew Ojeda '12
Linda Quarles Arencibia, “Woman Up! African –Descended Women in the Saddle and at the Reins”
Patriarchy and euro-centrism frame how most histories have been traditionally recorded. The histories of African-descended women have labored under hegemony and thus been under-told. There is no want of personages and events about Black women worth telling, rather the stories of their past have simply been dismissed. Scant data sources complicate its knowing. Additionally, certain themes never entered the imagination much less the writings of traditional scholars. In this context that one finds the Black female equestrian. Woman Up! addresses the history of African-descended female equestrianism. In a May 26, 2018 article in The Spectator, horsewoman Molly Watson states, “To ride a horse and have it do as you ask, despite the difference in brute strength, is to feel powerful. But no matter how brave the rider, that power can only be accessed by persuasion – and perhaps this is a particularly female gift.” Horses have historically been associated with notions of strength, power, capacity, validation, and worth. Those intimately involved with them add ideas of wisdom and intuition. These themes also persistent in Black women’s history. Using Ms. Watson’s words as a metaphor, Woman Up! examines Black women’s presence and participation in equestrianism, both historically and contemporarily
Grant Morgan and Anitra Howard, “Unpacking Norfolk’s Desegregation Crisis Step by Step”
Morgan and Howard designed a tour uncovering desegregation in Norfolk, one of the areas in the U.S. that fought the hardest against desegregating their school systems. The tour will include multiple stops such as Booker T. Washington School and St. John’s African Methodist Episcopalian Church to look into the lives of children, parents, and teachers from 1939-69 who were on the frontend of the fight for educational desegregation in Norfolk. The tour will also relate the struggles of desegregation in the past to racial disparities in schools today. The tour will emphasize the roles of black teachers, such as teacher Aline Black, who participated in a lawsuit against the Norfolk Public School Board for equal pay. By focusing on oral histories and letters, this tour will dive into the thoughts shared by black residents during this tumultuous period, rather than the traditional white perspective. Through doing this, we will attempt to bring to light the issues faced in Norfolk’s struggle for desegregation and look at how it reflects in today’s society.
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.
