Making the Familiar Strange: Inclusion, Exclusion, and Erasure Luncheon Address Given at the 29th Annual Fall Conference of the AERA SIG: Research on Women in Education

Abstract

She was preparing an assignment for her graduate research course and experiencing extreme writer'sblock. It just seemed as if nothing of substance was occurring, and finally in frustration she decided toleave her cubicle and wander through the library stacks. Her steps took her to the section marked "AfricanAmerican Studies" where she began to scan the shelves. Not long after, she found herself drawn to a bookwith the title, The Contributions of Blacks to the American Military: A Retrospective.Intrigued by both the text and the promise of narratives and faded photographs, she removed the book andbegan to turn the pages. Casually moving through pages that documented black men's combatcontributions from the Revolutionary War to World War II, she found herself drawn to the accounts andfaces of "free men," stoic foot soldiers, aviators, marines, and army battalions""and, quite unexpectedlyto a picture of what appeared to be a ship's hold with thirteen black officers seated on graduated steps.Since there had been few photographs of blacks in the Navy, she stopped to look more closely at thepicture and to read the names. Suddenly, her eyes widened with astonishment as she recognized the faceof her own father. For the first time, at age 23, she was learning that he had been one of the first blackscommissioned as officers in the United States Navy. In that moment, his/story had become her/story too.