African American Women’s Definitions of Success: A Conversation on Homemade Citizenship with Koritha Mitchell

From Frances Harper to Michelle Obama, Black women have faced countless forms of violent aggression at the intersection of racism and sexism. Professor Koritha Mitchell, Literary Historian and Professor of English at Ohio State University, discusses the way these women define and redefine success in the face of this violence, challenging us to see their lives not just through the lens of protest, but through the lens of perseverance and achievement as well. Her book, From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture, uses this lens to read the experience of Black women throughout U.S. history. This episode is hosted by UCLA Historian and Professor Katherine Marino. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Then and Now, brought to you by the UCLA Leskin Center for History and Policy. We are dedicated to studying change in order to make change, linking knowledge of the past to the quest for a better future. Every other week we interview thought leaders, historians, researchers, and policymakers about what happened then and what that means for us now.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Welcome to Then and Now, a new podcast sponsored by the Leskin Center for History and Policy at UCLA. I'm Catherine Marino. I teach in the UCLA Department of History and I'm a friend of the Leskin Center. The goal of the center is to bring the past into conversation with the present, and in doing so, understand how we got where we are so that we can imagine alternative and better futures. And that idea of both grappling with and honoring the past in order to build a better future is truly at the heart of all of the work of our guests today. Karitha Mitchell is an award-winning literary historian, cultural critic, professional development expert, and professor of English at Ohio State University. She's the author of the award-winning book Living with Lynching, African-American Lynching Plays, Performances and Citizenship 1890 to 1930, published by University of Illinois Press, as well as the 2018 Broadview edition of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's 1892 novel, Iola Leroy. Today, though, we'll be discussing her most recent book, From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship and African American Culture, just published from University of Illinois Press. Tracing a long sweep of history, this book analyzes canonical texts by and about African American women to lay bare the hostility these women face as they invest in traditional domesticity. Instead of the respectability and safety granted white homemakers, black women endure pejorative labels, racist governmental policies, attacks on their citizenship, and aggression meant to keep them, quote, in their place. Tracing how African Americans define and redefine success in a nation determined to deprive them of it, Mitchell shows how these artists honor Black homes from slavery and post-emancipation through the civil rights era to the quote-unquote post-racial America. This book is truly brilliant, extremely engaging, and so full of relevance for this tumultuous moment we're in right now. Professor Mitchell, thank you so much for joining us today. We're so excited to have you with us. And just want to say how much I love all of your work and this book especially. So just to start off, I wondered if you could share with us how you came to this project. And, you know, like many other readers of it, I've been really struck by this profound intervention you're making to rethink a lot of these really canonical African-American women's novels, not as seeing them not just as protest literature, but seeing how they're centering ideals of and and achievement of success.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to have this conversation. You're absolutely right. I mean, the focus on achievement is the biggest shift that the book is aiming to offer. And I would say that the way I came to be so invested in it is that in writing my first book, Living with Lynching, it became clear to me that African Americans living at the height of mob violence knew very well that they became targets for violence because they were succeeding. It wasn't because they were failing. It wasn't because they were criminal. It was because they were successful in some way and white people wanted to put them back in their so-called proper place. And so once I finished that book with that kind of clarity about the function of racial violence, I really thought to myself, well, what would happen if we took seriously black people's awareness that they are targeted for success? If we took that seriously, I'm not sure that it would make a lot of sense to read their literature and art through the lens of protest. So then what should be the lens? And it felt to me like success should be the lens because if they understand that their success makes them a target, then my question becomes: how do they continue to be so focused on pursuing success then? And once you start reading for that, you start to see just how much African Americans are defining success, redefining success, defining it again, because every time they have any kind of achievement, they are responded to with violence. And so sometimes they have to adjust their conception of what achievement is in order to continue to pursue achievement. But it was absolutely clear to me that pursuing achievement is exactly what they do. And as you said, it's so important to look at Black women's literature and art in this way because they are clearly dealing with the violence that's coming at them because of racism, but also the violence that's coming at them because of sexism. So when we look at people who are having to figure out strategies of perseverance, right, um, at the intersection of both racism and sexism, then that means that we're going to gain even more insight about people who are just dealing with the intersection of racism, for example, right? Um cis Black men who are just dealing with racism. We're going to gain insight into how they pursue success too, when we look at Black women who are encountering both. So for me, it became important to really focus on Black women for their strategies of perseverance, their ways of continuing to pursue success, despite knowing that their every achievement and their every assertion of belonging was going to invite attack.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

Yes, and you define this sort of um request for success discussion of how to find achievement and recalibrate the meaning itself of achievement through this concept of homemade citizenship, which you say is quote, a deep sense of success and belonging that does not depend on civic inclusion or on mainstream recognition. And I was really struck by um both the fact you know that it does not depend on civic inclusion, and would love for you to explain that a little bit more, but also the way that it works in a in a two-pronged way. I mean, the notions of success, as you're saying, are so bound up in um black women's liberation and and sort of freedom from oppression specifically on an individual, in these individual women you're looking at, but it's so linked to a broader community sense of belonging to absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

No, that's great. I mean, I think what I'm invested in here is to understand how if I'm going to look at the literature and art through the lens of success, then so often what you're going to encounter seem to be very conservative portraits of how you know these figures in the literature are defining success. And so there's a kind of temptation to assume that therefore black people simply are defining success in conservative ways. And I think what you're helping me think through is the way that homemade citizenship is geared toward understanding that there has to be something else there, right? I mean, even in slavery, if black people achieve anything like what white people define as valuable, they will be attacked for it. So even if it's just the heteronormative, you know, decision of a partner, because it looks like what white people value, enslavers are going to make sure that black women can't choose their romantic partner. So anything that looks like the success that white people value is going to be attacked. So my thinking was how could it possibly be that simply wanting what white people have is the motivation? It just doesn't make sense. I mean, then if you fast forward to, you know, maybe the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, when there's kind of this movement toward home ownership. In those decades, does it really make sense to say that obviously black people just want the American dream? I don't think it does because they know that any semblance of that achievement is going to invite attack. So for me, I was trying to think about how we can understand a sense of belonging that is beyond US citizenship. Because US citizenship is all about excluding African Americans. That's the point of it. That's how it's designed. So then I was trying to develop a conception of, you know, something beyond that. And I think that belonging gets to it, right? So the idea of tracing homemade citizenship, that it's not about civic inclusion and mainstream recognition, is one way for us to understand how is a sense of belonging cultivated in a society that's determined to exclude you. And one way that I can, you know, kind of gesture toward one of my answers to that question in the book is that it's about these practices of belonging, right? To my mind, debate is an embodied practice of belonging. And because black people are within their own communities debating how to define achievement, that is part of what makes them a community, and that is part of what creates belonging. And that belonging is the thing that's separate from and in addition to anything that even looks like US citizenship. That's why it's homemade citizenship because it goes to that sense of belonging.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Right. Thank you. And um, and your points too about the um the way that white violence attacks um any sort of semblance of um white mainstream notions of um traditional domesticity. It's a point that you make throughout the book. And I found your notion of homemade citizenship so capacious because it um refers not only to the crafting of citizenship for people, black women especially, who've been denied um citizenship from its the founding of the nation, but also the domestic, the way you really center the domestic space and effective relationships in the home, um, how homemaking, as you say, is so central to belonging. And I should have you know said earlier, each chapter really it traces this story from um you know Harriet Jacobs and Elizabeth Keckley and you know, Nella Larson and Zoraniel Hurston, uh up to um up to um uh Tony Morrison and Octavia Butler and Michelle Obama. So I think that it's in these sort of embodied um, I mean, these these stories of of um, these author's stories of African-American women, I think that the lens of homemade citizenship helped me understand some of these um quite canonical texts in a totally new way that emphasize, I mean, for instance, your um rethinking of Harriet Jacobs' um um sort of evasion of sexual violence through this lens of success. And also um, I mean, we could go on with many more examples, um, but I thought one other example that was powerful was rethinking Zoran Yel Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, um, and thinking through how this often quoted idea that African-American women represent the mules of the world misses that at that moment of that quote, there's an important narrative shift happening around um the character's embrace of a sense of success, a sense of pleasure and um self-affirmation.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yeah, thank you for that. Thank you for that. I mean, it's I mean, you've brought a couple of key issues to the forefront here. I mean, the first thing I think I want to say is part of what um focusing on domesticity in the book ends up yielding is a way for us to understand that Black women care a lot more about the bonds and affection, as you put it, right? Um they care a lot more about that than they do about a particular domestic configuration. And so that's part of the reason why when you look at Black women's domesticity, you can see that they are homemakers even when they don't have that title, even when what they develop in their domestic spaces doesn't look like a traditional idea of a homemaker. They're being homemakers regardless of the domestic configuration. And that became important to me, right? Because part of what I'm invested in doing in the book is having us understand that this violence that comes your way is what these artists are trying to highlight. And as we watch the way that they highlight it, um, even when, or especially when they achieve something that looks like a traditional definition of domesticity, then that should only underscore for us the way that all black intimacies, including queer intimacies, are part of this conversation around homemade citizenship. There is no real division if you understand how much these figures that I'm studying are willing to change their definition of success. It's the fact that every definition gets attacked that they end up highlighting for us, right? Um, and so your point about uh their eyes were watching God and you know the shift that I'm able to trace there around that famous moment of mules of the world, I mean, I think that was one of the really delightful surprises for me too, right? It was one of those moments where I said, Oh, wait a second, when you use success as your lens, this is what you notice. Um, and so what became really important was recognizing how when Nanny tells Janie, um, when she shares her story with her about what life has told her about how black women are the mules of the world, part of what we watch happen there is Janie's investment of developing her own definition of success. And she insists upon having pleasure be a part of that definition. And so that text ends up being such a fruitful way for us to understand there is debate among Black women, even about how we define success. Some of us are convinced that it is all about propriety and the, you know, um proper home that hopefully is also going to come with financial stability. And other others of us are convinced that it should include pleasure, and that is part of what we watch with that shift and how um you know Janie is going to define success moving forward in her journey. So, yeah, that was, I would say to you, like one of the delightful surprises of using success as a lens.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

That's great. And yeah, that was only just one example of so many in your book, right? I just was so amazed by the profound shift that that lens really provides. And I think it's going to be incredibly generative for scholars and everyone going forward. And it's sort of that example gets at the point I was trying to make, um, but didn't put very well earlier the way that, you know, all these definitions of success vary, but they seem to foreground um belief in one's self-worth, um, but not in an individualist way, you know, and different definitions obviously apply to different experiences and people you're exploring in this book, but they're also never um totally individualistic because they're always engaged in this broader community conversation, as you put it, and that is intimately bound up in these debates, and that intimately is bound up in this notion of belonging. Absolutely. I just think it's so powerful how you're kind of bringing these books together to show um how this community conversation has actually been building on itself over you know a long period of time. Um so I just I guess to zoom forward to the moment we're in today, um I mean, there is just so many ways, there's so many ways in which your book is so relevant. Um in terms of the um the white supremacist violence we're seeing discursively and and physically and materially, um the global pandemic that is disproportionately affecting women of color and families of color, um so many, you know, a crises happening. And so I just um I wondered what you could tell us about why you think this rethinking and reframing around success and homemade citizenship is so important right now. Um or put another way, how does this history you've shared with us of African-American women's homemade citizenship help us navigate or just understand this moment we're in today?

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Yeah, and that's such an important question, and one that I could go in about 500 directions on, and I will definitely, you know, limit myself. Um, I think that one way I see what I learned from writing this book applying to our current moment, one way I see it is with the example that all of these figures give us in terms of not just coming up with an answer on how to survive and thrive and then coasting, but rather that you continually are recalibrating, you're continually rethinking, how do I want to move in this moment where I'm attacked at every hand? And that is absolutely the case uh that we're in right now. Like that is the reality. But what I hope homemade citizenship does is it helps us see that this is not a new circumstance by any means. And that if we can start to look at earlier generations and look at them not just for their protest strategies, but for their strategies of perseverance, then we can take certain tools from that, right? I mean, one of the ways that this question kind of resonates so powerfully for me is I think about the kind of debates that happen sometimes when people try to create a false tension between earlier generations of activists and current activists. And one of the things that struck me is that actually Ruby Bates was on a panel where she was actually saying, no, no one owns the liberation struggle. We're all doing our part, we all pick up where it is. And I think that that really goes to the heart of the fact that it's always been a debate and it's the community conversation has always been a debate. And so if we accept a false narrative that says something like, well, you younger activists don't know what it was like to go through X, Y, and Z because this is what it was like back in the day, younger activists are quite valid to say, well, look at the fact that here we are, just a few years ago, the Voting Rights Act was gutted. And right now I'm watching the killing of black and brown people on repeat on social media, and vigilantes, not just the police, are doing the killing. Don't tell me I don't know what it's like to live under this kind of state-sanctioned violence and state-sanctioned even when the people doing it are just ordinary citizens. Don't tell me I don't know about that, because that is my current moment too. So I think that for me, thinking in terms of community conversation allows us to really get real about the way that we are all simply doing what we can to figure out how to navigate this incredibly violent context that is violent in different ways, but is still intensely violent. And that part has not changed. And so we will continue to need different strategies of perseverance. So I think that is the main way that I try to take the lesson. From the case studies, basically, that I use throughout this book, right? Throughout generations. And I think the only other thing I'll say about it is I just found so refreshing too the way that these artists were preserving debates within the community such that they were making sure that, okay, if there is an accepted idea or an accepted definition of success in our community. So let's say, for example, in the chapter where I look at Raisin in the Sun and Wine in the Wilderness, so civil rights era drama and black arts movement drama, if the definition in the community conversation has become dominated by a particular definition of success, Black women always are saying, I don't know that this accepted definition includes me. I don't know if this definition is giving me room to breathe. I don't know if this big definition that we act like we are agreed upon is actually representing me. We need to continue this debate. And I think that that is the other lesson that I take from the artists that I look at is they are not giving up on the community conversation, even when it doesn't fully accommodate their own goals. And that's something that we just have to keep investing in.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

That's inspiring, um, you know, a hopeful message for right now. Um, I mean, your book itself really brings us up to today and really makes these links for us, I think, too, both in the you know, uh penultimate chapter where you're looking at this um this rethinking of a quote unquote post-racial, you know, moment in this in the 70s, um, but also to getting to today. And I loved how your book um really gave explanatory power to um you know the 2016 election through this notion of know your place aggression. This is a concept you've written about before. Um but I in the the last chapter you explore um the know your place aggression specifically that was targeted against um Michelle Obama as well as her own public persona that you analyze as a text and how she herself um did the work of homemade citizenship in the face of that um violence. So um I wondered if you could elaborate a little bit on um how Michelle Obama functions in your in your book and your thinking.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah, thank you for that. I mean, I think, you know, one way that Michelle Obama ended up being really important to me is that she so clearly understood, even though there was nothing about her position that would allow her to say it out loud. She clearly understood that her every success would be opposed. Um, and so in that way, I saw her as being very much in the tradition of um black club women of the 1890s and early 1900s who were making very deliberate decisions around hair, clothes, bodily presentation, and even home decor, um, all for the good of the race. And so I saw the way that because she knew she would be opposed, because she knew she would be attacked in every way, all of her decisions were in that tradition of understanding that she was in the public eye, she would be attacked, but she also could use semiotics, as I put it in the book, right? This idea that we are conveying meaning, we are interpreting meaning, not just through words, but also through objects and gestures and so on. And so it felt to me like that was an opportunity to see how she was using her decisions about hair clothes and bodily presentation, as well as how to decorate the White House to, you know, navigate the violence that she would encounter, the discursive violence that she would encounter, if nothing else, but also still give some messages to Black and Brown women who needed affirmation. But I think, you know, the other thing that you're reminding me of is know your place aggression in relationship to her becomes so important in the coda, um, which I call from mom in chief to predator in chief, because it feels to me like American voters, now thank heaven, voter suppression was required for Donald Trump to win. I I thank heaven for that because it is the only thing that makes me believe in any sense of decency in this country. But nevertheless, he didn't win the popular vote. This is true, and so that is like, you know, my one thing that I hold on to. At least that was required. But nevertheless, 63 million Americans did vote for them, for him, and including 53% of white women. And so part of what I think that does for us is it really allows us to think about um how 2016 put American culture on display. If we had any doubt about what are the most common words and deeds of American culture, that election put it on display. And so part of what I'm interested in is the way that, you know, the way that he disrespected President Obama in order to have political ascendancy, questioning his citizenship and so on. It went from President Obama to Hillary Clinton. And that for me was a way for us to understand that US citizenship is actually designed only for straight white men. And so you can be a straight white man who damages institutions, damages um communities, but American dream is for you. American citizenship is for you. It is not for even a powerful white woman. And that is what the treatment of Hillary Clinton shows, again, not just based on Trump and what he did, but based on the support he had for it. But to your question, the reason Michelle Obama ends up being important in the coda is because she actually directly addressed the release of those recordings of him bragging about grabbing women. And what I think is happening is it's a way to grapple with the way that if American citizenship continues to function the way it does, then part of what we have to contend with is the way that part of what she was doing was just leaving a record. Leaving a record of how America's most common words and deeds are all about putting someone like her in her proper place. A black woman who has been successful, a black woman whose success had to be gained in the face of all kinds of attacks that were based on both race and sex, the way that she testified to the fact that those comments of sexual predation that he nevertheless got voted in after it was spread, she makes it clear that other women of every background, if you felt a certain amount of shame hearing that, you are not imagining that you should have felt that shame. That was the point. That is what happens when people in power are allowed to operate in ways that are all about putting you back in your so-called proper place. It's all about having you give up your ambition, all about having you not go for achievement. And so to me, that's part of why it was so important to end on the note of Michelle Obama showing us her examination of know your place aggression, even though she doesn't do it explicitly, because it allows us to see American citizenship right now is geared toward just telling everyone who's not a straight white man that they need to know their proper place. And it's especially galling when the straight white man who is getting this support is so much the opposite of anything admirable. It's especially galling, but that is exactly the point of the violence, right? That's the point of the violence. That's the point of know your place aggression.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Right. Thank you. That was powerful. And I mean, I just want to reiterate how much I love the ending, the coda, with Michelle Obama's contribution to this community conversation and her making a homemade citizenship, one that um emphasizes African-American women's right to live free from sexual and racist violence and harassment, to have love, admiration, it really just continues on this intergenerational conversation that you've laid on in the whole book.

SPEAKER_00 31:09

Yeah, and can I just add really quickly, the other thing that's so important about your emphasizing that is I think part of what was so powerful for me to recognize too in this study is the way that even when the text that I'm examining seem to be all about addressing a mainstream audience, they still participate in a community conversation. Michelle Obama is an example of that. Obviously, she's the first lady. What she does addresses mainstream audiences, but even as she does that, she is participating in the community conversation. It's not just about responding to mainstream audiences.

SPEAKER_02 31:47

Right, exactly. I found that super powerful and important. Um and um just wanted to reiterate more generally how much I love how your book itself just really illustrates this point that is so central to this center and podcast, the um relationship between the past and the his and history. Um, you know, not only recognizing um and grappling with the history of slavery and various forms of violence, but also um, as I think you've put it elsewhere, sort of honoring the ancestors, really by thinking about this work in terms of success, you're really honoring a much bigger vision of what these um artists and authors are trying to do and really tracing those connections with history. Um so I um I will for the sake of time, I would love to continue the conversation, but I will end it here. I just want to point out too how much um, in your own words, you know, you're really highlighting how these authors quote, steer the community conversation in ways that will empower African Americans uh to quote create a future of possibility for the collective. And I think that's exactly what your own book does. So thank you so much for it and for joining us today in this conversation. Thank you. Such a pleasure. Ven and Now is a production of the UCLA Leskin Center for History and Policy with support from the UCLA History Department. Ven and Now can be found on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Let us know your thoughts on this or other episodes of Ven and Now by emailing us at LeskinCenter at history.ucla. Special thanks to our executive producer, Maya Ferdman, and to David Myers, the director of the Leskin Center for History and Policy. And so many thanks again to Professor Karitha Mitchell for her fabulous book From Slave Cabins to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

Thank you for joining us this week on Then and Now. Then and Now is brought to you by the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy, where we study change to make change. For more on our work, follow us on Twitter and Facebook at our handle at Leskin History. Our show is produced by Maya Ferdman and David Myers, with original music by Daniel Reichman. Special thanks to the UCLA History Department for its support, and thanks to you for listening.