Gender and Race: Together at Last?


	Gender and Race Introduction	9:47
	The Slavery Experience	10:04
	The Idea of Race as Nation	13:44
	The Future of Black Women's History	17:32
	Black Women Historians	16:25
	Black Women's Academic Experience	10:40
	Interaction Among Panelists	13:20
	Audience Question and Answer: Part One	21:13
	Audience Question and Answer: Part Two	18:30

	Gender and Race Introduction
	In convening the opening panel of the conference "Gender, Race, and Rights in African American Women's History," Drew Gilpin Faust, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, welcomes conference participants to celebrate both the sixtieth anniversary of the Institute's Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America and the revolution in women's history and women's lives that has occurred in the years since the library's founding.<br> <br> Dean Faust then introduces the Carl and Lilly Pforzheimer Director of the Schlesinger Library, professor of history Nancy Cott. Reflecting on the library's history, Cott notes that Professor Arthur Schlesinger was the first professional historian in the twentieth century to chastise the profession for leaving out the female half of the population. The organizing theme of the conference, states Cott, focuses on African American women's history because of the importance of that community within all of American history and because of the Schlesinger's significant holdings in this area. Joining the papers of Shirley Graham Du Bois, Pauli Murray, and Dorothy West in the library's collection, Cott announces, are the newly acquired collection of papers of African American poet, essayist, critic, and activist June Jordan, who passed away in 2002.<br> <br> Historian Gerda Lerner, a professor <i>emerita</i> at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is then introduced as the panel moderator. Professor Lerner declares, "I can still remember a time when the idea of publishing a volume on the history of African American women was greeted by ridicule and the assertion by the experts, all black and white males, that such a project was impossible, since unfortunately black women had left no record of their history…. As I look around the room, we can see how far this field has come." <br> <br>