Ep. 21 – The 400th Anniversary of Jamestown: A Conversation with Dr. Pero Dagbovie

[0:00:00 Peniel] Welcome to race and democracy. A podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, social justice and citizenship. Welcome to race and democracy. Were pleased to have Dr Pero O G. Dagbovie University, distinguished professor of African American history and associate dean of the Graduate School at Michigan State University with us is a guest today. Ah, Professor Dagbovie. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Um, Pero you are one of the most prolific scholars of African American history of your generation. I really want to have ah talk with you about both your new book Reclaiming the Black Past. The use and misuse of African American history in the 21st century. But you’ve written about, um, Carter G. Woodson, your ah, the editor in chief of the Journal of African American Studies, which is the leading publication of black studies really in the world. Um, I want to talk to you about, uh, the 4/100 anniversary of Jamestown. Ah, it’s 2019. This is the 4/100 anniversary of when 20 an odd number of enslaved Africans from Angola were stolen by British privateers from Portuguese slavers and arrive in British colonial North America, Jamestown, Virginia. And this is the 4/100 year that Malcolm X used to always talk about and say, 400 years of oppression. So I want to talk to you about those 400 years. But really, how do you conceptualize that within the context of African American historiography? Because I know you’ve studied and written really the big book on Carter Woodson, Um, who’s who’s really our premier historiography for of African American history. And you’ve really taken that mantle yourself in a way I read reclaiming the Black past and other books that you’ve done, which are precisely about African American story. Ah, graffiti as really both a contribution to intellectual history but also reframing and forcing scholars, grad students, the general public to rethink how we situate African American history intellectually, politically. So I just wanna have kind of a free form conversation about about that and what you feel your role is and what our generation of scholars but a new generation of scholars how they’re contributing to that as well.

[0:02:30 Pero] Yeah, let me begin by thanking you for your kind words and inviting me to speak with you today, and you’ve raised a lot of things that is, You put a lot of things on the table to grapple with, and I guess I’ll begin by talking about the notion of 16 19 and I’ll speak about this a little later. In my talk today, you’re totally correct that African American activists like Malcolm X have been using this notion off 400 years of struggle. For a long time now, I think we could probably go back to even the era of the Great Depression. And there were black activists were talking about being in a state of bondage or being in a state of being denied basic civil rights as black people as a 400 year process. Yes, 60 19 is a symbolic date, and the academy is recognizing this. The general US public is recognizing this, and I have various thoughts about this. I think it’s important as a anniversary year, um, signifying the 16 19 i e arrival of some, as you said, 20 Africans and Jamestown. So it’s important at that level at a different level. It’s kind of problematic because it assumes that prior to 16 19 there was not an African presence in North America what we now call the United States, and we have plenty of evidence to challenge that going back to the 15 hundreds. And if we even want to go back earlier, we could borrow from I’ve advancer temas that came before Columbus and argued that there’s a possibility that some of the Africans who were in ancient America, IE South and Central America down NBC Times might have migrated to North America. So using 16 19 as a starting point is problematic, but I I can understand it. The other challenge that I would pose to the 16 19 paradigm is that some people equate being in North America as early as 16 19 as being in the United States back in the day, beginning in 16 19 when we know that the United States becomes the United States after the American Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution in 17 89. So I usually like to talk about the African American experience based upon this continuum from 17 89 up until the present, which is about a 230 year experience. So I’m not arguing that we say 230 years, as opposed to 400 years, but I think things need to be put into context whenever at these moments of celebration, I’ll just close by saying, I actually do think it’s good that it is an anniversary year marking 16 19 for 400 years of quote unquote presidents in North America, since that’s all. Some people view it because it allows us to stop and really think proactively about African American history and culture in a society that tends not toe. Want to talk about black history except for let’s say, during National African American History Month during February.

[0:05:43 Peniel] Well, let’s talk about reclaiming the Black passed not just the book but Historia Historiography. Um, one of the things that I have noticed when we think about the new historiography is on the black power movement, the civil rights movement and really even contemporary sort of black urban studies. Black feminism, or intersectionality, is the presence of talking about racial slavery where you have these contemporary scholars who are having red big studies. Whether you’re thinking about Ebony and Ivy by Craig Wilder or the Half has never been told by Ed Baptist or Empire of Cotton by spend Becker Daina Ramey Berry The price for their pound of flesh. Sadiya Hartman, the new David Blight Frederick Douglass book that won the Pulitzer Prize. Yes, people are really connecting when we think about the black freedom struggle in the 20th century to racial slavery and racial slavery, and the black freedom struggles connection to American democracy and sort of critiquing, challenging, reimagining, rethinking. And I wanna want you toe talk about sort of Where do you see that historiography? Where has it been? Where is it going your own contributions as well?

[0:07:00 Pero] Sure, as you pointed out, I like to consider myself to be a quote unquote historiography. For that is, I believe that it’s very important to know what has been written in the past in order to understand where we’re going in the future, in terms of our contributions to African American history or any history for that nature. And one thing I’ve noticed is that younger generations seem less inclined to really go back and study what has been written about certain historical topics, especially when making their arguments about how original their work is. Now go back to our friend L. D. Reddick, who way back in the day when he was working with Woodson. This is, during the first half of the 20th century during the Great Depression era, argued that enough had been written about slavery. Now I’m not saying that his argument was totally accurate because we can still continue to write in innovative ways about slavery. But what he was arguing is that sometimes people, um, might be rehashing certain arguments that have already been said and repackaging them for a new time. And I’m not saying any of those books that you mentioned fall within that category. I think they’re all wonderful books, but I would argue that how we define what’s original nowadays, especially with upcoming scholars, is this kind of challenging. And that’s because a lot of times books today do not have historic graphical sections in them, whether it’s in the intro, whereas a freestanding chapter. And that doesn’t mean that I wanna read books that rehash all of the scholarship that’s been published on the topic at hand so they can demonstrate what’s original about their topic. But it is useful in some cases because a lot of younger let’s say, even say graduate students when they’re reading books. They assume that this might be the first book on a set topic, and if that’s what the assumption is, they won’t understand the contribution because they won’t be ableto place it within a certain historical time Here. Now I like the books that you’ve mentioned because off them are in this kind of new genre, which is taking us back, I think, to the sixties and seventies with these narrative approaches to African American history that are not just written for a specialized group of historians but are written for broader public’s per se. And those type of books can have a great influence on the public. And that’s why I decided to attempt to do that. And I’m not as good of a writers. Some of those of you have mentioned with my book Reclaiming the Black Past. I wanted to write a book that was more wide reaching in scope and touched upon topics that, you know, your average non micro study history reader could understand, Um, and that seems to be a trend to now. And what I mean by that is that it seems that back in the day, in order to prove oneself. Historians would have to publish 12 or three books with those university presses, Right? There seems to be a movement now where junior scholars are getting contracts with trade presses earlier in their careers. Then perhaps previous generations head. And I think it’s a good thing because it’s making history, um, more relevant. And I’ll just close by saying that I think it’s a powerful testimony that allow the scars that you mentioned are going back to the period of slavery in the 21st century. Because many people like to divorce that sensitive issue in American culture from the present. When if you look at the African American experience within this large continuum, you can never divorce that period of slavery, that period of bondage from the present state of African American culture and society.

[0:11:02 Peniel] Yeah, and to really amplify that, I think one of the things that these scholars air doing and I think you’re doing it to, and I want to talk to you about even just your first chapter year. Uh, none of us. None of our hands are entirely clean. Obama and the challenge of African American history is this idea of looking at structures. This idea of I think there’s a contemporary generation who are really interested, even as they’re interested in narrative histories there, very much sensitive to the way in which people people’s lives are shaped by structures were and by structures, I mean both structures of the nation, state and sort of ah, Graham, she and way. But I also mean this new focus, which has always been a focus. When you read Frederick Douglass to be Wells on African diaspora, it foodways. I’ve also think this whole notion of African American environmental history, which we’ve always had when we think about do boys and we think about Did you know Anna Julia Cooper when we think about all these different folks, they were talking about the environment, But I’m interested in the fact and you do it here. What does it mean? What is the challenge of African American history when right now we have sort of the most capacious amount of it that we’ve ever had? We have more studies of the civil rights movement of black labor history, of black women’s history, black feminism, issues of blacks and the medical field issues of African Americans and stem fields, issues of African American Children during racial slavery and the civil rights movement. The great Migration globally. When we Think about the Age of Garvey by Adam Ewing and others, right Bobby Hill in the Marcus Garvey Papers, The Papers of King What are some of the challenges you talk in your first chapter about some of this and sort of the central place of Obama as the first African American president, as something who? Somebody who challenges us as historians of this period?

[0:12:58 Pero] Yeah, it’s interesting those various sub fields that you have mentioned in their impact on present day history graphical thought. And I think it’s logical at one level that we’re beginning to learn more and more about the black passed in all of its complex city. The foundations have been laid for a long time. Now we can go back to the antebellum era with those early writers of the black past. Weaken, start with Do. Boyce is the first African American during a PhD in history. In 18 95 we can go through up until the present, and there’s been a large foundation that’s been established that allows these new, innovative approaches to history to take place, and I think it’s going to continue to get more detailed and detailed. And then here and there there will be those quote unquote brave historians will take on those larger periods of time, right? Who will tackle the long Do Ray, which is very challenging because if you tackle the long door A, then you can be criticized for marginalising certain periods. Whereas if you cover a short period of time, you can focus on that time and get into a much detail as you want to. So I’m really happy about this new movement. A Z editor of the journal African American History. I’m very pleased that our next issue is entitled quote unquote LGBT themes in African American history. And this is an area of African American history that has not been as cultivated and developed as, um, it probably should be. And so we’re cutting new terrain, challenging previous conceptions on a day to day basis, and I think it’s just going to become Mawr and Mawr complex. One of the things that I was trying to do in that chapter that you referenced on Obama was to really explore how it is that he packaged and used African American history during his presidency during his two terms. And so what I did is I obviously started online since. Nowadays weaken cheating, cut corners by doing research online and went toe white house dot gov. And looked at the speeches that he had given over the years. And as you know, since you’ve written on Obama, he’s delivered more than 2500 speeches. But I focused on those speeches that he gave focusing on topics in African American history, whether it was slavery, whether it was Jim Crow segregation, whether it was the civil rights movement. And I looked at how he decided to strategically describe and portray African American history based upon his audiences at hand. And it’s very clear that when he speaks to an all white audience versus when he speaks to a quote unquote mixed ground versus when he speaks to just a black audience, that his messages are often times different. And he’s a very calculated individual. I like in him in many cases the Booker T. Washington, And when I say that some people might get things twisted cause they might not view Booker T. Washington in the same way that I did. But what I mean by that is that he was pretty much of a chameleon when he was presenting African American history to different audiences. And so I find Obama to be an interesting character to explore how African American history is represented to the American public. And again, Obama is not as simple of a character to analyze in that respect. But I do buy into much of what Michael Eric Dyson says in his eloquent, wonderful book on the Obama presidents

[0:16:43 Peniel] Black presidency. Obama leads me to the second chapter contested meaning of Black History Month. When we think about Black History Month, it’s really grown from Carnegie. Woodson’s Negro History Week in 1926 by 1976 has become Black History Month on for US scholars. I remember reading Derek Bell and faces at the bottom of the well, and he starts off that book talking about how you know Black History Month is a time when all these black scholars and this is the early age of black public intellectuals 25 27 years ago are getting on the speaking circuit, and they’re sort of Ah, a commercialization of Black History Month and that I’d like you to talk about the positives and the negatives of that, because on some levels, I think Woodson would be proud because we’ve gone from Negro History Week to Black History Month. But then there’s corporate sponsorship. Some people soft pedal it. Some people package it like you said in specific ways. So let’s talk about the pros and cons of Black History Month.

[0:17:44 Pero] Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up because it goes back to some of the issues that I delve into in that chapter on African American History Month. Many people don’t realize this, but back during quote unquote the days of Woodson, there were these same type of debates. Um, Woodson, as early as the late twenties, thirties and forties, noticed that there were a group of who he called race traduced sirs who were using African American History Month or black history. Weaker Negro History Week is was called in that time to make profits. And if you go back and read the Negro History Bulletin er, the Journal of Negro History, you’ll see that Woodson was actually telling these people oftentimes entertainers or amateur historians to turn over the profits that they made from their speaking engagements back to the association because they were talking about a celebration. We’re talking about the Association for the Study of Meager Life in History. There’s an out association for study of African American life in history.

[0:18:47 Peniel] Can you tell our listeners what that is?

[0:18:48 Pero] Yeah, It was an association that was founded in 1915 by Carter G. Woodson, that had the main goal of studying and disseminating information about black history. And it was a grassroots organization that not only included people from the community but also scholars, and it’s been around for more than 100 years. It’s the oldest and leading association dedicated to the study of black life in history. There’s annual conference every year. There’s the Journal of African American History that is associated with the association that was founded in 1916. There’s a Negro history bulletin that was founded in the 19 thirties, which is part of the association, and every year, the Association for the Study of African American Life in History that Woodson found it back in 1915 issues, a theme for black history month, and they were also instrumental in helping convert Negro History Week into Black History Month, as you mentioned in in the mid 1970.

[0:19:51 Peniel] So it seems like that’s a great success. So what are what are some of the Yeah, what are some of the positives right now when you think about 2019 of having Black History Month? No,

[0:20:01 Pero] it’s a great success. And I think that, um, you know, the problem is not having Black History Month just become that token time of the year, especially in K through 12 education, where we acknowledge black contributions to American life and civilization. Okay, that this should be a month during which these contributions might be spotlighted. But the contributions of African Americans to US history of world civilization should be fully integrated into the curriculum of K through 12 education and education, even at the college in university level. In fact, when Carter Woodson founded Negro History Week, as you mentioned in 1926 he said that the ultimate goal was to create Negro History year, and obviously what he meant by that was the full quote unquote integration of African American history into us history. And so while I like the fact that there is a time of the month where you know you spotlight like contributions, I also don’t like his. You mention the hyper commercialization of African American History Month Company’s business is capitalizing, and I’ll just give one quick example. Just take Nike, for example. You know, they got Ah whole B H M line, a black History Month line where they got Jordan’s Kobe’s. Even Kyrie Irvin’s that are designed, um, can today sold with kente cloth found them to be sold and some of my kind of dope, but to be so during Black History Month. I remember the first pair of Air Force ones that came out for this B H M line, and it had, like, a quote from Carter G. Woodson in the insole, and I don’t think it was totally accurate either. But the thing that bothered me was that again, you’re stepping on his words and possibly wearing them out over time. So again, you have all these different companies and corporations, and this goes back to the sixties and seventies, and I mentioned this in my book where all these companies begin to make profit off of it. So again, any time something becomes popularized, it runs the risk of becoming commercialized. Just like, let’s say, hip hop culture and music.

[0:22:18 Peniel] Well, when we think about black history and historiography, I want to talk about, um, really how the expanse expanded historiography is impacting not just the field of African American studies, but U. S. History, political science, just interdisciplinary fields. Because in a way, I think that you can’t run away from African American history anymore. You can’t run away from race anymore. Even from when I started grad school, which is now over 25 years ago, it was much more segmented and isolated, right? Where is now When we think about, you know, even, you know, a book by whether it’s David Blight, Heather Ann Thompson on Attica or folks like Rhonda Williams? Um, Daina Ramey, bury these books, touch upon the American historical narrative and really force scholars who might not be African American ist toe to rethink and reframe what they’re doing. So I’d like you to talk about what do you think the impact has been especially concomitant with? This is the growth of black studies. You’re black studies. When you think about Africa, Merrick studies departments like Michigan State, which offer PhDs. Yeah, and, uh, produced so many credible scholars you produced over 15 PhD’s yourself. So I want you to talk about the impact that it’s had.

[0:23:41 Pero] Yeah, there’s a lot of growth in African American history and blank studies in general. And when previously I was mentioning different gaps in certain generations in a semi critical manner, I’d like to highlight that. I feel great to see all of these younger scholars who are making names for themselves, where getting positions, nice positions, sometimes endowed positions at leading research one institutions. This is great because it is adding to our representation in the ivory tower, which is something that’s that’s very, very important. Any time a young, upcoming African American historian or blank studies scholar gets a contractor gets a job, it reflects well on the entire community. Um, at this point, I am very pleased with certain movements that have happened since the publication of my book, What is African American history? And that’s the problem of writing books and you know this all too well that are also reflective of the contemporary moment that book came out in 2015. So I had to have the manuscript into the press by 2013 2014. And part of my argument was that journals like the Journal of American History H. R. Did not feature essays by African American historians who are dealing with African American subject matter. That’s why your essay, Excellent Essay and Black Power Studies that appeared in one of these mainstream journals was very, very important for the time because you were part of a small group. Since 2015 there have been more and more particularly African American stories who have been ableto have their work spotlighted in these mainstream journals. I think that’s a good sign because it’s challenging the profession. And there are certain journals that are now very conscious of this because they’ve been called out. Um, and so I think that’s a good move. A same time. I also believe that we also have to support our journals that specialize in African American history. Black studies, whether it is the Journal of African American History, whether it’s the journal Black studies, whether it’s the black scholar where, whether it’s the International Journal of black studies, Whether it’s the Western Journal of Black Studies, whether it’s African American review, I could go on and on. These journals still need to be supported wholeheartedly, but I think we’re making definite progress. But we also have to keep in mind that progress is all relative. If you were to look nationally speaking at statistics, you’ll see that right now, 75 out of every 100 university professors throughout the nation are white Americans. And if you were to break down the black population of professors, it’s about you know, 4 to 5% at highest. If you were to go field by field, you might even, you know, see statistics very, especially when you get to the stem oriented fields where African American representation is not very high at all. Where is in the historical profession? It’s a little better because historically we’ve had a presence in the historical profession in the U. S. Going back to the early 20th century.

[0:26:58 Peniel] I want toe highlight what you’re saying about the mainstream versus supporting our own institution because I think one of the things, the reasons, Ah, we’ve seen this uptick in the mainstream of African American history has to do with not just, well, two bookends, the Obama presidency and also Ferguson Baltimore Black Lives matter because when we saw the success of Tana HAC Coats between The World of Me sold over 1.5 million copies. When we see the success of Michelle Alexander’s Your New Jim Crow When We See Right Now, Jeff Stewart just won the Pulitzer for a Brilliant, which I’ve read a landline Lock 1000 page book. The definitive biography of Lock Just Won the Pulitzer Onda Coats is when the Pulitzer Abram Candy, one of My Mentees, when the Pulitzer won the National Book Award for for Stanford, begin in a book that I teach so that mainstreaming is both good. But But what we know historically is that white supremacist institutions can also cherry pick and sort of then on. And we’re seeing this with the new proliferation of African American young memoirs. You think about no, no ashes in the fire. You think about Patrice Kahn colors. These are books that I teach their brilliant, but it’s like, Why is this happening right now? Certainly there’s a commercialization aspect where these books are selling to millennials generation Z and places that didn’t necessarily want black voices just several years ago. Right now are and where I mean, I read Time magazine and there, quoting Kimberly Crenshaw and Intersectionality and woke and all right thinking.

[0:28:40 Pero] And And they’re also selectively quoting for these folks. And that’s why I have maximum respect for all of the people that that you mentioned, because they do remain committed to the cause and have a high level of integrity when there sharing their ideas, despite the fact that there are systems that are probably attempting to use them in the name of diversity. And in multi culturalism,

[0:29:13 Peniel] I want toe. I want toe closed by asking you really a broad based question with something specific to in your book What is African American history? You spend a lot of time on civil rights, Black power historiography, right? And you make an argument about how and I completely agree how influential that historiography has been. One that civil rights. The story. Ah, graffiti from generations ago. But then the black power studies the story. Ah, graffiti, sort of the hip hop generation scholars like ourselves who really linked both. We did the deep reading on excavating of the past, but we were really in touch with contemporary culture. We weren’t condescending to that culture. What is? I want you to talk about the impact of that historiography in terms of the new sort of black power choreography and black power in a long do records. I would include people like Kiesha, Blaine and different people Ashley Farmer, of course, who are connecting that. What? What is the impact? Because I think the impact has been huge just professionally in terms of what Generation Lee that hip hop generation has been able to do.

[0:30:20 Pero] Know it’s a profound impact. Um, when I took over as editor of the Journal of African American History, one of the first things that I did was to do an environmental scan. And by that I mean that I went and looked at all of the issues and volumes of the journal that were edited by my predecessor, Professor VP Franklin, and I noticed that the earlier periods were not cover it as much as the later periods. There’s been this move, obviously, as you’ve mentioned to research more recent time periods that were distanced enough from to be objective about There’s still stuff coming out on as you know, the quote unquote modern conventional civil rights movement. But, yeah, black Power studies, in part sparked by your work, and folks like Jeffrey OG. Bar and William Vanderburgh are beginning to look at the black power era. Ah lot. And I’m telling you, at least when I looked through catalogs, it seems that a good percentage of books coming out are on the black power. Aaron. There’s nothing wrong with this. I think it’s great because there’s enough time that’s elapsed where we can objectively look at the period. And there are many different levels that we can analyze it on, whether it’s based on gender, whether it’s based on region, whether it’s based on the organization, whether it’s based on the movement, I don’t know if ever that this period will be totally unearthed. We still need full fledged books on the Republic of New Africa. We still need fulfilled his books on the League of Black Revolutionary Workers. There’s a lot of areas that that can be explored, and so I think it’s it’s something that that’s good and positive at the same time. Interesting debates have surfaced that I know that you’ve been privy to where you have folks like of our generation, who were born during the black Power era, interpreting it. And you still got the folks who were in the movement alive who are reading our stuff and are saying, no, that’s not what happened. I was there. I knew Malcolm. I knew Baraka. I knew Angela Davis. Um, so I think it’s interesting, Um, play. And I think it’s going to continue for a minute until the eighties and nineties becomes quote unquote legitimate history. And I’ll close by saying this that I would challenge upcoming generations of historians to engage in contemporary black history. And what I mean by that is to deal with those piers. I just mentioned the eighties, the nineties, even the early two thousands, because after all, that is history. If we define history is being anything before this present moment that were existing in. But it seems that historians are sometimes a little conservative in that they don’t want to deal with periods where people are still alive from those periods or periods that you know they can’t sit back and study in a so called detached manner. Perhaps we don’t want to play sociologists, which we should sometimes I think want to dio.

[0:33:48 Peniel] All right, thank you, Dr Pero G. Dagbovie, who is university distinguished professor of African American history and associate dean in the Graduate School of Michigan State University, the author of numerous books in The editor in chief of the Journal of African American History, and his latest book is Reclaiming the Black Past. The Use and Misuse of African American History in the 21st Century. It’s a terrific book. All his work is terrific. I would really implore everybody to go out and search his work and purchases work and read his work. Really one of most important historians and scholars of his generation, and it’s really been a pleasure and a privilege to have you on race and democracy. Thank you.

[0:34:28 Pero] Thank you very much, Professor Joseph.

[0:34:30 Peniel] Thanks for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on Twitter at Peniel Joseph. That’s P-e-n-i-e-l  J-o-s-e-p-h and our Web site, CSRD.LBJ.utexas.edu and the Center for Study of Race and Democracy is on Facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Thank you.