GLC News and Events
Yale announces 2020 Frederick Douglass Book Prize Winner
December 9, 2020
New Haven, Conn.— Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition announces the winner of the 22nd annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize. The 2020 winner of the prize is Sophie White for Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and the University of North Carolina Press). White is Professor of American Studies, Concurrent Professor in the Departments of Africana Studies, History, and Gender Studies, and Fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame.
Our thanks to Professor Daniel Pinkel for his support
 Professor Daniel Pinkel has recently made an extraordinarily generous gift to the Gilder Lehrman Center as support for the future of the Frederick Douglass Book Prize and other work at the Center. Daniel is Professor Emeritus in bio-physics at the University of California San Francisco where he had a highly successful career, achieving many patents and research breakthroughs, focusing primarily on cancer genetics and genomics. Since retiring he now lives in New York City, not far from Grant’s tomb and two monuments of Frederick Douglass. At a gathering at the New York Historical Society in 2019, Daniel and David Blight met at a lecture by the GLC Director. Daniel is a very serious reader of history and literature; most recently he has tackled Don Quixote. At a gathering at the New York Historical Society in 2019, Daniel and David Blight met at a lecture by the GLC Director. In making this donation to Yale and the Center, Professor Pinkel commented: "I feel fortunate to be able to support the continuation of the Prize and its encouragement of work that brings to life the reality of slavery, especially now, when the very notion of reality is under such challenge." At the GLC, we as a staff, as well as the countless historians and writers in our network, wish to thank Dan Pinkel for his gift. We will carry on our work because of enlightened minds like Dan. We welcome with a warm heart this distinguished scientist and wonderful citizen of our community of knowledge and teaching.
- David Blight, Director, GLC
Slavery and Its Legacies: J’Nese Williams on “Race, Place, and Expertise: Working in the St. Vincent Botanic Garden 1765-1822”
Dr. Williams is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Stanford Humanities Center and a lecturer in the Department of History. Her book project, "The Texture of Empire: Britain’s Colonial Botanic Gardens, Authority, and the Age of Revolution," explores the creation of authority in both imperial rule and scientific work. "The Texture of Empire" spotlights botanical workers, both enslaved and free, as they navigated changes in governmental and scientific culture.
Online Events and Resources
Until events and other public gatherings resume, we'll be suggesting online events and resources, past and current, that may be of interest to viewers.
Robert E. May-Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory (audio)
Civil War Talk Radio  In researching my 2019 book “Yuletide in Dixie,” I discovered that many historic plantation and mansion sites are reluctant to talk about slavery at their Christmas events. This is partly because administrators want to avoid topics that might make paying guests angry or uncomfortable.
But the omission of black Southerners from these holiday tales also stems from pervasive myths about slave life at Southern plantations before the Civil War. For a long time, many people got their ideas about slavery at these places from memoirs, novels and short stories written by white Southerners after the Civil War. These stories, now outrageous for their racial stereotypes, not only justified the institution of slavery, they also made it seem like all enslaved people had fun on a Southern plantation at holiday time, dancing, singing, laughing and feasting for the holiday season, just as their masters did. Robert May, from The Conversation, December 12, 2019In the NewsWe Are Not Done With Abolition
Eric Foner, December 15, 2020, The New York Times
Early this month, a group of Democratic members of Congress introduced an Abolition Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Why, in the year 2020, does the Constitution need an amendment dealing with the abolition of slavery? Wasn’t that accomplished over a century and a half ago?
The problem is that the Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, which prohibits slavery throughout the country, allows for “involuntary servitude” as a “punishment for crime.” This loophole made possible the establishment of a giant, extremely profitable, system of convict labor, mainly affecting African-Americans, in the Jim Crow South. That system no longer exists but its legacy remains in the widespread forced labor of prisoners, who are paid far below the minimum wage. The Abolition Amendment would eliminate the Thirteenth Amendment’s “criminal exemption” by adding these words to the Constitution: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude may be imposed as a punishment for a crime.”
When enacted, the Thirteenth Amendment was recognized as a turning point in the history of the United States, indeed the entire world. When the House of Representatives approved it as the Civil War drew to a close, wild scenes of celebration followed. Members threw their hats in the air and embraced one another. Passage, wrote one newspaper, was “the crowning event of the war, indeed of the century.”
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My church will replace our Black Lives Matter sign. Will America replace its racist myth?
William H. Lamar IV, December 15, 2020, The Washington Post
Do you hear what I hear? I hear the imperial American myth in the throes of its own death rattle. And I hear a people clamoring for a story by which to order their lives.
The United States does not like to call itself an empire. But it is. Through military and economic force, the United States extends its narrative, politics and culture throughout the globe for good and for ill. The American story to which I refer does not shape our domestic life alone. It shapes the world.
Myths, stories, give our lives meaning. They tell us who we were, who we are and who we will be.
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Op-Ed: What Americans don’t know about Latino history could fill a museum
Stephen Pitti, December 16, 2020, The Los Angeles Times
On Thursday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) blocked a bipartisan congressional effort to establish a new Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino, declaring that “the last thing we need is to further divide an already divided nation with an array of segregated, separate-but-equal museums for hyphenated identity groups.”
Warning of the dangers of a new Latino history museum, he accused its supporters of ascribing to a “so-called critical theory” that “weaponizes diversity,” that “sharpens all those hyphens into so many knives and daggers,” and turns “college campuses into grievance pageants and loose Orwellian mobs.”
Lee’s exaggerations sidestepped every available fact about Latinos in the United States. They caricatured the views of the museum’s supporters, including historians, museum professionals, community leaders and business executives. He was the only senator to oppose a bill embraced by a majority in the House and Senate (including most of the California congressional delegation), President-elect Joe Biden and the Smithsonian’s leadership. President Trump is expected to sign the bill if it lands on his desk.
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How Black Brazilians Are Looking to a Slavery-Era Form of Resistance to Fight Racial Injustice Today
Ciara Nugent and Thaís Regina, December 16, 2020, Time
A dozen people are dancing around a bonfire in a yard between two large warehouses in São Paulo. It’s early November and members of Quilombaque—a Black community hub in Perus, a poor neighborhood on the city’s northern fringes—are celebrating. They’ve raised 50% of the funds they need to buy the space they’ve occupied for the past decade and avoid eviction by the owner, who is selling up. As the fire spits embers up to a dark sky, and a steady drum beat marks out a rhythm, the group sings: “I will build my refuge, I will build my place, I will build my quilombo.”
The word quilombo–derived from languages brought to Brazil by enslaved Africans–was the name given to rural communities established by those who escaped slavery in the centuries before Brazil abolished it in 1888—the last country in the Americas to do so. At least 3,500 of those rural quilombos still exist. But today, quilombo is taking on a wider meaning. Young Black Brazilians say they need to form new communities of Black resistance to deal with a society still shaped at every level by the legacy of slavery.
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How Enslaved People Helped Shape Fashion History
Jonathan Michael Square, December 14, 2020, Guernica
 I have spent my entire academic career analyzing images of enslaved people, with a particular interest in their dress. This research led me to found a digital humanities project called “Fashioning the Self in Slavery and Freedom”, which uses fashion to explore the creative ingenuity of people of African descent. Yet, I often know frustratingly little about the lives and identities of the individuals who populate the project’s Facebook and Instagram feeds. The experiences of enslaved people were not always deemed important enough to record for posterity, and the glimpses that have been preserved are often distorted by interventions of enslavers. We are left to wonder: Who are they? What were their names? What were their favorite colors? Why did they choose to be photographed on these particular occasions? Why did they style themselves in these ways? One thing we do know is that incorporating black people into fashion history can disrupt easy narratives, including that of the gradual progression from one silhouette to the next. Traditional fashion history is often organized by the reign of European monarchs, which, in the case of the Anglophone academy, often means the British. Georgian round gowns give way to Victorian hoop petticoats that then begat Edwardian walking skirts, and so on. But enslaved people and their descendants do not fit neatly into those fashion timelines, often by their own choosing. Hattie Thompson, who was born enslaved, insisted that “patching and darning was stylish” when she was a child, even though the dominant style in the late 1850 and 1860s would have consisted of Victorian gowns and suiting—styles that certainly did not use a patchwork aesthetic or darned fabrics. continue AnnouncementsCurator of Black History and Religion
Conner Prairie, Fishers, Indiana
 The Curator of Black History and Religion will oversee Black History Experiences at Conner Prairie. The position's principal function will include overseeing the creation of a new Black Settlement experience through a religious storyline that brings to life composite stories of a 19th Century Black settlement found in the Midwest. . This position will be responsible for working with the exhibits, interpretation, education departments, project advisors, and other internal teams to bring the experience to life while managing the settlement's day-to-day operations. The position will also be responsible for creating and developing new Black History experiences at Conner Prairie. Apply here.
Postdoctoral Researcher: History of Slavery in the City of London
Nuffield College, University of Oxford
Nuffield College seeks a Postdoctoral Researcher to research the role of the City of London and its commercial institutions in the eco-system of the transatlantic slave trade and ownership. The closing date for applications is 11 January 2021.
Assistant Professor, AFAM Studies
University of Central Arkansas, History
The University of Central Arkansas invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professorship in African American History. Successful candidate will teach Introduction to African/African American Studies surveys, American history surveys, and undergraduate courses in area of specialization. The department coordinates an interdisciplinary major & minor in African/African-American Studies. Review of applications will begin on January 15, 2021.
Associate or Full Professor - Black Studies
SUNY New Paltz
The Department of Black Studies at the State University of New York at New Paltz invites applications for a visiting Associate or Full Professor of Black Studies (3-year term) who will serve as interim department chair, which includes limited summer responsibilities. The committee will begin reviewing applications on January 15th, 2021, and applications will be accepted until the position is filled. |
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