Slumped and slanted pages, reading on planes and trains and over the heads of children and under the arms of friends.

Texts

• Karen Cook Bell, Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

• Tandazani Dhlakama et al., Biennale Arte 2026: In Minor Keys, ed. Siddhartha Mitter (Silvana Editoriale, n.d.).

• Jesmyn Ward, On Witness and Respair: Essays (Scribner, n.d.).

Header Image: “Slum kitchen; Washington, D.C.; October 1937” via NYPL

I wrote this on Threads this week (light edits for flow):

Hear me out: Nolan was 18. "My baby would never" is easy to say, but we all know we can't control for what they do when we aren't around. In a world that knows terrorizing Black kids is easy sport? We raise em, we let em go, and they get killed for Skittles, for having the wrong friends, for being in the wrong car.

Black children and Black youth should have the same freedom to explore the world all others do.

That they don't is suffocating and terrifying. So we dark laugh into what we hope will prevent what we can't control.

But it can happen to all of ours. What a horror story. I feel sick.

I know EXACTLY who to blame. All the rest is just harm reduction.

I take it back.

I was responding to a conversation developing online—as it does in the face of violence we feel helpless to control— about what Nolan's parents did, didn't, should or shouldn't have allowed their son to do.

The issue? Should Nolan have been allowed or raised to see it acceptable to go on a trip with an all white (including at least one white-presenting Latino) group.

Read more

I went into the archives to find you. I am Alice spelunking down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

Granma! Did you know I have a few things wrong in the book I am writing, a book as much about history as it is about my love for you, and how one pretends to be finite and the other knows it is infinite and sometimes they are confused for each other, but never when I close my eyes or bow my head in prayer?

I am making a list of the little edits I have to make: The year I sent you that text message. The date I wrote your name in my diary as you moved from not quite gone to no longer alive.

There are things I can put into words now--the injustice of sitting third pew from the front, your first grandchild, your eldest grandbaby--that I couldn’t even feel then.

There are things I chose to forget, amnesia a sharp and bitter strategy for self-preservation. On February 1, 2020, I wrote, “I am convinced racism killed my grandmother.” I still am But I forgot I wrote this. Tomorrow, I will forget again. The truth is too acidic, so I witness and release, witness and release.

There are things I have since learned. You loved Lou Rawls, whose voice makes me want to do nasty things. You were nothing if not a woman of faith with faith in the profane.

I fall into the past and I am touching baubles and knick-knacks, looking for the cake that makes this memory big or a drink to make the grief small. Small enough to see my way around, over, under.

I wrote this on October 8, 2019:

No one expects grandmothers to live forever.

and

My child is four months old. The last words my grandmother said to them were over text:

and

How long can a body stay suspended between two worlds before succumbing to one or the other?

On July 7, 2026, I add:

When does a haunting begin and end?

I don't care. Haunt me forever, Granmaa. Never leave.

Reads:

• Jesmyn Ward, On Witness and Respair: Essays (Scribner, 2026).

• Aida Mariam Davis, Kindred Creation: Parables and Paradigms for Freedom--Black Worldmaking to Reclaim Our Heritage and Humanity (North Atlantic Books, 2024).

• Mayra Santos-Febres, Sobre Piel Y Papel/over Skin And Paper, 2nd edition (Ediciones Callejon Inc, 2011).

Thank you for subscribing. If you prefer to have a cafecito and leave without subscribing, you can do so below!

One Time Cafecito

I’m excited to give you a sneak peak of a new home for some of the creative freedom dreaming I’ve been doing.

Read more

In my first newsletter post on TinyLetter I wrote “Believe in the dignity of ghosts.”

RIP Tiny Letter and QDEP to our ghosts; the righteous and holy dead who are not dead, who are always with us, and who live, these days, on our hard drive and mobile device archives. The #landofwomen* is so precious to me. I cannot worship there enough.

This 6-week summer community offering, I return to my hard archive of photos and materials, not with any special intention or purpose in mind, but with some hope that there is a photo here or there that will jog a memory, a reflection on history, or a poem about the past.

Maybe you’ll share some of your letters for—or photos of—ghosts too. The chat will be open,

Rambling around in my brain and letting whatever comes to mind slide into your email inbox starting July 7, 2026.

Share

*Coffee and groceries crew, you can take a trip down memory lane by looking for #landofwomen posts in the archive.

Subscribe now

Thank you for subscribing. If you prefer to have a cafecito and leave without subscribing, you can do so below!

One Time Cafecito

July is here and it is never too late or too early to repost this. Students ask me about how I stay writing, stay teaching, and stay researching (along with running labs, creating art, and raising SkyBabies) all the time. This same formula has worked for me since dissertation days1 with a few tweaks along the way. Share with a friend, save a life.

I still stand by Scrivener as my favorite drafting tool, but if you have suggestions, I’m down to hear them.

I also want to point to an amazing and damned thorough thread shared by , laying out the requirements, stakes, and importance of having materials ready to go when tenure time comes. The responses added even more detail about the process.

The responses also worried me so much. Are folks getting the deep lore of the academy from their mentors? Are humanities and social sciences graduate students and junior faculty being told the terms of engagement they are signing up for when they enter the professoriate? If you’re a graduate student in the humanities or social sciences, what has mentoring like been for you?

And what would you want to know more about?

Summer is for writing. May the writing gods speed your pen, pad your fingertips, and protect your wrists. Summer is almost over.

Share

Originally at dh.jmjafrx.com (sundowned) ---

title: "Small Chunks Go Down Easier (ft. Scrivener) #writing"

date: "2013-03-15"

via Academic Coaching & Writing:

"...When faced with a large writing project, writing coaches advise you to break the large project down into manageable writing assignments. Anne Lamott, author of _bird by bird_, imagines a one-inch picture frame and suggests you think in terms of this tiny frame rather than the big picture. Her book on her own writing process is called _bird by bird_ because one night her older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to write a term paper on birds that he’d had months to write. He’d procrastinated, and it was due the next day. As he sat at the kitchen table in tears, with piles of books on birds and immobilized by the enormity of the task, his father sat down beside him, put his arm around his shoulder, and said, “bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.” Just as Anne’s brother re-conceptualized his term paper in terms of single birds, begin to think of your project in terms of short assignments. Remember a dissertation or a book is written one word at a time..."

I live by this. I write in paragraph-sized, 250 word 'chunks' at a time and use [Scrivener to keep it all organized](http://literatureandlatte.com/).  Scrivener allows users to write in documents (files) or folders, and to 'stack' documents or folders on top of each other so they collapse and expand hierarchically.  I prefer using documents over folders but it's purely psychological. Documents allow me to imagine the book is divided into physical stacks of paper around my office. In real life, this wouldn't be feasible but in Scrivener anything goes.

My system is largely based on a [storyboarding method posted by Bombay in the Phinished forums](http://www.phinished.org/showthread.php?p=94773). I won't outline it here because I could never do it justice, but explore via the link above (you need to login to access it, but it's worth it).  I tweaked the storyboard strategy to fit my needs. For all the analog professors out there, Bombay actually begins with a legal pad and does much of the process by hand.  Whichever way you try it, the general idea is small, visual, chunks help lay the foundation and can keep from having to backpedal later on.

How I use Scrivener as my 'Writing Lab'

I create a Scrivener 'binder' for each book or essay project.  Most of the writing happens in a folder I name the Writing Lab.

In the Writing Lab, I create a document for each chapter, give it a working title, and then create sub-documents representing every single paragraph of that chapter. Each document (and thus each paragraph) has a goal of 250 words. Guided by the assumption a chapter is roughly 8-10,000 words, I add forty documents to each stack, right off the bat. Now my goal is not to write a 10,000 word chapter (multiplied by however many chapters there are), it's to get through a 250 word paragraph and see where that takes me.

When I have an appropriate number of documents, I work on the rough organization of the chapter. I might designate three documents for the introduction and argument, five for background or backstory, seven to ten for each sub-argument, etc., save three at the end for the conclusion. As I go, I stack again and again, so the documents related to the introduction go into one pile, the documents related to the background go into another, and so on.  Predictably, the organization changes depending on the type of argument I'm trying to make, the story I want to tell, or the source material I'm working with.  An anecdote may need only two or three paragraphs but a court case may need fifteen to twenty.  Each Writing Lab is constructed differently but by the end, I'm able to literally fold and unfold the book by chapter and section, breaking the manuscript down into its most basic units.

With this rough organization in mind, I jump into writing.  I start wherever I feel most comfortable and most prepared, although I normally begin with the introduction and go from there.  Scrivener's customization features are amazing. I use labels and colors with almost no restraint. When one of the documents meets the 250 word goal, I change the label to 'Draft' and the color to deep purple, then move on to the next.  The title of each document is my topic sentence so that when I move forward through the chapter, I can check back to see whether the topic sentences flow together. The last step is compiling and sending the entire document to MSWord for final formatting. Scrivener is not a word processor. It's a workshop. The final tweaks still need to be done in another program, whether that's OpenOffice or Pages or your favorite rich-text editor.

My strategy might be a mix of sequencing and subgoaling, with a little bit of outlining thrown in, but I think the point is to start small and work your way up and out. Starting small kills writing anxiety; starting big fuels it.

What's your system?

Subscribe now

Coffee & Groceries Crew: Another quiet book drop, from the land of women….

Read more

Occupations be damned. The beat goes on….

Reads

• Edward Ball, “Retracing Slavery’s Trail of Tears,” History, U.S. History, , Articles, Smithsonian Magazine, November 2015, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/slavery-trail-of-tears-180956968/.

• Jennifer Van Horn, “‘The Dark Iconoclast’: African Americans’ Artistic Resistance in the Civil War South,” The Art Bulletin 99, no. 4 (2017): 133–67, https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2017.1327777.

• Sophie White, “Marguerite 1764,” OI Reader, n.d., accessed August 18, 2025, https://oireader.wm.edu/open_oi/voices-of-the-enslaved/marguerite-1764/.

• “Lawrence Van Alstyne’s Diary of an Enlisted Man, 1862-1864 (Part 3, 2013: ‘Make Way for Liberty!’) NUCMC and the Documentary Heritage of the Civil War (National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC), Library of Congress),” accessed August 18, 2025, https://www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/2013CivilWar/08_Alstyne'sDiaryofanEnlistedMan.html.

• Esther Schreuder, “Looking Back at the Painting The Slave-Dance 1707 by Dirk Valkenburg,” Esther Schreuder, May 15, 2021, https://estherschreuder.wordpress.com/2021/05/15/looking-back-at-the-painting-the-slave-dance-1707-by-dirk-valkenburg/.

• Mark Stryker, “Dance Party USA at the DIA Explores Art That Cuts a Rug,” Detroit Free Press, March 16, 2016, https://www.freep.com/story/entertainment/arts/2016/03/16/dia-dance-american-art/81771056/.

• Tracy L. Barnett, “Juneteenth,” Civil War Monitor, May 2025, https://www.civilwarmonitor.com/article/juneteenth/.

• Baptiste Henriot, “François-Auguste Biard, Bust-Length Study of a Man, ca. 1848,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 22, no. 2 (2023), https://doi.org/10.29411/ncaw.2023.22.2.7.

Today’s mix is random. No logic, no reason. Enjoy.

Subscribe now

Header Image: Carrie Mae Weems, “The Considered,” See Bergman, 2012 inkjet print, 38” x 27”. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. ©Carrie Mae Weems

Reads

• Gary R. Mormino, “Florida Slave Narratives,” The Florida Historical Quarterly 66, no. 4 (1988): 399–419.

• Ronnie W. Clayton, “The Federal Writers’ Project for Blacks in Louisiana,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 19, no. 3 (1978): 327–35.

• Marcus B. Christian, The History of the Negro in Louisiana. Unpublished. Negro Federal. Writers Project at Dillard University.

• Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past,” The Journal of American History 91, no. 4 (2005): 1233–63, https://doi.org/10.2307/3660172.

• “Judge J.H. Ferguson Declares the Separate Car Act Constitutional in 1892,” The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Louisiana), November 19, 1892.

• Stephanie M. H. Camp, Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

• Julie Thompson Klein, Interdisciplining Digital Humanities: Boundary Work in an Emerging Field (University of Michigan Press, 2015).

• Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo, “Insider and Outsider, Black and American: Rethinking Zora Neale Hurston’s Caribbean Ethnography,” Radical History Review 2003, no. 87 (2003): 49–77.

• Daphne A. Brooks, “‘ Sister, Can You Line It Out?’: Zora Neale Hurston and the Sound of Angular Black Womanhood,” Amerikastudien/American Studies, 2010, 617–27.

• Alexandra T. Vazquez, The Florida Room (Duke University Press, 2022).

• Deborah Willis, The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship (NYU Press, 2021).

• Violet Harrington Bryan and Brenda Marie Osbey, “An Interview With Brenda Marie Osbey,” The Mississippi Quarterly 40, no. 1 (1986): 33–45.

• Sara E. Johnson, Encyclopédie Noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World (UNC Press Books, 2023).

• Farah Jasmine Griffin, “Toni Cade Bambara: Free to Be Anywhere in the Universe,” Callaloo 19, no. 2 (1996): 229–31.

• Toni Cade Bambara, The Black Woman: An Anthology (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010).

• Task Force on Slavery, Segregation, and Racial Injustice (Rice University, 2021)

• “Sylvanie F. Williams 1896,” Wilkes-Barre Times Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), November 5, 1896.

• Kristi Branham and Kelly L. Reames, eds., Navigating Women’s Friendships in American Literature and Culture, American Literature Readings in the 21st Century (Springer International Publishing, 2023), https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08003-6.

• Cate Płyś, “THIS CRAZY DAY IN 1972: Did Gwendolyn Brooks Inspire ‘Sylvia’?,” Substack newsletter, Roseland, Chicago: 1972, February 11, 2023,

Roseland, Chicago: 1972

THIS CRAZY DAY IN 1972: Did Gwendolyn Brooks inspire "Sylvia"?

To access all website contents, click HERE…

Read more

3 years ago · 1 like · 3 comments · Cate Płyś

• .

• “Black History Month: Gwendolyn Brooks - English | Colorado State University,” English, February 8, 2017, https://english.colostate.edu/news/black-history-month-gwendolyn-brooks/.

• The Writer Who Changed the Future: On Gwendolyn Brooks - Beltway Poetry QuarterlyBeltway Poetry Quarterly, n.d., accessed June 12, 2026, https://www.beltwaypoetry.com/changed-the-future/.

• “Gwendolyn Brooks: A Chicago Legacy,” The Poetry Foundation, accessed June 12, 2026, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/160105/gwendolyn-brooks.

Watch

Projects

Gwendolyn Brooks Digital Archive [Link]

The literary archives of Gwendolyn Brooks (1917-2000) are part of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Ms. Brooks was an Illinois Poet Laureate as well as the first Black writer to win the Pulitzer Prize. The collection is comprehensive and spans more than half a century. It includes Ms. Brooks’ youthful poetry and prose, scrapbooks of pieces she published as a young woman, and extensive correspondence with a significant roster of other writers. The correspondence section alone has more than 100 boxes filled with letters, envelopes, and other items that were sent to and by Ms. Brooks. Also in the collection are manuscript drafts and proofs, especially material from after she left mainstream commercial publishing to produce her works with small presses and Black-owned imprints.

VOICES FROM THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER WATERSHED: A collaboration of the Neighborhood Story Project & Bvlbancha Liberation Radio

Voices from the Mississippi River Watershed is an audio series that connects Native stories of past and present with visions for Indigenous futures. The Neighborhood Story Project collaborated with Bvlbancha Liberation Ra- dio to amplify the poetry, realities, histories and dreams of possibilities of Indigenous People, scholars, artists and researchers from Bvlbancha | New Orleans to Bemidji, Minnesota, Bemijigamaag, “lake with crossing waters” near one of the many Mississippi River headwaters.

[PDF and Interviews]

Read more about OCNOC here:

LifexCode: DH Against Enclosure

Celebrating an Open Curriculum for New Orleans Culture (NEH)

This week, on the LifexCode socials, we celebrated one of our NEH-funded LifexCode projects and collaborations: the Open Curriculum for New Orleans Culture…

Read more

a year ago · 5 likes · LifexCode Admin

Affirmations and Beatitudes

I am on a social media break until July, but shout out to New York City which was all the way up this week. Signed, Your Chicago Cousin

For the Coffee and Groceries Crew

New book…who dis?

Read more

Settling into summer, closing the circle on a few things, starting new ones, cooking up a new community offering (projected: July/August 2026) and putting a lot of words on paper. A lot lot. June also means a turn back to the land of women, the land of SkyBabies, the sacred work of grief and living in spite of. But mostly, it means some peace, lots of listening, and a chance to slide back into my own skin. The book I am writing—about history, about family, about empire—requires me to be present in ways I never imagined. Trying to honor that work.

Tomorrow is Gwendolyn Brooks birthday. Rest in peace, fellow child of Chicago.

Research things below…..

Listen

• Holly Baker and Julian Chambliss, hosts, 403 - Cheryl Wall and Eatonville, Zora Neale Hurston, and Transformation, January 1, 2019, https://stars.library.ucf.edu/everytonguegottoconfess/3.

Reads

• Jo Banner, “Nothing Is Ever Black and White on a Plantation,” The Lens, June 3, 2025, https://thelensnola.org/2025/06/03/nothing-is-ever-black-and-white-on-a-plantation/.

• Pema Levy, “The Roberts Court Takes a Page from Plessy v. Ferguson,” Politics, Mother Jones, n.d., accessed May 13, 2026, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/05/supreme-court-callais-louisiana-plessy-ferguson/;

• Brook Thomas, Plessy v. Ferguson : A Brief History with Documents, with Internet Archive (Boston : Bedford Books, 1997), http://archive.org/details/plessyvfergusonb00thom.

• Shannon Dosemagen, “Holding Ground: Climate Change, System Collapse, and Home in New Orleans,” Southern Cultures 32, no. 1 (2026): 104–17.

• Panel Discusses Sale of Slaves in Louisiana by University in 1838 | Jefferson City News-Tribune, January 2, 2017, https://www.newstribune.com/news/2017/jan/02/panel-discusses-sale-slaves-louisiana-university-1/.

• “Louisiana v. Callais,” Legal Defense Fund, n.d., accessed June 6, 2026, https://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/louisiana-v-callais/.

• “On Water, Salt, Whales, and the Black Atlantics,” THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE, December 14, 2021, https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/the-ocean/on-water-salt-whales-and-the-black-atlantics.

• Richard Campanella, “Arpents, Ligas, and Acres,” 64 Parishes, March 1, 2016, https://64parishes.org/arpents-ligas-and-acres.

• Black Girls in Archives, “Gold Jewelry: What Makes It Ghetto versus Classy?,” Substack newsletter, Black Girls in Archives, May 14, 2026,

Black Girls in Archives

Gold Jewelry: What Makes it Ghetto versus Classy?

Recently, I was rewatching Sex and the City, and the women started discussing what they do and don’t want for their wedding rings. Carrie makes it clear she does not want gold. One of her friends is surprised because, honestly, Carrie does wear gold all the time. Carrie’s response is quick and joking: “Yeah …

Read more

2 months ago · 111 likes · 2 comments · Black Girls in Archives

• Kristina Kay Robinson, “Power, Gris-Gris, and the Plurality of a Haunting: Maryam de Capita’s New World Order,” [Taller] Electric Marronage, March 22, 2021, https://www.electricmarronage.com/electricblog/2021/3/19/robinsoninterview.

• Christina Thomas, “Toni Cade Bambara x Geraldine Wilson, A Friendship,” Diary of a Historian, March 26, 2020, https://diaryofahistorian.com/2020/03/26/toni-cade-bambara-x-geraldine-wilson-a-friendship/.

• Heidi Renee Lewis and 2014, Feminists We Love: Toni Cade Bambara – The Feminist Wire, n.d., accessed June 6, 2026, https://thefeministwire.com/2014/03/revolution-begins-with-the-self/.

• “Toni Cade Bambara | Georgia Writer’s Hall of Fame,” accessed June 6, 2026, https://www.georgiawritershalloffame.org/honorees/toni-cade-bambara.

• “Toni Cade Bambara | Georgia Writer’s Hall of Fame,” accessed June 6, 2026, https://www.georgiawritershalloffame.org/honorees/toni-cade-bambara.

• Heidi Renee Lewis, “An 86th Birthday Tribute to Toni Cade Bambara…from the Crates,” March 3, 2025, https://www.nwsa.org/blogs/nwsa-staff/2025/03/03/ToniCadeBambara.

• Susan J. Ross, Photographs of Toni Cade Bambara & Friends – The Feminist Wire, n.d., accessed June 6, 2026, https://thefeministwire.com/2014/11/photographs-of-toni-cade-bambara/.

• Haki R. Madhubuti, Bambara: What She Meant To Us/Me – The Feminist Wire, n.d., accessed June 6, 2026, https://thefeministwire.com/2014/11/cultures-of-masculinity/.

• Gabrielle Dudley, She Puts Things In: Toni Morrison and the Legacy of Black Women Writers – Rose Library News, February 19, 2020, https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/marbl/2020/02/19/she-puts-things-in-toni-morrison-and-the-legacy-of-black-women-writers/.

• Lauren McLeod Cramer, “Icons of Catastrophe: Diagramming Blackness in Until the Quiet Comes,” Liquid Blackness 4, no. 7 (2017): 142–68.

• Katherine McKittrick, Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle U of Minnesota Press, 2006).

• Allison M. Guess et al., “Reaching to Offer, Reaching to Accept: Collaboration and Cotheorizing,” American Quarterly 68, no. 2 (2016): 409–12.

• Kristina Kay Robinson, “A Mass For Worlds Pre and Post: Preface to a 918 Volume (304 Children) Suicide Note or Letter to June Jordan on Jonestown Reply Written in New Orleans, 1,392, . . . Official Count,” Southern Cultures 31, no. 3 (2025): 120–23.

Documents

Economy Hall Cultural Family Photo Exhibit https://www.economyhall.com/descendants

Coutume de Paris, Rédigée Dans l’ordre Naturel de La Disposition de Ses Articles... Par Me Pierre Le Maistre,... Nouvelle Édition, Revuë et Augmentée de Plusieurs Notes... Par M*** [Germain-Antoine Guyot], Avocat Au Parlement (1741), https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k97771036.

Watch

CTA Connections, “We Are CTA” - Michele New, Rail Transit Operator, 2022, 00:52,

.

Projects

Save Black History saveblackhistory.org

For nearly six decades, the Amistad Research Center has stood as a vital cornerstone in preserving the rich cultural tapestry of minority groups across the United States and the African Diaspora. As one of the nation’s largest and most prestigious institutions of its kind, we house an unparalleled collection of over 15 million manuscripts, documents, letters, photographs, artwork, and more – a testament to the triumphs and struggles that have shaped our nation. From the original records of the courageous Freedom Ship Amistad, whose name we proudly carry, to the powerful works of artists like Jacob Lawrence and Elizabeth Catlett, our archives hold the evidence of stories that must not be lost.

But today, Amistad faces a critical juncture. To ensure our sustainability and expand our vital work of collecting, preserving, and providing public access to these invaluable historical assets, we have launched the SAVE BLACK HISTORY campaign with a goal of raising $1 million.

Just as Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald forged a powerful partnership over a century ago to uplift communities through education, we now turn to you, our friends and allies, to help us secure the future of Black history. Your support will enable us to strengthen our collections, enhance accessibility for researchers and educators, and ensure that the stories held within our walls continue to inform and inspire future generations.

There is no story that the Amistad cannot tell, and there is no time to waste. Please join us in this crucial mission to SAVE BLACK HISTORY. No amount is too small to make a difference. Donate today and become a vital partner in preserving America’s story for the next generation – a generation in search of the truth.

Who Owns Black Data? wobd.blackbeyonddata.org

In this conference series, we propose to gather a distinguished group of scholars, librarians, and archivists from the Americas and Africa to discuss, elucidate, and provide public answers to the question: who owns and controls the Black historical and cultural record? That question suggests a troubling answer as soon as we pose it. That answer is whispered in the halls of academia and once in a while it surfaces in our writings and conferences. That answer also prompts us to ask other important questions which we hope to address in our conference series: How did we end up here? How do we answer the question of ownership and control in the context of today’s hybrid record, both analog and digital? What can and should we do going forward? Can we tie the question of control over our material inheritance to the movement for reparations for colonial harms and the evils of the trans-Atlantic slave trade? Should Black stakeholders be guaranteed a seat at the decision-making table in matters of the historical and cultural record of Black people? What happens when data about Black people and historical figures is created or curated by people who are not Black, as is the case of many, if not most important sources from the early modern period until the present? What further implications should we consider when that data is commodified, monetized or used as leverage within current regimes of private property? How do we begin to connect these questions to the role that ownership has played in Black History?

Visiones del Caribe https://visionesdelcaribe.org/about

At Visiones del Caribe, our mission is to cultivate a deep understanding and appreciation of the Caribbean as a multifaceted geographic and cultural region, enriched by its diverse communities. We aim to provide educational resources and experiences that encourage participants to explore and reflect on the complex meanings embedded within the Caribbean. Through engagement with a curated selection of cartographic and literary works, including maps, atlases, travel diaries, stories, and poetry, our project fosters insights into the rich history, literature, and geography of the Caribbean basin. By promoting knowledge and empathy, Visiones del Caribe strives to inspire curiosity, critical thinking, and cross-cultural appreciation among participants from all backgrounds.

CB-Essay https://collectionbuilder.github.io/cb-essay/

CB-Essay is a free, open source publishing framework that lets you write with, on, and for the web while keeping complete control over how your work appears online and in print.

Leona Tate: Integrating McDonogh 19 Elementary School https://neworleanshistorical.org/items/show/1625

Tate’s primary objectives in preserving the McDonogh No. 19 building are to create a permanent memorial site and exhibition dedicated to the McDonogh Three and the integration of New Orleans Public Schools; curate engaging programs that will attract visitors and address the needs of the community; and stimulate the local economy of the Lower 9th Ward. Tate wishes for all who enter the center to leave with an overall understanding of the importance of the events of November 14, 1960, and McDonogh Three’s contribution to the Civil Rights Movement and the possibilities for the further advancement of African Americans. Tate feels that there is more work to be done, as segregation has taken on new appearances such as restructuring school districts by creating tiered systems that greatly disadvantage poor African American New Orleanians. (10)

Share

Affirmations and Beatitudes

“We are not the descendants of slaves, we are the descendants of human beings.”⁣⁣

French lawmakers just voted to abolish a colonial slavery law 341 years after it was passed. The law was created by the French monarchy to regulate slavery in the 17th and 18th centuries.⁣

“Today the House passed SB 121, the racist voting map authored by Sen. Jay Morris. It now goes back to the Senate for approval of an amendment. We packed the gallery to make our opposition known just as we have for weeks on end. Despite the refusal of lawmakers to listen to Louisianans, we will continue to watch them and fight back. This fight is just getting started.”

“Yesterday a very important water ceremony took place in preparation for the opening of our traveling exhibition “In Slavery’s Wake” tomorrow at the Iziko South African National Gallery (@izikomuseumssa) in South Africa. The ceremony took place near the wreckage of the São José slave shipwreck. Following the conclusion of a 10-year loan to our museum, wooden artifacts, including ship timber, from the São José slave shipwreck will return home to South Africa for long-term conservation and continued stewardship. This moment marks an important milestone in with the work being done through our Slave Wrecks Project (SWP). Using maritime archaeology, historical research, and the study of sunken slave ships, the Slave Wrecks Project takes a distinct approach to the study of global African enslavement and the history of the African Diaspora.”

Quid Nunc owner Nancy Blackwell speaks with Baltimore printmaker and MICA graduate Sandman (@sandman.psd ) about the work featured in their Scout Art Fair booth, their evolving artistic practice, and Baltimore’s art scene.

SUPA DUPA FLY

On April 29, 2026, as I sat down to write this twelfth and final offering for Stitch Open My Eyes, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision on Louisiana v. Callais.

I planned to write about Homer Plessy.

It was in high school I first learned about Plessy v. Ferguson, the case of train segregation that made its way all the way to the Supreme Court. In the 90s, if you’d cornered me outside of the Loomis exit of the Racine Blue line stop (the end of the station usually without an agent so you needed a metro card or a token to enter or you jumped the turnstile and risked someone telling a teacher or your parents or both), I probably would have palmed my metro card (I never jumped turnstiles) and told you this:

plessyversusferguson made it so that Black people were separate but equal and it was eighteen ninety six and the Supreme Court (the highest law of the land) decided it and it was the rule until Martin Luther King had a dream and there was a bus boycott and Rosa Parks sat down and separate is never equal, of course, but until after Brown v. Board it was the law and led to Jim Crow where there were a lot of lynchings including Emmett Till (he was from Chicago, you know, he was just a boy) in Mississippi but I am glad that law got changed because now we can all live together and Black people are free but I still wonder about what happened during slavery to get us there also separate but equal is such a stupid thing to do why would a town pay twice for the same thing why not just have one water fountain instead of two?

I would have, of course, been more coherent in writing, after a few trips to the Chicago Public Library (Sulzer Regional Branch on Lincoln Ave) and if surrounded by emotional support stacks of books, including the twenty-plus volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica my mother purchased for me and my sister to study from. Still, that would have been the gist of my social studies knowledge of Plessy—a court case marking the beginning of Jim Crow.

I did not listen well as a teenager. I took for granted that the knowledge I needed would be there when I wanted it. I didn’t grow up with Google, so I can’t really blame social or digital media for my hubris. I think I lived the intellectually privileged, desegregated life of many post-Civil Rights movement Chicago school kids. I assumed that Black history would always be there because MLK had a dream and I was the dream and since I was sitting in a magnet school classroom rubbing sweaty shoulders and ashy ankles with a handful of other Black Mexican, Asian, Jewish and Eastern European kids from across the city, hadn’t his dream become a reality?

Still, even then, I knew slavery was the poisonous root of all evil, coiled, cloaked and silenced. Even then, slavery was a question I knew I needed answers to.

And because slavery was a road I would keep walking down, towards, under, over and through, it didn’t take me long to find my way back to 1896.

Imagine my surprise when I realized behind plessyversusferguson lived a real man, Homer Plessy, and a real community of organizers, writers, spiritualists, journalists and politicians risking blood and bone on a radical vision of the future.

Between 1863 and 1896, Black people in the United States gained legal freedom, gained birthright citizenship, gained universal male suffrage, gained political representation through Black elected officials (the most elected officials, proportionally, up to then and since), gained access to public schools and public accommodations, and gained legal representation (trial by jury, public defenders, and the right to give testimony) in the courts of the land.

By 1868, Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate war general whose viciousness could be seen as sociopathic by present-day standards, had founded the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee. Despite the movement to take down Confederate monuments and commemorative names, a movement that hit fever pitch in 2015, he still has a state park named after him.

By 1877, newly elected President Rutherford B. Hayes had pulled federal troops out of the South in exchange for the electoral votes needed to secure his win.

That year is seen as the end of Reconstruction, but Black southerners refused to curl up and hide in their homes.

I grew up in Chicago, Illinois. Our state’s motto is “Land of Lincoln” and the mythos of the North as a land of freedom and escape from slavery and the Jim Crow South, is strong. But I grew up with a grandmother from Alabama who raised three boys in the middle of the Cabrini Green housing projects. Everything in my lineage told me Black southern women knew how to fight, how to abide, how to cajole, and how to survive. Over the course of my childhood, more than one friend moved “back down South” to Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Atlanta became a popular destination by the 99s to the 2000s. Family reunions rolled through my classmates summer schedules, sending them to parks from Texas to South Carolina. We couldn’t afford to go to ours, though I pestered Granma and my uncles about attending every year. For solace, I looked at pictures my friends developed of themselves in family reunion tees and wondered what it must have been like for them to sink their feet into the soil of their homelands. I wanted that for me. And even though I missed the Freaknik era, I saw the same VHS tapes of camcorder recorded footage that every other Black kid my age did.

In other words, to us, the Black South was legendary, exciting, and defiant, maybe a little nastyinagoodway.

Seeing Black southerners as unworthy, lost, or lazy was never a consideration. Instead, what I couldn’t understand—again, slavery being a question I continued seeking answers to—is why the portrayal of Black people could be so pitiful on one side of 1865 and so heroic on the other?

If Black southerners could organize a boycott that brought down Jim Crow, why wouldn’t we have more stories of enslaved people doing the same thing a generation earlier?1 Did Black heroism just rise up from the red dust of the roads, or was it hard fought, hard won, forged and filched from the hands of Bull Connor and his ilk? Was the Black South an unnamed woman in a dusty apron in front of a crumbling cabin or Harriet Tubman? Was Rosa Parks magical or just mad? The two images—the slave and the superhero—formed a palimpsest in my mind that jarred and prickled, a high contrast photo set too high, too sharp, too jagged, too false.

College is where I met Homer Plessy, the man, and the Comité des Citoyens or Citizen’s Committee of New Orleans. By then, I’d already said yes to marrying the Crescent City, lived in a dorm room piled high with fresh stacks of McKeldin Library books and JSTor journal articles about slavery in Louisiana. By then, I wasn’t surprised to encounter the untold-unless-you-grew-up-in-the-city-or-were-the-child-of-Afro-Creoles story of Homer Plessy and the fight for Black life. Wasn’t surprised to learn Plessy’s story begins years before 1896.

Perhaps I can sum it up here better than my childhood self could:

In 1864, two years after the Union army occupied New Orleans, a Black man (”Afro-Creole” in ethnicity and culture) named Dr. Louis Charles Roudanez founded the La Tribune de la Nouvelle Orléans (the New Orleans Tribune), the first Black daily newspaper in the United States. Through the rolling shifts, wins, and violations of Reconstruction—despite Louisiana seeing some of the bloodiest white Confederate violence the South would see after the Civil War, including the Mechanics Institute Massacre in 1866 and the Colfax Riot of 1873, both of which effectively bookmarked the era of Radical Reconstruction—the New Orleans Tribune publicized a radical ethos authored by a politicized (largely masculine) bloc of the Black community of New Orleans. Their demands included universal suffrage, desegregated schools and accommodations, and reparations by offering land to those formerly enslaved. They sponsored a Freedmen’s Aid Association which promoted collective land ownership, a terrifying concept to white landowners then and a radical one today, but one that fit the communitarian ethos of Black freedpeople just fine.

The Tribune represented and publicized their political ideology in English and in French, a multi-lingual editorial strategy that reflected its transnational solidarities with republican France, as well as emancipated bondspeople in the Caribbean and Latin America. Basically, the first Black daily in the United States was a global, multi-lingual newspaper in the Black South with anti-imperial and anti-slavery goals. But by 1869, the Tribune folded, due to political repression in the form of threats and financial pressure. Still, the political ideals and community it represented did not.

So as former Confederates continued to carve back the rights Black Louisianans had died for, Black folks continued to fight back. One of those battles occurred in 1890, when the Comité des Citoyens (Citizens’ Committee) for the Annulment of Act No. 111, Commonly Known as the Separate Car Law as formed. As its name describes, the Comité des Citoyens organized themselves to fight back against a new state law requiring separate rail cars for Black and white citizens (yes, that means that for years before, the rail cars were integrated, as were schools and the city police force).

Plessy, in other words, did not just sit down and refuse to get up. His act of civil disobedience was a well organized attempt to trigger police and court action. He, like Rosa Parks, also wasn’t the first. Daniel Desdunes attempted to desegregate a train from New Orleans to Mobile, but the case never went to court. In 1892, Homer Plessy’s did. Plessy was so light-skinned he reportedly had to alert the agent that he was, in fact, Black, lending even more absurdity to the idea of separate but equal—which is still a stupid idea, but one that makes sense if what you are trying to do is grift and steal tax revenue from Black communities without representation or compensation, but that is another conversation. When Plessy let the conductor know who he was, he was arrested. Louisiana Supreme Court Judge John Fergusm ruled against Plessy, upholding the law under the premise that separate did not mean unequal.

After four years of cases and appeals, the Supreme Court agreed: 7 to 1, separate did not mean unequal, opening the way for segregation to shave resources and rights from Black communities across the country. The Comité disbanded, but their existence is an example of how Black organizing during slavery never stopped after slavery. Black southerners always had a bigger dream for what freedom meant and continue to fight, remain ready for a fight, and are steadily fought against despite having had the moral upper hand since 1865 (and before).

This is probably what I would say about Plessy now.

Mark Charles Roudané, a descendant of Louis Charles Roundanez, along with Mr. Leon Waters and the Louisiana Museum of African American History (LMAAH), has been instrumental in keeping the memory of the New Orleans Tribune alive—including having a plaque placed on the wall of the building that housed the newspaper offices in the French Quarter. He wrote this about the New Orleans Tribune and about Black organizing in New Orleans:

“How can it be that such dramatic resistance is largely an untold chapter of the American experience? How can it be that one can still stroll past the former offices of the Tribune and see no plaque, no recognition, no reminder? How can it be that tourists are guided through Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 and not learn that Louis Charles Roudanez is buried right around the corner from Marie Laveau and Homer Plessy? Some scholars, perhaps thinking French-speaking free people of color unrepresentative of the black cause, have avoided the critical role they played. And, like so many seminal events that characterized the African-American struggle for freedom, little or no attention is given to the underlying story, the history is marginalized, and the public remains clueless.”2

Language does get in the way. The French issues of the New Orleans Tribune are notoriously radical and are currently being transcribed and translated by LMAAH. Published in English and French, the issues were bilingual but not identitcal, and a deeper look at the differences is exactly what Mr. Waters and the team are exploring.

But I am not convinced that language is the only or even the primary reason why the New Orleans Tribune, the Comité and Homer Plessy himself had been reduced to plessyversusferguson in the national imagination.

Instead, I’d guess that Plessy’s problem is the same problem that Rosa Parks had is the same problem that Black southern organizers and activists have had since emancipation is the same problem all Black people have which is it is hard to be seen as a person when you have spent centuries seen as a thing.

A political problem too big to solve so you are turned into fractions like three fifths. A thorn in the side of American democracy, too deep and ill-placed to scratch out with your own hands. A drug at the heart of American capitalism, white powder puffs of cotton as far as the eye can see, cheap labor (bound, convict leased or indentured), and these days, cheap and easy consumers and producers mined for culture, pimped out to apps slinging distraction and hallucinogenic Ai.

You cannot make a person into a thing. More important, Black people already know that better than anyone else.

The Black South is a truth serum that slices through the fugue state that is U.S. exceptionalism, Lost Cause boosterism, and white liberal apathy.

It took the Louisiana state legislature less than a month after Louisiana v. Callais to redraw the state maps. On May 29, 2026, the state passed S.B. 121 which eliminates an entire district of Black voters. More than one-third of the state is Black.

“If you could give us less than zero seats, you would.” Marshawn Camese stated point blank period in his testimony to state representatives.

“I went through something no child should go through to desegregate our state. And now, 65 years later, I’m watching as lawmakers attempt to go backwards and segregate us once again through disgraceful voting maps,” said Ms. Leona Tate, the last living member of the McDonough Three, the three little girls who joined Ruby Bridges in desegregating public schools in New Orleans. In 1960, Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne walked into McDonough 19 past a screaming crowd of white onlookers. While Ruby Bridges is more widely known, Tate, Prevost, and Etienne are beloved in New Orleans and across Louisiana. In 2019, the Leona Tate Foundation purchased McDonough 19 (which closed after Katrina and never reopened), turning it into the TEP Center, a museum and monument to the civil rights struggle for equal and equitable education in New Orleans. Like a woman with a vision, the TEP Center also includes units of affordable housing for elders and infirm.

Since April, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi have all passed, proposed, or are planning to redraw Black voters out of their voting maps.

And since April, a coalition of organizations have taken up the following refrain: All roads lead through the South.

This offering is for the Black road that is the Black South and its fire of truth. It is for the roads, familial, communal, and genealogical that Homer Plessy walked when he stepped onto that first class train car at Press Street Station, in defiance of the law and on behalf of the Comité. It is for the little girls who walked into McDonough 19 avoiding spit, drowning out screams, with chins high. It is for the acts of refusal, subertfuge, and courage that we, those who are Black and those who conspire with us for freedom, remain in the tradition of, knowing we have done this before, knowing we have strategies to learn and relearn and implement. It is for what will be asked of us in the days ahead—all of us. Black in the South, Black in the North, Black in the West, Black abroad, Black expatriates, Black on the islands, Black and just discovered it because you opened a safe of documents in the house of your grandfather, Black and you speak many languages, Black and Indigenous on every continent, Black and churchy, Black and witchy, Black and dancing on tables, Black and middle finger to the wind, Black and curled up with two others, Black and waiting in the doctor’s office, Black and on a boat in the swamp, Black and angry, Black and drunk, Black and and.

This offering is not a map.3 It is the call and response, the marking and making of territory. Like the eleventh offering, it gives testimony. Like the tenth offering, I see you. Like the ninth offering, I hope you bear witness with me. Like the eight offering, we have a vision. Like the seventh offering, let that vision be on purpose. Like the sixth offering, let that purpose jump scale. Like the fifth offering, may we shed all delusions. Like the fourth offering, in shedding, let us see clearly. Like the third offering, in seeing clearly, may we prophecy. Like the second offering, may that prophecy send us back to fetch it. Like the first offering, may what we fetch return us to ourselves.

This offering, like all of the Stitch Open My Eyes offerings, like this history, is for you and for me, the girl I was, the unicorn you are. It is for the storytellers, the griots, the memory workers, the secret keepers, the guild guardians, the glamorous, all who read us, all who sit in the circle with us, all who listen and all who don’t. It is for the documents we have and the ones we lost and the ones never created.

It is for the five Black students who dropped the class after the first day. It is for the ones who remained.

It is for Black southerners who stay even when their Northern cousins ask them why they don’t just go. It is for the Northern cousins who come back despite empire telling them to abandon home. It is for my grandmother, her sons, my children, their Black South-born father and his kin who are now my kin, so now Georgia is added to Alabama is added to Chicago on that tree healing the girl that stood at the Racine stop wondering why why why and what a stunning thing Black kinship is and Black love be.

It is for my wife that is New Marie Orleans, who I will love to the end of my life.

History is happening to us and all around us, but, contrary to popular nihilism, it is not repeating. A road is a road. It is a place in the dirt, a real thing. What happened to Ms. Leona Tate was a real thing. There is only one Plessy, there will never be another, and, try as they might, no Confederate, neo-Confederate, or billionaire brat is going to turn back time. There is no great again.

We can walk the road in one direction or another. We can get off and walk into the woods. We can stop and sit down. We could, if we were far enough in the future, build a drone to come pick us up and lift us off that road and into the sky. To the stars. But a road is a road and you’re either walking or you’re sitting down and getting run over.

May we see the present and trust the future. And move.

Readings

• Elsa Barkley Brown, “Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom,” in Jumpin’ Jim Crow: Southern Politics from Civil War to Civil Rights, edited by Jane Elizabeth Dailey, Glenda E. Gilmore, and Bryant Simon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 28-66

• Roger A. Fischer, “A Pioneer Protest: The New Orleans Street-Car Controversy of 1867,” Th

• Mark Roudane, “THE NEW ORLEANS TRIBUNE: AN INTRODUCTION TO AMERICA’S FIRST BLACK DAILY NEWSPAPER : History and Legacy,” Roudanez: History and Legacy (blog), 2015

• Michelle Alexander, “Introduction,” The New Jim Crow

• Rebecca J. Scott, “Public Rights, Social Equality, and the Conceptual Roots of the Plessy Challenge,” Michigan Law Review 106 (2008 2007): 777–804.

• The 64 Parishes entries on Plessy v Ferguson, the Comité des Citoyens, and the New Orleans Tribune

• Arnold Hirsch. “Simply a Matter of Black and White: The Transformation of Racial Politics in Twentieth-Century New Orleans,” edited by Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon, 262–319. Louisiana State University Press, 1992).

• Caryn Cossé Bell, Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718--1868 LSU Press, 1997).

• Brian K. Mitchell et al., Monumental: Oscar Dunn and His Radical Fight in Reconstruction Louisiana (Historic New Orleans Collection, 2021).

Share

This concludes this season’s community offerings. Feel free to revisit all twelve here. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Thank you for joining me and stay tuned on kitchentablehistory.blog this July for the next set of community offerings, more research posts and lots of notes activity and updates as we head into summer writing season. Thank you for sitting at my table. *~*

Subscribe now

Listen

Center For Black Diaspora At Depaul University, “The Sounds of Stillness: Dwelling in the Visual Archive of Diaspora,” WBEZ, April 14, 2013, https://www.wbez.org/2013/04/14/the-sounds-of-stillness-dwelling-in-the-visual-archive-of-diaspora.

Reads

• Emily A. Owens, Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women’s Survival in Antebellum New Orleans (The University of North Carolina Press, 2023).

• “The Freedmen’s Bureau,” National Archives, August 15, 2016, https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/freedmens-bureau.

• “No Pensions for Ex-Slaves,” National Archives, August 15, 2016, https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2010/summer/slave-pension.html.

• Alexandra Shahin, “They Struggled and Fought, with Courage Fraught,” 64 Parishes, March 1, 2026, https://64parishes.org/they-struggled-and-fought-with-courage-fraught.

• D. Ryan Gray, “Memories of Black Indian Materialities in Colonial New Orleans,” Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 8, nos. 1–2 (2019): 78–109, https://doi.org/10.1080/21619441.2019.1647662.

• Kristina Kay Robinson, “Down River Road,” Burnaway, February 18, 2020, https://burnaway.org/magazine/letter-from-new-orleans-down-river-road/.

• “One of the Most Resilient Trees on Earth Is Dying in Droves,” Premium, August 15, 2023, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/forest-bald-cypress-climate-change-sea-level-rise.

• “Ecotourism Could Help the ‘Amazon of North America’ Recover. Here’s How.,” Travel, April 16, 2021, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/the-amazon-of-north-america-is-disintegrating-visit-mindfully.

• “Fish Flee for Their Lives in Rare, Chilling Video of Bottom Trawling,” Environment, May 9, 2025, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/bottom-trawling-effects-seabed-ocean.

• David Joshua Jennings, “Documenting Louisiana’s Surviving Old-Growth Bald Cypress Trees,” Louisianalife.Com, May 1, 2025, https://www.louisianalife.com/documenting-louisianas-surviving-old-growth-bald-cypress-trees/.

• Fatima Shaik, “Economy Hall, the ‘Carnegie Hall of Jazz,’” accessed April 27, 2026, https://hnoc.org/publishing/first-draft/what-do-you-know-about-economy-hall-jazz-fest-tents-namesake-was-once-.

• Heather Timmons and Sruthi Gottipati, “Woman Dies After a Gang Rape That Galvanized India,” World, The New York Times, December 28, 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/29/world/asia/condition-worsens-for-victim-of-gang-rape-in-india.html.

• Chris Turner-Neal, “Widow’s Mite,” 64 Parishes, May 31, 2022, https://64parishes.org/widows-mite.

• Sean Michael Chick, “On the Eve of War: New Orleans, Louisiana,” Emerging Civil War, April 12, 2021, https://emergingcivilwar.com/2021/04/12/on-the-eve-of-war-new-orleans/.4ee

• “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina From the Federal Union,” Digital History, accessed April 28, 2026, https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/south_secede/south_secede_southcarolina.cfm.

• Ann Patton Malone, Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana Univ of North Carolina Press, 1996).

• “‘With Malice Toward None...’: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address (U.S. National Park Service),” accessed April 28, 2026, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/-with-malice-toward-none-lincoln-s-second-inaugural.htm.

• Gabrielle Dean, “Scribbling Women: Zora Neale Hurston, Lost and Found,” Sheridan Libraries, September 10, 2020, https://www.library.jhu.edu/news/2020/09/scribbling-women-zora-neale-hurston-lost-and-found/.

• Valerie Boyd, “Zora Neale Hurston: The Howard University Years,” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, no. 39 (2003): 104–8, https://doi.org/10.2307/3134393.

• Mary Niall Mitchell, Raising Freedom’s Child: Black Children and Visions of the Future After Slavery NYU Press, 2008).

Documents

• “Transcript of the Emancipation Proclamation,” National Archives, October 6, 2015, https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation/transcript.html

• “Proceedings in a Case between an Alabama Freedwoman and Her Employer’s Son, March 24, 1866,” accessed April 27, 2026, https://www.freedmen.umd.edu/Sanford%20case.html

• “Proceedings in a Case between a Tennessee Freedwoman and Her Employer, May 24, 1866,” accessed April 27, 2026, https://www.freedmen.umd.edu/Boyd.html.

Watch

Projects

“Cultural Family Photo Exhibit,” Economy Hall, accessed April 27, 2026, https://www.economyhall.com/descendants.

Economy members served in the Battle of New Orleans and Civil War, died in the New Orleans Massacre and “Battle of Liberty Place,” worked in the Reconstruction government and post-Reconstruction politics and much more. Their hall hosted public debates, theater, concerts, recitals, and balls.

Following are the names of the people who created the Economy Hall’s community: the 1836 founders and men who were members of the society in 1874 and 1876 when the Economy re-incorporated to include Les Amis de l’Équité—the Friends of Equity. Also listed are classical and jazz musicians; activists and politicians; and mutual aid, philanthrophic and labor organizations that came to Economy Hall.

The Cultural Family of Economy Hall is this community—linked over 200 years by history, culture and a commitment to equal rights and social parity. All cultural and biological descendants are welcome to join with the general public to celebrate the Economy family in June 2023 at Xavier University of Louisiana. .

(In)Visible Architects of Freedom Digital Archive https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/education/invisible-architects-digital-archive.htm

Primary sources, maps, timelines, and other educational resources for use in your classroom!

Explore this database of sources about the development of the Black American community of Lënapehòkink (known today as Philadelphia) dating from the 1600s through the 1800s.

Primary sources include petitions, newspaper articles, letters, objects, friendship albums, and images organized by eras, people, places, and events.

“Photos,” Roudanez: History and Legacy, June 24, 2015, https://roudanez.com/photos/.

The Cabildo de Regla Project: A Digital Archive https://archipelagosjournal.org/issue07/gelbard-cabildo.html

Scholarly practice in the 21st century is marked by an existential demand to break down the walls of academia and work more closely with communities on the ground. Of the many shapes that this outreach can take, one of the closest to our traditional practices is the re-shaping of the cultural record to include historically marginalized voices in a close dialogue among equal partners. The Cabildo de Regla Project: A Digital Archive provides us with a model of how a scholar, completely new to digital humanities, has used their growing knowledge and access to resources to document and amplify the practices of a Caribbean afro-religious community with crucial historical and present-day significance for the region. The below exchange highlights the project’s growth, always in dialogue, always in relation.

Affirmations and Beatitudes

Dissent

Block em.

Freedom struggle

Divine Nine Says No

Ask me: what do i remember?
What do I remember?

Horses big, brown, tired, seeing
too much between the trees. i remember

to put the blackberries in a jar, taste
with smashed fingers, remember

their breaking, the wet mud, slick.
Eighteen sixty three, remember?

"God damned Yankee army," he'd hissed
while i prayed black and remembered

red watermelon flesh, fresh cut grass, smelled
pistol-blood on leather that remembers

three years isn't long enough.
(But the shame is not mine. Remember.)

Share

On March 3, 1865, Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. The “Freedmen’s Bureau” was a critical resource for ex-slaves as they battled ex-Confederate soldiers, former owners, planter legislatures, and extra-legal violence. The Freedmen’s Bureau assisted formerly enslaved women, children and men with emergency food, clothing, medical care and education. They mediated labor disputes, criminal disputes between freedpeople and between freedpeople and their owners, and civil ceremonies like weddings.

The Freedmen and Southern Society Project has worked for years to make the massive documentation generated by formerly enslaved available for all to see, read, research, and learn from. Learn more here.

On September 25, 1866, just three years after the Emancipation Proclamation, Rhoda Ann Cody “came into this office” of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Griffin, Georgia and delivered testimony about a brutal rape by eight soldiers that occurred at her house, while her husband “had gone to the watermelon patch.” At least one man, she “supposed to be an ex-Confederate soldier,” because he was on crutches. They threatened to kill her because her husband fought for the Union Army. The the men beat her daughters, ransacked their cabin, stole clothing and other items, and left. “There were concerned in this affair eight men,” she stated, “none of which could be recognized, for certain.”

Recognizable or not, Black women seized the right of testimony where it was available. And whether it yielded safety or not, Black women demanded their story would be told. And whether officers believed them or not, whether it was safe to tell or not, they were determined to be heard.

This offering is for the power of testimony. And memory.

I offer a ghazal, a form of poetry that has a tradition of love and loss, to struggle with what love means in a world of slaves, what love means in the afterlife of slavery, with loving Black womanhood and mourning the suffering that stalks us and loving how we give testimony anyway. With the five senses of the body (see, touch, hear, taste, smell) and what it takes to be in our bodies despite and because and in the face of.

Ada Pinkston, artist and cultural worker, created the performance piece pictured to reconsecrate sites of Confederate monuments around Baltimore City. The LandMarked project is at the link.

May light lift up the souls and spirits of Rhoda Ann Cody, but also Cerina Fairfax, Shaneiqua Pugh, Nancy Metayer Bowen, Lisa Grier, Barbara Deer, the many named and unnamed.

We remember and will remember. The shame is not yours.

Texts:

• Brittney Cooper, “The Shreveport Mass Killing Isn’t Just About ‘Mental Health,’” The Cut, April 20, 2026, https://www.thecut.com/article/shreveport-killing-shamar-elkins-mental-health-patriarchy.html.

• Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez and Jessica Marie Johnson, “Hoodrat Praxis in a Time of Love and Fury,” in More Than Our Pain: Affect and Emotion in the Era of Black Lives Matter, ed. Beth Hinderliter and Steve Peraza (SUNY Press, 2021).

• Treva B. Lindsey, America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice, (University of California Press, 2023).

• Emily A. Owens, Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women’s Survival in Antebellum New Orleans (The University of North Carolina Press, 2023).

This is offering #11 of Stitch Open My Eyes a 12-week community offering on history and memory in slavery’s archive. Because the Black freedom struggle during slavery should be a topic of conversation at every kitchen table. Follow along by subscribing above.

I am always receiving, seeing and gathering critical and anti-Ai material on social media (IG). For those who don’t know, I direct an ecosystem of labs that has a Critical Ai manifestation doing incredible work. So I also get a lot of material from across academia and the tech-academic-policy nexus as well.

Read more

Listen

Reads

• Justin L. Mann, Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculative Fiction (Duke University Press, 2026).

• “The Underground Railroad by William Still, 1872 (U.S. National Park Service),” accessed April 16, 2026, https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/inde-underground-railroad-wstill-1872.htm.

• Toni Cade Bambara, The Black Woman; an Anthology, with Internet Archive ([New York] New American Library, 1970), http://archive.org/details/blackwoman00toni.

• Beer P. Prakken and Lauren Smith, “Black Resistance, Struggle, and Agency on Canal Street’s Neutral Ground: A Washerwomen’s Case Study, 1837-1841,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 66, no. 4 (2025): 415–50.

• Zach Blas et al., eds., Informatics of Domination (Duke University Press, 2025).

• Edward Jones Corredera, ed., Supplicant Empires: Searching for the Iberian World in Global History (Brepols Pub, 2025).

• Department of Arts of Africa Americas Oceania, and the, “Nok Terracottas (500 B.C.–200 A.D.) - The Metropolitan Museum of Art,” October 1, 2000, https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/nok-terracottas-500-b-c-200-a-d.

• por 90 Grados, Desarchivar La Mirada: Una Exhibición Para Revisar Las Visualidades Del Arte Puertorriqueño Del Siglo XX. – 90 GRADOS˚, March 16, 2026, https://90grados.com/arte/desarchivar-la-mirada-uprrp.

• Jane Dailey et al., eds., Jumpin’ Jim Crow (Princeton University Press, 2000).

• Toni Cade Bambara. “Reading the Signs, Empowering the Eye,” in Deep Sightings & Rescue Missions: Fiction, Essays, and Conversations, edited by Toni Cade Bambara, 240. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009).

• Toni Cade Bambara, The Black Woman: An Anthology Simon and Schuster, 2010).

• Rebecca Snedeker, “Once the Levees Break,” Southern Cultures 31, no. 3 (2025): 14–29.

• Sara E. Johnson, “Wonder as Creative Act: Methodological Approaches in Encyclopédie Noire,” Journal of Haitian Studies 31, no. 2 (2025): 225–42

• Karen B. Graubart, “Disassemblage/Reassemblage and the Archival Problem,” Journal of Haitian Studies 31, no. 2 (2025): 216–24

• Manuel Covo, “Decentering the Author, Recovering Voices: From Moreau’s Encyclopédie to Périès’s Histoire,” Journal of Haitian Studies 31, no. 2 (2025): 213–15

• Elise A. Mitchell, “L’Utilité de Cette Espèce de Science”,” Journal of Haitian Studies 31, no. 2 (2025): 208–12

• Leslie M. Alexander, “Untelling/Retelling Black Lives: A Reflection on Sara Johnson’s Methodology in Encyclopédie Noire,” Journal of Haitian Studies 31, no. 2 (2025): 198–207.

• Sara E. Johnson, Encyclopédie Noire: The Making of Moreau de Saint-Méry’s Intellectual World (UNC Press Books, 2023).

• “Major Update in Our NEH Lawsuit - AHA,” Https://Www.Historians.Org/, accessed April 17, 2026, https://www.historians.org/news/major-update-in-our-neh-lawsuit/.

• “Humility of Things,” What Did They Eat? Where Did They Stay? Black Boardinghouses and the Colored Conventions Movement, n.d., accessed April 17, 2026, https://coloredconventions.org/boardinghouses/humility-of-things/.

• “Traditional Origin Story,” The Meeting That Launched a Movement: The First National Convention, n.d., accessed April 17, 2026, https://coloredconventions.org/first-convention/origins-1830-convention/traditional-origin-story/.

Documents

• List of Anthony Thompson’s Negroes (with a line item for Ben, Harriet Tubman’s father) https://www.mdhistory.org/resources/list-of-anthony-thompsons-negroes-sic/

Watch

Black Diasporican Archives Event

Hosted on site at CENTRO, The Latinx Project presented a panel curated by this year’s Miriam Jiménez Román Fellow Daniel Morales Armstrong. The program offered a retelling of the emancipation story in Puerto Rico through the archival records of the formerly enslaved people who redefined the meaning of freedom in the colony. The presentation was followed by a conversation with Ashley Coleman Taylor (UT Austin) [via zoom], Dahlma Llanos-Figueroa, and Yomaira C. Figueroa-Vásquez,

Projects

“My Bondage and My Freedom” Digital Exhibit, Amistad Research Center, https://g.co/arts/fxSw7shBQ28krfuJA

Jen White-Johnson, https://jenwhitejohnson.com/

Jennifer White-Johnson is an Afro-Latina disabled artist, designer, educator, and activist. White-Johnson was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and currently lives and works in Baltimore. Her mother was raised in Ponce, Puerto Rico, before moving to D.C. and meeting her father, a Black man from the South Side of Chicago. White-Johnson, who self identifies as Afro-Latina, was raised around colorful art—her mother liked making arts and crafts, and her father once painted an entire mural on his DC apartment wall. (source: NMAAHC Artist profile)

Affirmations and Beatitudes

Because what even is research, if not this?

Diaspora

I love you

Grown Woman

How it feels to trust a Capricorn

See you next week….

This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you.

The series was canceled, but the mark on the culture was real.

When I heard the internets summoned Misha Green’s TV series Underground from the archives, I went into the hard drive archive for material. And it just so happened that, this week, in Black Freedom Struggles, we discussed Black visual archives of slavery, along with watching Underground (season one, episode one) and Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave. We walked the arc of Black visual narrative from hieroglyphics (Egypt) and Nok sculptures (Nigeria) to lithographs, prints, and sketches of the early eighteenth-century travelogue era to the paintings, portraits, and political cartoons of the nineteenth century. We ended with the rise of monuments (Confederate and emancipation) and photography in the nineteenth and into the early twentieth century.

This tenth offering is a mosaic laid at the altar of slavery’s visual archive. It is dedicated to Misha Green’s chaotic and perfect vision of whole Black people (especially Black women and girls), to Toni Morrison’s Black Book, to the genius and challenge of seeing Black life, and to the way we who are Black, with all of our cool and all of our bite and all of our body, even in the time of slavery, were ten times more interesting than [redacted] and we remain so.

Seeing is never just believing, but our eyes are information.

A note: This post is too long for email. Click the title to go to the newsletter page and view the entire post. The images and videos below are worth it, I promise.

This is offering #10 of Stitch Open My Eyes a 12-week community offering on history and memory in slavery’s archive. Because the Black freedom struggle during slavery should be a topic of conversation at every kitchen table. Follow along by subscribing above.

…and now, a bit of a tangent, in honor of Underground:

The Black and Indigenous freedom seeking practices and solidarities….

Rosalee and William Still below. Truly, the second season was elite.

Misha Green, if you ever read this, please know the North remembers and we will continue to hold a candle for this show that was killed before its time. Ashé.

"They were determined to have liberty even at the 
cost of life." Despite "abridgements" and "omissions," one
day, you go. From Norfolk, Delaware, Maryland, cross
rivers, with tears, they wrote (and spoke) letters home to kin:

"Dear Mother" I am writing you, loving you, "hounds was
on my" skin but I am safe, Mama. I am free here "where
they would never smell my track" I am "free as she is and
more happier" this Northern "air was precious" Mama! "A
secret passage" on "one of the steamers running be-
tween Philadelphia and Richmond, V.A." I fled
the "barbarism of slavery," I, woman, man, child
neither slave nor sibling, human, agent, bright star.

Will wrote it all down. Took a drink. Wet his pen. Began again.

Share

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of experiencing a Julia Mallory writing workshop. There she introduced participants to the “hai-ju,” a poem in thirteen lines, thirteen syllables each line and the thirteenth line offering “a closure or revelation.” This is my haiju for William Still, the author and abolitionist, who collected the narratives of Black freedom seekers riding the Underground Railroad to freedom out of slavery.

This week’s offering is dedicated to the fury and labor of the witness, and therefore to him, but also to Julia Mallory, all the women and gender-expansive souls who attended the “Whats the Plan?” Toni Cade Bambara weekend in Baltimore, and Toni Cade Bambara, ibae, who, was also a witness, whose writing offered testimony on Black culture, and Black cultural work.

The Toni Cade Bambara: School of Organizing documentary, directed by Louis Massiah and Monica Henriquez, offered various “lessons” inspired by Bambara’s life. One of the lessons was: “Be responsible for your eyes.”

Be responsible for your eyes.

Grateful forever.

This is offering #9 of Stitch Open My Eyes a 12-week community offering on history and memory in slavery’s archive. Because the Black freedom struggle during slavery should be a topic of conversation at every kitchen table. Follow along by subscribing above.

Shoot me a line, let me know what you’re reading these days.

Texts:

• Rashauna Johnson, Sweet Home Feliciana: Family, Slavery, and the Hauntings of History (Cambridge University Press, 2026).

• Toni Cade Bambara, Deep Sightings & Rescue Missions: Fiction, Essays, and Conversations (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2009).

Header Image: View of incarcerated women from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, West Feliciana Parish, working in a field, with a correctional officer or guard observing (Article). This post may contain affiliate links, meaning I get a commission if you decide to make a purchase through my links, at no cost to you.

Kitchen Table History on Bookshop

Subscribe now

But that's it. That's the research post. Between trips out of town and hosting events, I am inhaling this book and nothing else!

If you are in town, come to the Parkway tomorrow. Let Toni Cade Bambara bless your life.

Check the IG for the travel and event updates. Check the lab newsletter for project and event updates.

Enjoy the weekend.

Subscribe now