Curriculum Designed with You in Mind: Honors

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Welcome to day three and chapter three, named Excel of spellbound The Odyssey, volume 140. We are so happy to be here with you all today, the time has really flew by I cannot believe we are already on to day three of but I'm so excited to get this kicked off with you up. So before I turn it over, just some quick housekeeping rules. Of course, this session that we are in is called curriculum design with you in mind, it will be honors mock lecture that will last from around three o'clock to 345. To view the rest of the agenda, please feel free to use the agenda button on the spell bound portal for spell bound website. Remember that this is a webinar so we cannot see you, but you can see us. And then if you have any questions or anything of that nature, once you have that opportunity to ask those questions, please feel free to drop those in the chat. These sessions are all recorded and they will be available at the end of the week. And we are excited so I don't want to take up any more of your time. So I'm going to pass it over to miss Sydney.

Good afternoon everyone. Long time no see how we feeling drop it in the chat. How y'all feeling? How's the last two days of spellbound Ben? Let me know in the chat. Good. Great. Feeling good feeling great. Okay, I see y'all. All right. Feeling good. Fantastic. Amazing. Okay, guys, we finally made it to chapter three, which is sadly our final day of spell down 2021. So let's make it a great last day. I've been having so much fun with y'all. Day one and two were phenomenal. So I know day three will live up to the expectations as well. Today we're focusing on life beyond Spellman gates. So you will sit on a couple more classes speak with the offices at Spelman that helps students prepare for their future, and chat with alumni that are either just starting out or settled into their careers. Take notes, ask questions, be engaged and have fun. I'll see y'all later.

In passing it to you, Dr. heit.

Thank you, Morgan, I'm probably going to need you to be engaged because since they aren't, I don't see them. Maybe you can tell me their answers to some of my questions, or can they be unmuted at some point?

So they I don't believe that they can be unmuted, but we can utilize the chat function so I can keep my eye on the chat for you. Okay, as well as my co lead also.

Okay. All right, thank you, because we are actually going to begin with them answering me this. I want to know, who knows this painting. And I want to know if they can tell me who the painter is. And I want to know, how you know, this painting. So in other words, I want you to tell me the conversations that you have had about it. And you can be brief

and put your answers in the chat for me. Yes, it is American Gothic, and it is Grant Wood. And I want you to tell me what you sort of Okay, so someone said they know it from their art history class. Okay. Yes, it is. It is in popular culture, very present in popular culture. And can you tell me why it is present in popular culture so much, you know, it has become one of those images that is sort of, you know, the furniture of the environment, as we like to say some people know it from World History. You've seen it in your art class. Some people say it sort of represents the American dream. Yeah, humanities class, third grade in Germany for art it was highlighting. I don't know what that is about America. My oh, maybe she meant rural America. Yeah, it's supposed to sort of, you know, kind of represent these Stark, Midwestern values that some people think that he was critiquing. Some people think that it's a sort of comment on a married pair is actually a dentist and his sister, even though grant would would say it was a father, or husband and wife pair. And so this next photograph was taken, and it was taken, certainly to cite that last image that you saw, so Now I want you to tell me whose photograph This is. Yes, it is a Gordon Parks photograph of who? of who. So the important thing that you have to understand then is the images that are in popular culture are painted by visual artists, or they are drawn or they are photographs, but or photographed. But images do not just come into the world, but they are made. Yes, this is Ella Watson. And so what does ello Watson represent? Well, for Gordon Parks, who was a black photographer from Kansas, originally, he was a WPA, a Works Progress Administration photographer. And he was the first black photographer for Life magazine. He was on assignment for life, documenting the experience of black American experience. And he is actually in DC, when he takes this photograph of a black woman who was working in the Capitol. And as you've said, her name is Ella Watson. This photograph is taken 12 years after the 1930 photograph that was taken, or a painting that was made by Grant Wood. And the photograph of Ella Watson. Some people say here, she represents the typical hard working American woman. Well, not quite, I mean, because she is a black American woman. And so in certainly in 1942, this nation would not have seen her as a representation of white American women. Certainly, it is the case that as a black working woman with an ill fitting dress, with both hands occupied in labor, in the nation's capitol, set against the American flag, you're absolutely right to say that this woman was making a an explicit claim about this nation. And parks wanted to make an explicit claim through her about this nation's in justices. And so it is important to begin here, because it gives you a sense of what Gordon Parks was attempting to say about America. And so life photographers said, Oh, you know, I mean, will, you know, eventually, you know, right, like, This man certainly has an eye but as a WPA photographer. The concern was, you know, Hey, are you trying to get yourself fired? Are you trying to get me fired. So it is important to recognize that the critique that he was making was a radical critique of the nation in 1942.

Later, in 1956, Gordon Parks would make another statement. And he would do so in Mobile, Alabama. 1956 is important because 1956 follows 1955. On December 1 1955, Rosa Parks was sitting on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, as she refused to leave her seat that began over 300 days of protest in Montgomery. And so Gordon Parks goes to Alabama, after Rosa Park sits down, Martin Luther King was introduced to the nation as a civil rights activist. And so Gordon Parks returns and so this is in during the Civil Rights Movement, the nascent civil rights movement. And so what is different automatically about this image from the other photographs that you saw from that period in your history books, is that this one is in color. So these photographs were rediscovered, they were a part of a life spread on September 24 1956. And it gives us a very different image of civil rights. And so here you are presented with Mr. And Mrs. Albert Thornton of mobiel. You learn here from the caption that Gordon Parks photographed his older black couple as part of a photo essay for life. On the everyday lives of the large extended Southern family under the tyranny of Jim Crow. They are friends of the I'm the cozies, who he photographs for this spread, there are at least 16 images here. So, after reading some of the honors applications, I was moved to have a class that was dedicated to the difference between the way that I view the film that I had you read for the honors question Anna. And the moment when Anna's mother says to her, that she should guard her in here and protect it and tell it I love you. And I asked a question about interior lives. Much of what students have written that I have read thus far. It admits in some ways, to a transgression of black interior space that needs to be corrected. Whether you choose to come to Spelman or not. I thought that while I had your attention, I could say to you, that until you guard safe your inner life, you cannot be all that your ancestors had imagined. Because too much of the outside world has already gotten inside. So while I have your attention, we have got to talk about how you establish those boundaries, and how you articulate an inner life in the spirit of what you see here. So since I have already told you what I think of some of what I read of what you have written about the black interior, I want to begin by saying that these black people are very different from contemporary black people in the way that they already understood that it was important to see themselves through the eyes of other black people, and not through the lens, not through the eyes of white supremacy.

And I know that, because of that essay, one of them that I gave you, one of the essays that I gave you to read that is on that site for black indoors that is actually from a real class, it would be a real, the real honors course that I teach is around notions of black endurance. And we always begin with an idea of loving blackness, which is dangerous in a white supremacist culture, which is what Bell Hooks argues. And it is dangerous, because there is no where in this world where black people would have gone in public, and gotten an idea that black people were beautiful and worthy of being loved. So if you can arrive at that conclusion on your own, then you are threatening in a culture that w Eb Dubois asserted, has constructed in all pervading the desire to inculcate disdain for everything black from to stop to the devil. And as James Baldwin writes to his nephew, you were born into a society that spells out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible that you are a worthless human being. Your goal, your job, dear James, is not to believe them. And so what Bell Hooks tells you is that in order for black people, to ensure the endurance of other black people, black women went to work. So what she says in in our glory is that our black grandmothers, our southern black grandmothers, like this woman in this photograph, went to work, curating images of black people at their best. And I would venture to say that the majority of you are the products of grandmother's just like this one. In that, if you look at the walls of the of this hall, the Thornton home, you look at that coffee table. You see exactly what Bell Hooks asserted, is the work of black women. In curating the image. You see black people at their best in their glory II Even with Mr. And Mrs. Thornton, he is in clean shirt and tie, she is probably wearing her best dress. Because, in a society with an all pervading desire to inculcate disdain for blackness, there was nowhere else black people could have turned for an image of themselves in their glory, as she notes. Generally, in American popular culture, black people were rendered as zip code, and mammy or Sapphire, or jazz rebel, or some other erotic construction demonized image of who black people are. And so in the privacy of black homes, black people made images they made and curated exhibitions of us at graduations at baby showers and confirmations and graduations. that showed us differently, right. And who was that for? That was for the sake of other black people? That was for you. That wasn't for white people, white people did not go into the homes of the black people who lived in Mobile, Alabama, you see, and if black people thought, white people were going to come into their homes, then there was a performance, there was a particular performance, to protect themselves from whatever they imagined what those white people would do to them. Okay, so that could vary. But in this case, what we know is that we are presented with an image of these folks at their best. So what's important for you to see is not just the photographs, right? But to understand who those photographs were for.

And Kevin quashy helps us understand that. But before we get to that, I also want to say that it's also important that you see their cleanliness and their orderliness. Again, that is for you. And that was also for them. You see, so they decided that they needed an environment, whatever that environment was, that could be for the best it could be for them, because they deserved it. Right? That is a radical idea that other black people think that they deserve what is best not because some white people said so. But because they had sovereignty. So the essay that I make available to you, from Kevin quashy was an early draft of a of some ideas that you can find in total, in a book called the sovereignty of quiet. And in that book, he shares his meditation on this image. And this is the same image that you find him discussing in the article that I gave you, as well as the link to him, Kevin quashy, who is actually now at Brown, him discussing this particular image. And so what you learn from Kevin quashy, and this, this is such an important thing. He says that in this photograph, and in that moment, we focused on what was exterior, right, which is generally he says, how we regard black people, we regard black people, as only always public. And what is the problem with that? I literally want you to tell me, what is the problem with that? Put it in the chat. What is the problem with only imagining blackness as public? What is the problem with only always imagining blackness as public? It puts our humanity in the hands of someone else. Yes, it is limiting. Yes, that's right. Yes, it takes away from our humanity. Why? Why does it take away from humanity? Why does it reduce it right as it shrink it? It is an appearance. It isn't a facade. Yes. Yeah, it could be stereotypes. Well, it also tethers blackness, he says this, yes, it restricts it tethers blackness, to whiteness, for its distinctiveness for its sole existence. So all you can ever be, is constructed as in opposition to whiteness, right? That's all you can ever be. So within a white supremacist construct, if you imagine that black people are only ever always resisting, then that means that you need white supremacy for your existence, that without it, you do not have substance. Right? So he says, there has got to be more to black life than only always in opposition to whiteness, right? We are more than what white people see. So this is what has been so problematic about what I have read, you see, this idea that you are only ever full inch challenging what some people say about you that you can only sort of talk about yourself in opposition to these people who, for like the thought and even within the privacy what what happens in the black private, right, is that you become sovereign, you get to decide you get to say what the substance of your life is, not somebody else. So when I asked you the question, tell me about your inner life. I don't need to or no, nor do I expect to hear about somebody else. But you. I shouldn't hear about all these people who did you wrong? Or did you harm I should be hearing about you. What conclusions Have you drawn? What have you learned? What connections have you made? What gives you richness? and fullness? What do you want to meditate on? When people disrupt your thinking, what have they disrupted? What is the stuck the substance of this in here that you prefer? I'm interested in that. Right? I want to know what connections you have made for yourself. So when I was your age or younger, I was younger. And I'm the first in my family to go to college. So I'm first generation college student. And my grandfather used to sit in a room that we called our TV room. And he would just look out the window. For me what looked like what seemed like hours. And when I asked, What are you thinking about? His response was girl, one of my thoughts would bust your brain wide open. And I was attracted to the possibility, whatever the possibilities were of what those ideas could be. And that is actually what drove me to want to become a scholar. I was trying to figure out what his explosive ideas were right. But what I also understood is that when people would come to our house, and they wanted to talk to my grandfather, I understood that whatever he was thinking about in that room, that they benefited from that. And I wanted to be able to do that. What I couldn't figure out is how you can earn a living from being able to do that. And then I hit upon it. It was academic work, right? It was scholarship, it was insight, that the things that he had figured out, that was the cure, that was the bomb, and gilliat, if you will. So I am interested in what is taking place inside of you. Because I think that whatever that is that there's a contribution that you can make through it. You see. So a part of what Kevin quashy is drawing your attention to with Smith and Carlos is that whatever it is that they're doing inside, right, that is what enabled and facilitated the outside because there is a great deal of strength that is involved in courage involved Making this exterior gesture. And he says it's important that we pay attention to what that is. Right? And so it's not just the interior, or not just the exterior, but there's an inner life. And it is not responsive.

Directly all the time. You know, of course, sometimes, you know, it meditates on the outside, but that outside does not control it. Right. The inside is controlling and taking measure of the exterior. So I want to give you an example of how that looks. Right. So my favorite novel is Beloved, I read it like some people read the Bible, right and go to it for insight. Toni Morrison has had asserted that once the storytelling stopped in oral culture, we use the novel, right, the novel became the place where black artists encoded the insight. So that's where you can go, that's why I go all the time to try to find it. So there's a moment in beloved when baby Suggs has accepted the gift that her son gave her of his work, and his work, but her freedom. And she discovers, right, that now she can go to work for herself. Okay, and not for the slave Ah, cracy. And so she says, Look, I have this one question that I wanted that that I want to ask of the man who had enslaved me. And so I want to share what she says. So let me pull it up.

Okay.

Okay. So, now let me come back to you. And I am ready to share. Okay, so here. So she says to him, the way she asks him the one question, and so, Mr. Garner, she says, okay, right, Mr. Garner laugh nothing to be scared of Jenny just keep your same way as you'll be all right. She covered her mouth to keep from laughing too loud. These people I'm talking I'm taking you to will give you what help you need name of Bhagwan a brother and sister Scots. I've been knowing them for 20 years or more. Baby slugs thought it was a good time to ask him something she had long wanted to know. Mr. Garner, she said, Well, you call me Jenny. Because that's what's on your sales ticket gal. Ain't that your name? What you call yourself? Nothing. I don't call myself nothing. Mr. Garner will read with laughter when I took you out of Carolina with Oh called you Jenny and Jenny Whitlow is what his Bill said. Didn't he call you Jenny? No, sir. If he did, I didn't hear it. What did you answer to anything? But six is what my husband name. You got married Jenny. I didn't know it. Matter of speaking. You know where he is this husband? No, sir. Is that Halley's daddy? No, sir. Why you call him serves then his bill of sale says Whitlow to just like yours. Services. My name, sir. From my husband. He didn't call me Jenny. Would he call you baby? Well said Mr. Garner going pink again. If I was you, I stick to Jimmy Whitlow. Mrs. Baby serves like no name for free Negro. Maybe not she thought. But baby serves was all she had left of the husband she claimed. Now pay attention to this. Maybe not, she thought.

A serious melancholy man who taught her how to make shoes. The two of them made a pact. Whichever one got a chance to run with take it together if possible, alone. If not, and no looking back. He got his chance. And since she'd never heard otherwise, she believed he made it. Now how could he find or hear tell her if she was calling herself some bill of sale name. She couldn't get over the city. more people than Carolina and enough white folks to stop the breath. two storey buildings everywhere and walkways made of perfectly cut slats of wood. Roads wide is Garner's whole house. This is a city of water said Mr. Garner everything travels by water. And what the rivers can't carry the canals take a queen of a city Genie, Jenny, everything you ever dreamed of. They make it right here iron stove button ships, shirt, hair brushes, paint, steam engines, books, a source system. Make your eyes bug out. Oh, this is a city. All right, if you have to live in the city, this is it. The Bible is live right in the center of a street full of houses and trees, Mr. Garner leapt out and tied his horse to a solid iron post. Here we are. Now notice, baby Suggs thought, but she didn't feel like with her answers, she needed to tell them to him. She didn't spend any time trying to convince him that she had a better idea for herself. She acted on her insight, in her own mind. Right? He wasn't the most important person for that insight. She was, you see. So what's very different about her response. And the things that I see students writing is that she understood that she did not need his permission for what she called herself, that her name was not his to decide, you see. So this woman who had been enslaved for all of her life, until that point, she seemed to have an understand a greater understanding, a greater depth of understanding of what it meant to free to be free, then, so many of the better educated students that I teach, and who are eligible to give me applications. So I think it is very important that students figure out how it is that your freedom has been so constricted in freedom. How is it that you have allowed the outside of white supremacy, to inform who you think should be the sovereign decision maker of your interior life? When what Morrison is clearly showing us that the greatest insight of what it would mean to be free, would come from these people who had examined slavery? up close, they lived it. Right? So she had an intimate knowledge of how that world worked. And there was a mystery, and she was curious about it. But what you can observe is that he's not curious about her questions, right? He presumes to know what's best for her. Why would you allow people who presumed to have your answers, who aren't curious about you, to determine how you think about yourself, and how you feel about yourself. So whether you decide to make the decision to come to Spelman or not, I think it's important for you to make the decision that that can't hold that you have got to figure out how to regain sovereignty of your own life. You see, so so much of these confessions that I'm reading and they're basically confessions of all the hurts that people have encountered it how you can change that story, so that your interior life is a clearer portrait of loving blackness.

Because for all of the things that Mr. And Mrs. Thornton lack, they are rich in loving blackness. They understood the value of curating the black image for the sake of other black people. They understood the value and importance of having a clean environment for other black people. And they understood the value of having a home life that was ruled by loving blackness and not responsiveness to white supremacy, for the sake of a concept of black endurance. So I think What is crucial for you young black women moving forward is that you figure out how to learn from old black people how to endure, because you're going to need that. Because white supremacy continues to be a threat. And if you don't figure out how to use your energy productively, then you can be consumed. I'm Darlene Clark Hi. And Kathleen Thompson, in a book called a shining thread of hope. They make the point that slavery broke as many souls as it ennobled. Right. And so white supremacy continues to function in that legacy. It breaks you. So what you have to figure out how to do is how to fortify yourself. So the point of learning black history is not to have some facts that you throw at some people that you think don't know. But the point of that is to learn, so that you can build insight so that you could keep moving. You see. So a part of what you think you need to do, especially if you're interested in being an intellectual community with me is you need to figure out how to enter community, with other black people with the proper humility. And understand all that you don't know. And be grateful for the fact that you have survived. And you haven't spent enough time appreciating what black people have to teach you about how to talk about your interior life. Yeah, as it stands, I'm troubled by the fact that you haven't paid attention enough to the your interior and understood that there's a world inside that other people can't see. And that it's time worthwhile and will spit. When you examine the texture of that life. We're looking for people who come to this institution who bring unique perspectives on this world. That's how we solve problems. That's how as the end of Beloved, you know, we need some kind of tomorrow. Well, if we have some kind of tomorrow, that will depend on the knowledge that we make of the same thread. So we need people who have spent time cultivating the color and the texture of their inner lives. So for those of you who are continuing to submit, that should help you, right. have a clearer sense of what we're looking for. I'm literally looking for portraits of inner lives that are about you, and not about you know, a talk to the hand kind of gesture to white folks. So, Morgan, you wanted me to go about 40 minutes and so there you have it.

Yes, thank you so much, Dr. height. That was great.