Afterword: A Response

Abstract

Afterword:A Response Deborah Gray White (bio) I am humbled by these papers celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Ar'n't I a Woman? because when I wrote the text, first as my PhD dissertation and then as a monograph, it was not my intention to do anything spectacular. As a 1970s graduate student specializing in African American history, I was weaned on all the new works in slavery studies. Suspicious of the interpretations of enslaved women's lives, and seeing much that needed to be done, I dove into the field, naively thinking that I could go to the sources, find the evidence that I needed to write a study of slavery from the perspective of enslaved women, write up my findings, hand it in, and receive my PhD. My goal was not to write a path-breaking work or to be a pioneer; it was to fulfill the requirements for the doctorate and get a job. I did not see the study as a baton-passing event or as a founding text. I certainly did not imagine that it would influence career paths. Today, more than twenty years after the book's publication (where did the time go?), I am still stunned, yet pleased, by the book's impact. I can not think about the writing of Ar'n't I a Woman? without reflecting on how things have changed. I remember struggling to write about what is today taken for granted, for thirty years ago—I started the project in 1974—it had not been established that gender was a legitimate category of analysis. In fact, we were just getting comfortable with the idea that race was. We had not developed the sophisticated language to express the interdependence of identities and structures of oppression. Not much of a theorist, I remember groping, sometimes in tears, to write about what is today known as intersectionality. I also remember researching and writing about African American women in isolation. Today, thanks to the efforts of many historians, some of whom are African American, black women's history is a thriving field, and scholars can trade ideas with each other. That is a luxury I wish I had had. Moreover, today, studies of gender in general, and African American women in particular, are not just accepted in the discipline of history, but expected. I remember how little enthusiasm and resistance met my subject matter. On occasion there was downright hostility. Indeed, African American women had been rendered so invisible that few considered a separate study of female slavery necessary. The most common question that greeted my subject was, "why would you want to do something like that?" When I first started working, it was even suggested that I scrap any idea of getting it published and find a new subject on which to base my tenure promotion. Truth be told, (and it will be told elsewhere), Ar'n't I a Woman? barely escaped the trash bin. [End Page 168] I am absolutely thrilled that so much has come of the text, that it proved to be somewhat of a baton, that it inspired new work in the field, and that a new generation of historians have and will set about the work of revision. There is, as this roundtable suggests, a lot of work yet to be done. Stephanie Camp has shown, with her use of theories from geography, that there are many ways to approach this subject.1 Ideas from other disciplines are absolutely necessary to deepen our theoretical understanding of enslaved African American women. Jennifer Morgan has expanded our chronology back into the colonial period. Her meticulous study of travel accounts, wills, and bills of sale has added another dimension to the story of the origins of slavery and has changed interpretations that have existed for decades.2 Daina Berry's regional study of Georgia will contribute to our understanding of the ways men and women interacted and survived the daily insults to their humanity, and Leslie Harris's current research on African American men in the South will show how men experienced women, the family, and enslavement.3 As these scholars maintain, there is much yet to...