iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

If you need a brief recharge, tune in to C-SPAN2 / American HistoryTV tomorrow afternoon: a rich Nov 2025 program on Frances Ellen Watkins Harper featuring @drkmttr82.bsky.social, Sherita Johnson, & me via @amantiquarian.bsky.social. Harper still has so much to teach! www.c-span.org/event/americ...

This photograph offers a three-quarters length portrait of African American activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper standing behind a chair with her hands on the chair’s back. Her body is turned to her right, but she faces viewers directly. Her dress is dark, with a bustle skirt, darker sleeves, and a row of buttons down the front of a skirted vest that matches the fabric of the dress skirt. Harper used this photograph as a frontispiece in some of her later books.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

This is one of those classes that I just never want to end.

a stack of books, spines facing out and consisting of (from top to bottom) Willa Cather's O Pioneers, Julie Otsuka's The Buddha in the Attic, Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones, Traci Chee's We Are Not Free, Malinda Lo's Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Julia Alvarez's Before We Were Free, Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street, Sabaa Tahir's All My Rage, and Nicola Yoon's The Sun Is Also A Star

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Reposted by Eric Gardner

American Antiquarian Society @amantiquarian.bsky.social · 13/11/2025

Join us tonight online at 7:00 PM ET for “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Civil War and Reconstruction” with Eric Gardner in conversation with Sherita L. Johnson and Derrick R. Spires. www.americanantiquarian.org/programs-eve...

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Reposted by Eric Gardner

19thnews @19thnews.org · 24/09/2025

On her 200th birthday, Harper’s voice is as urgent now as it was centuries ago — and her vision lives on through The 19th’s HBCU fellowship and other efforts in her name.

19thnews.org

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s bicentennial is a call to action

Harper’s voice is as urgent now as it was centuries ago — and her vision lives on through The 19th’s HBCU fellowship and other efforts in her name.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

The footnotes I struggled with most in my new book Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction (#24 & #28) are in Chapter 1, and THAT is the chapter that is currently freely available to everyone. Book info in the comments. See academic.oup.com/book/60645/c...

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

A birthday present for Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s 200th: you can now read Chapter 1 of my new book Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction online for free for a limited time! Please share widely. Book info in the comments. Check out: academic.oup.com/book/60645/c...

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper is 200 today! @c19americanists.bsky.social @digblk.bsky.social @ccp-org.bsky.social @blkgrlpoet.bsky.social @profgabrielle.bsky.social @npr.org She’s just as fabulous, relevant, and fiery now as she was in C19! For a sample, see commonplace.online/article/vol-...

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

After a decade of work, here is the unboxing of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction! Cloth ISBN 9780197804490. Use discount code AUFLY30 to get 30% off at global.oup.com/academic/pro...

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

The digital version of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction is now available for folks who have Oxford Academic Access! Online ISBN 9780197804520; print (forthcoming) ISBN 9780197804490. See academic.oup.com/book/60645

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

Proofs are proofed. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Civil War and Reconstruction is on track for 1 Oct release from Oxford UP. The book wouldn’t exist w/o support from the NEH & so many librarians & scholars committed to the fact that Black history is American history. We still have so much to learn.

Excerpts from proofs of the title page of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper's Civil War and Reconstruction by Eric Gardner and of the Contents page. The latter lists: Acknowledgments, page ix; Chapter 1, Strangers and Neighbors: Recovering Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Life and Work, page 1; Chapter 2, Origin Stories, page 29; Chapter 3, Reconstructing an Abolitionist Voice, page 66; Chapter 4, “Go on”: Harper’s Challenges to Reconstruction, page 94; Chapter 5, “Lay the whole foundation anew”: Harper in the Thick of Reconstruction, page 134; Chapter 6, The Fifteenth Amendment and Epic Struggles, page 176; Chapter 7, Endings and Not, page 221; Notes, page 263; Works Cited, page 295; Index, page 305.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

“[I]t may have been the fourth of July; it does not matter.... The next day my child … said: ‘I know why we can’t ride in the cars; because we are colored!’ … yet … trodden under foot as our people are, I would not change souls with the richest and proudest stockholder….”--Frances E. W. Harper 1867

commonplace.online

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s “National Salvation”: A Rediscovered Lecture on Reconstruction - Commonplace

What makes Harper’s January 31 [1867] lecture rare is that we have its full text. The Philadelphia Evening Telegraph printed a transcription of “National Salvation” the day after Harper spoke.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

Per Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, remembering Black soldiers who “marched to the front, faithful to the country when others were faithless—who were rallying around the flag when Rebels were trampling it under feet; true to the country when she wanted a friend.” See commonplace.online/article/vol-...

Detail from the front page of the 10 October 1863 issue of the Weekly Anglo-African (a Black newspaper published in New York) that shows Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s poem “The Massachusetts Fifty-Fourth,” commemorating the efforts of the famed all-Black Civil War regiment. For more on the poem including its full text, see https://scholarlyediting.org/2013/editions/aa.18631010.1.html and https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/25194/24963

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

September will mark the 200th anniversary of author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. Here’s the sixth of six essays in the exciting forum on Harper in the current issue of Legacy, @brigfield.bsky.social’s breathtaking & visionary “Generational Harper.” muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

September will mark the 200th anniversary of Frances E. W. Harper’s birth. Here’s the fifth of six essays in the forum on Harper in the current Legacy, Barbara McCaskill’s wise & rich “Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Ethics of Personal Rest and National Restoration”: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

Detail from a photograph of an African American woman (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) featuring her head and shoulders. Her body is turned to the right, but she faces the camera directly, with a calm power. Her hair is pulled back, and she wears a fashionable nineteenth-century traveling dress. Harper use the larger version of this photograph--a three-quarters view of her standing behind a chair--as the frontispiece in several of her later works.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

September will mark the 200th anniversary of Frances E. W. Harper’s birth. Here’s the fourth of six essays in the forum commemorating Harper in the current Legacy, Nazera Sadiq Wright’s amazing study of Harper, Gertrude Bustill Mossell, & Black library use & creation: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

Details from two photographs showing individual African American women: at left, Gertrude Bustill Mossell, and, at right, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Both are head and shoulders pictures. Mossell’s body is turned slightly to her right, but she faces the camera slightly to her left. Harper’s body is turned to more to her right, but her face aims directly at us. Both are in fashionable late nineteenth-century dresses. Mossell’s hair is up, and Harper’s is pulled back.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

September will mark the 200th anniversary of author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. Here’s the third of six essays in the forum commemorating Harper in the current issue of Legacy, Leslie Schwalm’s groundbreaking intro to Harper’s work in Iowa (!) muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

This photograph offers a three-quarters length portrait of an African American woman (Frances Ellen Watkins Harper) standing behind a chair with her hands on the chair’s back. Her body is turned to her right, but she faces viewers directly. Her dress is dark, with a bustle skirt, darker sleeves, and a row of buttons down the front of a skirted vest that matches the fabric of the dress skirt. Harper used this photograph as a frontispiece in some of her later books.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

September will mark the 200th anniversary of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. Here’s the second of six essays in the forum commemorating Harper in the current issue of Legacy, the powerful “We Need to Speak about Home” by Kristin Moriah @dark-stars.bsky.social: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

A contemporary color photograph of a three-story rowhouse in Philadelphia owned by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper during the last four decades of her life. The front façade is red brick. The first floor features a blue door (at the top of a short set of off-white stairs) and two double hung windows trimmed in white with blue shutters and blue window boxes. Two basement windows made of glass blocks can be see below the first-floor windows. The second and third floor each feature two double hung windows, again with white trim and blue shutters. Off-white lintels matching the front stairs are placed at the top of the door and basement windows and at the top and bottom of the other windows. A small cornice done in blue with yellowish accents tops the structure. This is an end unit and the photograph approaches the structure at an angle, so the end side wall of gray stone is also visible. Various utility wires interrupt the view of parts of the second and third floors. A historical marker—a sign on a tall pole—can be see to the viewer’s right, rising from the red brick sidewalk. The rowhouse immediately to the right is brown brick, separated visually from the Harper home by a white drainage pipe running from the roof to a black base in the sidewalk.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

September will mark the 200th anniversary of author-activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. Here’s the first of six essays in the forum celebrating & commemorating Harper in the current issue of Legacy, Lois Brown’s stunning & timely “Catalysts for Justice”: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

September will mark the 200th anniversary of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s birth. To help commemorate and celebrate, the current issue of Legacy features a forum on Harper’s life and work. This week, I’ll share each of the six essays; for now, here’s the intro: muse.jhu.edu/pub/17/artic...

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

A powerful piece by Patricia Okker, former President of the New College of Florida, on how reading American women writers can shape our current moment. This is what the humanities can do, and this is why they are so afraid of us. Free access from Legacy: muse.jhu.edu/article/959226

muse.jhu.edu

Project MUSE - Learning to Read American Women Writers

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Reposted by Eric Gardner

Zinn Education Project @zinnedproject.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Help us reach 10K followers on Bluesky. We provide free people's history lessons, Teach the Black Freedom Struggle classes, Teaching for Black Lives study groups, book giveaways, this day in people's history posts, & we organize to defend the right to teach truthfully. www.zinnedproject.org

zinnedproject.org

Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in middle and high school classrooms across the country. Based on the lens of history highlighted in Howard Zinn’s bes...

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 11/04/2025

Save the NEH! More great books on Black history & culture--these, all aided by the NEH: Courtney Thorsson’s meticulous & beautiful The Sisterhood studies a world-changing community of Black women writers (Morrison, Shange, Jordan & more) @courtneythorsson.bsky.social cup.columbia.edu/book/the-sis...

The cover of Courtney Thorsson’s book The Sisterhood: How a Network of Black Women Writers Changed American Culture. On a sepia background of varying tones, the top of the cover offers the title of the book in large black all caps spread over two lines, with a line between the words. Under another line, the subtitle appears in smaller black letters. Under another line, the author’s name appears in smaller black all caps. The bottom half of the cover is filled with a stunning 1977 picture (again, with sepia tones) of a group of African American women, most wearing coats and smiling, some sitting and some standing. They are Vertamae Grosvenor, Alice Walker, Lori Sharpe, Toni Morrison, June Jordan, Nana Maynard, Ntozake Shange and Audreen Ballard—some of the members of the title group, all women who changed the landscape of American literature.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 06/04/2025

Care about the National Endowment for the Humanities? You should! NEH makes lives better & for some folks simply makes life possible. Consider @altnehgov.bsky.social & @humanitiesall.bsky.social. And really valuable ideas to help save NEH at: nhalliance.org/federal-fund...

nhalliance.org

Save the NEH! – National Humanities Alliance

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Save the NEH! More great books on Black history & culture--these, all aided by the NEH: Derrick R. Spires’s The Practice of Citizenship is an archivally-rich must-read about early Black print but also about what we should be doing now. @drkmttr82.bsky.social www.pennpress.org/978081225080...

The book cover for The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States by Derrick R. Spires. On a light gray background, the top two-thirds of the cover show a matted and framed C19 print; the frame is contemporary brown wood. The shadows around the frame give a three-dimensional effect, as if the frame is resting on the cover. The print is from the American Antislavery Almanac for 1837 and is titled “A Sketch of God’s Description of the ‘Consequence of Emancipation.’” At the right side of the engraving, a tree stands with a sign saying emancipation nailed to it. In its boughs, broken chains and manacles are draped. In the far distance, center, we see what looks like the US Capitol building. In the foreground, a Black man in a long coat holds an open Bible with one hand and has his other hand raised heavenward, index finger pointing up. A Black woman holding a baby and a toddler kneels beside him along with a third young girl (also kneeling). In the mid-ground we see a cabin and a group of African Americans facing the capitol and cheering. The book’s title appears in bold black letters below the frame, the subtitle appears in smaller all caps below the title, and the author’s name in larger all caps appears below the subtitle.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

The daily barrage of evil made me hold back on a cover reveal, but maybe this is the day. Out later in 2025, this book, like 7000+ books & so many other rich projects, would not exist without the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. These stories must be told & we must save the NEH.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Organize & learn from the past. The Colored Conventions Movement = a great place to begin/recommit: field-making interdisciplinary work treating the archive as a live space. @ccp-org.bsky.social uncpress.org/book/9781469...

The book cover for The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century, a collection of essays edited by P. Gabrielle Foreman, Jim Casey, and Sarah Lynn Patterson. The book’s title in large blue all caps and the subtitle in smaller black italics are superimposed (with some white background added) toward the top of an 1869 sketch by Theo. R. Davis of a session of the National Colored Convention in Washington, DC, held that year. Dozens of African American people are seated in rows of pews in a large church-like meeting space. The view is as if we, too, are entering the hall. In the background—at the front of the hall—two men are behind a pulpit, one standing, one sitting. In the foreground, which is colorized, three women and a man are in the process of taking their seats. The man’s black jacket and one of the women’s blue overdress and dark bonnet are especially striking. At the bottom of the cover, on a strip of black background, the editors’ names appear in small white all caps.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 01/04/2025

Pols & pundits, please quit saying things are "distractions." It is both dismissive & wrong. DEIJ, colleges & universities, museums & libraries, PBS & NPR, the NEH & the NEA make lives better & simply make some lives possible. If you call them “distractions,” you’ve already capitulated.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 31/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Manisha Sinha’s The Slave’s Cause is magisterial but never forgets that the big picture is composed of many, many individuals. Archivally & conceptually brilliant. @profmsinha.bsky.social yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

The cover of Manisha Sinha’s book The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. On a white background, the right half of the cover is a reproduction of a C19 engraving showing a US flag on a flagpole done in light red tones. The flag’s rope extends down the pole and ties the wrists of a shirtless African American man above his head to the flagpole and then, further down, ties his calves to the pole in similar fashion. It looks as if he is about to be whipped. The enslaved man (literally bound to the flag) faces toward the left half of the cover, which, at the top, has a laudatory blurb from Ira Berlin in small type, the main title in large blue all caps, the subtitle in smaller black all caps, and the author’s name in similarly-sized blue all caps. The main title and author’s name have a slight serif, while subtitle is sans serif, with the "a" and the "of" in italics.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. I love a good biography & Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement is that & so much more: a deep & nuanced study of a whole world of activism that tells of both the then & the now uncpress.org/book/9780807...

The book cover of Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. The upper third of the cover offers a stunning closeup partial head shot of Ella Baker (an African American woman, here in middle age) speaking done in brown tones, with her name in large white letters superimposed over the bottom portion of the photograph. The bottom two thirds of the cover shares “& the Black Freedom Movement” in large black letters spread over four lines, with the subtitle below in small all caps, followed by the author’s name in larger red letters, and a glowing blurb from Cornell West in much smaller red letters. In the middle third, just off center to the right is a small black and white version of the photograph from which the larger head shot is drawn; this fuller version shows Baker’s head (and hat), torso, and upper arms with an NBC microphone set to hear her.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 25/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. No way to do this w/o Darlene Clark Hine, so a fabulous edited collection with John McCluskey Jr: The Black Chicago Renaissance. Short version: Harlem, yes, but don’t forget the Chi. www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p0...

The book cover of Darlene Clark Hine and John McCluskey, Jr.’s edited collection The Black Chicago Renaissance. On a light gray background, the title appears in large type, with “Black Chicago” larger and in bold black and “The” and “Renaissance” in slightly smaller white. At the bottom of the cover, the editors’ names appear in smaller bold black all caps. A thin, tri-color band runs along the left edge of the cover—from the top, first black, then blue, then red. On the cover’s right side, next to the title, we see a detail from Walter Ellison’s stunning 1937 oil on canvas, “Leaving Macon, Georgia,” which shows two African American men talking atop two train cars (one of which is faintly labelled “ICRR”). The center character wears a blue work shirt and a dark blue cap; he is smiling, and a one hand raised to point. The other wears overalls and a hat. In the background, we can see a long pair of roads, with a white crossroads sign.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. The reason Jennifer L. Morgan’s Reckoning with Slavery won such praise? It is *that* good. Early enslaved women’s lives, capitalism, the Middle Passage: required reading on so many issues. www.dukeupress.edu/reckoning-wi...

The cover for Jennifer L. Morgan’s book Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic. In a rich combination of blacks and browns, the bottom left portion of the cover has a tall lighter brown triangle background. The author’s name is in small all caps at the bottom, all in the triangle. Higher up, the title appears in red all caps, partially in the triangle, and the subtitle appears in smaller white type just below it, again partially in the triangle. A line of three spaced asterisks beginning near the top runs down to the title, centered; below the subtitle, a line of three more runs down to the author’s name, again centered; a single asterisk appears below the author’s name, again centered. The bulk of the cover is a detail from the stunning oil on canvas, likely from the 1580s, “Portrait of an African Woman Holding a Clock,” attributed to Annibale Carracci. The title woman looks directly at us in a three-quarters view; she is dressed in period European fashion with a thin white shawl over a dark dress. She also wears a beaded necklace, an earring, and a silver circlet in her hair. The title clock is in the foreground and looks like a small imperial tower worked in carved gold, with the clock face on one side turned toward us.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 23/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Leslie M. Harris’s In the Shadow of Slavery knocked me over when it came out & the 2024 version has a powerful new afterword. Such a key work for C19 NYC and beyond. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

The book cover of Leslie M. Harris’s In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. The top of the cover begins in black and gradually fades, in the lower half of the cover to a blue-tinted C19 photograph of the Colored Orphan Asylum in NYC that shows several African American children on the grounds and on stairs leading to the building. The vast majority are girls, and they wear the same broad dresses. Those in the foreground are holding hoops, and all are looking at the camera. The book’s title is in the upper half in all caps in varying shades of blue. The author’s name appears below in smaller blue all caps; the phrase “With a New Afterword by the Author” appears in small blue letters between. The subtitle appears in red-orange italics with a border right center.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 22/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Even tho I’ve already included a Tiya Miles book, Dawn of Detroit is SO good. Rethinking the times, places, & structures of slavery, this archival wonder never stops seeing individual lives thenewpress.com/books/dawn-o...

The cover of Tiya Miles’s book The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits. Roughly the top half of the cover features a color illustration of a very early view of Detroit with the title superimposed in white all caps, with “Detroit” in the largest font, “Dawn of,” slightly smaller, and “The,” still smaller. The author’s name—in black all caps—covers a bit of the clouds and sky at the top of the illustration. The bottom portion of the cover offers a light sepia-toned early map of part of the Detroit area. A white box with rounded edges covers the center of the map, and the book’s subtitle appears in the box in black all caps.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March a C21 book on Black histories. All the more important now, Hilary Green’s Educational Reconstruction reminds that studies of Black ed have to dig deep, challenge existing narratives & see communities @hngreen.bsky.social www.fordhampress.com/978082327012...

The book cover of Hilary Green’s Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools in the Urban South, 1865-1890 features the title in block all caps with three-dimensional shading at the top of a beige box outlined in black and centered in the top portion of the cover. The subtitle (in smaller red all caps) and the author’s name (in smaller black all caps) also appear in the box. In black on a gray background, a border of the alphabet in roman caps runs borders the top and bottom of the outside of the box, and various lower case roman letters run down the outside sides. A further outside border contains the cursive alphabet in caps along the top and bottom, with various lower case cursive letters running down the sides. The lower portion of the cover features a late C19 classroom, with several African American students in their Sunday best seated at desks and facing the camera. Blackboards run along the back walls of the room, and two African American women, one younger and one older, stand in back of the class.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. In addition to some of the smartest close readings I’ve seen, Katherine Clay Bassard’s Transforming Scriptures does stunningly good interdisciplinary work w/ real emphasis on that opening verb ugapress.org/book/9780820...

The cover of Katherine Clay Bassard’s book Transforming Scriptures: African American Women Writers and the Bible. The top tenth or so of the cover is a band featuring a C19 floral motif. Below this, on a black background, the book’s title appears in large lower case letters—the first word in orange and the second, in yellow. Below this, the subtitle appears in smaller white all caps. After a bit of space, below this, the author’s name appears in smaller salmon-colored all caps. The largest element of the cover appears immediately below the author’s name: a close-up photograph of an open Bible, turned slightly clockwise so we look at it at a slant. We can see the gutter between the two pages and rising curve of the larger page that is in focus; the text of the focal page focuses on the Queen of Sheba’s visit to Solomon.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Telling Histories, edited by Deborah Gray White, brings together the voices & stories of 17 field-building Black women historians to reflect on history, praxis, & futures. A gift, pure & simple. uncpress.org/book/9780807...

The book cover of Telling Histories: Black Women Historians in the Ivory Tower, edited by Deborah Gray White. On a white background, the title is in large black type (with the exception of a red dot over one “i”) at the top, followed by the subtitle in smaller red type and the editor’s name in small red all caps. The remainder of the cover lists the seventeen contributors’ names in various colors: Elsa Barkley Brown, Mia Bay, Leslie Brown, Crystal N. Feimster, Sharon Harley, Wanda A. Hendricks, Darlene Clark Hine, Chana Kai Lee, Jennifer L. Morgan, Nell Irvin Painter, Merline Pitre, Barbara Ransby, Julie Saville, Brenda Elaine Stevenson, Ula Taylor, Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, and Deborah Gray White.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 18/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Glad to see William & Ellen Craft in broader public spaces & remembering the power of Barbara McCaskill’s deeply-researched Love, Liberation, & Escaping Slavery ugapress.org/book/9780820...

Book cover of Barbara McCaskill’s Love, Liberation, & Escaping Slavery: William and Ellen Craft in Cultural Memory. The top half offers a photograph of two contemporary actors dressed as the Crafts during their escape—the lighter-skinned Ellen dressed as a rich planter with a black top hat and her arm in a large sling, and the darker William as her enslaved aid. Three versions of the photograph are superimposed next to and partially on each other to create a visual reminiscent of stop motion animation. The book’s title appears below in all caps in gray on a black background; the author’s name appears below.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Erica Armstrong Dunbar’s A Fragile Freedom is one of those rich, deeply local studies (Philly) that has much to say about broader landscapes and thoughtscapes. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

The book cover of Erica Armstrong Dunbar’s A Fragile Freedom: African American Women and Emancipation in the Antebellum City, which features the three main title words—in gray, black, and red, respectively—in large, lower-case letters; “fragile” is in italics. The subtitle and author’s name appear in smaller all caps. Between these latter two elements is an early C19 engraving of a mob of five white men invading a Black woman’s small home. Three hold the woman, who is standing at the center, and one has a club raised, ready to strike her. At the far left, another man pulls the woman’s child from the modest bed; he, too, has a hand partially raised as if to strike. The mother’s head is turned back toward her child, and there is an expression of horror on her face.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Daina Ramey Berry’s The Price for Their Pound of Flesh changed everything for folks considering the nexus of slavery & capitalism & Black lives. It still haunts. www.beacon.org/The-Price-fo...

The book cover for Daina Ramey Berry’s The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation. The title appears at the top in large all caps above a heart-breaking C19 engraving of an enslaved woman being sold away from her child. A white man holds her back as she reaches out with both arms for her baby, who is held by another white man with one arm while he uses his other hand to count coins on a table along with a third white man (standing in the image’s middle, between the baby and the mother, gesturing toward the mother). There are chains on the floor, and we can see outside the room to a long line of enslaved people. Below this image, the subtitle appears above the author’s name (in all caps, a bit smaller than the main title) and a laudatory blurb from Isabel Wilkerson.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. I think I learned something from every page of Keisha N. Blain’s Set the World on Fire. Also, I love it when really smart people are also really clear. www.pennpress.org/978081222459...

The book cover for Keisha N. Blain’s Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom. The top half of the image carries the title in large all caps, with the subtitle in smaller all caps. The bottom half of the image carries the author’s name at the very bottom of a black and white photograph of a Black nationalist march with women at the fore.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Kidada E Williams’s stunning I Saw Death Coming deeply engages & challenges the archive. It will change the way you think about Reconstruction & everything after @kidadaewilliams.bsky.social www.bloomsbury.com/us/i-saw-dea...

The cover of Kidada E. Williams’s book I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War against Reconstruction. The title (in large all caps), the subtitle (in a slightly smaller font) and the author’s name (in smaller all caps) appear in black over a sepia background marked with deeper brown spots on the edges—in all mimicking the kinds of aged paper one finds in many archives. A small white circle to the right of the subtitle contains black text that notes that the book was longlisted for the National Book Award.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Ranging broadly across time & geography, Mia Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, & Barbara D. Savage’s edited collection Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women is as germinal as it gets uncpress.org/book/9781469...

The cover of Mia Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, & Barbara D. Savage’s edited collection Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women, which features the editors’ names and the book title in red type over a dark background. The left side of the cover features the left half of the face of a Black woman mostly in shadow but with her forehead and eye bright. She looks straight at the camera with wisdom and determination.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Can I imagine the study of C19 Black culture without Frances Smith Foster's work? Nope. Full stop. Here’s 'Til Death or Distance Do Us Part, a powerful study of early Black love & marriage global.oup.com/academic/pro...

The cover of Frances Smith Foster’s 'Til Death or Distance Do Us Part: Love and Marriage in African America, featuring the title in large all caps and the subtitle and author’s name in smaller all caps—all stylized in a light/off-white color on a darker background. Flourishes featuring birds appear near the top, and a ring loops the “o” in “or”.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Blurbed & still love @brigfield.bsky.social & @jsench.bsky.social’s Against a Sharp White Background. Rich histories of diverse Black print from scholars like @profgabrielle.bsky.social uwpress.wisc.edu/books/5486.htm

The cover of Brigitte Fielder and Jonathan Senchyne’s edited collection Against a Sharp White Background: Infrastructures of African American Print. The main title (in large all caps), the subtitle, and the editors’ names all appear in black print; the main title’s letters each have an identical white background letter behind them, making some look almost three dimensional. The broader background is a bright, multi-layered, and multi-colored mix of individual letters in a variety of fonts and styles. Some letters come close to forming words (in the top background, one can almost see “bibliography”) but many more seem randomly placed, often partially on top of other letters, almost postmodern.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 09/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Heather Andrea Williams’s amazing Help Me to Find My People remembers how C19+ Black folks searched for family torn away by slavery, in part via “Information Wanted” ads uncpress.org/book/9781469... @uncpress.bsky.social

The cover of Heather Andrea Williams’s book Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery, which features the title in large script and the subtitle and author’s name in roman. The largest portion of the cover features a stunning quilt made by Williams with a blue border with yellow and red flowers double framing a child’s white dress at the center. Below the dress and around one side, Williams stitched the traced handwriting of an 1857 letter by Vilet Lester. Lester, an enslaved woman, is discussed in this fabulous book, and the writing on the quilt is from a letter to her former enslaver: “I wish to [k]now what has Ever become of my Presus little girl. I left her in Goldsborough with Mr. Walker and I have not herd from her Since …”

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Reposted by Eric Gardner

KEW @kidadaewilliams.com · 08/03/2025

In this special lecture series, Curating Dreams: William J. Wilson's Vision of an Antebellum Black Museum, Dr. Cocoa M. Williams will discuss 'The Afric-American Picture Gallery,' a little-known work by activist William J. Wilson published in 1859. www.atlantahistorycenter.com/event/curati...

atlantahistorycenter.com

Curating Dreams: William J. Wilson’s Vision of an Antebellum Black Museum — Lecture 1 | Atlanta History Center

Beyond Bondage: Art, Identity, and Resistance in Antebellum Black Visual Culture In this special lecture series Curating Dreams: William J. Wilson’s Vision of an Antebellum Black Museum, Dr. Cocoa M. ...

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Knowing that the personal is always political makes Erica Ball’s archival explosion of dominant narratives in To Live an Antislavery Live as powerful now as when it came out. ugapress.org/book/9780820... @ugapress.bsky.social

The cover of Erica Ball’s book To Live an Antislavery Life: Personal Politics and the Antebellum Black Middle Class, which features, above the title and author information, William Matthew Prior’s 1854 painting “Three Sisters of the Copeland Family.” Copeland’s oil on canvas image shows three well-dressed African American girls—two holding plants and one holding a pair of books—facing the painter with eyes wide open.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

February’s too short so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Tiya Miles’s All That She Carried won more awards than I can list. But I can’t stop praising its care for memories & materials both strong & delicate & its archival love for the people & the story tiyamiles.com/books/all-th...

The cover of Tiya Miles’s book All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake—showing the title, author’s name, and a praise-filled blurb from David Blight, as well as a gold circle with black lettering noting this as a National Book Award winner. The background is fabric, and embroidered leaves decorate the edges.

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Eric Gardner @profgardner.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

February’s too short, so each day in March, a C21 book on Black histories. Lois Brown’s landmark bio of Pauline Hopkins teaches not only about a key Black writer/activist & her world but about how we might honor Black lives through archival research uncpress.org/book/9781469... @uncpress.bsky.social

The cover of Lois Brown’s book Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins: Black Daughter of the Revolution, which features a portrait of Hopkins facing the camera with calm determination. The portrait, the book’s title, and the author’s name are superimposed over a background picture, taken in 1902, of the large, six-story building housing (and noting via signs) the Colored Co-Operative Publishing Company and the Colored American Magazine.

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