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o pharmaceutico seve prevenar dente. Hello

1:12

everyone and welcome to Talk Nerdy. Today

1:14

is Monday, March 4th, 2024, and I'm

1:16

the host of the show. Cara

1:21

Santa Maria. And as always, before

1:23

we dive into this week's episode, I do want

1:25

to thank those of you who make Talk Nerdy

1:28

possible. You may or may have

1:30

not noticed that this is our what, ninth

1:32

episode of the year. And of course, I've

1:34

only sold one ad slot. So

1:37

clearly the support of the show lately

1:39

because of the way that ad sales

1:41

are going with podcasting is relying heavily

1:43

on listener support just like you. It's

1:45

always been the main model of support

1:48

for the show, but now more than

1:50

ever, it is pretty important. So if

1:52

you're interested in pledging your support, you

1:54

know, using this sort of like NPR

1:56

PBS model, all you've got to do

1:59

is visit Patreon. You can pledge as little

2:01

as a few cents if you want to. I

2:06

don't know if I would do that

2:08

because of processing fees, but as few

2:11

as a dollar or something like that

2:13

per episode. And it really does go

2:15

a super long way. This week's top

2:18

patrons include Daniel Lang, David J.E. Smith,

2:20

Mary Neva, Brian Holden, David Compton, Gabrielle

2:22

F. Jaramillo, Joe Wilkinson, Pascuali Gelati, and

2:25

Riva Keith, and Ulrika Hagman. Thank

2:27

you all so much from

2:29

the bottom of my heart. All

2:31

right, let's dive into this

2:34

week's episode. So I had

2:36

the opportunity to speak with

2:38

Dr. Barbara D. Savage, a

2:40

historian and the Geraldine R.

2:42

Segal Professor of American Social

2:44

Thought at the University of

2:46

Pennsylvania. She has a

2:48

new book out called, Mers

2:50

Tate, The Global Odyssey of

2:52

a Black Woman Scholar. And

2:55

she recently won the Association for

2:57

the Study of African American

2:59

Life and History Best Book

3:01

Award for 2024 for

3:04

this very book that we're

3:06

going to dive into. So

3:08

without any further ado, here

3:10

she is, Dr. Barbara Savage.

3:12

Well, Barbara, thank you so much for

3:14

joining me today. Thank you

3:17

so much for the invitation. Really looking forward to

3:19

talking with you. Yeah, so this is, I

3:22

love having these kinds of conversations on

3:24

the show. I don't do them very

3:26

often, but I am always fascinated

3:28

by the history of

3:30

science, the history of

3:32

influential people in academia,

3:35

the history of scholarship,

3:37

and especially the

3:39

confluence, obviously, of these

3:41

different social pressures and

3:44

just conversations about how we got to

3:46

where we are, where we're continuing to

3:48

go. And so I'm always excited

3:50

when I have individuals on the

3:53

show who are not just historians

3:55

like yourself, but also just

3:58

incredible writers and authors who bring in the world. bring

4:00

that history to life. So before we get

4:02

into the book itself, I would love to

4:04

hear a little bit more about

4:06

your path and journey. Like

4:09

how does one become a historian?

4:12

Well, I am a historian

4:16

fully by choice in the sense

4:18

that like many people

4:20

who went to college in

4:23

the late 1970s, I took a

4:25

detour first to law school. I

4:28

did that inspired in part

4:30

by the example of really

4:33

heroic lawyers during the civil

4:35

rights movement, which was my

4:38

childhood. And so

4:40

after going to law school

4:42

and spending about a decade or a

4:44

little bit more in Washington, working on

4:46

Capitol Hill and at the

4:48

Children's Defense Fund, I

4:51

realized how much I wanted to write

4:53

and how I was still drawn

4:56

to history and particularly to African-American

4:58

history. So I made a

5:01

decision in my mid 30s to

5:03

go to graduate school to study

5:06

history and was able to

5:08

do that, felt

5:11

privileged to be able to do it. And

5:13

so I think I come to

5:15

this work with a great deal

5:17

of a sense of purpose and

5:19

mission and

5:21

always wanting to write African-American

5:23

history, which I still believe was

5:26

both understudied and misunderstood and

5:29

hope that as a writer

5:32

and a researcher and as a teacher, that

5:34

I could continue to advance

5:37

what we know about black

5:39

history in this country. And

5:42

so I have brought to

5:44

it everything that I

5:46

am, including

5:48

someone who came to it

5:51

in midlife or after having

5:53

done something else. So

5:56

that's the short story. I grew

5:58

up in Virginia. And

6:01

as I said, time in Washington, it

6:04

still keeps me with an

6:07

interest in politics and history and

6:09

the relationship between race and

6:11

media and politics and history. And

6:14

certainly as I've continued

6:16

to be in the profession myself, been

6:19

very much aware of the difficulties,

6:22

particularly for black women who also

6:24

want to enter this field and

6:26

do this kind of work. And in many

6:28

ways, I think all of those concerns

6:31

kind of come together in this

6:33

biography of Merce Tate. Yeah.

6:37

So it's obviously one

6:40

cannot grapple with and

6:42

tell stories about black

6:44

history without grappling with

6:47

politics, without grappling with

6:49

the political nature of

6:53

the American experience. But one

6:55

thing that interests me a lot is the kind

6:59

of special focus that you have had

7:01

in your career on the

7:03

stories of black women. And so

7:05

I'm curious because, gosh, when

7:07

we talk about, I

7:11

come from a psychology background, right? So I just

7:13

finished my PhD in psychology. Again, like late in

7:15

life, kind of did a mid-career shift as well. And

7:18

I usually have that lens,

7:21

right? And

7:23

so what I know about kind

7:26

of race relations, race

7:29

studies, and specifically when we talk

7:31

about African-American

7:33

history, but also women's

7:35

history, that confluence there,

7:38

just that across the board, it's the,

7:40

I mean, how

7:43

do I word this? It's the

7:47

raw end of the political stick, right?

7:50

And I think that that

7:52

conversation is such an important conversation

7:54

because very often we talk about race

7:56

or we talk about gender, but we

7:58

don't talk about the African-American. intersectionality of

8:00

the two. And that's

8:03

I think a really important point and

8:05

a really important place to begin because

8:07

as a black woman scholar writing about

8:09

a black woman scholar, as I

8:12

do in this book,

8:15

there were certainly very familiar

8:17

resonancies with me, things that

8:19

were very legible to me

8:21

because how even though Mercedate

8:24

and I are separated by half a century

8:26

in terms of time, there

8:28

was a great deal of familiarity. I mean you're

8:30

right that I've spent a fair amount of time

8:32

talking about and writing and

8:35

researching black women. One of

8:37

my original interests actually was

8:39

in politics and religion and

8:42

African-American women and so I had done

8:44

some earlier work there looking

8:46

at the relationship between religion

8:48

and politics through the lens

8:50

of black women who were

8:52

working inside religious organizations

8:55

or outside of them and

8:57

criticizing them but really trying

8:59

to elevate them into that into that story.

9:02

And that then carried over

9:04

into a collaborative project that I was

9:06

really privileged to be a part of

9:10

on black women intellectuals

9:12

because African-American

9:14

intellectual history has been

9:16

dominated as a field

9:18

by men who are very

9:22

deserving and who've done and who

9:24

did extraordinary things and are very

9:26

gifted and important figures, you know,

9:28

do boys and others but

9:30

I have tried and we tried in that

9:32

project to say, you know, hold up, wait a

9:34

minute, there are also all

9:36

of these women who may not

9:38

have had access to doctoral level training or

9:40

may not have been able to get published

9:43

in the same way but were

9:46

nonetheless doing intellectual history wherever they

9:48

were and that their ideas whether

9:50

they're expressed in print or in

9:53

speeches or in

9:55

essays are just as significant and

9:57

just as important and deserve to be

9:59

a part of it. part of these ongoing

10:01

conversations about, as you say,

10:03

about race and gender and

10:06

about politics and race. And

10:08

so that's been, I think,

10:11

a theme in

10:13

my work. And

10:15

it's something I've also brought to

10:17

my teaching in the sense

10:19

that you certainly want to make sure that

10:22

when you're presenting this history that it also

10:24

reflects kind of a broad spectrum of

10:26

African American life and

10:29

people. And

10:31

so, and students respond very, very

10:33

well to that because they are

10:35

being raised in the world where there's

10:38

greater attention to gender, but

10:42

never enough, I don't think. And

10:44

so there's a great deal of receptivity to

10:46

it. So it's been,

10:48

it is something that I care about

10:51

very deeply. And it is out of

10:53

that work on black women intellectuals that

10:55

this interest in the

10:58

current project has came

11:00

to me. And

11:03

so I think that we

11:05

see this every day in terms of

11:08

the sort of current political realm

11:10

and certainly academic politics right now,

11:13

the difficulties that black

11:15

women in particular are

11:18

facing. And so

11:20

it is a story, sadly, that

11:22

continues in that realm and

11:24

something that we

11:26

need to be, continue to

11:29

be attentive to and also to realize

11:31

that there are all these historical

11:34

antecedents as well. Yeah.

11:36

And you know, before we get into

11:39

Mirth and her story, I feel like

11:41

there was, there's something that

11:44

you mentioned that's sort

11:46

of implicit, but does bear

11:49

repeating and making explicit,

11:54

which is this, the importance of

11:56

these conversations around the history of

12:00

people whose history

12:02

is often not documented

12:04

to the extent that

12:07

the history of those around them are. I

12:10

think it's an oversimplification to say that history

12:12

is written by the, people used to

12:18

say the victor, I like to say the powerful,

12:20

those who have power. But

12:24

it's such an important thing

12:26

to go back and to do

12:28

the excavation, to tell the stories

12:33

of the people who very often were not

12:35

there in the numbers that they should have

12:37

been, but were there and just didn't, they

12:39

didn't win the prizes, they didn't win the

12:42

awards, sometimes they didn't get the degrees and

12:44

they didn't have any of the

12:47

documentation necessarily.

12:50

Their stories weren't the ones being

12:52

told, but they were

12:54

there nonetheless. And

12:57

that's certainly the case with

12:59

Professor Tate, but I think

13:01

one more broadly in African

13:03

American women's history, one of

13:05

the kind of recurring tropes there

13:07

is this notion of silence

13:09

and absence, that somehow

13:12

this history has not received the

13:14

attention it has deserved because the

13:17

sources aren't there to support it

13:20

or they're not represented in

13:22

the ways that we're normally expecting

13:25

to find historical figures.

13:28

And I think part of what I try

13:31

to demonstrate in this work and in other

13:33

work I've done is that yes,

13:36

there are in fact

13:38

archives that are available

13:41

and they're waiting to

13:43

be tapped into to try

13:46

to broaden our understanding of African

13:48

American women's history and their contributions

13:51

to American history. And

13:54

so that is, and

13:56

I think as we get closer to talking about the

13:58

book, I think we will find that there

14:00

are many women like Professor

14:02

Tate who in their

14:05

lifetimes were very well

14:07

known and very accomplished,

14:09

but somehow are then erased

14:12

from the institutional histories and

14:14

the broader histories, even someone

14:16

who is as prominent as she was in

14:18

her lifetime. That

14:21

erasure is itself

14:24

a result of people looking

14:26

in the usual places for the

14:28

usual suspects to say

14:30

this is what history should look like, these are

14:32

the people who should be included. I'm

14:35

hoping that with this work and the work

14:37

of lots of other scholars right now that

14:39

we're just saying this

14:42

array of figures is much

14:45

broader, much richer, much deeper, and

14:47

much more interesting if we're able

14:50

to bring to life

14:52

again people who were very

14:54

important in their lifetime. So

14:57

that is one of the things that I try

14:59

to do here, and certainly one of the things

15:01

I encourage my students to do is

15:03

to be patient enough

15:05

to look beyond the usual

15:08

names and to dig around

15:11

just like an investigative reporter

15:13

does to look for interesting

15:16

moments, interesting people, and

15:19

to use that as a way of building stories

15:22

and narratives that will capture a broader

15:26

interest and serve to

15:28

illustrate this really rich history

15:30

that we all share. Yeah,

15:32

I think as

15:34

a historian it must be almost

15:37

like a two-pronged

15:39

approach. There's the

15:41

history itself and then there's

15:44

the meta-action of contextualizing

15:47

not just the history at

15:49

the time, but the

15:52

way that the history

15:54

was sometimes buried or

15:56

suppressed. So this is

15:59

what I'm trying to do. what was happening then, but

16:01

this is why you've never heard of

16:03

this before. These

16:05

were all the things that led to me

16:07

being able to tell you this story right

16:09

now. I feel like that component of it

16:11

must be ... There are whole

16:14

dissertations just in that layer. Yeah. It's

16:17

interesting that you should raise that, because when

16:19

I talk about Tate and other

16:21

figures that well, but in

16:23

this case about Tate, people

16:25

are often apologetic to say, I never heard

16:27

of her. I didn't know about it.

16:30

I'm so sorry. This is across the board. It doesn't

16:32

matter whether ... I've spoken about

16:34

her in very many wide

16:36

audiences, both here in the US and

16:38

abroad. I say, it's not

16:41

your fault. I

16:43

didn't know until I started doing the work on

16:45

her. It

16:48

is this notion of history being,

16:50

as you say, suppressed or buried

16:52

and this kind of excavation work

16:54

that historians do to

16:56

bring these lives

16:58

and these moments back to

17:01

the fore. It's also

17:03

important to then say, here's

17:05

the broader context of that life as

17:08

it was lived, and here's why this life

17:10

is still so important for us to know

17:12

about and what it is

17:14

that this one life can still

17:16

teach us. That

17:19

way, there's a political context,

17:21

but there's also a way to

17:25

show the continued relevancy of

17:28

the lives of these women

17:31

in particular whose

17:34

actions and work and writings and

17:36

lives have been erased. Of

17:40

course, Mersa's life

17:42

really does fit beautifully

17:44

into that context that you described,

17:47

simply from an era

17:51

perspective, because she spanned

17:53

... Her life spanned

17:55

so many different political

17:57

movements, so many different

17:59

changes. changes here in America

18:01

and abroad. So the

18:04

book, the

18:06

subheading of the book is the global

18:08

odyssey of a black woman scholar. And

18:11

there's this beautiful black

18:13

and white image of her in the front,

18:15

sort of in her regalia

18:17

on a bicycle in

18:20

front of, is this Oxford? I should probably

18:22

know that. No, it is Oxford, yes. Okay,

18:25

and so you have this

18:28

sort of juxtaposition, right? Of

18:31

an African American woman who's

18:33

studying abroad and who is

18:35

in this sort

18:37

of obvious academic attire

18:41

in an era when that probably

18:44

wasn't very typical. So talk to

18:46

me about the context

18:48

first of her life. When

18:50

was she born? When did she die? What

18:53

was kind of contemporaneous to that time? Yes,

18:56

she was born in 1905 and died in 1996. So

19:02

her life almost literally spans the entire

19:04

20th century, which I can tell you

19:06

was a big challenge for me because

19:09

the longer she lived, the more

19:12

work I had to do in order

19:14

to sustain that narrative. And

19:17

the real challenge of trying

19:19

to contextualize what's

19:21

going on in the 1920s and 30s and 40s and 50s in

19:26

a way that is sufficient

19:28

to help a reader understand

19:30

without overwhelming the story itself. So

19:32

it's a very tricky balance, but

19:36

she's a woman who was born in 1905 in rural

19:39

Michigan and to

19:42

a family of black homesteaders

19:44

there. And she

19:46

is born and raised there

19:49

and was able

19:51

to get a very good education, especially

19:53

for a black

19:55

student at that time. And

19:58

she takes full advantage of that. of every

20:00

opportunity that comes her way. And

20:03

so we see her, as

20:05

I argue in the book, also being a

20:07

child of World War I, that's

20:10

what those are her earliest kind of

20:12

public memories, fed

20:14

by reading newspapers, but

20:18

also by family members who serve

20:20

in the war and come home

20:22

with stories of what it's like

20:25

to be abroad. And so

20:27

we see her then moving through the 20s and

20:30

the 30s. She

20:32

begins to travel herself to

20:35

Europe and elsewhere in that period.

20:38

We see her grappling with all

20:40

of the issues that are raised during World War II,

20:43

in particular about black men and

20:46

serving in segregated armed services

20:49

and being sent overseas to

20:52

fight and yet still come back and

20:55

be treated as less

20:57

than Americans here. Every

21:01

decade we can use her

21:04

life to learn about anti-imperialism

21:07

in the 1950s, the

21:09

civil rights movement in the 60s, African

21:14

independence movements in the 60s and 70s, you

21:18

name it, she's there. And

21:20

so I have tried in

21:22

the book to use her

21:24

life as a way to take us through

21:26

that history, but

21:29

still, obviously still to be talking about what

21:31

it is that she's doing and what she's

21:33

writing and where she's going and what

21:36

she's thinking. But it was a

21:38

real challenge as a first time

21:40

biographer to figure out how

21:42

to do that. It taught me this, I understand

21:44

now why people write for 600 and 800

21:46

page biographies. I

21:49

did not do that because

21:51

you can in fact follow

21:54

every tributary and you end up with

21:56

a book that has that kind

21:58

of, tome and

22:00

I tried to be a little

22:03

bit more judicious in my approach

22:05

to her life. But

22:08

it was a tremendous opportunity to

22:10

review that history. And I

22:12

say that especially someone who's taught 20th

22:15

century African American history for 25

22:18

or 30 years and then to have

22:20

this person just kind of plop down in all

22:22

of these moments and just to see that in a

22:24

certain kind of reality through

22:27

one person's life. So

22:30

that was one of the most interesting,

22:33

challenging and compelling aspects of doing

22:35

the work. Yeah,

22:38

and I can imagine, you know, it's

22:40

funny that you mentioned these sort of

22:43

like tomes that I'm a sucker for

22:45

a Ken Burns documentary and so I

22:47

will spend like hours of my life

22:49

dedicated to that. But I

22:51

know that that is, you know, it's a

22:54

particular day, so not everybody. And even that

22:56

is documentary form, not book form. And

22:59

so this is not a Ken Burns book. It's

23:02

definitely readable and much more accessible,

23:06

I think, in so many ways. But

23:08

one thing that I guess I,

23:12

you tell me if you even want to go there, but

23:14

one thing that I'm thinking about is how we

23:17

are not just what

23:19

happened while we were

23:21

alive and we were affecting history, but

23:24

we are products of the immediate sort

23:26

of precursors of our parents of the

23:28

era in which we were

23:30

first born. You know, I personally

23:32

was born in the Reagan

23:34

era, but I don't remember Reagan. I

23:36

don't remember Reagan's policies and I don't,

23:39

I mean, I know about them because

23:41

I learned them in school, but I

23:43

was born into that. And

23:45

so I think about somebody like

23:47

Mirth who, she came

23:49

at a time in history that, I don't

23:53

think that most white

23:56

people think about. I think they think, okay,

23:58

there's like, you know. slavery

24:00

for all this time in American history, and then the

24:02

Civil War, and then it was like, ehh,

24:05

then Jim Crow. And they forget about

24:07

Reconstruction, and they forget about this era

24:10

that's very complicated. And I think

24:12

when we think about rural Michigan,

24:14

like the Midwest at the turn

24:16

of the century, a

24:18

lot of people might not, I know, I

24:20

didn't really know the context of what was

24:23

life like for a

24:26

black family in, you know, 1900, 1905, when she was born. Yeah,

24:32

and I think, I mean, I think you're touching

24:35

on something really important. I think one of the

24:37

things that I learned again in trying

24:39

to do a

24:41

biographical project is that

24:43

I had to embed her in her

24:45

family history, because you're absolutely right. It

24:49

doesn't control, but it definitely influences,

24:51

and it definitely is the foundation

24:53

for who she becomes. And

24:56

so, as I said, she's born in 1905 into this family that

24:58

is in the middle of nowhere

25:05

in Michigan, because her

25:07

family had moved west

25:10

from Ohio and Pennsylvania

25:12

to be able to take

25:14

advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862, to

25:17

be a little on the nerdy side there.

25:19

But the idea is that if they could

25:21

get there, they could get land, they could

25:23

farm it, they could build

25:25

for themselves. And this is at a time,

25:27

you know, when that was not, you

25:30

know, being able to own land and

25:32

to farm, especially, and she would say

25:34

this herself, that being born in Michigan

25:37

rather than Mississippi made all the difference

25:39

in the world for her. And

25:41

many, for many reasons, one of

25:44

which is what she meant initially

25:46

was that her parents were not sharecroppers.

25:49

They were actually black people who were able

25:51

to, they were not wealthy

25:53

by any means, but were able to have a

25:55

substance existence

25:57

there and to take care of them.

26:00

but also they have that pride

26:02

of ownership and independence and it

26:04

also means that when they travel

26:06

there her family had been Free

26:09

before the Civil War when

26:12

they were in Ohio and Pennsylvania

26:14

They were free black people, but

26:16

they still sought more financial You

26:20

know possibility by moving by moving West

26:24

and I also have come to see her

26:26

as a child of the Midwest Which is

26:28

a region that usually doesn't stand alone when

26:30

I teach African American history people just want to talk

26:32

about the north and the south the north and the south

26:34

yep But the

26:36

Midwest is its own is its own

26:39

entity and I've really come to respect

26:41

that history So much more having

26:43

had to learn it in order to to

26:45

place her So she's born in

26:47

Michigan and then moves south to

26:49

Indianapolis to get a teaching job

26:52

as a high school history teacher Because

26:54

she can't as a black woman.

26:56

She can't get that job in

26:58

her home state of Michigan but

27:00

she moves south to Indianapolis and spends

27:05

You know teaches at an all-black high

27:07

school there and that is

27:09

you know, it's a very prominent

27:11

and Lively black

27:14

urban community that's often overlooked in

27:16

our rush to talk about New York

27:18

and Chicago But

27:20

here, you know, but here, you know, here is

27:22

this whole other way of being

27:26

That I've just really had to come to

27:28

you know to appreciate and

27:30

so, you know Tate is unusual in

27:33

that way because she veers from

27:35

the usual Cat,

27:37

you know the usual categories the

27:39

usual paths of migration and for

27:41

each of those things that

27:43

are some somehow Exceptional

27:46

she is still nonetheless living

27:49

out a In some

27:51

ways that also very typical Life

27:53

of an African-American woman in this

27:55

period an African-American woman with access

27:58

to education and

28:01

someone who's imagining what

28:03

a modern black womanhood might look for

28:06

her, which is also

28:08

a very privileged position

28:11

from which to dream. Through

28:15

hard work and determination, she's able to

28:17

push from

28:19

Indianapolis to Oxford and then

28:21

to get a degree there

28:23

in international relations in the mid-1930s

28:26

when access to that kind

28:28

of training was all but

28:30

foreclosed for women and for black

28:32

women in particular. So I just say all

28:34

of that to say you're absolutely right.

28:36

I give a lot of credit

28:38

to her family and her upbringing

28:41

and that

28:43

fierce sense of independence and

28:45

possibility which they then gave

28:47

to her. Yeah,

28:50

sort of fostered in her. I'm curious

28:52

about this concept and I

28:54

know I'm maybe getting a

28:56

little bit meta here, but as it relates

28:58

to her life, hopefully you can also give

29:00

us some examples, but this concept of sort

29:03

of being in a

29:05

privileged position but also that

29:07

privilege not being foregone, right?

29:09

Like she was, let's say,

29:12

financially or just culturally and

29:14

maybe I'm talking about the

29:16

microcosmic culture of her own

29:18

family, but culturally her

29:22

independence and her curiosity was

29:24

fostered and she was privileged enough

29:26

to be able to travel and to be able to go

29:29

to these different places to be able to learn. But

29:31

at the same time, there were not a lot of

29:33

people who look like her

29:36

doing these things and she had to

29:38

leave places where she

29:40

didn't have that kind of opportunity

29:42

in order to seek those opportunities.

29:45

So I'm curious about this juxtaposition

29:47

of being in a privileged position

29:50

but also a very disadvantaged position

29:52

sort of at the same time

29:55

or needing to be a trailblazer to

29:57

provide privilege for those who follow her.

30:00

Yes, and I think you you're touching on

30:02

exactly a paradox and a juxtaposition

30:04

because she is relatively privileged

30:07

Certainly compared to other african-american

30:09

women and other african-americans And

30:12

actually do you have a college education and

30:14

begin to have graduate degrees at that point?

30:17

She's actually more privileged than many white people

30:19

at that point, too And

30:21

definitely women. Yeah and definitely women

30:24

But I think that you're absolutely right that

30:26

for her and for many black

30:28

people men and women of

30:31

that era with this privilege

30:33

comes this also tremendous sense

30:35

of responsibility

30:38

and of the responsibility

30:41

to represent to both to

30:43

say see themselves as

30:45

trailblazers and as also

30:48

trying to Demonstrate over

30:50

and over and over and over again. Yes.

30:53

I'm smart enough to be here. Yes I'm

30:55

capable of doing this work. Yes I

30:58

can do this and yes I'm as

31:00

capable and if not more capable than

31:02

you are But also this

31:04

notion that if they should fail if they

31:07

should falter if they should make a mistake If

31:10

they should do something unseemly that

31:12

it would not just be a

31:14

reflection on her and her possibilities

31:16

But it would be a reflection on

31:18

the entire race of black people

31:21

and also the especially on other

31:23

black women Which is and

31:25

she felt that very keenly and spoke

31:27

about it poignantly When

31:29

you know when she was that whether she was

31:31

at Oxford or later at Radcliffe But I think

31:33

all of her life this this notion

31:35

that you're always and I call it

31:38

the burden of of racial representation

31:41

But it's thought there's also an opportunity

31:44

there to to pave the way as

31:46

you say for people to follow I

31:48

mean, I see myself as a beneficiary of

31:52

The kind of sacrifices and work

31:54

an example of people like Tate

31:56

not not just her but

31:58

people who basically came

32:01

into these opportunities, made the best of them

32:04

that they could. I've had much greater

32:07

privilege and much greater sense

32:09

of possibilities, but they're

32:11

example of stepping up, stepping in,

32:14

and trying to make the best

32:16

possible use of whatever

32:18

opportunities come your way. I think

32:20

that that's the example that I

32:23

certainly see in her life and many,

32:25

many other lives. Yeah,

32:27

and you touched on

32:30

something about intersectionality that I

32:32

find really

32:35

interesting and difficult to

32:37

grapple with. Obviously, I am a white

32:40

woman. I'm a Latina white woman, but

32:42

I present, obviously, very, very white, Puerto

32:45

Rican. I'm

32:47

a woman, and I have other components to my

32:49

whatever. Everybody has

32:51

their descriptions. I'm an atheist, and I'm

32:53

unmarried, and I'm child-free, and all these

32:56

different things. One of my

32:58

dear friends is an

33:00

Afro-Caribbean woman. We

33:02

talk often, we dig deep

33:04

a little bit into this concept of

33:07

intersectionality and the times in

33:09

her life when she grapples

33:11

with, she's like, I'm black

33:14

and I'm a woman, but I'm also a black

33:16

woman, which is different than being black

33:18

or being a woman. When

33:21

I think of Mirth, she was

33:23

born into an

33:25

era of quote-unquote

33:28

freedom, but then immediately was thrust

33:30

into this Jim Crow era. She

33:35

was not born with the privilege of

33:37

the vote, for example. When

33:41

you think about women's suffrage in this

33:43

country and you think about how some

33:45

of the people at the bleeding edge of

33:48

the women's suffrage movement were black women,

33:50

but they were minimized by

33:52

their white peers.

33:55

Their voices were actively being silenced by their

33:57

white peers because they didn't see them as

33:59

being quote-unquote. helpful to the movement, even though

34:01

these were the women who were very often

34:03

spearheading the movement. And so this

34:06

idea of being a woman

34:08

in this era, but maybe not fully

34:10

identifying with the women that you're

34:12

surrounded by in academia, and being

34:16

black in this era, but not fully identifying

34:18

with the men, the black men that you're

34:20

surrounded by in academia, must have been ...

34:24

gosh, there are so many adjectives I could use,

34:27

but I'm curious how you might describe that experience.

34:29

I think part of what you're

34:31

touching on is this. There's

34:34

a great deal of freedom, actually,

34:36

in not having a role model.

34:39

And let me explain what I mean

34:41

in the sense that she is an

34:43

example, a tremendous example, of self-invention

34:46

and self-creation, in

34:48

that when she was going to

34:50

school and to college and

34:52

to graduate school, there were

34:54

no other older black women

34:56

at Oxford. There

34:59

weren't older black women with

35:01

doctorates and professorships. And

35:03

so she is imagining

35:06

herself stepping into

35:08

a role for which there are no

35:10

models. And in that

35:12

way, that actually can be very freeing.

35:15

I mean, obviously, you're having the

35:17

battle, the kind of oppressive expectations

35:19

that people have and limitations, but

35:22

if you refuse to accept that in

35:24

the sense of limiting your own vision

35:26

of yourself and what you are and

35:28

what you can become, there is actually

35:30

some liberation in

35:33

that, which is not to say it was easy. It

35:36

was not. But what I find interesting

35:38

in her life, when you're talking about

35:40

the suffrage movement and the

35:42

discrimination and racism within

35:44

that movement, which she would

35:47

have been aware of, she

35:49

always credited her

35:52

success, and she was correct in

35:54

this way, to the generosity of

35:56

older women, both black

35:58

and white. I

36:00

think that's one of the things that struck

36:02

me as unusual in her life that

36:05

women deployed the

36:08

limited resources they had on

36:10

her behalf because they could

36:13

see all of this genius

36:15

and determination.

36:20

People wanted to help her realize

36:23

that ambition which she had. She

36:28

is one of the

36:30

rare examples of interracial

36:33

cooperation in the period

36:35

during her life. Her

36:38

models, I think, for her life really were

36:41

other engaged, strong,

36:44

independent black women who

36:46

were not without delicacy

36:49

and not without their

36:51

own vulnerabilities, but black women who

36:54

had found a way to serve

36:57

their communities to become what

37:00

they wanted to

37:02

become within the limitations of Jim

37:04

Crow and segregation and discrimination, but

37:07

who were able to hold on

37:09

to a tremendous sense of self-worth

37:12

and also racial commitment.

37:15

She also was not someone without

37:17

her own ego and also

37:19

a boldness about her

37:21

and a willingness to fight for

37:24

what she thought was right for

37:26

herself and for other people. It

37:31

took all of that, frankly, for her

37:33

to achieve the success that she was

37:35

later to see in her life.

37:40

Basically, these were women who did

37:42

not give up and who refused

37:45

to accept the narrow boundaries and

37:47

categories that people wanted to

37:49

put them in. For that, I'm

37:52

just really grateful for her

37:54

example and that of many, many

37:56

other women of her

37:58

generation. Yeah,

38:00

you mentioned, just trying to again,

38:03

tap into my own empathy for the

38:06

historical period and for the experience.

38:11

Let's say at home and abroad, I'm

38:13

curious and maybe you can help us

38:15

with the timeline too, when

38:17

did she leave, at what point in her

38:19

education did she leave and then come back.

38:22

But at home and abroad, was

38:24

she the only black woman that

38:26

she saw? Like

38:28

you said, super minimal representation and beyond

38:31

that, was she mostly, if you

38:34

were to think about that intersectionality,

38:36

surrounded by black

38:38

men or was she mostly, obviously she

38:40

was mostly surrounded by white men, but

38:42

beyond that, was it more black

38:44

men or more white

38:46

women that would have been the

38:48

template around her? Yes, just to

38:50

move through that quickly, if we think about the institutions

38:53

that trained her, what's unusual is that

38:55

of course, when she went

38:57

to even in elementary,

38:59

secondary school and then college

39:01

at Western Michigan, she

39:04

was one of the only

39:06

black women in

39:08

those classes. So she was surrounded

39:11

by white people, including

39:13

other white women there. When she went to

39:15

Oxford in the 30s, of course,

39:17

this is a time when there were very,

39:19

very, very few women at

39:22

Oxford. She was the only black American

39:24

woman in the entire university, but

39:27

was befriended by the small group

39:29

of white women who were there.

39:32

And so she is in this

39:35

white male institution, but

39:37

surviving in the enclave of other women,

39:40

in this case, most of them are

39:42

white. And when she leaves

39:44

Oxford and then comes back to the

39:46

United States and rides a Jim Crow

39:49

train south to North Carolina,

39:51

where she taught first at Bennett College,

39:53

which is an all

39:55

black women's college in

39:57

North Carolina. she

40:00

is in a

40:02

pretty much an all-female

40:04

Black setting for that

40:07

period and then goes

40:09

to Radcliffe and Harvard to get

40:12

her doctorate where once again she's

40:14

surrounded primarily by white men and

40:16

a small enclave of white women

40:19

within the university. So it

40:21

is not until she gets

40:23

to Howard University in the

40:26

mid-1940s that she's actually

40:28

in a Black institution that

40:30

is dominated by Black men

40:33

where there are very strong,

40:35

interesting, formidable,

40:38

brilliant Black women there. She's not

40:40

the only Black woman there,

40:43

but the administration, the deans, and

40:45

the presidents, the people who are running

40:48

the institution are of course men.

40:51

And I give Howard full credit

40:53

for hiring women to

40:55

the faculty at a time when

40:57

other institutions were not doing that.

41:00

And so she was very

41:03

grateful for that opportunity and spent the

41:05

rest of her career there. But in

41:07

that case, you do see

41:10

her literally tussling with

41:12

the men in the institution

41:14

who she thought were basically

41:17

playing favorites with an old

41:19

boys' network, if I might

41:22

put it that way. But the other

41:24

thing about her career as a scholar

41:27

is that this is a woman who

41:29

is studying international relations and diplomatic history,

41:31

who's an expert on disarmament,

41:34

and just all of these categories

41:36

of knowledge that very, very, very

41:38

few women are engaged in. They're,

41:41

for the most part, that's the

41:43

province of white men, you know,

41:45

foreign affairs, international relations. So in

41:49

terms of her work and the fields that

41:51

she's trying to break into, she

41:54

runs then, you know, smack into

41:56

the white men who control

41:58

publishing and and

42:00

recognition and book reviews, and

42:04

even just figuring out how to get

42:06

into print. And at each of

42:09

those turns where

42:11

she's successful, there

42:13

is some woman somewhere

42:16

trying to deploy whatever power she

42:18

has to, again, assist and help.

42:23

And so that's the

42:25

really interesting thing to me is

42:27

that women, including

42:30

white women, had such limited access

42:32

to power themselves, but it is

42:34

reassuring to see them basically

42:37

trying to mentor and help,

42:39

in this case, Tate, but

42:41

others along the way. That's

42:43

a long and wandering digression

42:45

a little bit, but I, just to capture that dynamic.

42:49

So she doesn't really, she's not

42:52

really in a black male

42:54

dominated institution until she arrives at

42:56

Howard. And that changes during the

42:58

course of her career there. Of

43:00

course, she comes there in the

43:02

40s and retires in the

43:04

late 70s. And by then, of

43:06

course, there are black women who are deans and

43:09

have more authority, although she would still

43:11

say that the men are still favored

43:14

and she would not be wrong about that. And

43:16

I say that as someone, you

43:18

know, who entered academic politics in the 90s, and

43:21

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any disease. Oh,

44:17

it's still the case today. I mean, it's, it,

44:19

and that's, I think, such an important

44:21

kind of concept, especially for those listening.

44:24

I have like a, it's interesting because

44:26

I, I started this show almost 10

44:28

years ago now with, actually 10 years

44:30

ago now, with like a very hard

44:32

science entry because that's what I used

44:35

to do as a neuroscientist before I got into

44:37

psychology. And I don't

44:39

know if it's because of that or whatever.

44:41

Long story short, I have a

44:43

predominantly male listenership, which I find

44:45

bizarre because I almost exclusively have

44:47

women on the show. And

44:51

so it's, it's really interesting to see that.

44:53

But what I find

44:55

is this sort

44:57

of, the

45:00

point that I'm getting to here is

45:02

that sometimes when we look at things

45:04

through historical lens and how that historical

45:07

lens bleeds into the present, especially when

45:09

we're talking about race

45:12

in this country, there's, there's

45:14

sort of an overt manifestation

45:18

of racism, right? Like we can

45:20

talk about segregation.

45:23

We can talk about the Jim Crow South. We can

45:25

talk about, these very obvious

45:29

examples. When we

45:31

talk about gender, I worry that

45:34

the patriarchy has been

45:36

largely invisible. And

45:38

maybe when we talk about somebody like Mirth,

45:41

we're like, Oh, right. Because it's the forties

45:43

and the cult of don't miss this. But

45:45

she's not really doing that. She's an academic.

45:47

So she's not like, she's not sort of

45:51

shackled by that normativity.

45:53

It's like, no, she was, she was

45:55

still living in an era where women

45:57

were fully. capable

46:00

as we learned during the war

46:02

to do anything and everything, yet then the minute

46:04

the war was over, it was like, no, go

46:06

back to the kitchen. And so this was like

46:08

a really ... And that patriarchy continues,

46:11

obviously. It's sort of invisibility

46:13

continues. But she lived during a very

46:15

overt version of that, that

46:18

I wonder if it was often not

46:22

minimized, but sort of hidden by

46:24

the race component that is

46:26

out in front. Right. I

46:28

think, though, if you really had a

46:30

... I think the

46:32

clearest understanding of intersectionality and kind

46:34

of related concepts is the

46:37

inseparability, if you will, of race

46:39

and class and gender. And

46:41

so what I would say to

46:44

that is that, yes,

46:47

she certainly felt the

46:50

power of

46:53

kind of the focused on men

46:56

and the acceptance of

46:58

men as leaders and as

47:00

embodying a particular kind of excellence

47:04

that was the same thing that she was

47:06

herself trying to achieve.

47:09

But we also ... You see her

47:11

kind of refusing to accept that.

47:13

And she also made a decision at

47:15

some point. She never married and

47:18

also never had children. And I do see

47:21

that as a decision and not as a

47:23

... Not as a ... That

47:26

she was sorted from those things. I think she

47:29

made a decision. And so

47:31

she's also a woman who's living

47:33

in a world where marriage brings

47:35

a certain kind of status so

47:38

that your attachment to a male

47:40

partner and being married, including,

47:43

and maybe even particularly

47:45

among African-American communities, but

47:48

this notion of being sort of twinned

47:51

with your male partner in terms

47:53

of status and access socially,

47:56

politically, professionally. And

47:58

she did not have the benefit of

48:01

having a male partner. And

48:04

yet, she was welcomed

48:06

by other black women

48:08

into that social world, so

48:11

she was not rendered lonely

48:14

or alone. But

48:16

I also have a very difficult

48:18

time imagining her

48:21

being able to go

48:23

to India in 1950, 1951, and

48:26

a Fulbright for a year and travel

48:29

all around there in Asia, or

48:31

to circle the globe twice solo

48:35

by herself alone traveling,

48:37

or to be able to make

48:39

time to write five books and

48:41

publish 24 articles

48:45

to do her academic work, to

48:47

travel as widely as she did

48:49

to live the life that she wanted to live.

48:52

It's difficult for me to imagine in

48:54

that era for her how she would

48:56

have been able to do that if she

48:58

had chosen to be in

49:00

a traditional marriage, or if

49:02

she had had the responsibilities

49:05

of childcare in

49:08

a particular kind of way. And so for

49:10

her or for someone like her,

49:13

that may have been a

49:15

necessary choice. It's not

49:17

so much the case now. It is possible to

49:19

do all of those things if you

49:22

find the right partner

49:24

and can share responsibilities.

49:27

So you can imagine that working out.

49:30

But I think for the kind of independent

49:33

person, woman that she was,

49:36

it's difficult for me to

49:38

imagine her in a

49:40

much more traditional kind

49:42

of role as wife or mother,

49:44

and being able to become the

49:46

person that she wanted to become.

49:49

Yeah, that double-edged sword is

49:52

fascinating to me. It

49:54

brings me to these very existential places, which is

49:56

what most of my studies are in, of freedom

50:00

from but freedom to, right? Like she had

50:02

the freedom to be able to follow

50:06

these different kind of goals

50:08

and endeavors. But at the same time, you

50:11

mentioned it, and I think it bears repeating, marriage

50:14

at the time was a currency,

50:16

and especially in academia. I have

50:19

interviewed many older women

50:21

physicists who got their first

50:24

professorship position as a come along

50:26

with their husband. Like this was

50:28

not uncommon, because their husband got

50:30

a professorship, they worked into

50:32

their contract that their wives could also

50:34

come to the university because no women

50:36

were professors at the time. And I

50:38

think it particularly in fields

50:41

like science, but also

50:43

in other fields as well, that

50:46

makes all the sense in the

50:48

world to me for those

50:50

early generations of women

50:53

academics. And so she's there

50:56

finding a way to, and

50:58

she writes about it and talks about it

51:00

early on. Even in the 1930s, she's kind

51:03

of imagining the kind of

51:05

possibilities for black women. She's training

51:07

in the 30s and 40s and

51:10

seeing the possibility that they could have

51:12

access to professions that their

51:15

parents or mothers would never have had access

51:17

to, but that they might

51:19

also want to be married and might

51:21

also want to have children. Or

51:23

for those who didn't, she was trying to find

51:26

a way to say, that's not

51:28

a bad thing. That doesn't mean that

51:30

we're old maids or all

51:32

of the kind of dismissive things that

51:34

were applied to women who chose to

51:36

remain single and to become

51:39

profession, you know, become profession. So

51:41

she's trying to figure out how do you

51:43

train women so they can

51:45

pursue whatever professional ambitions they

51:47

have, but also protect the

51:50

opportunities for them to marry

51:53

if they choose or be coupled

51:55

and have children or not, and

51:58

yet be that there's a pathway. You

52:00

know for a kind of modern

52:02

black womanhood that that allows for

52:04

all of those variations which we

52:07

now see now but

52:09

but not without I

52:12

mean being single at that point was

52:15

was a stigma. It was stigmatized. Yeah

52:17

Yeah, I mean it's still it but like

52:19

definitely work in that period when when it

52:21

was the expected thing and also when

52:23

you know We think of marriage and

52:26

love and romance but marriage is also

52:28

an economic Relationship and so those two

52:30

coupled Households, it

52:32

was tremendous amount of economic Advantist

52:35

to that as well. So and she did not

52:37

you know, she did not have that herself Yeah

52:40

back to the push-pull again She had to

52:42

it was all on her shoulders yet at

52:44

the same time She was never going to

52:47

be a doctor and misses she got to

52:49

be doctor because even if she had been

52:51

Doctor with a man She might have still

52:53

been the missus and I think that that's

52:55

a context that's often forgotten that we still

52:57

see to this day Exactly.

52:59

And so she was and she

53:01

was always, you know, very proud

53:04

of what she had achieved And as I said

53:06

was not shy about expressing

53:09

that and claiming it and I

53:11

admire that in her those are

53:13

traits that are still found upon

53:15

in women today and Yet

53:17

she was you know, she was pretty

53:20

strong and clear and had a

53:22

tremendous amount of ego strength to

53:24

you know To support her own views

53:26

about what was best for her Yeah,

53:29

and so, you know, we've spent and this is

53:31

so my way so I apologize in advance but

53:33

I love just like getting into the gray and

53:36

getting into the context and Setting a scene and

53:38

painting a picture because of course We're

53:41

not reading the book on air, right? Like I

53:43

want to get people into the era so

53:45

that then when they pick the book up

53:47

They can learn all of the all of

53:49

the stories and they can experience, you know

53:51

all the twists and turns But maybe just

53:53

as a little bit of a spoiler alert

53:55

as we're winding down You

53:57

can give us some of the greatest hits

54:00

some of the accomplishments, especially of

54:02

her academic career in this field

54:05

that you mentioned. She's

54:07

an expert on nuclear arms. She's an

54:09

expert on this idea of

54:11

depreliferation and, I guess,

54:15

dearmament. What was her stance

54:17

and where was

54:19

she sort of publishing in the academic

54:21

world? Yes. She

54:24

was publishing actually at Harvard and Yale,

54:27

which was very unusual. Her

54:29

earliest works on disarmament and

54:32

nuclear proliferation came under

54:34

that imprint. I think

54:36

that her largest and

54:38

most significant body of work actually had to

54:41

do with race and

54:43

anti-imperialism in the Pacific. She

54:48

began that work by talking

54:50

about U.S. imperialism

54:53

in that region and using Hawaii

54:57

as her example and the U.S.

54:59

interventions there starting in the 1820s,

55:01

but which eventually resulted

55:05

in annexation and statehood, as

55:07

she was someone who was really, really

55:09

sensitive to what she called and what

55:11

others called the darker peoples of the

55:14

world in the 20th century

55:16

and how do we move

55:18

away from the colonization that

55:20

had characterized certainly the first

55:22

half of the 20th century and

55:25

move to a freer and

55:28

more just set of

55:30

societies for people in the

55:32

Pacific, in Asia, in India in

55:34

particular, and then by the end

55:36

of her career in

55:38

Africa, as she

55:40

saw post-independent Africa

55:43

being vulnerable to

55:45

a new kind of imperialism that was

55:47

led by international corporations,

55:49

many of which were headquartered

55:51

in the United States. And

55:53

so if there's a true

55:55

line in her work, it is that,

55:58

really thinking about the power differences

56:00

between heavily armed

56:03

and heavily capitalized nations,

56:06

including the United States and other

56:08

imperialist powers, and then how do

56:10

we move to a freer and

56:12

more just world in

56:16

the 20th century and I guess going

56:18

forward here in the 21st century. I

56:20

think as we see, those issues

56:23

are still really pertinent. She

56:25

was prescient in all sorts

56:27

of ways about that. Her

56:31

work was, I said in her lifetime, was recognized

56:34

as definitive and important

56:37

and breathtakingly early

56:39

in many of these

56:41

ideas, but then she was, as

56:44

I said, both erased and lost

56:47

in the rush towards rewriting and writing

56:49

that intellectual history of the 20th century.

56:52

That's part of what I hope to reclaim in

56:55

this book for her and I

56:57

hope also for other men and

57:00

women who suffered the same sort

57:03

of fate to say, there's work to

57:05

be done and let's dig around and

57:08

pull these figures back and let us

57:10

continue to learn from them in their

57:12

lives. It's so

57:14

important, I think, when we look at

57:16

these different, I guess, levels

57:19

of granularity. The

57:21

personal is the political and

57:23

vice versa and these sort

57:25

of microcosms of individual lives,

57:27

how often these

57:29

individuals who couldn't

57:31

help but understand the

57:34

context from which they were

57:37

navigating their own lives and to

57:39

make that leap or to connect

57:41

those dots to the

57:44

larger concepts of, like

57:46

you said, imperialism and

57:48

capitalism and colonialism, that

57:50

this kind of African-American

57:52

woman who grew up

57:54

during all of

57:57

the, during women's suffrage

58:00

during the Jim Crow era, during

58:02

all of these really

58:05

important sort of political movements

58:07

is also prescient

58:09

about like the genocide that's

58:11

happening right now in Gaza,

58:13

right? About these different, you

58:15

know, global scenarios that tend

58:17

to recapitulate over and over

58:19

and over. What an important

58:21

message for anybody right now. Yes,

58:24

and I'll just say this as well

58:26

to speak to this

58:29

point about her is that

58:31

she also had what I call

58:33

the book an engineer's mind. She's

58:35

very scientifically oriented, very great

58:38

at mathematics, but also

58:40

really intrigued by large technological

58:42

projects, whether, you know, dams

58:45

or other kinds of electrification

58:47

projects. And so her mastery

58:50

of the technologies of imperialism,

58:52

whether it's armaments or

58:55

in Africa, she saw railroads and deep

58:57

sea ports as tools of imperialism,

58:59

but she brought to all of

59:01

that work a deep appreciation

59:03

for an understanding of the

59:06

relationship between technology and race

59:08

and imperialism. And that's something

59:11

we've gotten more sensitive about,

59:13

really rather recently, but

59:15

I also would see her as,

59:18

you know, as just having a particularly

59:20

kind of scientifically oriented mind. And you

59:22

find that in the work itself. And

59:25

that's one of the reasons that these

59:27

fields that she worked in had been

59:30

so heavily identified as male, quote

59:33

unquote, because they really did require

59:35

a fair amount of scientific mastery

59:37

to be able to write about

59:39

them, even in an international

59:41

relations and diplomatic history context.

59:43

And she reveled in that. And so

59:46

she would appreciate the work that you're

59:48

doing on this show. But I also,

59:52

I always just like to say that she

59:55

basically, you know, had an engineer's

59:57

mind, a problem solver. Yeah.

1:00:00

Yeah, it's it's honestly it's so rare

1:00:02

like working in a field that's very

1:00:04

kind of skeptically oriented and very scientifically

1:00:07

minded but also being

1:00:09

very interested from a psychology

1:00:11

perspective in Indigenous

1:00:14

practices and in sort of This

1:00:18

like decolonizing approach

1:00:21

to understanding human psychology

1:00:24

and relationships It's

1:00:26

complicated because a lot of my peers in

1:00:28

the sort of scientific skeptic movement I do

1:00:30

believe have an oversimplified view that sort of

1:00:33

science and technology will save us all and

1:00:35

it's sort of The

1:00:38

indigenous practices versus modern

1:00:40

science or technology and

1:00:42

then it's not that simple No, it's very

1:00:44

short-sighted to yeah, and I think also at

1:00:47

the end of the 1940s She

1:00:50

was already advocating for African

1:00:52

American students to study science

1:00:55

and technology and engineering Because

1:00:57

you could speak to this perhaps because

1:00:59

she thought that those fields if if

1:01:02

black students were able to excel there

1:01:04

That some somehow the quantifiable nature

1:01:06

of those fields would would would

1:01:09

make it easier in

1:01:11

a way for people to recognize

1:01:13

and appreciate good work worthy

1:01:15

work and that and somehow

1:01:18

it might be not as as

1:01:20

subjective as other fields and there

1:01:22

might be avenues for you know

1:01:24

for Success there for

1:01:26

black students if they could

1:01:29

get access to that training But she

1:01:31

was saying that in the 19,

1:01:33

you know the 19 late 1940s

1:01:35

before we knew the concept of

1:01:37

stem Yeah, or

1:01:39

even just like decolonizing science like

1:01:41

that's an interesting. Yeah, I think

1:01:43

so many people misunderstand

1:01:45

what that movement is and they

1:01:48

think it's about like getting rid of

1:01:50

the scientific method or making everything postmodern

1:01:52

and it's like no it's about having the voices

1:01:54

in there that should have been in there

1:01:57

from the beginning that are sensitive to the

1:02:00

potential dangers, and

1:02:02

I say the latent potential dangers

1:02:04

of technology and science, not that

1:02:07

they're intrinsically dangerous, but that unchecked

1:02:09

without the moral component and

1:02:12

without the intersectional component.

1:02:14

When you don't have women in the room,

1:02:16

when you don't have individuals of color in

1:02:18

the room, those perspectives are lost, obviously.

1:02:20

And that's actually one of the things

1:02:22

I say in the book more

1:02:25

broadly, is that when you think about

1:02:27

people who've done the academic

1:02:30

work and the intellectual work that Tate has

1:02:32

done, but it's been lost to us. If

1:02:34

we think of all the people who

1:02:36

did not have the privilege and the

1:02:38

opportunity that she had to be trained

1:02:40

and to do that work, if

1:02:43

we think about that sort of taken together,

1:02:45

how much we all have lost

1:02:48

from not having access to that

1:02:50

work, for not having access to

1:02:52

that potential work that some brilliant

1:02:56

person could

1:02:58

have done given the opportunity, that

1:03:00

the loss is really ours and

1:03:03

the tragedy is really ours. And

1:03:06

so I think it's really important to be

1:03:08

able to reclaim someone like

1:03:10

Tate who made through

1:03:14

hard work and determination her own brilliance,

1:03:16

but who took advantage of every

1:03:19

opportunity she had. But nonetheless, her

1:03:21

work was then lost to us,

1:03:23

lost to me as a scholar and as a

1:03:25

teacher. And so that's

1:03:28

the real tragedy. And so recuperating

1:03:30

that work and reintegrating it

1:03:32

and broadening out what we think we

1:03:34

know and understand about whatever

1:03:37

field is, this is a

1:03:39

moment where I think that's

1:03:41

really, really important to be able to do. But

1:03:45

an important point, and I think a really

1:03:47

good point to kind of close us out

1:03:50

on this idea that sort of the trajectory

1:03:52

has often been set by

1:03:54

these historically powerful

1:03:57

people and those who

1:03:59

were oppressed didn't get

1:04:01

to have as much influence on the

1:04:03

trajectory of whatever we're talking about. And

1:04:06

I think sometimes it may feel

1:04:08

like it's hopeless, like we can't change a

1:04:11

trajectory, but I do think

1:04:13

that doing the work

1:04:15

to go back and excavate these

1:04:17

stories and then reintegrating the lessons

1:04:19

from these stories and the empowerment

1:04:22

that come from these stories into

1:04:24

the narrative today does have

1:04:27

quite an impact on the trajectory. And

1:04:29

that's not to say that the patriarchy

1:04:31

isn't powerful, right? That's not to say

1:04:34

that white supremacy isn't incredibly powerful in

1:04:36

our country, but it is to

1:04:39

say that it's not a foregone

1:04:41

conclusion and that we can learn

1:04:43

from the past in order to

1:04:45

continue to put pressure on the future to

1:04:48

move that trajectory. And when you

1:04:51

move that angle just the tiniest bit,

1:04:53

right, we think about it from a

1:04:55

physics perspective like asteroid deflection or something

1:04:58

like that, just the tiniest little change

1:05:00

in the course becomes

1:05:02

dramatically different. And I think

1:05:04

that's an important perspective to

1:05:06

maintain. Yes. And I

1:05:08

think we all also need to be holding

1:05:11

on to our

1:05:13

own commitments to make it less

1:05:15

hard for people

1:05:17

like Tay to make it

1:05:19

less difficult, to make it

1:05:22

easier and to open these

1:05:25

opportunities to those who

1:05:27

are willing to do the work and who

1:05:29

have the abilities to do it and to

1:05:31

be still engaged in a project of

1:05:34

trying to do that and

1:05:36

to move beyond the kind of usual

1:05:38

places that we look for, for

1:05:41

genius and for brilliance. Here,

1:05:45

here, well, everybody, the book

1:05:47

is Mirth Tape, The Global

1:05:49

Odyssey of a Black Woman

1:05:51

Scholar by Dr. Barbara D.

1:05:53

Savage. Barbara, thank you so much for spending

1:05:56

so much time with us today for enlightening

1:05:58

us about this woman's incredible story

1:06:00

and for really just

1:06:02

kind of inspiring these important

1:06:04

conversations. Well, thank you very much.

1:06:06

It is my privilege to talk with you. Keep up the

1:06:09

good work. Thank you

1:06:11

and everybody listening, thank you for coming back

1:06:13

week after week. I'm really looking forward to

1:06:15

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