The Epic History of African American Women’s Pursuit of Political Power — and How it Transformed America

In Vanguard, acclaimed historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women’s political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond, Jones excavates the lives and work of black women — Maria Stewart, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer, and more — who were the vanguard of women’s rights, calling on America to realize its best ideals.

The keynote presentation will include a review of Dr. Jones’ new book, with a discussion regarding current existing barriers to voting for different populations. After a moderated Q&A session, a virtual book signing will follow the book talk. PRE-ORDER THE BOOK.

Martha S. Jones, JD, PhD

Professor Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University. She is a legal and cultural historian whose work examines how black Americans have shaped the story of American democracy.  Professor Jones is the author of Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (Cambridge University Press, 2018), the winner of the Organization of American Historians Liberty Legacy Award for the best book in civil rights history, the American Historical Association LittletonGriswold Prize for the best book in American legal history, and the American Society for Legal History John Phillip Reid book award for the best book in Anglo-American legal history. Forthcoming in 2020 is Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Fought for Rights for All (Basic). Professor Jones is also author of All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture 1830-1900 (University of North Carolina Press, 2007) and a co-editor of Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Currently, she is working on a biography of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney.

Professor Jones is recognized as a public historian, frequently writing for broader audiences at outlets including the Washington Post, the Atlantic, USA Today, Public Books, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Time/ She has also curated museum exhibitions, including “Reframing the Color Line” and “Proclaiming Emancipation” in conjunction with the William L. Clements Library, and collaborated with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery, the Charles Wright Museum of African American History, the American Experience, the Southern Poverty Law Center, PBS, Netflix, and Arte (France). Professor Jones holds a PhD in history from Columbia University and a J.D. from the CUNY School of Law. Prior to the start of her academic career, she was a public interest litigator in New York City, for which she was recognized as a Charles H. Revson Fellow on the Future of the City of New York at Columbia University. Professor Jones currently serves as President of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, and on the Executive Board of the Organization of American Historians.

Angela D. Dilliard, PhD

Professor Angela D. Dillard is the Richard A. Meisler Collegiate Professor of Afroamerican & African Studies, History, and in the Residential College where she is part of the Social Theory & Practice program. Dr. Dilliard specializes in American and African-American intellectual history, particularly around issues of race, religion, and politics, and maintains an active interest in urban studies and visions of an egalitarian metropolis. She is the author of two books, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner Now?: Multicultural Conservatism in America (NYU Press, 2001) and Faith in the City: Preaching Radical Social Change in Detroit (U of Michigan Press, 2007). Both books reflect Professor Dillard’s interests in the study of political ideologies — how they emerge, how they get deployed in the context of political movements, and how they change over the course of time. Her current manuscript-in-process is focused on the wide history of Black freedom struggles situated at the intersection of the post-World War II civil rights movement and the rise of the New Right. 

Dr. Dilliard is a faculty advisor of the Detroit School of Urban Studies and Co-PI on the Egalitarian Metropolis project, jointly sponsored by LSA and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning and funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. In addition, Dillard serves on the Executive Committees for the Bentley Historical Library and the U-M Institute for the Humanities as well as on the Advisory Board for the Mellon Foundation’s College & Beyond, II study. Currently, Dillard serves as the Chair of the Academic Advisory Committee for the Fall 2020 Democracy & Debate Theme Semester.

2020-21 Carol Hollenshead Inspire Award for Excellence in Promoting Equity and Social Change

In 2018, CEW+ established the Carol Hollenshead Inspire Award for Excellence in Promoting Equity and Social Change in honor of Carol Hollenshead’s 20-year tenure as executive director of the Center. These awards are presented at the Symposium each year and awardees will give a brief lightning talk before the keynote session during this kickoff event. Each awardee will lead a 90-minute workshop during the course of the academic year as a part of the year-long Symposium activities. The intent of Inspire workshops is to highlight the authentic journeys of social change leaders, spotlighting them as role models for others aspiring to work towards social change.

Award Recipients & Lightning Talks

Kate Fitzpatrick-Harnish, PhD, is Associate Professor of Music Education and acting Associate Dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs (Fall, 2020) for the School of Music, Theatre and Dance at the University of Michigan. Before coming to U-M in the fall of 2008, Fitzpatrick served as Assistant Professor of Music Education and Assistant Director of Bands at the University of Louisville. Fitzpatrick is an active and prolific researcher, focusing on the experiences of those who have been historically marginalized in music education. Her research has been published in the Journal of Research in Music Education, Research Studies in Music Education, the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, Contributions to Music Education, Southwestern Musician, the Music Educators Journal, and the Journal of Mixed Methods Research, in addition to numerous book chapters. Her book, Urban Music Education: A Practical Guide for Teachers, was published in 2015 by Oxford University Press. Fitzpatrick has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Research in Music Education and Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, and was an inaugural member of the Higher Education Advisory Council for the Save the Music Foundation. She is the past national elected chair of the Social Sciences Special Research Interest Group for the National Association of Music Education, and also serves as a frequent clinician and guest conductor with bands across the United States. An avid supporter of public school music programs, she is the former director of instrumental music at Northland High School in Columbus, Ohio, where she directed the district’s largest band and orchestra program and was awarded the Brass Band of Columbus’ 2003 God and Country Award, recognizing her “outstanding, sensitive leadership of young people.”

Lightning Talk:  Dismantling Systemic Marginalization and Oppression in Arts Education
The arts play an essential and powerful role in how people view and experience the world as human beings. The reality of arts education today, however, is that the greatest access to the arts is provided within our most well-resourced schools for our most well-resourced children, provoking profound questions of equity, marginalization, and oppression that often follow racial and socioeconomic lines. Beginning with an award-winning career as a high school band director in a large urban district, Dr. Kate Fitzpatrick has spent over 20 years studying systems of oppression and marginalization in music and arts education. Within this lightning talk, she will discuss how her positionality as a white teacher of students of color led her to explore issues of privilege and allyship that have profoundly shaped her journey as a scholar, author, teacher, and mentor in arts education.

Rogerio Pinto accepting on behalf of the Faculty Allies for Diversity Committee: Born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Rogério M. Pinto is a Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the University of Michigan School of Social Work. He is the co-chair of the Faculty Allies for Diversity Committee. In his work, Pinto focuses on finding academic, sociopolitical, and cultural venues for broadcasting voices of oppressed individuals and groups. Funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, his community-engaged research focuses on the impact of interprofessional collaboration on the delivery of evidence-based services to marginalized racial/ethnic and sexual minority individuals. Funded by the University of Michigan Office of Research, as a new scholarly pursuit, he is building an art installation, The Realm of the Dead, to investigate his own personal marginalization as a gender non-confirming, mixed-race, and Latinx immigrant. This installation will serve as the stage set for Pinto’s award-winning theatrical performance, Marília, a one-person play, in which Pinto further explores the tragic death of his 3-year old sister, Marília, and how such loss haunts and inspires the lives of the family members she left behind. Marília won the 2015 United Solo Festival Best Documentary Script and it will be performed again at the University of Michigan as part of the centennial celebration of the School of Social Work.

Lightning Talk:  Diversity Matters: How about Equity and Inclusion?
This lightning talk focuses on advancing racial/ethnic minority scholars finishing their academic programs, graduating, and finding jobs), and on providing academic institutions with the tolls to (1) welcome diverse students and immediately (2) develop programs, activities, and events to ensure equity and inclusion so as to (3) help students develop social capital. The talk will inform programming to help students find (4) social support – emotional, concrete, informational – to (5) access institutional resources during their academic years and beyond. Programming includes scholarly writing workshops and spaces for addressing structural issues affecting racial/ethnic minorities (e.g. weekly COVID-19 online forum). This has been a sustained effort with demonstrable outcomes (e.g. more publications, more grants, more visibility at national conferences) stemming from creative approaches to advocacy (e.g., a Research Day in which PhD students display their research in poster format) and full participation in problem-solving (e.g., social hour to discuss job market difficulties).

Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil, is the Newman Family Professor and Deputy Chair in the Department of Radiation Oncology and Director of the Center for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan. An internationally recognized clinical trialist and health services researcher in the field of breast cancer, Dr. Jagsi has coauthored over 300 publications. She has also devoted a substantial portion of her service to the institution and her scholarly effort to promoting gender equity in academic medicine. She is a frequently invited lecturer on this subject, having delivered keynote or plenary talks at the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the American Medical Association, and for dozens of other institutions and medical specialty organizations in the US and abroad. Her investigations of women’s under-representation in senior positions in academic medicine and the mechanisms that must be targeted to promote equity have been funded by an NIH R01 grant and grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Doris Duke Foundation, AMA, and other philanthropic funders. Active in organized medicine, she has served on the Steering Committee of the AAMC’s Group on Women in Medicine in Science, which recently recognized her with its Leadership Award.

Lightning Talk:  Promoting Gender Equity in the Professions: Insights from Academic Medicine
As a physician-bioethicist who also holds a doctorate in social science, a key focus of my scholarly work has been focused on developing evidence-based interventions to promote gender equity in medicine. In my talk, I will briefly describe the evidence that suggests that the ongoing dearth of women in leadership positions in medicine is not simply due to a slow pipeline but rather due to the differential challenges of unconscious biases, gendered expectations of society, and overt discrimination and harassment (with sexual harassment in medicine being more common than in any other profession studied by organizational psychologists to date). I will then describe several concrete, targeted interventions to promote gender equity at the national and local levels in which I have had the privilege of playing a leadership role.

This Symposium is made possible through the generous support of CEW+’s Frances & Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund. CEW+ would also like to thank the following supporters of this event: