Under DeSantis’s new laws, Floridians may never learn there was once a Black Superintendent of Schools in Florida who was so forceful in his advocacy for civil and educational rights, that he had to sleep armed in his attic to ward off attacks from the KKK. Meet Jonathan Gibbs.
As the first Black superintendent of schools, Jonathan Gibbs supervised every county’s standard of education and established uniform textbooks across Florida. I hope his ghost is haunting Ron DeSantasis and Florida state legistlators who undermine and attack public education.
So the Dean/Chair/Provost asks you to sit on the Diversity/Equity taskforce (a thread).
You: What can you take off my plate to make this possible? Repeat if nec.
Right answer: a course release.
Wrong answer: anything that has to do with “expertise,” and “appreciation.”
Civil rights icon Angela Davis pumps her fist during a Juneteenth protest against police brutality as longshoremen shut down the Port of Oakland and 28 other ports along the west coast on Friday.
Story:
Mom fell, broke a hip + can’t be alone at home. So I’m driving to chicago tomorrow. Now she’s been directly exposed to Covid; her house isn’t big enough for us to quarantine. Also it’s been a year of caretaking + my brain stopped working weeks ago. Prayers please.
It's such an honor to work in concert with so many of the stellar historians, activists, and cultural workers, my siblings and family in the work of African American justice making, art, and organizing. Congrats to the
#MacFellow
. Strength and joy to all of us doing the work.
Literary Historian and Digital Humanist
@profgabrielle
sparks inquiry into 19th-century collective Black organizing efforts through initiatives such as the Colored Conventions Project.
Learn more about the 2022 MacArthur Fellow
#MacFellow
Actual language from a “Talking/Teaching/Writing about Slavery” guide I curated got thousands of RTs/likes today without citation. I can’t say how much I 🧡 the
#CiteBlackWomen
hashtag + commitment to making sure our labor/time/expertise is acknowledged.
Evelyn Higginbotham becomes the 1st (!) Black chair of History at Harvard.
“I am chair of the department from which W.E.B. Du Bois received his PhD in 1895” and Carter G. Woodson received his PhD in 1912.
#Blktwitterstorians
#twitterstorians
Sweet Honey in the Rock was the soundtrack to Black feminism’s growth, the sonic equivalent of bell hooks, Alice Walker and Toni Morrison—songs coming out like their books and essays. Teachers. Sisters. Mothers. Sages.
#BerniceJohnsonReagon
Rest in Power.
Despite the mistakes, this is a chilling political win for forces whose agendas had nothing to do with the issues they weaponized to oust Claudine Gay.
As the first Black superintendent of schools, Jonathan Gibbs supervised every county’s standard of education and established uniform textbooks across Florida. I hope his ghost is haunting Ron DeSantasis and Florida state legistlators who undermine and attack public education.
”Let’s not assume that until the Capitol riot the United States was a well-functioning democracy” writes Eric Foner. The Electoral College is “an archaic system” that bolsters the white South’s political power, augmented by the legacy of the 3/5th clause.
Gratified that
@nytimes
joins activists in refusing to see the story of
#BreonnaTaylor
fade. None of 7 police raiders wore body cameras. "The Times’s built a 3D model of critical sequences of events to show how shoddy police work led" to her murder.
If you are a Dean/Provost/Chair and you’re asking your faculty of color/grad students to sit on
#DEI
taskforces, please see this entire thread. Summary: 1) take something real off their plates 2) offer resources to make sure their work isn’t impeded 3) have answers 👆🏾.
#highered
I think I’m at the point of my career where I don’t want or need to publish with any press or journal where I can’t capitalize Black: Black people, Black collectives, Black movement, Black agency, Black love.
Writing letters that actually get people jobs, grants, fellowships and opportunities—it’s painstaking and time- devouring work.
Thanking everyone who has done this work for me.
We don’t talk enough about the “emotional work that is involved in our scholarship” as
#POCHistorians
. “We are charged w/ reading some of the most devastating, horrific information. That work is heavy. And it’s constant” says
@ericaadunbar
#slavery
‘I can think of nothing more American.’ — Beto O'Rourke — the man taking on Ted Cruz — brilliantly explains why NFL players kneeling during the anthem is not disrespectful
Non-Black people. Your Black colleagues are exhausted and spent. Ask if they want to cancel or postpone that meeting. We need a minute. We can’t quite catch our breath.
News. I’ll be joining amazing
#BlackStudies
,
#BlackPoetry
,
#19C
scholars and library and
#DH
colleagues at Penn State in this historic cluster hire. Can’t wait to build with new colleagues + all of you frm our new Center! Effort results in nine new faculty
1/4 Hyped to finally announce! In honor of rectifying past practice with positive forward action, I have proposed and been approved to pause all digital project work at Houghton Library, and spend the next year digitizing only Black American History
These taskforces will eat into your time, your energy, your sleep. Please believe.
Some institutions will make imp changes as a result. Some will do nothing/nada.
You can say no.
There’s lots of ways to say that, here’s one: “My focus is really on my scholarship right now.”
People aren’t “low income” and we can use more accurate language than “low-income families.” They are from *under-resourced communities;* and “high-income families” come from *over-resourced* communities—with subsidized schooling, tutoring, access to green spaces, arts and more.
Academics, please stop referring to kids as “low-income.” They are from low-income households. A kid’s family’s household income is not their social identity. It’s a category used to make (usually very surface) assumptions about kids’ lives when they don’t have access to wealth.
Questions to ask:
1. Does this support or advance my own and BlPOC faculty/students communities larger goals?
2. Who is on the committee and who is leading it?
3. Is it advisory or will it have the power to implement?
4. Will you get faculty lines, grad student stipend 💰?
You: What resources can you provide so this doesn’t impede my scholarship? (Repeat if nec).
Dean/Chair: 1) a research assistant/team or 2) your
@NCFDD
tuition or 3) do you want to go to
@TheOpEdProject
or . . .
Wrong answer: b/c of Covid we don’t have such resources . . .
Jonathan Gibbs's son, Thomas Van Renssaler Gibbs, is a founder of
#FAMU
which, we can only imagine, will be directly hit by Florida's HB999 and WOKE acts. He served in the Florida legislature; like his father, he advocated for Black educational justice.
Calling on the ancestors who survived people and places meant to crush them. We need all your wisdom, strength, spirit and strategies right here, right now.
5. What’s in place to ensure the task force’s recommendations are adopted?
6. Is there a baseline budget attached to the task force? Or are these budget neutral recommendations?
7. Ask yourself: is there another more effective way I can add to or influence this conversation?
@KeishaBlain
@politico
You should know better
@politico
; demote whoever put together this list. For shame. Send
@KeishaBlain
a gift box for her suggestions—and do your homework not only with Black scholars but with various POVs and communities of historians that have so much to offer on this topic.
After earning a doctorate from Cornell, as the only African-American graduate in her class, Dr. Julie R. Butler took over the 145th Street Animal Hospital, for many years the only full-service vet clinic in Harlem. 62 years old. Gone to Covid.
(Mifflin Gibbs was a successful businessman and newspaper man, who, facing racial violence in CA moved to Canada and became their 2nd Back elected official. He's the 1st Black elected judge in the U.S. He and his brother Jonathan were active in the Colored Conventions Movement).
EXCITED to start a Center for Black Digital Research w/ Shirley Moody-Turner, Jim Casey +
@CCP_org
! You’ll soon find us at
#DigBlk
—pronounced either way. Award-winning Colored Conventions Project founding director joins Penn State.
Jonathan Gibbs became Florida's 4th Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1873 after serving as its first and only Black Secretary of State. Gibbs advocated for education as a civil right in the 1868 Constitution and oversaw a rapid expansion of public education.
Recruiting Black/Latinx/Indigenous faculty + grad students?
Start *fully* covering relocation costs. We often don't have savings and family safety nets. Why?
A typical white family's net worth is nearly 10x greater than that of a Black family.
#highereducation
#highered
@MehrsaBaradaran
@SkinnerLiber8ed
Stupid question and I know you’ve covered this but she’s applying to all the no loan small schools like Amherst and Bowdoin right? No loans. Paid summer internships. Amherst is now more than 50% students of color I think.
This is scholarly solidarity.
@DukePress
’s move to make Lorgia Garcia Pena’s book open access is badass and important. It signals to
@Harvard
and Lawrence Bacow just how backwards and transparently insulting to Ethnic Studies + scholars of color this tenure denial is.
@thecrimson
@rajchettysju
@malamanuense
In collaboration with us, and to make the event possible,
@dukepress
has generously made García’s book freely available for a month in electronic format. . Notice also they are offering a 30% discount on the print version using code E19GRCIA at checkout.
If you think the institution will follow through, you can still decline. Be in conversation with others to see who can do the work. Share this with them so they can get the necessary resources so this isn’t extra labor that so many women of color especially carry.
When Ona Judge waits 200 for her story to be told alongside those about her enslavers Martha and George Washington; and then the book about her becomes the 1st about Black women to win the Douglass Prize. Congrats
@ericaadunbar
+ co-winner
@TiyaMilesTAM
.
Why Black people are forced to pay for police services that are not set up to serve or protect us—that too often terrorize us—is one unaccounted for way we *subsidize* public services. We did this for decades, centuries even, during Jim Crow too. I’m just sick. Again.
3.1 Million. We're cooking up all sorts of interdisciplinary Black scholars/hip at the Center for Black Digital Research/
#DigBlk
with amazing colleagues across the continent and across the commonwealth.
Grad students--the opportunities and packages are 🔥
For those pointing out that from the 19th thru the mid 20th centuries, Democrats were aligned with slavery, racial violence, and Jim Crow, this account is connected to a historian, not a partisan; 🙄we can keep track of policy positions connected to political parties over time 👀
Next July, I’ll be heading to the American Antiquarian Society as the Distinguished Scholar in Residence. Hoping we can have an African American Archives posse all year round. Please apply for long and short term fellowships!
#c19
@AmAntiquarian
I keep thinking about how much energy it takes to stand up and calmly say “you will not erase my work and presence,” about how hard your heart beats before you get up to say “I do not consent.” Even as we stand with
@chaedria
and celebrate her, the stress and costs lurk and claw.
It went down at the Guggenheim!
@chaedria
is the first Black curator to exhibit with the institution with her show Basquiat: Defacement The Untold Story. They left her off the panel and.....
Learning
#RBG
had only one Black law clerk in 40 years on the Supreme and Appellate courts is gutting and haunting me. I am having problems mourning her and need to ask “can’t Black women have anything?” How do we swallow this to celebrate her legacy?
David Drake is the only Black poet we know whose circulating work doesn't include *anything* printed in newspapers, pamphlets or books. His page was clay. Enslaved until the War freed him, his poetry appeared on the pots he made for others' gain.
#slaveryarchive
#C19
#BlackPoetry
Holding space for those of us absorbing the execution of
#DaunteWright
: His mother. His son. His family and friends. MN’s Brooklyn Center community. Also the Black reporters covering state murder after murder, with no pause or justice coming.
I love working where I work, but all things being equal, I'd like to teach at a University that protects its students, faculty, staff, and vendors by requiring anyone who is on campus to be vaccinated. Just sayin.
Pomona College has a 2-year
#postdoc
in any field in the arts, humanities or social sciences whose research engages race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality studies. 1-1 load, one public lecture a year. Salary = visiting full-time faculty position.
Let’s call the names of Black women critics who were the first to recognize and make way for what we now know—that Black woman’s genius on the page cuts, shines, blinds, illuminates.
Barbara Christian
Mary Helen Washington
Frances Smith Foster
Claudia Tate
Thank you
"Trying to diversify the faculty without the support and resources necessary to address the real structural inequities that are at work--that's not actually
#DEI
work."
Let's say this one together
#highered
. Extractive, underpaid, labor is not equity work.
I choose Wayne State as my first tenure track job for its Black, older, working class, smart, savvy, driven students. I’m so glad to see this good news!
Wayne State University receives $6 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to increase Black Studies faculty and establish the Detroit Center for Black Studies
The head/chair of Penn State's African American Studies department resigns after less than a year in the position. He's the third chair in as many years of what was recently a robust and well-respected department on the rise.
Was asked to share a TT track
#DH
#job
paying 70K in one of the most expensive cities in country teaching 2-2 *and* working as the College's Educational Technologist. They wanted to attract a diverse pool. This was my response. A thread . . .
That the US gov compensated a small group of once enslaved Blacks and said “Opps. No.” should be better known of course. But this is taught widely in college classrooms. I learned about it as a 19 year old. “New investigative reporting” suggests that it’s new knowledge.
A new investigative report reveals that while the federal government did grant land to the formerly enslaved after the Civil War, it also took that land back and returned it to white southerners.
@IAmAmnaNawaz
speaks to
@AlexiaCampbell
to learn more.
This short piece by
@ProfCAnderson
is the best I’ve read all year. Chock full of evidence and analysis, it affirms the dangers of now and coming/soon that many of us know but somehow also hold at bay. Please read and share.
I don’t do “service work.”
I do pipeline-building work.
I do community-building work.
I do institution-building work.
I build partnerships.
I build digital archives.
#highered
@NCFDD
#DH
Well. . . I'm accepting an honorary degree from
@AmherstCollege
; there's so much to say. I'm grateful to be joining Tracy K. Smith and Freeman A. Hrabowski, both giants whose work has helped me think and create in new ways.
Six influential leaders in the arts, biotech, higher education, environmental journalism, business and literature will receive honorary degrees from Amherst during the
#Amherst2023
Commencement.
More:
Of course, Ben Carson tests positive. For his family's sake, I'm glad he has medical hook ups--cause Herman Cain already proved that Black men in horror movies always die first.
For the 1st time in 20 years, Oprah won't appear on the cover of O magazine. Instead, it features
#BreonnaTaylor
, the 26-year-old EMT fatally shot at home by Louisville police executing a no-knock search warrant.
#BreonnaTaylorsKillersAreFree
Queerness, the legacy of slavery, postcolonial African identity, are at the forefront of literature today. McKay lived 1889-1948 + was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. A century later, “Romance in Marseille” will be published, Feb. 11.
I want to be a VP of faculty recruitment and retention for my next job—and to help train others who take these positions. It’s amazing how badly Deans can boldly, arrogantly, or insouciantly bungle this. We need a systemwide response.
#highered
Grad Students! Undergrads! Explore digital initiatives + increase access to the Library of Congress’ unparalleled collections. Past fellows have identified hundreds of historical, literary, artistic, cinematic + musical gems. Remote. $6,000 for 10 weeks.
I hate the word “service” in academic settings. Many of us do institution building. We invest in graduate students, colleagues + depts we care about. This aligns with our values + an ethics passed on to us by
#academicancestors
. Let’s not devalue that.
#highered
#AcademicTwitter
Hey,
@nytimes
editors, people didn’t “keep” enslaved people—they *enslaved* people.
This interesting article *starts* this way:
”Stacie Marshall, who inherited a farm in the NW corner of Georgia, learned that her ancestors kept enslaved people.”
In Florida, the KKK was so enraged by Jonathan Gibbs's success in the realm of education and civil rights and by his roles as Secretary of State and Superintendent of Public Instruction that he slept armed in his attic to better defend himself if attacked.
Archivists at Penn State Libraries have created a
#lovecraftcountry
exhibit with loads of primary materials that focus on Black and LGBTQIA+ creators, travel, boarding houses connected to episode themes! Check it out!
@LovecraftHBO
@psulibs
Did you know Elizabeth Catlett and Margaret Walker were roommates? Digitizing Black women’s papers always surfaces networks, collaborations, and influences notes Meta DuEwa Jones in her vibrant keynote for
@BWOA_Project
and
@DigBlk
convening!
I just can’t. And note that we don’t kill and neglect your newborns: “The mortality rate of Black newborns shrunk 39-58% under Black physicians’ care.
Mortality rates for White babies is unaffected by the doctor's race.
I’m sending love and respect to all my friends and colleagues who have kids in the house whom they are trying to keep sane and schooled while also doing their jobs and trying to stay sane themselves. Just started this morning by saying a little prayer for you all.
The Black tax in housing makes me mad every day. At *closing,* my loan didn’t go thru despite my 790 credit rating, a letter saying I had a tenured job + two decades at my previous job. Turns out the mortgage loan officer entered Black under race. (He didn’t bother to ask me).
Black homeowners pay more in mortgage interest, mortgage insurance and property taxes than other homeowners and that contributes to roughly half of the $130,000 retirement savings gap between Blacks and Whites, according to a new study from MIT.
Please Send. Your. Students. We’ve got great new grad funding and mad mentorship support. Interested in a Dual-Title PhD in Af Am/Diaspora Studies and literary studies and/or rhetoric and Black digital and public research, apply for the Cooper DuBois:
He staged photos with room and costume changes. But the metadata outed this performance. Don’t mess with metadata y’all. It ain’t lying today. But the WH wouldn’t know anything about that.
The photos released by the WH tonight of the president working at Walter Reed were taken 10 minutes apart at 5:25:59 pm and 5:35:40 pm ET Saturday, according to the EXIF data embedded in both
@AP
wire postings that were shared by the White House this evening.
At the Huntington Library, they asked me for an ID every single day as other researchers with year-long, or even month-long, fellowships waltzed passed. The know-your-place aggression couldn’t be masked by all the politeness they poured into that daily request.
man, I still remember when an archivist said she needed to check my laptop bag…after I had been there for weeks without anyone ever asking, or any of the other researchers, about what’s in their computer bags.
"I am a black, Southern woman, and of my immediate white male ancestors, all of them were rapists. My very existence is a relic of slavery + Jim Crow. You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument."
It was Clayton, the south metro county that’s also the bluest bastion in the state, that provided the decisive votes. The county long represented in Congress by U.S. Rep. John Lewis, the late civil rights icon.
I didn’t share this on my panel but here’s one of the best pieces of advice I got—from the great Barbara Christian. “Read articles so you have no fears about writing them.” She was NOT here for imposter syndrome. Own y/our brilliance
#abwh2018
How lucky to come of age as a Black girl, a Black student, a Black literary scholar, as a grown woman, surrounded by Toni Morrison’s words, craft and wisdom. To have almost my entire literate life overlap with her—till this moment—is a deeper blessing than I had ever imagined.
My mom, who was disowned when she married my dad and was adopted into his/my family, just told me she was on American Bandstand and won. She’s never, ever, mentioned this. And I’ve never seen her dance. WTF?!
I just finished my 5-year review for full profs or endowed profs. I’d usually send it to my mom, and she would put her formidable proofing skills to work. She read *everything* I published for my entire career. Today I feel that deeply.
#grateful
Here’s my
#ProfMissionStatement
for those following this thread—please share yours. This helps me know what to say yes to and what to decline. I try to measure my work, accomplishments and shortcomings based on this—not someone else’s rubric.
#AAIHS2019
@jmjafrx
This inaugural advocacy award happened. It honors “collaborative service, scholarship, teaching, and leadership efforts aimed at promoting, fostering, and implementing an inclusive environment.” We have so much more work to do. They surprise winners in class. That’s me surprised!