Harriet Tubman Center for Freedom and Equity

Welcome to "Confluence: Humanities in the Public Sphere," an IASH sponsored podcast where we discuss various public humanities projects on Binghamton University's campus and elsewhere.  In this episode, we are joined by Anne Bailey, professor of history and director of the Harriet Tubman Center for Freedom and Equity, to discuss the range of community engaged projects the center is doing in order to rediscover and highlight the stories of Black Americans living in the Binghamton area. Bailey explains the center's ongoing Freedom Trail project, outreach to local public schools, and the power of public-facing writing.

If you would like to know more about the Harriet Tubman Center at Binghamton University, you can visit its website here.

Transcript

Joshua Kluever  0:00  
Welcome to Confluence humanities in the public sphere, and IASH sponsored podcast where we discuss various public humanities projects on Binghamton University's campus and elsewhere. I'm your host, Josh Kluever. In recent years, academic institutions and the broader public have begun to grapple with the United States is complex history of racial injustice. There are deepening desires for more inclusive curriculums that include diverse voices telling diverse stories. For too long, these stories have either been missed, or purposely hidden from our mainstream understanding of the past. at the vanguard of this drive for change of Binghamton campus, is the Harriet Tubman center for freedom and equity. Joining me today is Dr. Anne Bailey, Professor of History at Binghamton University, and the director of the Harriet Tubman Center. She is also the 2023, recipient of the Provost Award for Excellence in community engaged scholarship, I can think of no one better equipped to walk us through the incredible work that the center is doing, and to talk about the importance for academics to speak about contemporary issues in ways that are accessible for a wider public audience. Dr. Bailey, thank you for joining me. 

Anne Bailey  1:12  
Happy to join you Josh. 

Joshua Kluever  1:14  
Before we dive into the center, I was hoping you can kind of introduce your research interests, the work you do here on campus, and perhaps how those interests inform the work that you do at the Harriet Tubman center.

Anne Bailey  1:27  
I guess I'm in my 18th year and in general, I teach study, write, in African African American, Caribbean history. And that is broadly called in some circles, African Diaspora Studies, I perhaps here teach more African American history than some of the other fields. I am right now teaching a course called The Making of African diaspora. And then I'm also teaching grad course major works in African American history. How is this connected to the center? I think, for me, this work is also connected to public history, history and memory. And how we remember, as you've rightly said, how we remember this history has been, it's been spotty. It's been spotty in places, and the lots been done in the last number of years in the academy in terms of books, to really diversify our offerings. And really to, it's not new information. In many cases, it's like, we're just going back. And it's a work of recovery, we're going back and finding all these sources, all these stories that we just haven't been told, and they haven't been told in the public square. So that's been happening on a steady, steady rate in the academy. But in terms of public history, that's also important to me that we bridge what we do in the academy with what happens in the public square. And so Harriet Tubman center is born out of that. And that's why it's not just my scholarship in terms of African American African history and so forth, African Diaspora Studies, but it's really the scholarship of anyone interested in issues of freedom and equity, from any perspective that you want to see that played out in the community in some kind of direct way.

Joshua Kluever  3:12  
So when was the center started? What was kind of the the process of getting it off of the ground? And what are some of the goals or the broader intentions that the center is trying to accomplish?

Anne Bailey  3:24  
We got going, really in 2019. I mean, I think we were doing some work before that. But like really getting set in 2019. Again, the goals were to bridge the work that we do, and the Academy to work that can be or should be done in the community. So for example, my associate director, is Dr. Sharon Bryant, she is a medical sociologist, and she does a lot of work on medical disparities. And this is academic work, of course, right? The study of disparities in medicine, depending on where you're from, who you are, your community, where you live, and so forth. Even economic issues. Again, just as an example, we thought, well, this is not just an academic story, this is this is these are real people who actually have to deal with these issues. And even early on, we were exploring, and we probably will come back to that how can we not only do a study of medical disparities in a particular region, or what have you, but also talk about service delivery, how to deliver how to help create models that will help communities bridge this disparity. So this is an example of the kinds of things that made us want to do what we're doing our big focus now, given that we're still full time teachers, and that's we're important. It's important to us to be full time faculty members and also to be still working on our scholarship. Our focus now is on public history. That's why you see us with these different markers and historical markers and the downtown Freedom Trail, where we have identified sites in and 10, that have something to do with either anti slavery efforts or civil rights efforts. And that's an example of connecting our scholarship to the community. Because the fact is that we know a lot about the Underground Railroad, you know, a certain amount, there's still lots more to be known. But there are lots of places which haven't been specifically identified and marked in the public square. So people may write about it in academia. But if you're just a general public, and you're not on a college campus, or you're not reading these books, maybe you don't have access to this information, and everybody should have access to it, whether they're in college or not. Now, particularly we think K through 12, should have access to this information early, over and over and over, we hear from students, why didn't we learn this in high school? You know, or in middle school? Why? Why is African American history as an example, we kind of covered briefly slavery, and then jump to Martin Luther King, Jr. That's it, you know, I mean, it's getting better, don't get me wrong, it's gotten a lot better in many places across the country. But as you know, there's also pushback to, in places across in certain places across the country. So our big public history project is this downtown, Freedom Trail. And we have done all the research with the help of people from our history department, we have done better students have been amazingly helpful on this, the research to identify where these sites are, make them very, very visible to the community, render them visible, and then try to engage, particularly the public school students.

Joshua Kluever  6:39  
I know that a couple of freedom markers have already been placed, how about how many are out there for people to go see what our plans for? Do you have any idea of how many markers are going to make up this Freedom Trail?

Anne Bailey  6:50  
This is what's kind of crazy is that we think we're like we're done, then we get a call or you know, because more and more, it's getting more attention. So we get a call and someone says, you know, I think you know, this might be a site of the underground railroad stop and that kind of thing. We're really at 12. Now, there are two that are officially up and a large number are going to go up in Black History Month, those who are listening, we hope to hear from you, we hope to see you, we hope that you join our website, MailChimp, and you know, our email database, just go to Harriet Tubman, Center for Human equity, just put your email, we will communicate with you so that you know when these upcoming events are. So right now we're expecting to put a large number of them in February. But as I said, we still get calls here and there. And we want to we don't want to miss anything. Because this is the downtown area to three mile radius, we're interested to know. 

Joshua Kluever  7:49  
So are there plans to put in a Harriet Tubman statue in the Binghamton area? And what is kind of the process of you know, you're finding an artist to kind of create that statue? Like, is there a committee that's kind of going through different possible iterations of the statue? And how is this going to kind of be created in the end?

Anne Bailey  8:09  
Well this has been a two year process. And we tried to include and involve as many stakeholders as possible, including folks from Binghamton museum students, other faculty members, obviously, Harriet Tubman staff, people who are part of the campus appearance committee. I mean, we had this public art committee that was really just working on sending out a call to artists was a national call. And we had a large number of artists who sent in proposals into our call. And over this last two year process, we this committee helped us to narrow it down to five finalists. And what I think he feel really thankful for is that we have just had such such great support from not just members of the campus community, but like the community at large to when we had the five finalists, we asked them to do miniature models, you know, like miniature architecture models almost have what they would do. And they sent those to us. And we displayed them in the downtown center. And we had I mean, in the end, we also had mechanisms for feedback. So we had all these different ways in which people could get feedback. And we had over 700 responses from people, you know, quote unquote, voting for, but it was more than voting. I think they really took the time to study each model and every artists that submitted and these are these are mostly nationally known artists. They were very careful to make strong connections to Harriet Tubman story. It was very specific, the work that they did and so whoever was viewing these models could really almost study them like studying and book and say This is why we think that this particular view of Harriet Tubman, and image of Harriet Tubman should grace our campus. So we went through that process, the public art committee also reviewed just really a whole thing. Not only the feedback from the community, but then reviewing specific proposals, detailed proposals of each one and what they would do. And an artist has been selected, we cannot announce yet because we're still in the process of negotiation. But we're hopeful to do that soon. In fact, I'd like to be very optimistic and say that we'll be done very, very soon. And it's exciting because there was a broad appeal for this artists. So I think it should be something that you know, and that's what we wanted. We didn't want it to be about what Ambien and Sharon Bryan and the rest of the Tubman center things. So anybody who wanted to be a part of it can come. And if they couldn't come, when they saw the models in the newspaper, they can still vote, they can still get their viewpoint. And we like to think that we're acting as democratic away as possible. 

Joshua Kluever  11:06  
Yeah I think that's such an important part of this process of kind of doing public history is kind of engaging the public and, you know, having them offer their feedback. And you know, when you said voting for their kind of their favorite iteration of the statute, and I think it's gonna make a bigger connection that people when they when the statue is selected, that people feel like they were part of this process, which is definitely the important part of public history.

Anne Bailey  11:31  
That's exactly right. In fact, you know that the statue will be the first it there's already a marker for Harriet Tubman, but the statue will be the first stop on the tour, it does make a big difference, like how you set the tone for the movement through the city, it won't just be the markers, there'll be QR codes linking to lots of historical information about each stop. There'll be interactive activities, we hope to really be creative in the way that we have these markers, not just like standing, you know, like stiff, static marker, but something that really is more interactive. And it right, I think if we can do this as democratically as we can, we're not perfect. So there are probably some things we missed here and there, they will be other things we will miss that's just like, what we're learning a lot from what we've seen around the country. You may remember that when George Floyd was killed, we now know the number upwards of almost 100 it was about 97 Confederate statues were taken down. Many of them were just kind of forcibly taken down. And and while I do not advocate for that is to people to use an undemocratic process to do that, we can totally understand why that happened. Right? You can totally understand why there was such anger. And for some reason, it was directed at the statues, which seemed like symbols of injustice, symbols of a bygone era, that should be bygone. And one of the things that we thought about is okay, it's one thing to pull down 97 of the 2000 Plus Confederate statues across the country delone a drop in the bucket. What will go up? That is the question.

Joshua Kluever  13:11  
Shifting gears just a little bit. Another kind of work I saw on the Center's website is you guys conducted a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Binghmaton? Can you kind of speak to kind of what that entailed kind of perhaps how some people here on campus may kind of see some of the suggestions or the work that that was trying to accomplish?

Anne Bailey  13:32  
Well I can share briefly because it's such a long process. But that was another and that's the other thing. I think it's important to say that when you're doing this work, you can't be in a rush, you want to be totally want to see results. But I think you have to realize that we didn't get here overnight. So you have to be very considerate about it. And that's what we've learned. So the Truth and Reconciliation process did come out of the George Floyd incident. And once again, that the campus like other campuses, there was quite a bit of uproar and concern about like, Well, where are we on these issues? Okay, you know, we're not Minneapolis and this didn't happen here. We know other things happen on a different scale. We made the proposal to Harvey Stanger to President Stinger who was very receptive to the idea of pulling together a campus wide group of individuals, different stakeholders, different faculty members, different students, even though the now current deputy police chief, bringing those those individuals together to listen to mostly to listen, really, it's what in the South African model calls procedural justice in I am a big student of that history and teaching as well here the anti apartheid movement and which ended with at the end of the anti apartheid at the end of the of the apartheid The system, they had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, famously. And Reverend Desmond Tutu was the head of that commission. And they went around to all these different places all across South Africa, listening to the stories of what people had endured during the years of apartheid. So that procedural process is really important. And that's really what we did. And then out of that, we wanted to pull actionable recommendations. And so if anybody's interested, we have a list of those recommendations. A number of them have been worked on in different ways. And some of them are still in process, as I mentioned, because it takes time. And we do even consider the work that we're doing now is very much related to reconciliation on our campus and in the community,

Joshua Kluever  15:45  
To speak to that some of the changes that have been made I know a big goal of the center is kind of reaching out to area schools in terms of helping them with helping with their curriculum, staff development about how better ways to teach black history and the kind of the lessons of the past. Can you speak to that some of the work that you're doing with the local Binghamton or southern tier schools.

Anne Bailey  16:08  
First, I want to say I want to give a big shout out to CCPA, the College of Community and Public Affairs because they have been doing a lot of work that public schools, a lot of really wonderful, amazing work in and gotten some great grants to continue that work. So we anticipate, at some point, connecting with them in different ways as well. And then there are others who have done some of this, I don't want it to sound like we're the only ones. Even Dr. Sharon Bryant, who has been for years like director of the Upward Bound program, the CSTEP. For all of these programs. It's been a huge amount of community engagement in terms of faculty, engaging public school students in trying to bring them along, get them motivated for college, help them to see various options and opportunities that are out there. So along that line, and consistent with that, our focus is really just on diversifying the curriculum. In keeping with that we're we're just working with folks who are interested in diversifying their curriculum and bringing, for example, like the Downtown Binghamton Freedom Trail, making a direct connection between teaching the abolitionist movement hey, look no further, right. Teaching about civil rights and look no further you can make a local history connection that helps students to feel connected to this history. But obviously, you're going to bill way beyond that. So we've got some great public school partners, wonderful people, the superintendent has been to alum others are working with us. It's been wonderful to work with.

Joshua Kluever  17:44  
Listeners of this podcast. When I interviewed Dr. Langley for the hoed nashoni festival, she spoke to how Binghamton University, we are a public institution, we're here to also kind of serve the broader community. So being able to make these connections with a lot of the public schools in this area, like they can send students engage in public history, learn history through these freedom trail markers, I think is an important work that the senator is doing. I want to close though, by kind of broadening out and having you talk about your specific public facing work, you have done work with the 1619 project you've been very active in op ed writing, can you kind of speak to what you think the power of a lot of this public facing scholarship is.

Anne Bailey  18:28  
I feel really thankful for the opportunities to do this, I should say. And I should say that when I went to grad school, it was my aim and hope to make a bridge once again, between the academic environment and the things I was writing and thinking about, and my my community, local, domestic and international. And so I have been looking for opportunities like this, but they've also come my way, by nature of the kind of work that I've been doing academically, and I it's been a real pleasure. So I was a part of the 6019 project. Yes. And that was a really eye opening experience. Because, you know, I'm working with journalists and and it's, you know, it's they're different timelines is a different way of working. But it was a great learning experience. But also I like, I like what we were able to produce, you know, most particularly the 16 page article that I had in the New York Times Magazine in February of 2020, on identifying slave auction sites around the country, and that was a work that some of my undergraduates and graduate students here from Binghamton, they were research assistants on that project through the high vitamin center. So that was exciting to have students involved in this in real time and then they see you know, the product being published and it's something they not only put on their resume but can feel like oh my goodness, I was a part of that. And so yeah, public facing once again, this is more than just these are not just academic topics, literally. These are things that affect people's lives and the That's what we saw with the death of George Floyd. That's what we thought that the reaction to it. And what we're interested in doing is healing some of these divides bridging some of these disparities, looking at a more positive future by really examining the past in a way that is productive for us now, later. So that's what it means to me, personally, is just an I'm a part of, you know, it's I hope it's a movement that people that are interested in this and I hope to motivate and encourage others to do the same.

Joshua Kluever  20:30  
Dr. Bailey, thank you so much for being a part of this podcast, I will look forward to all the work that the Harriet Tubman center is doing, especially with Black History Month and all of those historical markers going up. So thank you for being here.

Unknown Speaker  20:44  
Wonderful! Please come and see us and maybe share that with your your audience.

Joshua Kluever  20:48  
Will do. Thank you all for listening. If you'd like to know more about the work that the Harriet Tubman center is doing, you can find links to their website in the show description. Once again, Confluence is sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. If you like what you hear, please leave us a review on your podcast app of choice and share it with your family and friends. We'll be back soon with more amazing public humanities projects.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai