Last Sunday night, the Vineyard Haven library hosted an event around the new book, “Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women,” co-edited by Mia Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, and Barbara D. Savage. Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, professor of history and African-American studies at Harvard, led a lively discussion with three of the four editors.
The book grew, in part, from conversations on the Vineyard. Panelists began by talking about the book’s evolution, a collaboration that spanned over a decade, and included workshops at various universities. Their goal was to demonstrate how the unique experiences of black women gave them a distinct perspective to examine the central issues and ideas of their times.
Panelists described the broad range of women and subjects included in the volume, which stretches from the colonial era to the present day and across the diaspora, including Africa, Haiti, and the Caribbean, as well as the United States.
The book includes essays, such as Jon Sensbach’s “Born on the Sea of Guinea,” on the role black women played in the transmission of African culture to the new world in the era of the slave trade. And then there is the, until now, largely unknown biography of Merze Tate, an important historian of international relations during the mid-20th century whose areas of expertise included the Pacific and the disarmament movement.
Ms. Higginbotham asked the editors to discuss their individual essays. In response to a question regarding her essay on black women’s thought in the 19th century, Mia Bay, who teaches at Rutgers University, talked about the particular challenges in writing about a subject that women thought about but did not often discuss. “How do you write the history of a silence?” Ms. Bay asked. Ms. Griffin, a professor at Columbia University, spoke about Ann Petry, a mid-20th century writer whose rich body of work is largely unknown today. Ms. Griffin pointed out that Petry’s essays should be read alongside the work of Ralph Ellison. Ms. Jones, who teaches at the University of Michigan, talked briefly about the controversy around the Obama-Clinton contest, when the media talked about a divide between women voters and black voters as if black women did not exist.
The event drew a large audience and inspired a lively question session. A recent college graduate asked about how black women today could learn from the past on how to mobilize their passion and ideas. Each generation must define itself and make its own history, the panelists responded. But in telling how women across time have dealt with similar issues, the history included in this volume, they suggested, offers a legacy that can speak to present challenges.
By Pat Sullivan, a contributing editor to “Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women.”
