Entrepreneurial Appetite

A Black Women's History of the United States: A Conversation with Drs. Daina Ramey-Berry & Kali Nicole Gross

• Langston Clark • Season 6 • Episode 6

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Discover the powerful stories and pivotal moments in Black women's history with our distinguished guests, Dr. Daina Ramey-Berry  and Dr. Kali Nicole Ross. Together, we unveil the intricate journey behind their groundbreaking book, which seeks to redefine contemporary Black women's history. From the inspiration sparked by a Rutgers workshop to the inclusion of iconic figures like Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks, we highlight how the authors have woven a tapestry of narratives that celebrate both well-known and unsung heroines. Listen as we explore the profound impact of this work on today's cultural landscape.

Journey with us into the often-overlooked narratives of Black LGBTQ women and the courageous acts that have shaped history. We delve into the trials and triumphs of Frances Thompson and athlete Alice Coachman, whose contributions to history transcend time, breaking barriers and setting the stage for future generations. Our discussion underscores the ongoing need for inclusivity and representation, exploring the cultural bridges between African American descendants of slaves and African immigrants. Through the power of education and storytelling, we emphasize the importance of unity and understanding in building a more inclusive historical narrative.

Finally, we tackle the ever-present issue of racism and white supremacy in America, using events like the 2017 Charlottesville rally as a lens to examine the deep-seated challenges that remain. Our conversation calls for accountability, examining the pressing need for reform in the criminal justice system. We explore the emotional journey of writing this significant work, touching on the haunting legacy of Emmett Till and the necessity of self-care for those who write history's weighty chapters. Join us as we discuss plans for the future, including the development of resources that ensure Black women's history remains an integral part of our collective consciousness.

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Langston Clark:

Hey everyone, thank you again for your support of Entrepreneurial Appetite. Beginning this season, we are inviting our listeners to support the show through our Patreon website. The founding 55 patrons will get live access to our monthly discussions for only $5 a month. Your support will help us hire an intern or freelancer to help with the production of the show. Of course, you can also support us by giving us five stars, leaving a positive comment or sharing the show with a few friends. Thank you for your continued support. What's good everyone.

Langston Clark:

I'm Langston Clark, founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting Black businesses. Welcome to another throwback episode of Entrepreneurial Appetite. We're going to get into our discussion. First off, I want to introduce our panelists for today. We have Dr Dinah Raymond Berry. She's a fantastic scholar, she's a fantastic person. Also, we have Dr Callie Nicole Ross, and so I just really appreciate both of them.

Langston Clark:

We sometimes get caught up in how great of scholars Black folk are once they've reached the level that these two women have, and they are fantastic scholars. But just knowing Dr Berry personally and just looking up Dr Berry personally and just looking up Dr Gross's background and her work that she does, black folk who are incarcerated. There's something I appreciate about both of them is that they're excellent in their everyday things too, and so I think you all will get some of that here today in the conversation. Also want to introduce to everyone someone who was like at the very first book club meeting we had, maybe two years ago. Good friend of mine, sierra Murphy, and she is going to be our moderator for today, has some outstanding questions lined up, and so, without further ado, sierra, just keep us all, and I'm looking forward to a great conversation. Thank you.

Sierra Murphy:

Right, thank you, Langston, appreciate it. I just want to say that while I was reading the book you know, despite, like the various books that I've read by African-American authors about Black history it was insightful to find information that I haven't heard of before. I'll get to some of that and the questions, but I did find myself having to, like, take a lot of breaks because the material is pretty heavy and it's just amazing that, like, even though African Americans have gone through so many trials and tribulations that we've been able to conquer, you know, all type of difficulties, but even just listening to it I could feel saddened or get very angry in the moment. While reading some of the material, it's incredible to kind of see a lot of things that have evolved from African Americans. So, anyways, thank you for listening to my ramble.

Sierra Murphy:

I'm going to get into the questions. So to kind of start us off, like what inspired you guys to write the book? Like what was the process for writing it and, most importantly, like how did you find a lot of this information? You know this is stuff that gets taught in like middle school or elementary school or high school, so I'm interested as to how you've got a lot of this information.

Kali Nicole Gross:

So first of all, thank you all so much for the opportunity to talk with you today, and thank you so much, langston, for the great introduction. I just want to make one thing. I'm a professor of African American Studies at Emory, so I wanted to clarify that. I think somebody said history. In any event, we actually were approached by an editor at Beacon and this was when we were both faculty at UT Austin.

Kali Nicole Gross:

But it was a really fortuitous meeting because we had been thinking a lot and talking about Paula Gidding's book or the work of Darlene Clark Haren and Kathleen Thompson, but those works at that point were, all I think, almost 20 years old, and so you know, it was kind of like this exciting moment to think about writing a history for black women that would serve the needs of readers in the 21st century. And in terms of source material, we really used you know, anything and everything primary research. We also the field of Black women's history has grown exponentially, just by leaps and bounds, so they also took the book as an opportunity to highlight the work of other sister scholars who have just done a lot of cutting edge research. We also tried to use sources that were readily available to help peak folks' interest and so that people can follow up and check out these sources for themselves. So I think that's sort of I don't know, dinah, if you wanted to add anything to that.

Daina Ramey Berry:

I just wanted to echo my appreciation for the invitation. Both of us are really happy to be here. Wish we could be there in person, but we're happy to have this conversation and I think it's a really timely conversation given everything that's happened even this week alone and what's going to happen on the 20th of January when we inaugurate the first woman of African descent as the vice president of the United States. So I think the history is timely.

Daina Ramey Berry:

Dr Gross and I spent a lot of time, as she was saying, talking back and forth about what we wanted to say, who we should cover in the book, how we should write it.

Daina Ramey Berry:

We both were working really hard in the archives to make sure we were telling unique stories and midway into working on the book we had done such a great job of really trying to highlight women that maybe people wouldn't have ever heard of that. When we shared the book with colleagues and a group of sister scholars at a workshop at Rutgers, the first thing that they said to us was that we needed to put some more of the more familiar names in the book as sort of anchors to understand, like who are the other women that were in the peer group of Harriet Tubman, who were the women that were in the peer group of Fannie Lou Hamer, who were some of the other women that preceded Rosa Parks, and so that really changed the way we structured the book midway and that workshop was one of the best moments of our academic careers and just of our process in writing the book.

Kali Nicole Gross:

It really was this incredible moment. Our challenge was to write a book that would be readily available and accessible to a wide readership, and we also wanted to make it expansive. Right, to write a book where any Black woman could pick it up and learn something about themselves or recognize someone in their family, or something along that line. Right, right, to write a book where any Black woman could pick it up and learn something about themselves or recognize someone in their family, or something along that line. Right. But at the same time, it needed to be a kind of a brief survey. Right, it was meant to be sort of an introduction, and so we were really wrestling with a lot and we finally decided that we needed to sort of sit with other sister scholars and just kind of get input, work more collectively, and that's in the vein of Black women's history, quite frankly. I mean, you know, black women are incredible organizers and really know how to network.

Kali Nicole Gross:

So we had this workshop where 10 other scholars were just incredibly generous and just read through everything we had and spent a day hashing it out. What kind of work. What did it? What we had, what we needed to add, what we needed to let go of. It was a really powerful experience to echo Dinah. It was probably one of the most incredible professional experiences that I've had, certainly to date.

Sierra Murphy:

I'd say that one of the most interesting aspects of the book, or at least something that I've had, certainly to date. I'd say that one of the most interesting aspects of the book, or at least something that I learned, were about the stories of Black women who were slaveholders. Could you talk a little bit more about that?

Daina Ramey Berry:

That was a difficult part. We even have a paragraph in there where we say this is a difficult history to discuss. It was awkward for us and even I think even the copy editor at the press was like are you sure you want to say this? But it was. We were trying to find a way. We felt like we couldn't not talk about it because it gets mistaught in classroom.

Daina Ramey Berry:

Whenever people find out that black people enslaved other black people, it's like, oh, there's no reason for us to complain about slavery or they misunderstand what that system looked like.

Daina Ramey Berry:

And we really wanted to find a way to profile a few enslavers, to show what it means for someone to try to purchase their family and what that looked like as a way to live in pseudo-slavery, but then also Black women who chose to be in relationships with white men, that they could then live in a space where they were able to raise their children, have their children become educated, and we were just trying to leave room for that but also put it in context so that people don't take that and use that or misuse that in the way they taught it. So we felt like it was our duty to try to be responsible about telling that history and about really showing that Black women that enslaved other Black folks didn't have the level of power I think we spent a lot of time with language so they could hold people, but they really didn't have the power of a system behind them because of their African ancestry, and so we wanted to make that point very clear. I'm not sure if it came across, but we hope it did.

Sierra Murphy:

I noticed early in the book there were themes of like suicide and self-harm in terms of like defiance. What kind of inspired that portion within the text?

Daina Ramey Berry:

In that space, we saw Black women taking ownership of what they knew was valued about them, and that was their bodies. And in a space where they had little control, they could then do things like make themselves less valuable in a market setting, so that then they wouldn't be sold, so they could stay on a particular estate with their relatives or a space that was familiar to them, where they had loved ones, and so we wanted to show that as a choice. And also some people looked at taking their own lives as a way to go to a better place, go to an afterlife and a space that was devoid of slavery, that didn't have slavery, and so, even though it's difficult to write about and not in the most uplifting writing, it was a part of our experience, and our goal was to always tell the truth, and to tell the truth about our history and about the way in which people responded to different aspects of our history at different moments.

Kali Nicole Gross:

I would just sort of add that it is again also a part of trying to also represent Black women's experiences in a diverse way, so not just presenting the most heroic kinds of stories or themes that typically dominate, I think, mainstream or popular kinds of studies, but to really offer a nuanced, layered history that allows Black women to be fully human right and to leave space for human frailty.

Sierra Murphy:

I also noticed that there were significant themes of Black, queer and trans women. Could you kind of touch on the importance of talking about the LGBTQ community in terms of being a Black woman?

Kali Nicole Gross:

To just build on what I said before, it was really important to us to have an expansive and representative history right, so all kinds of Black women needed to be included, and the Black queer experience was certainly a central aspect of that.

Kali Nicole Gross:

And what we really tried to do was to demonstrate that the history right, so that this isn't something that just shows up in same-sex relationships in the antebellum era.

Kali Nicole Gross:

But we have Black women who today we would identify as transgender, she considered herself of double sex, but this is, you know, shortly after Reconstruction, wanting to tell those stories and map those experiences, both to be representative but also, in the case of Francis Thompson, to show the pivotal role that they played in Black women's history.

Kali Nicole Gross:

You know, just for folks who maybe haven't read the book, Frances Thompson was she identified as female and had been assaulted during the Memphis riots shortly after the Civil War, and it was one of the five women who went on to bravely testify that they had been assaulted by these white men during a race riot and to say that she did not consent. But that testimony made her sort of persona non grata and so she was harassed routinely by police and there were these allegations that she was not, in fact, a woman, but a man. She was ultimately arrested and subjected to a series of invasive examinations and then criminalized because they found her sex to be male, even though she identified as being of double sex and had chosen to live as a woman. So she played this pivotal role in Black women's history and it was just something that we had to include. I think that was also inspired to as Dr. It was just something that we had to include.

Daina Ramey Berry:

I think that was also inspired to, as Dr Gross was saying, to have a really inclusive history. We've also at least for scholars of slavery, have been trying to get to that space in enslavement, to identify queer people that are in slavery, to identify different types of relationships, and it's been hard, but we've been trying to identify that in the scholarship and I think one way for us to do that is was to make sure that we show that there are groups of people throughout every time period, as Dr Gross said, and we were trying to find ways to make sure we incorporated that in the book.

Sierra Murphy:

Definitely important. Could you tell us a little bit more about the decision to include Alice Coachman, considering that black women athletes don't get recognized or celebrated in the same way as black men? Absolutely.

Kali Nicole Gross:

I mean you kind of answered my question.

Kali Nicole Gross:

That was a part of it was just to highlight black women's athleticism and to show to that not only were they athletic you know, natural born sort of athletes I mean this was a passion that she had and nurtured and cultivated as a part of who she was but also that she went on to, you know, win this Olympic gold medal and she broke barriers and that she was aware of the role that she was playing in history.

Kali Nicole Gross:

I don't know if you want to speak to this too. One of the things that I personally learned and I remain awed by about Black women throughout various moments in time, even our present, is how often they work to combat sort of racism and discrimination and all these challenges in part, just so they can live and be who they want to be, cleave out this space for themselves, but also, at the same time, they remain really mindful of the role that they play for the race for Black womanhood more broadly. I'm just in awe of that. Alice Kosher was a perfect example of someone who, you know, she had this incredible athleticism and wanted to exercise and she had to confront these barriers around race and gender, but she knew that she needed to be successful because, if she says it, if she failed, there wouldn't be a space for any other Black woman to come behind her.

Daina Ramey Berry:

I think it also sets the stage for the activism that we're seeing today Black women athletes. So there's a history behind Black women stepping out and going and traveling to other countries and participating in Olympic games when, in the height of segregation, where Black people were having to go through different entrances, not allowed to stay at the same hotels. I think it shows the foundation that the women that are coming up today. It shows a foundation that they are coming from. The only difference that I think we see is that a lot of the activism with someone like Alice Coachman is much more individual. You see, alice Coachman, there are people later on, like Wilma Rudolph and the Tiger Bells, manuel Matias and other Black women track athletes that were doing this individually, but now you're seeing team sports protesting, I mean even today, and they're leading protest movements for Black Lives Matter. I think there's a foundation among individuals as we go back in history to, you know, the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and so I just I think that was really important for us to show as well.

Sierra Murphy:

How can the book be used to reconcile differences throughout African dysphoria?

Kali Nicole Gross:

It's an interesting question.

Sierra Murphy:

I want to make sure I understand when you say reconcile, what do you mean? Experiences amongst African-American descendants of slaves and then people that have like, as you could say, direct lineage from Africa, where they're able to embody their culture, whereas I'm sure that I have roots from Nigeria as well, or at least heard of Western Africa, but I'm not able to embody the culture in the same way. How can we create, like, more cohesion between both communities? For instance, I think one example will be a lady that played Harriet Tubman. I remember a discussion point about why couldn't they get an African-American woman to play Harriet Tubman. Why did they have to get this British lady? There's some other controversy, but I remember that being kind of a question and thinking like I could see how it'd be nice, but what's also the issue with it?

Kali Nicole Gross:

at the same time, one of the ways that I see the book- as being helpful is just to educate some of these communities about the experience.

Kali Nicole Gross:

So to demonstrate not only this sort of this connection, a distant connection, but also to demonstrate all the ways that black folks in the US have retained and also cultivated and adapted a new kind of culture and practice that has served to be a model for, I think, a lot of Black folks throughout the diaspora about how to resist white supremacy in really effective ways. But for Haiti right, who sort of threw off, you know, the use of oppression, you know African-Americans have reshaped the nation. Black women I mean that's what the whole part of the book is about too is that Black women, you know, have pushed back and basically helped make America a truer version of what it pretends to be, and so I think folks educating themselves about that experience can help to, I think, break down some of the barriers perhaps, and also some of the animosity, although the case with that particular actress is also because she had said disparaging things about African-American history and culture, so that was also a part of the resentment.

Daina Ramey Berry:

So hopefully Weed in this book would maybe help her have a better understanding about the folks that she initially maybe spoke about in unkind ways years. If people understood and knew about that history and understood how that oppression was able to sustain itself for so long and that people of African descent that became African American did fight back at every single stage, from the moment they were captured in their communities and in parts of West and Central Africa, from the moment they were put on ships, from the moment they were taken off the ships. We have evidence of that. So I think sometimes the tension that we see is a judgment on a superior-inferiority complex and I think that that doesn't really do any of us service at all. And hopefully, when you understand the histories of all of these regions, that we'll come away and be a little bit more respectful of the larger diaspora.

Kali Nicole Gross:

In thinking about diaspora, some of these other ways. The other thing that we talk about are how certain folks also join the population and become a part of Black women's history in the US. So if we think about you talk about, like Claudia Jones, who emigrated to the US from Trinidad, you know, as a fairly young person and you know fought until she was deported, you know as a member of the Communist Party. But even other folks who people may not be aware of, you know everyone Lodz, malcolm X, you know is helpful to know that his mother was actually from Grenada. So you know, trying to also stretch out and complicate, kind of how we talk about diaspora. And of course we end the book with, you know, patrice Okumu, who scaled Lady Liberty in defense of children in cages at the border. I think that there are ways that we engage diaspora that are beginning to also help along, helping those dialogues also helped along helping those dialogues.

Sierra Murphy:

Can you talk a little bit about some of the struggles of the woman within the book that kind of paralleled to Black women and present day. I mean I think the woman.

Daina Ramey Berry:

we opened the book with Isabel de Alvera. We opened with her, you know, asking to go on an expedition to what now is contemporary New Mexico, and she says that she is neither bound by marriage or slavery. So she's a free woman of African descent and she knows that people will be disturbed by her presence At the end of her testimony, where she had to go get this piece of paper to allow her to travel. She says I demand justice. I think for Dr Gross and I, when we decided to put her narrative, her story, in there, we were thinking about, you know, the fact that Black women today are still demanding justice and that we came to this country demanding justice and we're still demanding it.

Daina Ramey Berry:

And I think one of the key takeaways for us who write about Black women's history is that we're seeing Black women across every time period in American history. They're often involved in multiple causes. They're not just, you know, a one-stop shop in terms of like, focusing on one cause. Most Black women were suffragettes. They were also abolitionists, you know. They were also in the post-slavery era. They were fighting for desegregation and also anti-lynching campaigns. So they were often doing multiple things and I think that was something that we tried to stress and we see that still happening today as well.

Kali Nicole Gross:

We also see real continuity in terms of Black women's role in the political process. So, stacey Abrams, right, the Black Lives Matter, these sisters, they have a real history. As Dr Berry mentioned, black women who are suffragists, but they also organized in groups also. So, black women. In 1924, just after the ratification of the 19th Amendment, they actually formed their own political group. Right, they were, you know, the National League of Republican Colored Women.

Kali Nicole Gross:

Right, they organized, they led voter registration drives in places where people were able to vote. They tried to agitate for Blacks in the South to be able to exercise their right in spite of racist tyranny and segregation, and they tried to put demands on politicians. They recognized that Black people and Black women could be this important voting block for the Republican Party, which was still at that time the party of Lincoln For many folks, not the GOP that we know today. And at the same time, they registered their discontent when they realized that their needs were not being met and they disbanded that group and began to switch party affiliation. So they have this legacy of organizing politically, of engaging the process, of taking candidates into churches and fundraising and campaigning. All of that has a history.

Sierra Murphy:

Thank you, just kind of talk about the recent events that have taken place on the Capitol. I was actually reading a couple of articles that were talking about some of the protesters, the rioters that were there that had actually died. Like the lady climbing through the window, she got shot and one lady got trampled to death and police officer being killed by fire extinguisher. He was by one of the, by one of the rioters and it just kind of made me kind of reflect back at like the extent and brutality of like white supremacist violence. And you know, after listening again to the story of Emmett Till and how you guys were going into detail about you know what his body had had went through, I just kind of wonder what is it going to take for United States to kind of come to terms with white supremacy violence and have them notice that it affects everybody, even people within their own community. That's a great question.

Daina Ramey Berry:

I mean and I think Dr Gross and I had a chance to like talk one-on-one this week I know for me it's been hard to process. Although it's very familiar, it's nothing like for me. I'm not surprised. I wasn't surprised that we can go back through several moments in history where we see this level of activism. I mean, we don't have to go that far. We can go to Charlottesville. It was at 2017 where we saw something similar to this right, although it wasn't our nation's capital. These are some of the same groups that were marching at UVA's campus and then in Charlottesville downtown, where another woman was killed as a result of that.

Daina Ramey Berry:

What I always say is that has never left our culture. That has never left our community. These are grandsons, great-grandsons of some of the same people that advocated for white supremacy in the post-slavery era. They have not left. It's not like they're gone. We haven't healed from that history and there's still a mindset. I mean, even if you looked sorry I'm interrupting myself, but even if you look at some of the things that they were saying, like I saw a lot of the footage, like visually, but then to actually hear the audio footage of some of the things that were being said like this is our country, as if it's not ours, and I think I said something about that earlier in the week. It's like as if black people don't have a right to be here, haven't done a lot of the labor to allow us to be here and have supported this nation, fought in almost every war.

Daina Ramey Berry:

I think that right there is missed in these kinds of conversations. And to answer your question, what's going to happen? When will it go away? I think we have to first acknowledge it that it's here and we're starting to see some people acknowledge it this week, but I'm not sure.

Daina Ramey Berry:

I think there was a video and a montage put out today by the New York Times and it was saying like this is not who we are, and they were sort of playing on that and the three authors of this video montage were saying but actually it is who we are. It is absolutely who we are. This is absolutely the kinds of responses that people have had when they didn't win their party, didn't win the election. This is absolutely to have nooses hanging. You know the noose stand out there. Actually, during Jim Crow era, black people were actually being lynched at that time. So I think that this has always been a part of our culture, and until we start telling the truth about our history and putting that in the books, and that you will have difficult passages that you're going to have to read, I think that's the starting point, and that's where I'd like us to start is to tell the truth about who we are and where we've been.

Kali Nicole Gross:

Yeah, I mean, I agree, I don't have too much more to add. I do think this myth about this isn't who we are is just not serving us well at all and it just causes everyone to have to go back and, you know, restate this, you know, go through and cut this myth again Again. I also think that we need to, we have to do better about just confronting it head on and finding better language to begin to really address and talk about it. One of the things that I was struck by and just sort of watching the footage also, and this might be taking us too far afield, so I apologize is that they kept asking this question what would have happened if these were the Black Lives Matter protests? Or why do you think there are these disparities? Or whether it's like we all know why that is right, like what are we wasting time reinventing this wheel? For Everyone knows why it was disparate treatment. Come on, you know. And so at this point it's sort of like what are we going to do about that? Who's going to be accountable for it? I know one person resigned. It's clear that some of those officers were in full agreement with some of these folks. Are those folks going to be held accountable? Can we parlay that into ongoing reforms in policing?

Kali Nicole Gross:

Now that you have seen with your own eyes everything that everyone has been talking about for the last century with respect to racism and policing and criminal justice, you know it's just, it's enough. So I definitely feel like we have to also just let's we know what it is now right, we don't need to kind of revisit. I mean, definitely we have to teach this history to get folks up to speed. But no one is in denial about racism or white supremacy or, you know, white privilege. At this point it was on full display.

Kali Nicole Gross:

So the conversation I think that is the other piece I'm personally waiting for. I don't want to start again back here with everything you know. We're at this point in the dialogue now, definitely that I think that is something that has to change. And then also, again, it needs to be real consequences. Everyone's talking. You know already the rhetoric has moved toward healing. I'm hearing healing a lot, but I haven't heard a whole lot about consequences or accountability yet, and so you know we can't have that right, we can't have that sort of healing without people being accountable and having consequences right. Those are sort of my thoughts just where I'm at with it at this moment.

Sierra Murphy:

So I thank you both for your time. I do want to turn the table back to Langston.

Langston Clark:

Thank you, sierra. We're going to get into the Q&A. I want to start with a question from Jada Andrew Sullivan so I think she was like the first person to type something in the chat, and so she's wondering how often will an updating of the history be and will there be a website or some other platform that people can use to access this Black women's history of the United States, because we know that it is an ongoing history?

Daina Ramey Berry:

Yeah, that's a great question. We've actually had that question about a lot of spaces where we've talked and we actually were thinking about doing a website. We are coming out with the paperback version and we did make some changes to the epilogue just because of events of 2020. We also have a young adult version of the book coming out so that that would get in the hands of K-12. And we know that there's a.

Daina Ramey Berry:

We did a conference last year in the summer, a virtual conference at the University of Missouri. They have an Institute for Black Studies there and we did a talk at that particular group and we were interacting with a number of K-12 educators who had already used the book even before we made it into a young adult version. So I think those are two different spaces. I mean, I feel like now, so much has happened in the last year. There are the things that we would add a change and update. This writing of Black Women's History sort of a general reader on Black Women's History, as Dr Gross said at the beginning has happened every few years and we knew that there wasn't one for our generation, and so that's one of the reasons why we wrote it and we tried to write it where we were encompassing a number of stories across the whole arc of the history. I don't know if we want to add any more to that, dr Gross.

Kali Nicole Gross:

No, I mean, I think you pretty much said it all, so I'm good with that. Thank you, dr Berry.

Langston Clark:

Thank pretty much said it all, so I'm good with that. Thank you, dr Barry, thank you all again and thank you for the question, jada. I have a question. This is really to well, I guess both of y'all could answer. But I know, dr Gross, you wrote the last half of the book, the More Contemporary Things, if I'm not mistaken, and I was wondering two things. One, I'm a black sports scholar, so and I might get in trouble here because I might, should know the answer to this as a black sports scholar but I'm just wondering is there, is there a space for you, maybe, or someone else, to write like a comprehensive history of black women's history in sport? Because I mean, we hear about the men, we hear about the meeting the brothers had when, when Muhammad Ali was stripped of his title, all the things that we see LeBron and him doing now, but what does this history look like specific to Black women in sports?

Kali Nicole Gross:

So thanks for this question. Well, first of all, I want to say that this was definitely a joint endeavor, so Dina and I wrote the book together and, while we have different areas of expertise and speciality, we definitely shared and weighed in back and forth, so I want to invite you also to weigh in, dinah. I definitely think there are some works out about specific Black women athletes, and those have kind of touched on longer histories, but I certainly would agree that I think a comprehensive survey of it is overdue. I know there are some graduate students who are working on it, and so I do think that there'll be more coming out about that, especially to because of the momentous activism of black women athletes. Currently People will want to give a context for that, from the sisters in the WNBA to all the various kinds of tennis stars, the gymnasts, all these folks. I definitely think that there's more to be done there.

Daina Ramey Berry:

There is a scholar and I was actually trying to find her name. I don't think the book is out yet. She's an African-American female scholar that writes on black women in sports Amira Rose.

Kali Nicole Gross:

Daviness, how could I forget? Yes?

Daina Ramey Berry:

I was really glad. I'm like, okay, we got it, we got to name this, so thank you. And then also a former student of ours from UT Austin who's now a professor at University of Michigan, ava Perkis, dr Ava the really, really beautiful history of women and women that were that were focused on being healthy but wanting to be athletes. She has some of the first women's basketball teams and basketball leagues and that book will be coming out, I think. I hope I'm well, I don't want to say I don't. I think it's coming out under university press, but I don't want to misspeak. So there are two books that I can think of that are coming out.

Daina Ramey Berry:

Then there's also a number of, as Dr Gross was saying, there are biographies that were written. There's one that actually Wyoming Atayas wrote a book Tiger I forgot the name of it, I think it's Tiger Bells, but Wyoming Atayas, he was an Olympian in track and field. There's a number of books about Gail Devers, jackie Joyner-Kersee, some of the track athletes, also gymnasts, stuff about Flojo and other other gymnasts as well, tennis players. So there's a lot more there and I think that's a wide, open field in scholarship and I'm sure we're going to, as Dr Gross was saying I'm sure we're going to see much more scholarship in that area.

Langston Clark:

Thank you. So the first question we're going to allow someone to speak out loud. We're going to go with Tammy Jackson and then, after Tammy goes, Leah Fulton, I'm going to come to you.

Kali Nicole Gross:

Hey Dr Berry, hey Dr Gross, how y'all doing. Two questions what was the biggest surprise? Or thing? Because, like as a historian, as a scholar, sometimes like oh my God, that shocked me or like it invigorated you when you were writing this book. What was that? And then, dr Gross, you actually taught me this in grad school. What was your method of?

Leah:

self-care during this writing process.

Kali Nicole Gross:

Thanks for these questions and hello, it's good to hear from you. What shocked me? There's so much, I think. Honestly, the more that I learned about Frances Thompson, I was surprised At the coverage of her experience. I was stunned that there were etchings of her that was like this. I was just blown away by that. So that was one piece, and then the other sort of quick piece that always it wasn't new to me, but I think it's changed over time.

Kali Nicole Gross:

For me, now that I'm a mother, also is the, the lucid way in which Emmett Till's mother was able to recount his numerous grotesque injuries, what she when she first recovered his corpse. That still sort of shakes me to my core and whenever I watch her do that, I'm always like just brought to tears. But I think those two things are probably what shocked me In terms of self-care. I mean sometimes, you know, dinah and I had to weigh in. We had to just check in, process, breathe. Sometimes it was just walk away, and you know Netflix and red wine and chill, and then sometimes too I had to just push myself a little bit. Also that you know as hard as it is to study that, like you know, these sisters lived it. You know sort of try to just summon up some of that energy to keep going.

Daina Ramey Berry:

Thanks, it's good to hear your voice, tammy. I would say for me I think we've talked about this before, but it's about the resilience of Black mothers and you know we talk about Emmett Till's mother, but for me I was thinking about Millie and Christine McCoy's mother, monamia. This is a woman of African descent that gives birth to the first African-American women's conjoined twins, and everything she went through to have those her daughters taken away from her when they were young and then sold, and then how she went back and she found someone to sponsor her to go to Europe to get them back when they were stolen, having to go to court and go to trial in Britain I mean, that's just at that time was amazing, and I knew about the twins more so from the way in which they were put on display in a very disrespectful way, and it was just different to see it from the perspective of their mother. And so I think that was something that was shocking, because I just didn't know why that part of the history wasn't told.

Daina Ramey Berry:

The spectacle of them was what was told, and not so much about the human side of them and I think self-care, that's like I think, everything that Dr Gross said also exercise, walking, running, whatever, just getting out. Also, me I've been doing like mindless television and also comedy, like some comedy, just so that I can laugh and laugh in the process. But also, like Dr Gross said, at the end it's like how can I not make it through whatever X is when these women were going through something a thousand times worse, and they did it so we could be here, and so that's where I try to draw strength from them.

Langston Clark:

Thank you both for those responses, le ah.

Leah:

Great, thank you. Thank you so much. This is really really rich and I'm a student, my discipline is in higher ed. Rich and I'm a student. My discipline is in higher ed. I anticipate advancing to candidacy in a couple of weeks and finishing a doc minor in Black Studies.

Leah:

My research focuses on Black mothers and our relationship to higher education as faculty, as administrators, as students, and part of what I'm spending some time on is related to our history and so laying a foundation for understanding that history. Understanding there's also some challenges in terms of even how we conceptualize motherhood. Thinking about the work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, but part of, I guess the question that I'm asking is, in my research so far, motherhood is often a cursory mention, that there's an acknowledgement that motherhood played a role in terms of being a mediator for who could or couldn't gain access to higher ed. It's addressed in terms of those kinds of opportunities, in terms of work that were had or not allowed to be had. It's not always particularly explicit, and so I appreciate your reflections about motherhood and relationship to Emmett Till and some of the work that you've done. I'm curious, as we look at these historic issues around education and racial uplift, if you've come across any insights related to motherhood and accessing higher education, depending on how you define it.

Daina Ramey Berry:

There are mothers that were sneaking and teaching, and we had the William writes about this in a book called Self-Taught where mothers were sneaking and teaching their children in the evenings. They had community schools, free black women, like Susie King Taylor during the Civil War, were finding ways to teach other soldiers and also other members of the black community community. So I would say that there's always been a drive and a desire for parents and mothers in particular, to make sure that their children learn and get an education beyond whatever they were. So we see that, even going back into slavery and for the more contemporary period. Well, I want to say one more thing.

Daina Ramey Berry:

We also wrote in this book about mothers who there are some women that were that embraced motherhood and there were other women that did not who there are some women that were that embraced motherhood and there were other women that did not, and there's some women that left their children behind, and so I think that's something that we need to think about and talk about as well as one of the challenges of motherhood, and particularly during moments where Black women were being raped, how they responded to being mothers. And then there's also women that couldn't be mothers. So that's. There's a lot there, I think, but I don't know. Dr Gross, did you want to add anything to that?

Kali Nicole Gross:

The only thing that I might just sort of add is that I definitely encountered a little bit more in terms of when we looked at the role of Black girls in desegregating the schools, and so I think there's a lot of rich excavation that you can still do around that, particularly with respect to the mothers and the decisions that went into. I think mothers especially sort of made in terms of picking girls to be sort of on the front line in terms of desegregating schools. I think sometimes the immediate response is that we imagine that maybe they would be like safer somehow. But there's a calculation too is that they are very resourceful and able to sort of adapt and had, like you know, these qualities that would, you know, enable them to potentially persevere under those circumstances.

Langston Clark:

Thank you. Thank you both for answering the question and thank you, leah, for the question. There are some I think, in some ways fair and unfair critiques of African-American studies or black scholars and academia being disconnected from the reality that you know everyday black folk face. I think the book is timely. I think the book is rich. Can you all talk about the significance of the book in terms because I know y'all mentioned the K-12 book for younger students but with the policies that have changed in education in Texas and maybe across the country, like, how can the book be used to leverage, like changes in education, k-12 or maybe even in higher education, given that ethnic studies is something that's going to be available to students in Texas and some other states?

Daina Ramey Berry:

As we mentioned earlier about the conference with K-12 educators over the summer. So Texas, as you just mentioned, is going to be offering an African-American elective. There are teachers in the Dallas ISD school district who piloted a course about a year ago. There's a teacher, Ina Cook, who's out of Kylene ISD who's teaching the course now, and I think there are other Black women scholars that have taught and worked with leadership training and professional and development workshops for K-12 educators, like Kelly Carter Jackson, where they're teaching workshops with teachers on how to teach history.

Daina Ramey Berry:

So I think that this book we learned. We were pleasantly surprised. We didn't know that that would be the outcome, but this book was something that has been really embraced by a number of high school, middle school teachers and we were floored when we were at this conference and had this really dynamic conversation with a number of educators and how they wanted to use it in the classroom. So I'm optimistic about the direction. I think also because of the change in administration that's coming in the next week or so, also with Betsy DeVos stepping down, I think that's going to open up the door for more ethnic studies at the K-12 level. We also have ethnic studies, Mexican-American studies, being taught in Texas public schools, but a number of other school systems are involved in this as well. So I think I think it's the door is wide open and I hope that we can drive forward and help with that and so in any in any way that we can.

Langston Clark:

Dr Gross, do you have?

Daina Ramey Berry:

something you want to add.

Kali Nicole Gross:

I totally agree with Dinah and I hope that we get it into the schools more. I mean we both do work with teacher trainings.

Langston Clark:

Thank you for joining this edition of Entrepreneurial Appetite. If you liked the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding 55 patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials, or you can subscribe to the show. Give us five stars and leave a comment.