Car. Im very pleased to introduce this event with martha s jones. I am excited to share with us book called vanguard. The Harvard Bookstore continues to bring authors in their work to the community. During the unprecedented times. Our event also appears on our website. It will conclude with some time for your questions. Click on the q a button at the bottom of the screen. I will be posting a link to push it purchase this book. Thank you for showing up and tuning in and support of our authors and incredible staff. If they do it we will do our best to resolve them quickly and we thank you for your patience and understanding. Im pleased to introduce tonights speaker. Martha s jones. As a professor of history at Johns Hopkins university. Her work has been recognized by the American Council of learning societies. She has held numerous fellowships. The university of pennsylvania law school. It has appeared in many museum expositions. With the National Portrait gallery. She has also been published in the Washington Post the atlantic she is the co editor of the history of the multi Award Winning citizens. They will be discussing the brandnew book published today how black women broke barriers. The New York Times called professor jones a scholar and an absorbent writer. As an expansive history of black women. A National BookAward Winning author said the political historian of africanamerican women and it is the commanding history of the remarkably remarkable struggle. We are so happy to have them both here tonight so without further ado the digital podium is yours martha and nicole. Ink you so much for the introduction. Im so honored to be here tonight with dr. Jones who i admire so much both as a scholar and as a black woman. And someone who has spent so supportive of my work over the last year. It is very much dogeared right now. Lets just start with a Pretty Simple question why did you decide to write this book and why did you title it vanguard. The idea came precisely because i knew the 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment was coming in a story about a book monument in central park one that would celebrate Elizabeth Cady stanton. This said to me that they were in danger perhaps of entering into this anniversary year. We really pulled together three generations. And to offer up the volume that would really commit all of us to fully appreciate the role that black women had played in political culture. Vanguard started that this was the notion that would be filled with black women first and black women breaking barriers and thats absolutely true. But as i really began to reflect on what i was fighting. They have really arrived at 200 years ago at the beginning of the 19th century and had carried forward really until our own time. This is the idea that american politics should have no place for racism and sexism. When i recognize how long they had been champion that view when i realize how long they had been alone in carrying that forward and setting the ideal in front of us. I realize they were a political vanguard showing the country to its very best ideals. I finish that when i first started. Welcome to everyone who is joining us tonight. Will get to them at the end of our talk today. A woman who was born into slavery in 1808. For obviously reasons i am interested in the power of using personal memoir to tell the National Stories can you tell us a bit about your great great grandmother and her descendents and how we started the book with the personal story. I also want to say thanks to the carter bookstore. For hosting us. I work in an office. Im sitting at home in my office now. We have portraits of our mothers including my great grandmother nancy belgraves. When i work i am very aware that i am accountable to them in everything i do i became selfconscious in fact. I really didnt know where they sat for all the interest in them and thinking about them. I have never have a chance to ask them about where they were in 1920. Her daughter and granddaughter. Are all alive in 1920. I didnt know what they were doing. But i realized before i was done with the book i was can have to dig for those stories and let them help guide me to tell what is a uniquely black womens perspective on Political Rights in Voting Rights. Are you saying you didnt know what their involvement in this work prior to beginning the research of this book . It was amazing except it was also tough there were things i wanted to know that i cut it i was trying to find my owned grandmother and the 1920s. I tried in missouri where she lived in 1920. Later in greensboro north carolina. The records just werent there. I thought i have struck out frankly. The one thing you think you know how to do is go through the archives and answer questions. Nobody valued that. And then i got lucky. I fell upon an interview that she gave in 1978 she and my grandfather for many years had run a place called Bennett College a black womens school in north carolina. Greensboro where they lived was kind of the fabled in civil rights history. They havent talked about 1920 at all. The brilliant story about young women who began to knock on doors. To that danger is a work of getting black americans on the voter role. I think thats where it aptly should arrive at. Working to come back to that. The fact that she wanted to talk about 1965. To the reason that the book exists. We will come back. When did you know you are going to improve this memoir. And why do you think. A long time ago i went to law school. One of the interventions that they made into legal scholarship. Was to surface the word i and to give us the latitude when we didnt find our own narrative in the casebook to introduce introduce them to our own storytelling. My training have given me a sense of why and how it can be important that we use our own stories. You have done this so beautifully in your essay to the 1619 projects. And giving us his Vantage Point on the history of this country in the state. It was definitely a departure for me because my whole paper in graduate school have been about my family. My beloved advisor. Taught me the word haiti or griffey. Maybe i didnt have the distance to ray about write about my family. It has taken me a lot of time to come back around into have a voice that is as admiring and loving and compassionate as i am to the women who come before me but also know how to teach bigger lessons about them. Its not family for family sake as it is using them as the way into my approach to a book. Readers will tell me if i am successful or not. With a departure for me. I think it was an important one. As a journalist who has practiced tunnel is in for almost two decades. Most of my career i also i was writing about myself or my family. They should be telling the stories of others. And i transitioned somewhat as i moved on in my career. I think it speaks to the fact that when you are our black woman writing about this history. These are our stories. There isnt the same kind a distance of other people have when they are writing around in american history. I want to move on. To the politics of writing. And black womens history in particular. And how we know the black womans role in movements and resistance and organizing. Is critical our work has been by that white society. But also by the mid of our own race. Who we were fighting alongside. I think that this is one of the many cases where history is so instructive. They were being accused of this railing the flight. And they were this railing that fight. You catalog how they were sidelined at color. And people convention. How they were viewed with suspicion. And then you have this illuminating meat passage about james swift town. Reporting back on that womens suffrage rights convention. You quoted her as writing the convention was not called to discuss the rights of color. She basically said that black women should not be seeking to aspire more than two race. To the memory memo of their own class. E ray about how white women at the time. Likely referred to themselves as slaves. While literally black women were enduring actual slavery. They push back against that. And they said i am womans rights. We clearly see today that black women are still fighting off both racism and sexism and still fighting ourselves. And pinned into the same corner. You talked about the suffrage is movement. They were just quite literally written out of that. Can you talk about those lessons from history that had that intersectional fight that they have to engage in. And how that has been there. And how black women had had to deal with political power today. One of the things that the quote reminds us of is the way in which the presents. The body we present a black women in a political gathering. Somehow it seems to enterprise those. There is this disjunction. That they are speaking insistently about racism. But when we read just some words. We recognize that there are deeply invested in the question of who is a woman. What does it mean to be a woman for her. How does a woman like her get into a movement that is framed around womens rights. Part of my reflection and the way in which the very presence of a black woman they dont hear what i hear in the women throughout vanguard who say yes, we are here to claim our political powers. But we come to do that in the interests of. I didnt expect. We do that in the interests of all humanity. And they say it again and again. And it becomes clear that its not that black women dont have extraordinarily ambitious and great vision. It encompasses all americans. And some international moments as well. But also you could hear or imagine. When you speak about themselves. In some parochial were inward looking way. That is trouble for black women that run to vanguard. And i think we can. 2 examples in our own heart. Of folks who cant really hear the words of black Women Political leaders. And assume they know the message because they read the person. Reading some of this it is like reading some of an internal argument and discussion that are still going on today. I think about how often. Even today the Women Movement really struggles to incorporate the fact that people can be black and in a woman. Language is women and black people. It seems to say we will be what are the other. And then puts a silent white in front of the word women. It was the inability to have two intersection holidays that derailed the womens march. They were unable to really resolve those tensions with women of color safe we have to deal with more than just discrimination based on our gender or. And i talked about this when we did the event for the 19th. What encapsulates it best in my mind is the fact that a lot of white women were holding during the womens march that here they have gotten elected. It erased the struggles of black women and other martin herbs of women. That it was just one woman and that donald trump wasnt in the office. There would not be someone protesting for peoples rights. Can you talk about how generationally they had been expected to turn off critical up critical parts of our identity to either head to focus on our race or our gender when clearly we are compelled to focus on both. For me the moment that always comes to mind when we talk about this is the primary contest between barack obama which was positive. If it was content. As if there were no black men. And stepped through the microphone and more. It has to be dispelled. With the iconic moment. The years after the civil war. With citizenship in the 14th amendment. That story continues to be told. As if it was a face up. With that calls for educated suffrage. And on the other hand. Douglas who says what about the black women. Who were in those meetings. Not only sneaks. And there were a poet. We are all bound up together. Its her way of saying im not can i count this as the cady stanton view about how to go here. In fact i think as a black woman i meet at that cross roads of racism and sexism. Women like me should be at the center. This coalition manages to lift me up. We would all be out lifted up politically. That story is often told to vilify white women or to vilify black men. In both instances it is a story told that does of violence to black women. They want to speak about Sexual Violence. In the specific right of africanamerican women in the country. In the face of freedom. Black women will pick up and work on pick through. Even until today. You also said that they speak of right which they speak of wrong. I appreciate you bringing up the part when barack obama was facing off with Hillary Clinton because i was interviewed. They spoke about how painful it was to having made that choice. And making that choice both of them were qualified to have to choose their race over their gender. The fact that we havent split ourselves. How can the struggle be resolved. In this country. Built on the foundations upon which it was built. I wish i knew the answer to that. I will tell you what i think. What becomes a regular part of the political discourse in the wake of 2008 is taking that moment at the podium to articulate for the uninitiated times to be here. And what your own political trajectory had been. We watched senator harris do that a few weeks ago at a convention. As a way. Of helping democrats understand how she comes to be here and how she is situated in the very complex history. It knows too little about black womens politics. There is that burden that black women still carry which is to help them read their bodies intelligently. When theyre at the podium. At the same time they had branded me too optimistic. I want to tell you what i think which is that im ready to dispense with the black women first analysis if we can call it that which is to say i dont think the most interesting thing about its her first black woman who has been there. I think black women have emerged as a force. Black women were more than prepared to step away in that moment when there was an election cycle. In a party. It turns out there at least six that we could name that have been on the short list. More than a hundred 20 black women running for congress. It is a record shattering number. In 2020. This is what we have seen as a force of black women in politics. People ask me how should i go forward. Might be time to tune in and understand and appreciate the study of black women. Today turning out in disproportionate numbers and been voters of consequence. And prepared to sit in washington not to mention state and local legislatures. And do the business of this country. I hope it is a year that folks find that necessary by tuning into that. Eased the permission of history. But the real consequence of course is what we can do with it. I will go so far as to say. With the outcome of this. I think all americans do. Black women will not go home in november even if things go the wrong way. History reminds us that they have shown up even in the darkest. In the most dire moments of this history. Black women show up for this country. Theyre doing it now and 2020. And i dont have any reason to think that we would pull back whatever the outcome of the election is in november. I think its a force thats here to stay in american politics. In i too optimistic do you think . I think what youre arguing though is that its actually a fact. You will not saying what the outcome will be. But you are talking about what black women through our organizing had accomplished and i do think that that framing that you just talked about im not talking about that. Black women pretty much made it impossible for joe biden not to take a black woman as president. The amount of organizing and that said its not okay to just commit to a woman. It needs to be a black woman because they had been the most loyal constituency for the Democratic Party. We come out at the highest rate. And we actually, when you think about what the democratic principles are in the principal. That black women are the ones who promote and believe and vote for the common good at the highest rates. And for all of those things that that the Democratic Party says it stands for. And then often used it to win elections and then forgotten about. I thing its been amazing to see black women come into their power. And say not this time. You will pick a black woman if you expect us to keep showing up for you. I think that is a great framing. And we should think about it more that way. Because they didnt come out of nowhere. And the first came because of the organizing of nameless faces. Black women. Who made sure that this could happen. I wonder if you could talk. One of the things i was not aware of was the relationship between the Antislavery Movement and the womens rights movement. It was born of the Antislavery Movement. I dont know if you could just talk about that. On the one hand i do think there is a predominant story that situates the political awakening about their own inequalities for White American women in their engagements. And indeed by the 1830s. It is is partly a deliberate strategy. With the unequivocal end of slavery. It does work through the principle of law suasion. You win people over by transforming our hearts and minds. Its not political question. And they are considered if you will the vectors are of morality in american culture. A way for the transformation of men thinking it through. Very much the target of abolitionist rhetoric. So you have women who have history in their own families or lives. For the first time being called controversy only. But to the podium. They pick up the pen. The writing as a deliberate or. That thinking involves that white women begin see themselves in their own plate if you well. As near in that circumstance. It is very unusual to have find a black woman in the same scenes. They pick up slavery as a metaphor. Even free women are living through. I think it of for them to borrow it as a metaphor to talk about a surge of sexism in their own life. I also want to say. I think the story begins much earlier. And it begins before anti slavery. It begins with that literary associations. With the rates without rates and civil rights work. Even before they are developing the intellectual foundation. They already had in hand by the time they get to anti slavery organizations that as a critique. No racism or sexism in american politics. That is the principle to which they will work. It is one that is an easily with the white ideas. About what a