among membership to promote black women in the profession, to disseminate information and opportunities in the field, and to suggestions concerning research topics and repositories we are organized and has grown from a handful of women in the 1970s to an organization that counts hundreds of members. we stand on the shoulders of our founders as we come together to share our work with one another, to fellowship, and to remind other why we have all chosen to dedicate our to correcting the narrative, to telling their stories and, to save their names. i have the honor of serving as the moderator of today's conversation. with three living legends jesus. pioneering and historians of black women. sit with us today. our conference is shining threads and heavy loads where we and when we exhale black women making history and all attempt introduce each of these iconic who have left indelible marks on the field of american history by centering the lives of black women. we have limited so i apologize in advance for paring down all the accolades. paula giddings is the elizabeth a woodson 1922 professor emerita of africana studies at college. she the author of when and where i enter the impact of black women race and sex in america in search of sisterhood, delta sigma theta and the challenge the black sorority movement. i'm waiting the sound that that. i knew had to get that moment. before we all get a little louder. let's keep and of course of course the biography of anti-lynching activist ida b wells. ida, a sort among lions, which won the los angeles times book prize for biography and was the final list for the national book critics circle award. ida was deemed one of the best books of 2008 by the washington post and chicago tribune and earned the first inaugural john hope franklin research center book award presented by the duke university libraries. the book also won the leticia woods brown book award from the association of black women historians and we offer the 2022 award later today evelyn brooks higginbotham is the victor thomas professor of history and of african and african american at harvard university. she's been a tenured member at harvard since 1993, and she has chaired the department of african and african american studies and the department of history. she is the founder and coordinator of acs departments. social engagement initiative an innovative pedagogy combines rigorous academic work with on the ground experience. professor higginbotham served as the national president of the association. the study of african american life and history from 2016 to 2022, just 22, 2021 and 21. yes, ma'am. a pioneering scholar, african-american women's history. she is the author of the prize winning book righteous discontent the women's movement in, the black baptist church, 1882 1920. she's also the classic african history text from to freedom, which first published by john hope franklin in 1947. among her most notable awards, the 2014 national humanities medal from president obama. deborah gray white is the board governors distinguished professor of and professor of women's and gender studies at rutgers university. there should be r-u because there's so many. rutgers is strong. the house today. during her more than three decades at rutgers, she taught and mentored students co-directed the black atlantic race nation and gender project. at rutgers center for historical analysis served as a research professor at the rutgers institute for research women and shared the department. so we have three chairs sitting front of us. professor white is the author of i a woman female slaves in the plantation south a field generator and shifting text. that continues to be taught in classrooms and referenced just about every book. probably that written in this room on black history. her other monographs include. too heavy a load. black women in defense of themselves 1894 to 1994. lost in the usa. american from the promise keepers to million mom. march and the three volume edition of scarlet and black professor white. also edited telling histories. black women historians in ivory tower, a compilation 17 personal narratives by leading black women historian. she has received fellowships from the guggenheim foundation, woodrow wilson international center for for scholars fellowship, the aclu, the american association of university women. the ford foundation. the list goes on. what i'd to do before we begin conversation is to take a moment to and recognize these three scholars. all right. i think there's going to be a lot of that smiling clapping, maybe even some tears. it's really an honor to have this conversation with three people, all of whom have touched my life personally at different moments and touched the lives of probably just about everyone in this room. and so we're going to have a conversation session today. much in kind of the vein of our opening plenary session, something that i hope all of us can chew on and meditate on and engage in. and so since we came together this conference, we've talked about origin stories and many of us in this room, we know the three of you as iconic historians, but we don't necessarily what compelled you to become writers, researcher, professors, administrators. and can i ask you, each of you, to share a little bit your sort of in origin story. and so now i get to pick who goes first or does anybody want to jump out front? i'll jump out. jump in. i'm the oldest. so my origin story, you know, grew up in a family dedicated to black history. my father worked with cartagena, woodson from the 1930s until was and in 1950. he i you you know, i would go with him to the association for the study of african-american life and history. i knew black history when. i went to college. i knew black history when i went graduate school at the. at howard. at howard university. to get my master's. i found out i didn't know black history. i sat in a classroom with rosalind turpin and rosalind penn. we were in professor donald taylor's class and we were talking about what our research projects were. and at that time i was working on a man named alpheus hinton. and alpheus was a scholar. he was the son of a very person. in fact his mother was a very famous, but he he was on the left. and so i was working that. and all of a sudden when ross talked about her work, she talked about people i knew historic and many, many people i didn't know historically. but i just want you to think your generation you come to graduate knowing about women in history you come to graduate school with the word gender in your mind that, word gender wasn't even in my vocabulary. and when i heard the name church terrell and rb wells and harriet tubman, i knew those names. but those women were race women. i know any they had racial consciousness. i didn't know anything about gender consciousness. and here was was talking about these women who were fighting for the vote. she transformed life. and just very quickly, she and sharon harley, they decided, as we were graduate students, that nobody else was doing this. we didn't have professors that doing this. so they decided that graduate students would put together this called afro-american women struggles and images. so that came out in 1978. i was still in graduate school by then in a ph.d. program. but i always say this to my graduates and i'm saying this to graduate students here today. those of you, the millions of you who have worked with the deborah gray white that. you know, that you shape the field, you know, we literally began this thing called black women's as graduate. you know, these were our dissertations. that's what you're doing now. you still field defining. i'll i'd like to say that you know oh i had that i knew black history. i didn't. i am i'm going to plug the memoir that i'm in the process of writing. but i grew up in housing project in in new york city. and i just social studies and then when i got into high school, i still like social studies. and i had a teacher who said, you know, the textbook was didn't seem to be. she gave me some books and she said, you know, if you like history so much, it was in american history. here, here are some books. talk about american history. and that's when i realized that history was not a set of dates. and it wasn't just some people, you know, memorizing. and i mean, i those books up. i just, i devoured them. and every time she gave me more, i just devoured them. i would go home, you know, i'd stay and i, you know i read them and. so in college and college, it was one of those things. it was so late sixties, early seventies. they didn't have african-american history or studies. i was one of those people who protested to make sure to bring black studies into the the universe city. but still, the idea of being a professor i thought maybe i'd just be a a high school teacher, you know, because i had been so inspired by the teacher who gave me all those history books. and i get a job. i got a job, a fifth grade teacher, which i started a one september, and by november i was putting in my applications for graduate. i was like, i can't do this. and so why i. i didn't know what a professor did my my powers, my parents were. you know, my mother graduated from high school. something i'm writing about now. my grandparents were sharecroppers and they were illiterate. so my mother was, you know, she graduated from from high school. my father had a sixth grade education. they didn't know anything about what a professor did. all i knew about being a professor was they don't work. they don't work as. obviously, i was, you know. but they don't have to work from 9 to 3 or from 9 to 5. and they seem to control over their time. so i didn't have anybody giving me a business to run or anything. so i'm like, well, this is what i'll do. i'll be a professor. long story short, i get to graduate school and writing the my dissertation and it happened to be the early seventies time on the cross and and herbert gutmann the black family and slavery and freedom and of course jordan roll all his books are coming out and i'll read his stuff and i'm like a queer where really black women they're over the place, but they are no place. and i thought the interpret was wrong. so i had a dissertation topic i was going to write about. african-american women in sports because that's that was also my passion and but i didn't i wrote aren't i a woman and there's whole story about that. but that's how it happened. and for those of you who don't know, it barely the trash can. so. we just got together night and. and one of the things we said to each and talked about was how proud we are of all of you. yeah listening to these papers of this and and it's certainly been a way to measure how far, you know, we have come. i remember. your point deborah when i read when when and where enter was a manuscript. my mentor who taught me great deal about writing in journalism because i'm a journalist and she read the manuscript and was already at the copy editors. she said you can publish this. she said you'll, be a laughing stock if you publish this book. nobody is interested in an entire book about black women. and look where we are now. right. my origin story is really as a my parents too were involved in civil rights from yonkers, new york. and my father was one of the founders of core. so it was a political family. and i remember vividly when i just about 13 years old, and that was year of the freedom riots. and from that moment on, when saw what happened to those riders and to the courage and especially when young people took on the rides and they weren't that much older, i was and i remember asking myself well, what is the power of this called race? what is it? what is it that could this kind of courage that can make say that they will die? remember those young, you know, young men and women, right. riding out wills, oh. and what is it about that makes such hatred so so that has always been the inquiry. that was always my head as as began to come of age and. i came of age actually. my beginnings are really in the black arts movement. after howard i graduated from howard universe city, went right into publisher random house and was in this world that always wanted to be in this world writers. so the people i hung out with, i was than most of them. but the people i knew was toni cade bambara and nikki and audrey lord. toni morrison came to random house while i was there and we became fast friends after she asked. i was a secretary at random house when i first came and she asked me to and some others to help her type a a manuscript that she was preparing. and what we didn't know at the time that we were typing the bluest eye. but that that was my world left random for howard university press, where i met others and where i met a lot of historians. charles harris, who started howard university, was a visionary, was one the first black editors in publishing and was a visionary about publishing history. and so i first met john hope franklin there. i met many others on his reading, all that that generation. ralph, that generation of of of scholars. and after howard working at a news magazine called encore magazine on american world wide news, the first black news magazine where went to put up and this and this inquiry was inquiry was always there what is this thing. went to paris for encore magazine i was the paris bureau chief which meant the paris bureau was me and whatever stringers i could find. but i thought if i went to europe and i went to africa, i did a lot of reporting africa that i would this would help me answer some those questions if i was going to the origins of whiteness and of race blackness and but so the way i was trying to answer these questions was through these different jobs. but then i came back from paris and was asked to by a professor bennett college in south carolina, was preparing some volumes of black women's work for the bicentennial and asked me. if i would write some manuscripts or manuscript on the arts. black women in the arts and black women in civil rights, and particularly with the black women in civil rights. this is when i decided this is when it really occurred to me something sort of opened up and said, you know, i'm going to find these in history. and that really begins that journey, that part of the journey of of a historic call, a perspective. i didn't know very much history at the time i, i started and one of the first important books i did read was rosalind turbo pens and shown harley's book for american women in images. a red bell hooks was very influential influential at that moment. and and more that that began my journey of history history. all of you. spent time in the archives and much has been sort of written or stated these kinds of spaces spaces aren't always warm or inviting to those of us engaged in black women's history in particular. and i'm wondering you could talk a little bit about your experi science, maybe a one single experience in the archives maybe to offer some advice, especially i'm thinking to junior colleagues in the room who are actively beginning their work in the archive. but maybe to talk a little bit about what it means to be in the archive doing black women's history history. well, for me and it's going to be a good story, the good story. just just the back up. i you know before i became a college professor, i was a junior high school teacher and a high school teacher. and from junior high and high school, i went to the maryland spingarn center and i was there manuscript, research associate and i was there. you know, i would work with these scholars who would come in and they would say, you need to go to graduate school, but i work with papers, okay? i work with papers. and so i a sense of just wonderful collections that were in maryland. but the good story was and i'm taking it back to afro-american women. so, you know, sharon and rosalind were saying, well, what you going to write your article on? you got to do a contribution. and so i had done something on mary church, terrell for, the dictionary of american -- biographies. i didn't want to do her again. i couldn't figure out who i wanted to work with. so i talked to mother and my mother said, well you know, there was this woman that went to your grandfather's church named nannie helen burroughs, and she, you know, and i might tell you the thing that's so amazing, it is that her name was not a name, was widely understood by my generation of the 1970s. and she died in like 62. so it's like she had been gone even that long. but anyway, i, i, i went into the i was working maryland, so i went in and i looked at the things there and it was pretty much there that i was to write the article about nannie helen burroughs and the training school for women and girls for afro studies. but the good story is this. so now i'm in graduate school and i'm at the university of rochester with people like general casey and i. i decided is going to be my dissertation topic women in the baptist church. so i go to interview because i'm from d.c. i go to the school and nannie burroughs had and i'm sitting there talking to a a woman named amelia downey and she says to me, oh, you know, why don't we go over to the old school? do you want to see the old trade school? so i said, of course i do. so i go to the old trade schools and there are boxes from ceiling to floor. now, mind you, i had just finished working at maryland spingarn. so i said to her, are those things? she said, those are the papers. and any helen burroughs? so i'm like, oh my goodness, you got to get these things to the library of congress. now i wanted them at the library of congress because i knew they'd get processed quickly. now i am and because i'd worked for moreland, spingarn had even been trained. the national archives. i went to the library of congress and i said, you know, you've just got these papers. and i have training. i work for you for free and help the current library. and so processing these papers and i spent my entire. of like 1978 working in those papers. so i got to see all those nanny helen burroughs in the archives, even before they actually got to be public. that was a wonderful experience, i must tell you. it just transformed my life. it transformed how i wrote it. transform the themes that i was writing about. so that's my happiest archive moment. well i don't really have a real happy archive. of. i just remember particularly go into the archive and you're looking enslaved women, you're looking through plantation records and you know, i now that there is a vocabulary area that there is a theory that that we've theorized african-american women's history. i was i was there and looking for ever and also i did work at a time when i didn't have anybody to help me. my my, my dissertation advisor was was somebody who was much more of a hindrance. in fact, he, he, he, he not pass my dissertation, which was the first iteration of aren't i woman. he failed it and so i yeah, he failed it. and he told me that there was no way that there was going to be a defense. and he told me this a week before the defense, which had already been scheduled. so i. four, four, four, i a woman. i just eons of time him going through plenty in records looking for story of african american women only to not find ensley of women there. and so whenever i remember was a conference darlene clarke kind was i had a conference on black women in the middle west and there was a session on the archives and i could say was black women aren't there now. no one was teaching me how to look. no one was teaching me how to read the silences. and i'm just going to say, i had a hard time. one of the reasons that i did i mean, there was the wpa narratives. and, of course with the wpa narratives. now people use them and their quote unquote, acceptable as sources. but at the time. 1970s, it was like, you can't use those because, you know, these are not authentic. and these people, our they're older. and so you can't deal with their memories. you know, it's so and and so if you don't use the wpa narratives, then what are you going to use? so, i mean, that's part of the story. one of the reasons that i did too heavy load was because i ran from the 19th century not that i got out of in a hurry because i there were no sources i and i had been told, well, you don't know. you just it allows a historian you don't know how to do it, etc.. and i'm like, i know how to resources, know a lot of resources. so if i did if you notice, if you to too heavy a load i'm reading organized nation records i'm like sources i them then i found them and i could them and i can interpret the aren't i a woman was i can't say it was a labor of love because it really truly was a labor of sorrow to to to borrow because i cried i cried throughout it i cried throughout the dissertation and when it was finally accepted after a year of rewriting it, i cried through trying to get it published and just say one other thing. i found even doing work in in particularly at moreland and also at some of the our hbcu used to be very difficult and now maybe there's there's more accessibility but i remember at howard i would go in and they say you could only take pick and see. now you can take pictures. but then you had to xerox. so okay, you better have a like, like at some places. like when i went to tuskegee, i went and got a whole roland nichols right from the bank because they actually let me just copy do it as much. and so i'm like okay. i'll be back this afternoon. and i went to the bank and i got rolls of nickels, etc. but when i went to howard, howard said, you can take pictures of five. they would not let me more than five or ten copies. and then you had to take notes on the rest of them. and i just found it to be very difficult. the one person i can say and was esmee von, who really, really just she would she was just this don't don't worry about them. you just do what you need to do. but if she wasn't there, i had a very, very difficult time and then even tried to make appointments and i understand the issue has a lot to do with money and not having the people but as i said i make my archive experiences were not all that great to me or archive sort like a religious experience for and to go through into an archive and to touch things papers to other people that touch the historical figures that touched the just feel i just could feel myself just surrounded by and by the history. but the most the most i had i understand i had some of these difficulties you had to advancement guard. but the most the most fun i had, i mean, was going on the road for ida wells. so i went into these all these small archives all over mississippi, the particular lady in chicago. so i go to holly springs, i go to there to the the little registry in little tiny holly springs, mississippi and within 10 minutes, i find the marriage of ida's parents. so it was this it was amazing. i said this exists. and i had a friend would travel with me. he was also a member of the wells family and was and was kind of an amateur genealogist. and he's one that helped me with so much of the family history because he'd been doing a lot of research so we would travel together and he was looking specifically well for his. it was on the other side. the family of his great great grandmother and one time we went into tip county, a small county there in mississippi and we went into their little ginger, their little archive. and we found the manifest of names of a slave owner, you know, who who was who was dissolving is a property. and there was his great great grandmother kizzy. it was her name at the age of nine was listed in this. and we just stopped you know i his name was maxwell. i said, maxwell, just go get a drink. i mean, let's just, you know, for today and think about this. but but there were those those kinds of moments. that one that was always inspiring to me when. i when i searched and there was one time i also now i'm just going to end with this searching in the archives in mississippi. and there is an enslaved woman's name and her name is remember me, campbell do are campbell and one word i remember me was her name was and that's i about doing this and and and making those lives there for all of us to remember and and to think about and so so i get a little tired or distressed. i think of remembering, oh, wow. you're so i'm going to ask a short question. this i want to make sure we have time for for q&a q&a. but we today and actually yesterday as well we've talked the founding of the field, which really kind of includes all of your books. so from enslaved women to either be wells barnard to baptist women we've in this room benefited tremendously from your work. but i want to ask you all to talk about the future of the field where are we going what must we. outside. okay i think sky's the limit. i, i. when i when i'm sitting in it's like we talk throughout last night at dinner and. i think of what said to me or what said to you like, you know, you're going to be laughing stock and nobody wants nobody wants. i said that. no, there's no there is no market out there for black women and nobody wants to read and i was people asked they just said, what are you going to do with the who's going to read black limits? it's three. you know i have to say, it's almost like when i was a kid and you know, if you want because i before black makeup you know before you could get before fashion fair okay i'm of that generation and you had to get makeup and you have you had to get flesh colored in even flesh colored stockings. flesh colored was always made white people. so it's like they never thought that there was even a market for black makeup. there was no market for black women's holes. sorry. there was so, you know, the idea that there would be a market for books looked black women it wasn't in any or publishers imagine and now when i look at the kinds of subjects that people are doing it's i would never have thought of doing this book so this no this guy's limit and you you all are just it and it is it it just warms my heart. it's like, my god, who would have thought to do something like that? it's limitless. it's boundless. here's what you have to do, though though. you all got to write it. yeah. you you have to sit yourself down to the computer, even though you don't want to. and those days, when it's really hard to just even just to say, just to look over at that computer, because after a while, it's like you and i do not have a cordial relationship, you. you are the enemy. and those days that you feel that way, you got to find a way to. sit down there. you've got to get. and so that you can and because you also have to you have to become part of the professoriate. then you can do whatever want you know can go off and do tv. you can do op ads, you can do social media, but get tenure and get published. and then the sky's the limit and do do what where your mind takes you you. that's what that's all that. well, i. will. i agree. i also want to say that when we talk about the i mean you are it and it's beautiful you these papers that you presented the plenary is just brilliant. so i would like to make just a couple of suggestions of areas i think would be really wonderful to follow. i think we need more biography. we need more biography i heard dana say she's working on anna-marie douglas. you know their names people when the king just did an amazing biography of maisie maybe i'm on the last name but she went to africa you because you were in the family with her but we have these biographies. wanda wanted to. hendrix i'm sorry wonder how many homes we i'm sorry, but the we need more of them because the biographies are teaching us about people whose names we know but they're also you're doing things about people we don't know and you know, one of the projects that i worked on with henry louis gates jr was the african-american national biography. and we have really thousands names now and several people have written it. probably people in this have written entries, biographical entries. those important. but i also want to give a great out to darlene clarke nine because she did she did that. charlene darlene did that multiple volume of the african-american woman and i. i have articles in one entry in there and i'm sure others here have entries in there. and the other field i to talk about is i think we are also in but we need to move further in the direction of family history. now, why is family history? well, family history is of two types. one is of the type that stefanie jones rogers talked about yesterday, which is extremely moving. but there's another family type that i think of people like tara hunter here, kind of field where were literally talking about your family and when you talk about your family because i did an article recently about my family and i want to tell you and this is another thing that i find interesting the more interdisciplinary we are with some of our things the more we learn. so my article was based on photographs of my family when they were in slavery and, so when i looked at the first photograph that was shown to me, a child, it the trial, the jury of jefferson davis, my my grandfather's right my great grandfather's right there in the middle. so he was that jury and they never had the trial. but that's a kind of famous picture. now, i had often heard about him. i didn't i never heard much about his wife, who would who would have been my great grandmother, lucy. so when i was writing righteous discontent, i read i came across her name. i was just shocked. i came across lucy's name and now in virginia, the more i look look at for her she found it. she she worked with other women religious women and with quakers and they founded something called the friends association for children. now, why did they find i found that, number one, it was right after the war. but her own daughter and we have a photograph of our own daughter, margaret ann, who would have been my great aunt margaret, was sold away from family. they never saw her again. and so my grandfather, who was a baptist minister and helen burroughs, a minister, and he writes he said, you know, if i only knew where her lifeless body was, i would tell my children and my children's children. and so i am telling you about margaret and but lucy obviously worked hard that orphanage because she knew that there were children out there like margaret ann who were taken. and now that organization is still in existence. lucy's picture is is up there. now, what i tell that story, because it's not about me. it's really not it's not really about my family. it's about history is about the nature of a slave system in a city which is very different from the nature of a slave system, a plantation you know, it's about slaves who were owned by institutions. my grandfather was owned by a tobacco factory at seven years old. his went around lucy trying to find a quote, friendly buyer that was a pattern. and pattern was the same pattern that that henry brown used. he just had a bad buyer. and so they sold his family away. but it's our story, and this is why i emphasize this. our stories, your family's stories are part of a larger history of our people. and i'd love to see us go more in-depth in that. well, you know, evelyn, i couldn't agree more about biography and. and and one reason is because biography is a story which is different than and i learned this the hard way and because my first two or three drafts about, ida wells, was were so dull dull. i said, how can this be possible? this is ida wells, you know, exciting life is and this is what is the problem. and the problem was i was writing the history of her life rather than the story of her life. and i had learn how to do that. and and as we know how much we learn from stories and and how much we how how how our audiences are greater, larger with stories. so that's that's that's important. and the nature of the story is a i always think about the well, two things thing about what deborah was also talking about the difficulty sometimes you have getting things published editors and publishers and which of course i did too. and i remember one time complaining to toni morrison about it and she said, this is very helpful. she said, what, what, what? oh i'm sorry. that's, that's okay. that's another story. i but but you know, she was so wise in so many ways. she was and she mentored a lot of people was very helpful to a lot of people for issues like this one. i said i'm having such difficulty with this, but you know, ed, she said, do you know who you're writing about? you're right. you expect this to be easy. you're writing about ida wells in america. you expect that this is going to be easy. what is wrong with you. you know, and that's that's very helpful. you know, that was you know, as you as you go, because you can't expect it to be easy and you can't be just angry that, you know, don't or don't understan what you're doing in so many ways. black women's studies wasn't even supposed to be a field, right? i mean, this is what inspired all of us to write was that we saw the you black history, you know, talking about men and women's history about white women where our voice in this where was our history? it wasn't supposed to be there. and so we have we've had create it out of whole cloth and we've done it so well and we've done it in a way that makes it makes what we are talking about, not just one small category, but it's the largest category. and you know, once you, dare i say, i'm almost afraid to quote her again, tony. but tony martin said, no, i remember she said, when a, she's really on my mind. a, when she said when when a newspaper reporter asked her if she was how she felt about being called the black women's writer rather than just an american writer. and she said, oh, i love the black women's writer because my world is larger, a black women's writer. and that's more and that's what we've proven theoretically. and in these wonderful papers and monographs and books that that have emerged. so i think that's where the field is going. it's just it's going is getting larger. and at the same time, we're beginning to understand how vital, you know, when we start about black women at the at the at the at the very basis of modernity in this country. then we're really hitting what is so essential about what we're and why we should all be so inspired to keep doing it. i think we have a little bit of time, very little back for q&a. so i know i think she harris has the microphone on if you have a question a comment, preferably a question short ish ish, please feel free lift. raise your hand. sheena will come you. this is your moment to to have a conversation or a question answered. i see two over here. could you stand up at that you have to introduce us for now. okay hello. i'm jocelyn imani from the transfer of publicly and i would just like to know in your journey of creating a field of black women's history, what are some of the challenges that you encountered in your you're framing in your writing like i heard you referencing the archive a bit but can you speak a little bit more as creating the field? what was that journey like maybe one would you can you repeat the question can you repeat the question a little more succinctly? and it's also a little to hear you up here. what but just repeat quickly. no. i. so she's asking in terms the archives but expanding that question to the building of the building the field what was that process like for you. well, i can speak to my experience it was it was painful. but here's the thing. i wasn't thinking, when i was doing my dissertation nation and doing the research i wasn't conscious of building a field. right. it's like i'm not that's not what i'm thinking of. i'm thinking of my goodness, i need a dissertation topic. i have to have this done at this particular time. i'm thinking the same way that you're thinking. i'm thinking i can go to the archive like everybody and i can do what everybody else does and then i can sit down and write it, you know, when i'm not finding the people, i'm like, it didn't hit me, okay? you what? they kept people in. do you really thinking going to find you're going to be able to write from the african-american woman's point of view by looking in the very the records of those people who silenced her it didn't you know i don't i'm not thinking that i'm really not because this is so new and so all i could say is i don't want to is that in the doing this or you look like founders, i don't think i was founding anything. i really thought i'm good. i'm just doing a dissertation and i'm just being like that has come that this is like that. we would this and this is the fruit of it i'm i'm speechless about it i do i beg to differ differ. i am channeling rosalind turpin she knew she was building field. she mobilized that she mobilized us build the field. okay i am channeling darling darling where, are you in south carolina? i am, yeah. channeling because darlene when she did got those. oh, yes, she did. the middle west. she knew. she knew building a field. we were building a field. now deborah didn't realize how important she was to the field. we were building. but deborah, you were just crucial. and so when when we i mean the whole point of founding i remember in 1977 we went to the berkshire conference it was in mount holyoke rising sharon and i and we knew then we had to be our own. you know this group we here i mean we recognized it as building the field and that the hard part here's the the challenge is that when you get hired and you go to a school and are the only black woman not only in the history department, but sometime in the entire city university, you're not of them recognize that you are building fields and not all of them take the field that you are building seriously, but you just keep working it. and this is where you're talking now. you just keep working at it and you just keep teaching your students. and i want to tell you, i know i built field because i have taught some great students students. i tell you, one of my great students is erica armstrong dunbar. if i can. just a minute what i know now that i've been and i'm looking all these people out here. but i did not. i you know i really didn't know them. how can i just say one more thing. i mean, i think erica tell you is that i we were building a field and i saw another student i had this wonderful this is just a pen. stephanie camp. yeah she one of my students. i mean, i've taught so many students and i taught at dartmouth. annette gordon-reed i taught at harvard and it. gordon-reed daughter, i mean, you know, there are so many great historians and you are telling them, you know, when they see you. deborah they know that they're in something special and absolutely. and i'm going to i'm going to move us along because we have like no time. but i want to get i know we have some questions over and what i'm going to do is ask you to kind of say your quick question. we'll just bump, bump, bump and we'll just sort of move through them quickly. maybe one person responds to a question here. hi, i'm chiara, a student at rutgers. and though this is a start in process of giving you your flowers as we all go, our separate ways, i'd like to know how we can continue to honor the work you've done in own individual journeys. okay, continuing the work. yes, hi, my name is mimi borders. i'm a graduate student at princeton university. and my question is, how do you define your role as a black intellectual inside and outside of the academy. hi, i'm dean sykes, undergrad student at howard university. it seemed as if all three of you spent some time at howard, whether that's being a student or in the archives. how did that what that mean to you as like black women? how did that shape who you are today and? a short follow up. so i'm a soon to be student in philosophy and the z program, and i just wonder how can i best send her women's stories and theories and the work that i do every single day? okay. hi, i'm audrey odell, graduate student at university, illinois at chicago. and yesterday we heard from those in the plenary session about their strategies in the archives, taking their time with source. so what are your top sort of strategies, tricks in the archives working on black women in the archives. so i'm going to i'm going to do take the liberty of kind of condensing some of these questions to maybe have two that we can answer. one being strategy about the archives. and also here is a question about what can be done to continue to honor the legacy in front of us. the second is more of a question about black women's intellectual work and thought and how maybe you position yourselves. so let's maybe we start with the first question what was the first question on how we i know i did my best how we honor how we honor move forward your legacy. and the second part was strategies about the archive. i like start i have a very simple answer that is that you have to help people, you have to help the next. that's how you legacy that's that to me would be more important than any other. yeah i say pay it forward the same. this is another way of saying you pay it forward for me in particular, i speak for myself i did not have the mentoring, i do not have the support. and i think that the best thing you can do is to give other people and you can mentor and you pay it forward and, give the others kind of support that hopefully i have given to my students. yes, you have have. yeah. the mentoring is crucial, but i will tell you, for all of us, i think our greatest joy, you know, at least i can honestly say this, if you think the greatest joy, the book you wrote, when were a professor and you can look out and see students become greater, you are to me, that's the greatest honor i could have. i told my fellow the time i'm going to start asking them to write me letters of recommendation. i want their i want them to write me letters of recommendation yeah, i. you know we are running short on time and i know that that question about sort of black women's intellectual is important, but i am going to need to sort of put pin in that. we can have some conversation after after our luncheon because we do need move on with with other things. but what, what i want to sort of conclude this portion of our luncheon with is first just my express ocean of deep gratitude and i'm to do this hopefully without crying but all three of you have just impact in my life since i was 18 years old to the present with both of you literally change my life deborah picking me up with boris of twenties and bringing me to rutgers and paula giddings sitting on that committee for the national award. so these three women right here made me and i think what all of us want to do in this room, those of us who are scholars is be as generous and giving and thoughtful and intentional as three of you. and so we you for spending your weekend with us and giving us nurturing that we need at end of a semester at the end of a year at the end. well, not the end of a pandemic, but at a moment in time in which we have not able to come together, you have given us the injection in the arm of strength that i think we need. and so i thank you. i thank for being who you are as scholars as mentors. and we owe you a debt of gratitude. thank you. but what i wanted to say was that you have given me and. seriously to look out and not to see. yes. all of the rutgers people here, but everybody, it's just like when those people failed those many years ago and said, you know, this ain't going nowhere. i just wish they were here to do. so today we are back for lecture number 11. this is the cold war and atomic apocalypse. today we really complete a pivot that we began last week from thinking in terms of religiously framed stories of apocalypse to secular visions of the end of human history. politics has followed us throughout this entire course, and it will continue to follow us through the rest of this last week. of course, content. but now we turn squarely also to the realm of science and technology. which we can imagine as a world apart from organized religion, although really you'll see they overlap substantially and fundamentally in ways that