>> Eric Deggans: Good
afternoon, everyone. Thanks a lot for joining us. My name is Eric Deggans
and I'm TV critic for national public radio. Thank you so much for joining us for this wonderful
panel discussion. I'm going to introduce
our two panelists and their wonderful work
and then we're going to talk about their books. But first a couple
of ground rules. Number one, look at those
pesky cellphones that you have and make sure that they're
silenced because I know that you think your ringtone
is really cool but when we're in the middle talking about
stuff, we don't want to hear, you know, Drake or
something, all right? Secondly-- >> Erica Armstrong
Dunbar: Maybe. >> Eric Deggans:
Yeah, maybe, maybe. Secondly, we're going have--
we're going to take questions from the audience
probably in the last 20-- 15 or 20 minutes of
our time together. And as you'll see,
there are microphones. And so I will let you know
when we get to the point and you can kind of line
up and we'll just take as many questions as we can
before the evening is over or before the afternoon is over. So, be thinking while
we're talking about what you want to ask. And remember, it's a question,
not a speech, all right? I'm just going to say
that one time [applause]. So, let's start with the
lovely lady to my left, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, the
Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers
University, and the former director
of the program in African American history at the Library Company
of Philadelphia. And she has written
"Never Caught: the Washingtons'
Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway
Slave Ona Judge", 2017 national book
award finalist. Erica, thank you for joining us. >> Erica Armstrong
Dunbar: Yes [applause]. >> Eric Deggans: And to my
right, Catherine Kerrison, who is a scholar of Early
American and Gender History who was recently became a
full professor of history at Villanova University,
and she's written "Jefferson's Daughters: Three
Sisters, White and Black, in a Young America", the
story of Jefferson's one black and two white daughters. Thank you very much for
joining us [applause]. >> Catherine Kerrison:
Thank you. >> Eric Deggans: So,
let's get right into it. I read both of these books. And as a black person, I
did not know how to feel about our founders after I
read about them owning slaves and their relationships
with their slaves. So, how am I supposed
to feel about this? How am I supposed to negotiate
how I feel about Jefferson and Washington after reading
about how they were slave owners and how hypocritical they
were in some ways about this? What do you think? >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Yeah. I think that the discomfort that
we feel reading about the sort of flawed nature of our
founders is natural. It's normal. We've grown up with
these narratives that paint our founders
in a specific way with specific light
for multiple reasons. So, when text like
"Never Caught" or "Jefferson's Daughters"
come out, it really sort of-- these texts challenge us to
rethink not simply our founders but this moment in which
the nation was created. And so I would say--
you know, I wrote a book that wasn't necessarily
about George Washington. The book was about an
enslaved woman named Ona Judge who happened to be owned by
Martha and George Washington. And so, it was really-- I
think we just think about it as an attempt to reshape
how we see the founding of the nation, founders
included. >> Eric Deggans: Now, your
book, there are some people who have even disputed
this connection between Sally Hemings
and Thomas Jefferson. So, as you work on the book,
did it change how you felt about Jefferson or change how
you felt about the founders? >> Catherine Kerrison: There
are still naysayers to the idea that Jefferson had this
relationship quite long-standing with Sally Hemings that produced
four children who survived into adulthood, but
the preponderance of the evidence really makes that position sort
of untenable, right? That, in fact, that he did have
this long-standing relationship. And like Erica with her
project on Ona judge, I was much more interested in
Harriet Hemings but, of course, I think in my work on all
three daughters, there's a way which looking at Jefferson as
a father, we actually see him in a very different way and
in a way that he is an edited. He was usually very conscious
of his self-presentation for both his peers
and for posterity, but as a father we see
him rather differently, and so I didn't see
Jefferson differently so much than I had before I
started this project. I knew he was a slave owner,
but to actually kind of see him in this relationship and how
he dealt with the children of his slave Sally Hemings
was really quite revealing, and that what I see ultimately
is Jefferson is very human, Jefferson as in some ways
very, very conventional. And that ultimately in seeing
the humanity of our founders, I think that's actually kind of
freeing and liberating, right? So, we don't sort of feel
as though we have to live up to these towering idols but,
in fact, we can take the best of what they have to offer,
except that this is indeed part of the American story. And ask, OK, so what does
that mean for us today and that's what I tried to do. >> Eric Deggans: So your book
talks about how this woman that the Washingtons owned
escaped from them went to Portsmouth and eventually
resisted their attempts to sort of bring her back into the fold. How did you hear
about this story? What made you decide you
wanted to write this book and how did you stumble on this? >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Yeah, I was actually working
on another book. This is what historians
always do. We're in the archives and we're
reading through old newspapers and manuscripts, and we find
something that intrigues us. And so, I was finishing
another book about how black women
became free in the north. And I was working, I was in
the archives, I was reading through 18th century newspapers
trying to get a feel for sort of everyday life
in Philadelphia. And so I'm in the
microfilm room, 13th in locus in Philadelphia, the historical
society, and I'm reading, you know, through the newspapers and up pops a runaway
slave advertisement. And I pause, I thought, OK,
this is sort of interesting, it's the end of the
18th century, it was 1796 slavery
is almost sort of dead, gone in Philadelphia. So it's interesting that
someone's advertising. And then it became clear to
me that this was not just sort of any advertisement, that
this was an advertisement from the house of the president. And so I did the pause
moment, wait, wait, wait, 1796, that's George Washington, OK. Who is being advertised here? What is this about? And what was so-- you
know, one of the things that historians have relied upon with runaway slave
advertisements is that it gives us
some information, typically about people of
whom we know very little. And so it said, you know,
absconded from the household of the president of the United
States, Ona Maria Judge. And I thought, OK,
wait, who is Ona? Why did she run away? We kind of know the
answer to that, right? What happened to her? And I think it was that last
question, the what happened to her that sort of just took
hold of me and never really kind of let go and I thought,
OK, well, I've got to figure out who this is and more
specifically as an expert in African-American history, specifically African
American women's history, I found myself excited but also
really angry and frustrated at that moment because I had
never heard her name before. And I thought why don't
I know this story? Why have I not encountered her
or her story in source material? So, I thought maybe I can
find a way to weave this into the first book
and I said no, I'm going to come back to this. So, I finished the first book
and moved on to really sort of figure out all that
I could about Ona. And that was really
a nine-year search. It took me nine years to
research and write this book, in part because Ona was a
fugitive and one the one thing that fugitives rely upon
is anonymity, right? So, she didn't want to
be found for the majority of her life, until the end. And it's the end of her life
where she does leave behind to newspaper interviews. So we do actually have Ona's
voice through her interviews. But really it was,
you know, finding Ona and then being committed
to telling her story, but also understanding
that Ona's life, her story, gives us a sort of portal into the founding of
the nation, right? We have lots of books, great
books about Washington, Jefferson, but I was more
interested in telling a story about those who worked,
who toiled, who labored under the founding
fathers, who built this nation. And so Ona gives us that perfect
portal to think about race, to think about gender,
to think about labor, to think about the
south and the north. She-- Her life allowed really
all of us to understand the sort of complex nature of
the early republic. >> Eric Deggans: That's
what's interesting to me about both your books,
because you guys are talking about slaves and you
are talking about women. You're talking about
the two groups that historians probably
ignored during that time and how do you put together a
book where you're trying to find out about these people who is
sort of the official chroniclers of history didn't pay attention
to or kind of marginalized? >> Catherine Kerrison: So,
as you had alluded earlier, for decades, the story of Thomas
Jefferson and Sally Hemings and their children had
been suppressed, right? And historians, to
be perfectly honest, were very much part
of that project. And so, they-- >> Eric Deggans: Proud
of suppressing the story. >> Catherine Kerrison: Of suppressing the
story, indeed, yes. And so, it-- they
ignored the story told by Sally Hemings' son Madison
who gave a newspaper account in 1873, so almost 50 years
after Jefferson's death. They suppressed that story. They even attack
Madison's character as incapable of telling
the truth. So-- And this is--
these are historians in the 20th century
who did this. So, it has been a project of the
latter half of the 20th century and into our own to
even get historians to really take seriously
the question of slavery and enslavement to even
think about that experience from the slaves'
point of view, right? And then as many of
you may know, in 1998, there was a DNA test that definitively linked the
youngest son of Sally Hemings, whose name was Eston, to the
Jefferson male line, right? So that's not to say
Thomas, but it was-- but all the other evidence
around this relationship, taken together with
the DNA as they say, it's really no longer tenable
to deny that relationship. So there was all of
that work that had to be done before we even get to the question of
women in slavery. And that field is
now quite rich, and again particularly
in the last 20 years. What I was-- What I wanted to
do when I first started my book, I was initially drawn
to it because Martha, the eldest of Jefferson's
three surviving daughters, lived into her 60s, had
11 surviving children, all of whom developed a rather
sizable archive of letters. And I remember the first
time I saw this, particularly at the University of
Virginia, I thought, gee, there's got to be a book
in there somewhere, right? And then I thought, well, if I'm
going to do a book on Martha, I'm not going to ignore
Maria, his second daughter with his wife, and then it
would be utterly dishonest of me to do a book called
"Jefferson's Daughters" without talking about Harriet. And in a slightly different
way than Erica did for her work on Ona, Harriet was a bit of
a challenge to try to find, because very briefly, what we
know about her, what happened to her also came from
Madison's account. And what he said was
that Harriet thought it to her interest to
go to Washington, DC to take on the
role of a white woman, and by her dressing
conduct as such. He believed that she never
revealed her identity as Harriet Hemings
of Monticello. In fact, she married a
white man of good standing in Washington City,
Madison said, and raised a family of children. So, a fugitive sort of in-- >> Eric Deggans: A fugitive
history in a [inaudible]. >> Catherine Kerrison:
A fugitive-- That's a lovely way to put it. Because she never--
Jefferson never gave her-- Jefferson never actually
gave her freedom papers but he did pay for her
stagecoach fair to Philadelphia and he did give her
$50 for her expenses. So clearly he facilitated
her departure, but at law, she was still a slave at law until the Thirteenth
Amendment was passed in 1865. She was-- That was what it
took to formally free her. And so, protecting her identity
was what she needed to do to pass as a freeborn white
person, which again is somewhat of a different strategy than Ona
Judge did and enabled me then to really kind of discuss this
whole phenomenon of passing both in the 19th century during
the course of slavery. And even today, one
researcher estimated as many as 30,000 people a year
crossed the colorblind from black to white. >> Eric Deggans: Wow. You know, I'm interested in
this idea of the modern things that we struggle with that
are legacies from slavery. And I've always felt
sort of this idea of inherent black
criminality, for example, came out of the need to find a
reason to oppress black people and force them into free labor. When you look at the work that
you've done about that time, about what Ona went through,
what are the modern legacies of what she went through in the
system of slavery that she had to find a way to survive? >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Yeah,
that's a beautiful question, because I think, you know,
someone who teaches US history, we-- and I sort of focus on
the 18th and 19th century, we don't-- historians are really
uncomfortable when people ask us to think about connecting the
past with the present, right, or the future but
I'll do it anyway. >> Eric Deggans: It's my job-- >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar:
That's your question. So, I'll do it, thank
you for letting me. You know, I do think we can
see these direct connections between the history of
enslavement, the creation of race with modern-day
social justice issues, right, when we look at the
industrial complex clearly. I do think also Ona's
story helps as to think about not simply the connections
between slavery and the lack of any inequality thereafter, but I think Ona's story
is really also a coming of age story that helps us think
about the importance of family, that helps us think
about what one must do in very dire situations, the
choices that they have to make. We also know that Ona as an
enslaved person was forbidden from learning to read or write. We know that at the end of
her life she learns to read. I'm not certain that she
ever learned to write, but clearly there
are these issues about literacy, about education. And I think education
in particular is one of these themes that we can
connect between the 18th and-- 17th through 19th century,
and the 20th and 21st century. When we think about how
the decks were stacked or the ground was
uneven, foreign slaved-- people who were legally
forbidden from learning to read and write and that we think
about education at this moment and the students, the
children in particular who have the least opportunity. We see some connections,
racially at least, right? And I do think that for the
21st century that the issue of education is going to be one of the most important
civil rights issues, right, of the century. And I do think that it's
important for historians like us to write about these
women, these men, but also to make certain
that readers like yourselves, adult readers, engaged
readers are invested but also children, you know? And it's our job really
I think to make certain that those ideas are translated, are legible for young
children, not just adults. It's too late to wait
until college, right? Or to wait into you're 18,
19, 20 years old to learn about these very sort
of fundamental issues that we can connect
to the founding of the nation, to the president. >> Eric Deggans: So, the
question I had when I came to your book, the
main question I had and the question I've
always have when I heard about Sally Hemings
was, what was that like? Like, what was that relationship
like between these two people? And like you said, there's not
a lot of information out there. It's hard to figure
out what's going on. What were you able to find
out about what it was like? >> Catherine Kerrison: I think
actually I have to hear-- talk very briefly about a
wonderful scholar's work, Annette Gordon-Reed, who wrote
a Pulitzer Prize-winning book called "The Hemingses
of Monticello". [ Applause ] And there Gordon-Reed
takes on this question sort of probing very much
what historians of enslaved women need to do, which is to probe
the silences, right? Because we don't know. What we do know,
what we can be sure of was this incredible
power dynamic and in balance between the two people, Thomas
Jefferson the slaveholder and Sally Hemings who
at age 16 in Paris where she knows all she has
to do is go to a French court and she will be freed,
has a decision to make about whether she's going to
re-cross the Atlantic to go back to a life of slavery
in Virginia or not. And she's-- >> Eric Deggans: At a time when crossing the Atlantic was
not the safest thing to do. >> Catherine Kerrison: No. No. So, there were all
sorts of risks, right? All kinds of risks. She's taken her life in
her hands at that moment. Does she company
Jefferson back or not? In so many different
ways, right? However, having stated
that, which is the obvious, it's also important I think to consider Sally
Hemings the person. And a very important point I
think that Gordon-Reed makes is that this 16-year-old in
Paris did judge correctly that Thomas Jefferson, a man 30
years her senior, at least, yes, that he would keep his
promise that if she came back to Virginia with him, he
would free any children that they had together. And for everything we can say
about Jefferson and slavery, and I am one of many
voices who have said a lot, we do have to say that he kept
that promise that he made. And there isn't a court
in the United States that would have forced
him to do so. So, she was correct
in that judgment. She was the person who also
had a home in Virginia, who had a family in
Virginia, who loved that view from Monticello of the Blue
Ridge Mountains, as much as any. The other thing that I do in my
book particularly is I'm trying to think about Harriet's
childhood is to take Sally Hemings,
to think about her as a person, as a mother, right? How did she raise these
children, trusting them-- trusting in Jefferson's
promise and educating them so that they knew that unlike
every other enslaved person on this plantation,
when they turn 21, they were going to be free. And how did she do that? And let's think that Jefferson
is not the only educator on that mountain. >> Eric Deggans: Right. >> Catherine Kerrison:
Sally Hemings was as well and she clearly prepared
her daughter beautifully for the life she was going to
live as a freeborn white woman, the wife of a white man
of middling standing who raised her own
children in her stead. >> Eric Deggans: Wow. >> Erica Armstrong
Dunbar: Can I just add? >> Eric Deggans: Please. >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar:
There's something that you said that I think is really
important, and it's about the archives. And for historians who write
based upon what we find in the archives, it's very
frustrating if you are someone who focuses on women
or who focus on people of African descent, you know,
prior to the 20th century. The archives are kind of
violent spaces for black women in particular because
we're not there, right? We're ignored. Our names are often
not mentioned. And so it becomes a
different kind of project when you're attempting to
recreate and share the lives of enslaved women in
particular, why it takes so long to write a book, too,
if you're doing that. But I do think it's one
of the things that led me in writing this book
about Ona to make certain that this was a readable book,
a book for a general audience but also one that
allowed me as an expert in African American women's
history to speculate, right? To speculate-- Informed
speculation, right? And to make certain that
the reader always knows when I do not necessarily
have a document that says Ona made
round bread this morning for breakfast, right? I don't have that document. But what I do have are
recipes from the 19th century of brown bread, right? And that we know the majority
of other enslaved women made that bread so it didn't
make me feel uncomfortable to say Ona probably made
brown bread for breakfast, in the narrative, in the book. But I do think that when
we're writing history, at least for me, it
was a risk, right? We're trained methodologically
to only stick to the sources, paper sources typically. That's almost impossible to do
if you're writing the stories, the histories of people who were
enslaved, who were murdered, who were traumatized and whose
names were not counted, right? >> Eric Deggans:
That's the thing that struck me about your book. I remember reading passages
where you Ona must've done this, or she might have felt that. And I could tell you we're
signaling-- I don't-- that's so you know for sure. But the thing that was
interesting to me is, you know, slaves were not allowed to learn
how to read, right, or write. And, you know, there's a real
practical reason for that, right, to keep them from
being able to make maps or communicate with each other. But what it also did was it
robed us of their history. Because a lot of your
book is letters, right, that all these people wrote
to each other and you're able to read these letters and
find out how they felt about the circumstances, what it
was like to live in that time, who died and when and of what. And we don't have any
of that stuff for slaves because they weren't able
to write any of that stuff down and leave it for us. And that's a cost of slavery that I think we can't
really appreciate until we read the books
that you guys wrote. >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar: I do think that the oral
tradition that's been passed down is amazing, right? And that for that reason we
can never dismiss the records that we do have, the oral
transcriptions of interviews and what have you from those
who are members of slavery or perhaps had a parent or
grandparent who was enslaved. And I think we have to look at that source material
in similar ways. And so, maybe I'm more of
an optimist and that I'm-- as opposed to being sort of
angry about what's not there. I'm excited and delighted to
read or to hear the stories of what actually
does still exist. It gives us enough
to tell the story. It tells us-- It gives
us the opportunity to get into the lives of these people who otherwise would
have been forgotten. >> Eric Deggans: I'm a
critic so it's my job to look at all the stuff
that is not there. We only have 15 minutes
left already? Wow. OK. >> Catherine Kerrison:
May I just-- >> Eric Deggans:
Before you do that, I just want to say we're going to start taking questions
from you guys next. So if you would line up at these
mics, if you have a question. And remember, no speeches. I will you off [laughter]. Go ahead. >> Catherine Kerrison:
Well, I'll say very quickly, just building on what Erica
was just talking about, it's this question of sources
and the ways in which documents which is to say the written
record has always sort of taken priority
among historians but over the oral record,
the oral tradition. But that-- So two things I would
say about that, first of all, let's remember that is
essentially the white archive, right? And so we need to be
really careful about that. So for example when
Jefferson's granddaughter and grandson finger their
cousins for the paternity of Jefferson's children, we need to be very careful
about using that. And then the other thing is
that some readers have said to me sometimes I get a little
frustrated with all those maybes and probablys and would have,
might have, but what I say to that is that, again,
in this effort to speak into the silences,
what is so important is to ask the questions,
right, to-- as you did, what would
it have been like? I don't know, I don't know. I don't have Sally
Hemings' words but I have all this other
information, all this context that then allows me
to think about that. And it's the thinking
about that that is so important to go forward. Thanks. >> Eric Deggans: Before
we take questions, I just want to point
out one more thing. There's lots of points
when I got upset, when I was reading
your books, you know? I mean your books are wonderful
but the things these people did. The Washingtons realized
when they're in Philly that they're there for six
months, can claim their freedom. So then they decide very
surreptitiously to come up with this plan to rotate
the slaves in and out of, what, Virginia so that they never run
out the clock on their freedom. I was like, Washington, I
hate that guy [laughter]. >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Yeah. Yeah. That is a moment where
you're in the archives like, George, man [laughter]. What you doing? Like, what is this about? And it was. I'm reading George Washington's
letters and he's saying, yes, you know, there's a law in
Pennsylvania that says-- that was written in 1780 that
said if you were a nonresident and you brought enslaved
people with you to the state of Pennsylvania, they can only
remain there for six months and then if they've
overstayed that time, they can be set free, right? So we send this letter home
to a secretary saying, well, we're going to rotate
the slaves. >> Eric Deggans:
And not tell them. >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar:
And not tell anyone. For good reason, right? >> Eric Deggans: For
good reason, yeah. >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar: And every six months they would
be rotated back to Virginia or if that was too inconvenient,
a quick trip to New Jersey, to Trenton, would
restart the clock. And that is a moment where
as a scholar, you know, you're reading the document,
you're using the documents but you're like, man-- >> Eric Deggans: Come on. >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar: What? >> Eric Deggans: And in your
case, the idea that Jefferson on the one hand talk about
refraining from using the whip, right, to control slaves. But on the other hand, he was
giving away slaves as like gifts and breaking up families to,
you know, hey, you got married, here, have these three people. >> Catherine Kerrison:
Absolutely. Yeah, Jefferson is, you
know, on the one hand, he will offer inducements
to his enslaved population. He'll provide a bed and
a pot as a wedding gift, if his slaves would find
spouses, and remember of course this isn't-- these aren't marriages
recognized by law. These exist strictly at the
sufferings of the master. So on the one hand, he'll encourage his
enslaved population to find a marriage partner
within his own population of enslaved people,
but then think nothing of separating children
out as wedding gifts. So yeah, it's-- that's when you
really realize the enormous gulf between the past and present. >> Eric Deggans: The present. Sir, if you could give us
your name and your questions. >> Hi. My name is Rod
Riggers [assumed spelling] from Rockville, Maryland. My question really goes to how
we identify people in the past and I noticed at the front
of this conversation, some people use the term
enslaved [inaudible] enslaved. So I just want to-- a discussion
on how we use identifiers and how we convert
humanity or take away that humanity and then in your-- >> Eric Deggans:
Very perceptive. She actually has a part in
the beginning of the book where you talk about using
enslaved as an adjective rather than enslaved as a noun,
which I think is important. Yeah. >> Erica Armstrong
Dunbar: You know, I think in the book I explained
that when I'm teaching, when I'm talking, I typically
use the phrase enslaved because it reminds us that this
is an action that was taken and placed on the shoulders
of enslaved Africans, right? This was not something that
we should think about in terms of just identity,
right, and it's forced. And that by using that
term, enslaved versus slave, it reminds the reader
of exactly this. However, I explained
also that I do-- I sort of move back and forth
between the term enslaved and slave just for sort
of narrative reasons. When you say enslaved, enslaved,
enslaved over and over again and when you're reading, sometimes that becomes
sort of a little heavy. But you're right, I'm glad yo
asked this question and I think if you walked into any sort of
history class at this moment in time that, you
know, we get it. The term enslaved is the term
that we use to describe folks. >> Eric Deggans: I
want to move quickly. So, yes, you. >> I'd like to address
this to Professor Dunbar. I read your book on Ona
Judge and really enjoyed it. >> Erica Armstrong
Dunbar: Thank you. >> You really have
aluminated a hidden chapter in our early history. And I'd like to make an
observation about the book and get your response to it. Much of the book deals with
the saga of an Ona living in New Hampshire and
George Washington trying to recapture her. And on the one hand,
you have a person who is triply disenfranchised
as an enslaved black woman. On the other hand, you have
by far the most powerful and prestigious person in the
country and yet in the end, Ona wins because she's
never brought back from New Hampshire to slavery. >> Erica Armstrong
Dunbar: Never caught. >> Eric Deggans:
Spoiler alert [laughter]. [Inaudible]. >> So, I found that
rather remarkable and somewhat inspiring
in a sense, actually. And I'd like your
response to that. >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar: Sure. Yeah, that's-- thank
you for that. And I do think that aside from--
yes, it's called "Never Caught" so you do know what
happens at the end but still go buy the book,
thought, right, because you want to find out what happens. >> Eric Deggans: Yeah, you gave
away the ending in the title. How do you do that? >> Erica Armstrong
Dunbar: It's worth it. So, you know, I do
think that the struggle between like the most powerful,
well-known founding father and this enslaved woman who
he could never see to capture and bring back into his
possession, although legally, he had every right to do so. He signed first fugitive
slave act of 1793 to make certain he could
cross state lines, right? And because of the help from
the free black community in Portsmouth, of white
sympathetic men and women who were uncomfortable
with human bondage. Ona is able to remain
detached, right, from this sort of powerful man. And I do think that it's a
story about perseverance, right? And that's not just for her. But when we think about the
experiences of the enslaved, the mere fact that
we still exist as black people is
amazing, right? It is-- It was survival. It was a story of survival. And I think Ona kind of
helped us to remember that. And I think sort of
at a moment in time where we're thinking quite a
bit about presidential power, about race that I think
Ona's story helped us sort of unpack all of that
and remain optimistic. >> Eric Deggans: Yes, you. >> You mentioned earlier about how we're considering our
founding fathers differently and in relation to the confederate
memorials coming down, some people have taken the
extreme stand that we ought to be removing memorials
to the founding fathers because they were slaveholders
and that sort of thing. Do either of you have a
strong feelings on that topic? >> Catherine Kerrison: I think-- the difference I think
for the moment anyway is in the conversation
around the statues. So, for example, they
are-- as this panel shows, there are a lot of
conversations going on about the founders
and slavery. There is very little
that I'm seeing in the public discourse anyway
about the Jim Crow context of the erection of the
confederate statues. And to me, that is a significant
difference, which is to say, we're not getting really the
history of why those monuments to confederate generals and et
cetera were put up when they when they were erected and why. And I think-- >> Eric Deggans: And where. >> Catherine Kerrison:
And where, yeah. So, I really do think if
we had a bit more context that was visible and a plaque
in front of those monuments that thought about the
daughters of the confederacy who erected these things, as we're also erecting this Jim
Crow legal system, that maybe-- that would be a little
bit different. But that isn't the
conversation going on. >> Eric Deggans: Yeah. It strikes me that a monument to George Washington is
not necessarily a monument to somebody who fought
for slavery but a monument to a confederate general,
it's a monument to somebody who fought for slavery. And they were erected-- >> Catherine Kerrison: And
for treason [applause]. >> Eric Deggans: Yeah. And they were erected at a time
when Jim Crow laws were trying to hold back people of color
and they were erected in places where people of color
would have to face them and be reminded of their status. So it's a totally
different conversation. >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar: And
I do think it's important for us to also recognize that there's
space for more monuments, right? That it's not simply about
tearing down monuments but it's about building them. >> Eric Deggans: Are you
advocating an Ona monument? Is that what you're doing? Somebody from-- >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar: I'll
be collecting money at the door. >> Eric Deggans:
Can we some funding? OK, yes. >> I'm [inaudible]. I want to thank the
panel and the discussion on the enslaved women. I'd like to know,
is there a story about the white women,
the white wives? Has that story been told or is that the subject of
a couple of books? >> Catherine Kerrison:
Sorry, the white-- >> Erica Armstrong
Dunbar: Wives. >> Wives. Wife-- The wife of
Jefferson and how did they feel about the relationships that their husbands
had with the women? >> Catherine Kerrison: OK. >> And what was going
on in their minds, what could you enlighten
us with. >> Catherine Kerrison:
Well, there's-- there has been some work
written about Jefferson's wife. What-- In terms of your question
about sort of the relationship or what white women kind of
thought about the relationships that their men, husbands,
fathers, brothers, there is in southern
society a huge cone of silence about that, right? And so, what I've--
So specifically, one thing for example that
I found is there are sort of these tiny little mentions
long after Martha Jefferson-- Martha the daughter dies where her son tells someone
who's doing a Jefferson biography that really--
I'm paraphrasing. If he'd-- If she
had her druthers, this is Jefferson's daughter, Sally Hemings would have been
moved off the mountain long before, in fact she never--
Jefferson refused to remove her. And Martha's daughter Ellen
talks with real disdain and condescension
that reverberates across the centuries
about the yellow children at Monticello, right? So, in all of those-- and
even in sort of the stories that they tell, he
white women tell, about where all these
light-skinned children came from or-- and there's-- they never even mentioned Sally
Hemings' children by name. Not once. They don't even honor
their humanity with their name. >> Eric Deggans: One
thing you'll learn from reading both
books but particularly from reading Catherine's book
is there's a lot about the lives of the women because,
you know, there's a lot about how they wrote to each
other and how they talked about how they were feeling. And so you do get a real sense
of what it's like to be a wife, not necessarily Jefferson's
wife because she died so quickly in the story. But, you know, there is that
area but we're making the point that the slaves, you
don't get any of that, because they weren't allowed to
memorialize their experiences. Yes. >> Hi. My name is Mimi
and I'm a recent graduate of the University of Virginia. And so I've lived
in Charlottesville for the past four years and
seen a lot of things changing and moving through the city and
I've been really [inaudible] by the work of my friends
and students that I've tried to hold the administration
accountable. I'm sorry. And I was just wondering what
you as professors would say that students and alumni could
do to keep that conversation and accountability moving
forward because we don't want that to go away at
all and there's still so much to be reckoned with. So I wanted your advice on that. >> Erica Armstrong Dunbar:
Oh, that's a great question. Thank you for that [applause]. I mean I-- if I may, I'll jump
in and I'll say, you know, I think students should
do what they are doing, keep doing what they are
doing which is don't be quiet. That's the great thing about
being a college student, right? Speak your mind and stand
behind those words too. And I do think we're
seeing student groups across the country doing
exactly that whether it's at Chapel Hill, at University
of North Carolina, whether it's at antiracist protests
in Charlottesville, that in the past
we've seen movements, really being supported and moved
forward by students, right? And so if students continue to
hold administrations accountable for what the student body
has to endure every day, whether it's walking
into a building named after a slaveholder,
right, or laying your head in a dorm every night in a
building named after those who traded and sold enslaved
people, we have to continue as professors and students
to remind folks that we have to rethink this and it's
up to us to rename it. >> Catherine Kerrison: And what
I would say quickly is continue to press for courses that
deal with this history, right, because as you can see,
there's still a lot of the history to be written. And urge college
students particularly to vote, right, to regret-- [ Applause ] To reject the displays
that we saw last year as unacceptable in
a civil society. So thank you for your
question [applause]. >> Eric Deggans:
Well, I can't think of a better note
to end our time. I've been told we're
out of time. So, apologies to those of you
who wanted to ask question but didn't get to ask one. Once more, a round of
applause for Erica Dunbar, Catherine Kerrison [applause].
