TIE Podcast: Dr. Tamika Nunley on How Black Women Defined Liberty in 19th-Century America

In this spring semester episode, Dr. Tamika Nunley, Associate Professor and Sandler Family Faculty Fellow at Cornell University, discusses her recent book, At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C. In conversation with Alexia Hudson-Ward, editor-in-chief of Toward Inclusive Excellence, Tamika explores the various livelihoods and everyday struggles of Black women in the Washington D.C. area during the 19th century. Tamika reaches beyond the heroic narratives often highlighted during that time—the educated, philanthropists, civil rights leaders—to humanize and bring forth stories of Black women pursuing sex work, gambling, or illegal pursuits in the name of survival and forging their own liberties. In addition, she describes the documents she used to piece these narratives together, often pulling from accounts of First Ladies and police precinct records to reveal Black women and children in the archive. Further, Tamika underscores how Black women defined liberty for themselves, creating their own versions of freedom under a government that did not grant it. To close, Tamika offers a look into her forthcoming book, The Demands of Justice: Enslaved Women, Capital Crime, and Clemency in Early Virginia, and how writing the title during the early pandemic and George Floyd protests of 2020 inspired and influenced her work. Listen to the podcast episode here: https://www.choice360.org/podcasts/dr... Find more TIE Podcast episodes here: https://www.choice360.org/podcasts/ca... Read more on the TIE Blog: https://www.choice360.org/toward-incl... Timestamps: 00:00 - Congratulations on all your book awards for At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C. Please share with our listeners and viewers what inspired you to write this book. 03:13 - In terms of our understanding of Black women in the Early Republic, we have attempted to elevate this heroic narrative, and so the people that we have brought forth have largely been the wealthy, middle class, educated, philanthropists, civil rights leaders. But we haven't told the story of the struggle of everyday Black women, so that's why I love this book, because you humanize all of those women, and it feels like it's a circular moment in time that now we're starting to have those same types of conversations about Black women and Black women work, and what people have to do to survive. 06:30 - It seems as if historical erasure and/or the lack of illuminated records has contributed to a very limited understanding of Black women’s lives in 19th-century America. Your book elevates their stories and addresses a broader scope of liberty and self-making – as you describe it - concerning these women. Would you discuss the process by which you were able to find your research subjects and give them voices? 10:30 - It required degrees of commitment and creativity to bring forth those types of stories. We can celebrate the ways in which we stand on the shoulders of women who were hustle women, but those things didn't come without difficulties and dangers on their own. I would imagine that you had to take some time back to say, "wow, this is a really heavy story, yet an important one to bring forth." 12:30 - While you address Free Black women, fugitivity, and enslavement, you also conduct an intriguing study of schools, government, and “street culture.” How do you co-locate all of these existences within the concept of liberty for Black women? 15:38 - There’s this idea that liberty is not an extension of what the government gives us. Liberty and the pursuit of it is a deliberate, individual act, sometimes within community. How do you see that in the individual agency of these women and the extension of liberty as a non-governmental, individual action? 19:22 - You have a new book being released next month on the University of North Carolina Press - The Demands of Justice: Enslaved Women, Capital Crime, and Clemency in Early Virginia. Tell us about your new work and how it furthers our understanding of Black women in the Early Republic. Captions provided by Zoom's automated AI captioning.