Further details on the program. Abstracts far below.
Registration at http://oieahc.wm.edu/conferences/supported/lemon/registration/
William & Mary
7th Annual Lemon Project Spring Symposium Black Revolutionary Thought From Gabriel to Black Lives Matter
March 17-18, 2017
Friday, March 17th First Baptist Church
7:00pm Welcome Jody Allen
Lemon Project Director and Co-Chair
Michael Halleran, Provost
Concert: The Hampton University Choir under the direction of Mr. Omar Dickenson
Saturday, March 18th Miller Hall, Brinkley Commons Mason School of Business
8:30am—9:30am Check-in and Continental Breakfast
9:30am Welcome
Introduction of Speaker Dr. R. Trent Vinson, History
9:45am – 10:30am Keynote Address—Dr. Lester Spence Johns Hopkins University
“Resurrecting A Black Radical Tradition”
10:30am – 10:45am Break
10:45am—11:45am Presentations
Public History: Interpreting the Lives and Resistance of Enslaved Virginians for Twenty-first Century Revolutionaries, Miller Hall, Brinkley Commons
Autumn Barrett, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University; Ana F. Edwards, History graduate student, Virginia Commonwealth University, “Black Lives Matter: Resistance, Rebellion, and Sacrifice from Gabriel to Trayvon Martin”
Zann Nelson, Director, Montpelier's African American Descendants' Project, “The Quiet Revolution: Defining and Declaring, “I have a valued history!”
Moderator: Susan Kern, Ph.D. Executive Director, Historic Campus and Adjunct Associate Professor of History
Rebelling against the System: Black Revolutionary Thought in Haiti, Hampton, and the Shenandoah Valley
Miller Hall, Room 1069
William Alexander, Ph.D., Professor, Norfolk State University, “Haiti’s Contributions to Francophone Black Atlantic Identity”
Janet Holmes, M.P.A., independent scholar; Leah Smith, B.A., Hampton University; Zachary McKiernan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Hampton University, “Revolutionary Foot Soldiers: Hampton Institute Students Dismantling Jim Crow”
Donna Dodenhoff, Ph.D., research historian and educator, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, “The Freedmen’s Labor Revolution in the Northern Shenandoah Valley”
Moderator: R. Trent Vinson, Associate Professor of History, William & Mary
Black Women’s Rebellions Against Enslavement and Imprisonment, Miller Hall, Room 1082
Lexi Cleveland, Office Manager, Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC, “From Cradle to Your Grave: Poison by House Slaves in Antebellum Virginia”
Zoe Spencer, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Virginia State University, “Sassy Mouths, Unfettered Spirits, and the Contemporary Lynching of Sandra Bland and Korryn Gaines, Structural Cognitive Dissonance (*SCD), Post Traumatic Slave “Master” Syndrome, and the Familiar “Policing” of Black Women’s Resistance in 21st Century America”
Moderator: Suzette Spencer, Visiting Assistant Professor, English
The Lemon Project in Action: William and Mary Undergraduate Presentations, Miller Hall, Room 1088
Emma Bresnan, “The "Science" of White Supremacy: Eugenics at the College of William & Mary”
Malerie C. Gamblin, “Somethin’ Strange: Black Women’s Voices & the Evolution of Jazz as Protest Music”
Asaad Lewis, “Decolonizing Ethnography: How addressing the Eurocentrism within the canon and methodology of Anthropology and Sociology can lead to better contemporary Urban Ethnography”
Moderator: Stephanie Blackmon, Assistant Professor, Education
12:00pm—12:45pm Lunch
Exhibit-Activism and The Arts
1:00pm - 2:00pm “Visibility and Race: From Civil Rights to ‘Black Lives Matter’”
Alphine W. Jefferson, Chair, Ph.D., Professor of Black Studies and History, Randolph-Macon College
Lenneal J. Henderson, Ph.D., Professor of Government, The College of William and Mary, “Police, Justice, and Community: History and Critical Race Theory”
Delores Jones-Brown, JD, Ph.D., Professor, Law, Police science and Criminal Justice Administration, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, “First Do No Harm: The Future of Racial Justice in Policing”
Michael R. Fischbach, Ph.D., Department of History, Randolph-Macon College, “Both Visible and Invisible: ‘The Spook Who Sat by the Door’ and Armed Black Militancy in the 1960s and 1970s”
W. Neal Holmes, Ph. D. Associate Professor of Political Science, Virginia State University, “Institutionalized State Violence and The African-American Community”
2:00pm—2:15pm Break
2:15pm—4:00pm Brinkley Commons
“Rise Up: The Legacy of Nat Turner”
Kelley Fanto Deetz, Ph.D., independent scholar
Alfred L. Brophy, Ph.D., Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
7:00pm – 10:00pm Open Mic Sadler Center Lodge 1
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Panel Abstracts
“Haiti’s Contributions to Francophone Black Atlantic Identity,” William Alexander, Ph.D., Professor, Norfolk State University
The Haitian Revolution, with its primarily African-born (bossale) participants, was a defining experience for the Atlantic world, almost a sine qua non of black consciousness in the Francophone Atlantic. This study examines the writings of Haitian intellectuals Juste Chanlatte (1766-1828), Baron Pompée Valentin Vastey (1781-1820), S. Linstant Pradine (?-1884), and Joseph Auguste Anténor-Firmin (1850-1911) that defined the intellectual agendas of the 19th-century Francophone Black Atlantic. Beyond the Enlightenment values of freedom and liberty, and the attainment of actual freedom through abolition by 1848, Francophone blacks and people of color asserted the worth of their own culture and its equality with others.
“Revolutionary Foot Soldiers: Hampton Institute Students Dismantling Jim Crow,” Linda Janet Holmes, M.P.A., independent scholar; Leah Smith, B.A., Hampton University; Zachary McKiernan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Hampton University
If revolution is the dismantling of one paradigm and its replacement by another, then the Hampton Institute students who turned Jim Crow on its head during the lunch-counter sit-ins, economic boycotts, civil disobedience, and voter registration drives of the 1960s are indeed revolutionaries in both thought and action. This presentation, then, highlights the Hampton students who served as foot-soldiers in the social and political upheavals that defined not only an historical moment but, indeed, a revolutionary movement that grew to have a national scope. So, too, does the research behind this presentation fill historiographical voids as much as mobilize today’s Hampton University students and local citizens to memorialize and remember these actors and events to inform and spark social action to challenge racist policies that persist today.
“The Freedmen’s Labor Revolution in the Northern Shenandoah Valley,” Donna Dodenhoff, Ph.D., research historian and educator, Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.
Almost two years before a Union League was established in Winchester, freedmen of the Northern Shenandoah Valley had organized a proto-labor movement, becoming the principle agents in the crumbling of the area’s paternalistic agricultural economy. Black farm laborers resisted the Virginia legislature’s efforts to impose such constraints on their labor as vagrancy and anti-enticement measures. By Reconstruction’s end, while the freedmen did not enjoy the full autonomy of landowners and proprietors neither were they emancipated dependents.
“Black Lives Matter: Resistance, Rebellion, and Sacrifice from Gabriel to Trayvon Martin,” Autumn Barrett, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, New York University; Ana F. Edwards, History graduate student, Virginia Commonwealth University
This paper discusses the circulations and resonance of revolutionary discourse in Virginia of 1800. We connect past and present trajectories of liberation struggles by discussing ethnographic dialogues with Virginia residents. Gabriel’s legacies live on in contemporary personal and collective formations of meaning where slavery is a defining part of one’s history, in local and national narratives, as well as in present day fights for social justice to end systemic oppressions. Recognizing that Gabriel’s 1800 revolt was one example within a history of resistance, as long as the history slavery in the Atlantic World, we examine the context of Gabriel’s life and his legacies, as moments within a long history of Africans of the Diaspora fighting to end slavery and oppression.
“The Quiet Revolution: Defining and Declaring, “I have a valued history!” Zann Nelson, Director, Montpelier's African American Descendants' Project
The work currently being conducted under the auspices of James Madison’s Montpelier Foundation is to identify living descendants of people of color, enslaved or free and associated with the Madisons, Montpelier and/or other properties in Orange County, VA. The presentation will review and explore the challenges faced and the solutions utilized in the efforts to identify, track and collaborate with living descendants. Revolutions are not always about military-style weapons or provocative protests.
“A fitting anniversary to mark slavery’s end,” Steven T. Corneliussen, columnist, Physics Today Online, and member, The Save Fort Monroe network
The increasingly recognized celebration Juneteenth, June 19, recalls a happy day in 1865 but unhappily cements a false understanding of emancipation. Inherently, it focuses on black passivity, requiring stark disrespect for self-emancipating black revolutionaries' crucial, central, animating agency in emancipation's evolution. This presentation shows that May 23, not misleading, obsolete Juneteenth, is the fitting anniversary for marking slavery's end—and for remembering those revolutionaries' first hobbled, halting but hopeful steps toward belatedly but blessedly completing America's founding as the first nation built on ideas.
“From Cradle to Your Grave: Poison by House Slaves in Antebellum Virginia,” Lexi Cleveland, alumna of William and Mary and Leiden University; Office Manager, Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC.
The scholarly focus on violent, open revolt, such as Nat Turner’s Rebellion, has led to the erasure of smaller forms of resistance and has particularly been neglectful of representing women in the narrative of resistance. The use of poison marks a much needed middle ground on the spectrum of slave resistance as it is both a violent way of revolt but also hidden. Slaves were often employed in positions of trust, such as cooks, nannies, and housemaids and examining the use of poison by house slaves allows for women and children to be viewed as agents of violent revolt.
“Sassy Mouths, Unfettered Spirits, and the Contemporary Lynching of Sandra Bland and Korryn Gaines, Structural Cognitive Dissonance (*SCD), Post Traumatic Slave “Master” Syndrome, and the Familiar “Policing” of Black Women’s Resistance in 21st Century America,” Zoe Spencer, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Virginia State University
This socio-historic paper critically correlates the history of lynching to the contemporary “suicides” and “officer involved shootings” of Black women resisters, who have been associated with the Black Lives Matter and contemporary resistance. This places the manner in which stereotypes of “the sapphire” construct contribute to the devaluation of Black women’s revolutionary voice, work, and resistance. But more importantly, this work develops two new theoretical concepts that explain the psycho-structural impact that Emancipation and the loss of supremacist, capitalist, sexual, and patriarchal domination over Black women’s bodies, that was integral during enslavement, has had on the white male psyche. The aim of this work is to take accounts of the deaths of Bland and Gaines that have been labeled “conspiracy theories” and put them into a socio-historic and psycho-structural context that makes the conspiracy theory sound more plausible than the accounts provided.
“The "Science" of White Supremacy: Eugenics at the College of William & Mary,” Emma Bresnan, undergraduate student, College of William and Mary.
The eugenics movement in Virginia used genetic pseudo-science to justify racial discrimination, anti-miscegenation laws, and forced sterilization. Virginia Universities embraced and promoted the doctrine of eugenics and William & Mary was no exception. Biology professor from 1916 to 1950 and long-time head of the Biology department Donald W. Davis was actively involved with several eugenics organizations and he and others taught courses and advocated for eugenic ideas within the community, the school, the scientific community, and even the state government.
“Somethin’ Strange: Black Women’s Voices & the Evolution of Jazz as Protest Music,” Malerie C. Gamblin, undergraduate student, College of William and Mary
Black lives in America were hardly ever seen in literature or in mainstream performing arts. They were invisible to the white public, with few stories of Black life published or produced for general consumption. Eventually, Black literary figures and musicians, especially women singers, began making social change through the use of blues and jazz as protest music. That evolution can be traced through three songs: “Summertime” (1935), “Strange Fruit” (1939) and “Mississippi Goddam” (1964).
“Decolonizing Ethnography: How addressing the Eurocentrism within the canon and methodology of Anthropology and Sociology can lead to better contemporary Urban Ethnography,” Asaad Lewis, undergraduate student, College of William and Mary
Today, black revolutionary thought has enjoyed a resurgence in contemporary discourse, especially in its’ potential to address social problems such as racial oppression, mass incarceration, and police brutality. This project addresses how Urban Ethnography can sufficiently address racial oppression in society by looking at the eurocentrism within the cannon and methodology of ethnography. He will examine works of contemporary popular urban ethnography (“On the Run”, “In Search of Respect”, “Code of the Streets, “Gang Leader for a Day”) to show how they have failed to adequately address social problems.
“Invisible and Too Visible: Blacks, Justice and the Police,” Alphine W. Jefferson, Chair, Ph. D., Professor of Black Studies and History, Randolph-Macon College; Lenneal J. Henderson, Ph.D., Professor of Government, The College of William and Mary; Delores Jones-Brown, JD, Ph.D., Professor, Law, Police science and Criminal Justice Administration John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York; Michael R. Fischbach, Ph.D., Department of History, Randolph-Macon College; W. Neal Holmes, Ph. D. Associate Professor of Political Science, Virginia State University
Using Robert E. Park’s quotation: “Prejudice is a function of visibility,” as its framework, this Panel examines the intersection of the Black Experience in the United States, its elusive search for justice, and the role of the police in the Black community. The first paper uses Critical Race Theory to explore episodes of conflict in urban areas. It critiques the failed recommendations of presidential commissions to offer viable solutions to ameliorate Black community and police violence. The historical and institutional patterns and strategies of Race Riots from Chicago (1919) and Tulsa (1921) to Baltimore, St. Paul, and others in 2016, are dissected. Speaker two analyzes the future of racial justice and the police in the context of Trump’s ‘law and order’ platform. Modern police policies of ‘Broken Windows’ and ‘Stop and Frisk’ are regressive measures from an earlier period. The third paper situates the non-violence of the 1960s in the larger context of the Black Liberation Army, the Black Panthers, and the 1965 Watts Rebellion. With the controversial 1973 movie, “The Spook Who Sat by the Door” as its metaphor, this talk examines Armed Black Militant actions during the Civil Rights era. The final speaker investigates institutionalized state violence in local, national and international spheres. The Weberian institutional complex model is utilized to dissect both ‘the military industrial complex’ and the emergence of ‘private prison enterprises’ by merging contemporary uses of media and technology with traditional historical narratives.
“Rise Up: The Legacy of Nat Turner,” Kelley Fanto Deetz, Ph.D., independent scholar; Alfred L. Brophy, Ph.D., Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
A special screening of National Geographic's 2016 documentary Rise Up, which explores the history and Legacy of Nat Turner and his 1831 rebellion in Southampton County, VA, combined with a panel discussion and Q&A immediately following. Panelists will include two of the featured scholars, Dr. Kelley Fanto Deetz and Dr. Alfred Brophy, and local descendants.
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Terry L. Meyers, Chancellor Professor of English Emeritus, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg Virginia
23187
http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/ <http://wmpeople.wm.edu/site/page/tlmeye/>
http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html <http://www.ecologyfund.com/ecology/_ecology.html>
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Have we got a college? Have we got a football team?.... Well, we can't afford both. Tomorrow we start tearing down the college.
--Groucho Marx, in "Horse Feathers."
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