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Could you take your seats
please?

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Well good evening everyone and
welcome. Thank you for joining

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us this evening for our annual
Black History Month lecture here

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at the University of Oxford. My
name is Tim Soutphommasane, I'm

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Chief Diversity Officer here.
I've been in post since January

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this year and I'm so pleased to
see so many of you joining us

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for this evening's lecture by Dr
Christienna Fryar. This is an

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event organised by Oxford's BME
Staff Network and the Equality

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and Diversity Unit, with the
support of the Mathematical

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Institute. And what a great
venue and spot to have our

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annual lecture this evening.
Black History Month is an

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occasion to honour the
contributions of black people

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throughout history to British
society and indeed to this

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university. And if there's one
message that people should take

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out of this month, it is that
black history is British

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history.

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This year has been poignant in
light of the 75th anniversary of

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the arrival of the HMT Empire
Windrush. As many of you would

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know, the passengers of
Windrush, most from the

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Caribbean, were the first
arrivals of many thousands of

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Commonwealth citizens who helped
rebuild the nation following the

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end of the Second World War.
It's been wonderful to see the

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enormous range of events and
activities that have taken place

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across Oxford this past month,
organised by staff

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and students alike, and we
culminate this month's

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activities with with what will
be a fascinating lecture from

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Christienna. As I mentioned,
this event is supported by the

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Mathematical Institute at this
venue. And I'd now like to ask

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Professor Ian Hewitt to provide
some words of welcome on behalf

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of the department.

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Thank you, Tim. Yeah, my name is
Ian Hewitt, I'm Associate Head

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of Department here in the
Mathematical Institute. I'm also

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the chair of our Equality,
Diversity and Inclusion

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Committee. So it's my joy to
give you a very warm welcome to

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our building here today. We are
really pleased to be able to

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host this lecture as part of
Black History Month,

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and I'm really looking forward
to tonight's talk. One of our

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key priorities here in the
Mathematical Institute is to

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create a welcoming and
supportive environment in which

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all of our students and our
staff can achieve their full

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potential. And one of the ways
that we're trying to do that is

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by celebrating events such as
Black History Month. And so it's

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really great to see people here
from our department, from across

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the University, and from beyond
the University.

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I hope that you're able to stay
afterwards, with the reception

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outside, and take the chance to
explore some of our building. We

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are celebrating the 10th
anniversary of this building

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this term. It's a building that
was created

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to celebrate mathematics and to
inspire new mathematics. And

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there is all sorts of bits of
mathematics tied up in the

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design of this building that I
won't bore you with [audience

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laughter], but I can do that
over a drink.

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We've taken the opportunity of
this 10th anniversary to

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celebrate the people who work
and study here, so you will also

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see, if you wander around
outside, a series of portraits

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that we've commissioned to
celebrate the diversity of

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people who work and study here.
So do take an opportunity to

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look at that. We also have some
intriguing pieces of geometrical

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artwork, if that's more to your
fancy.

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I have one small piece of
housekeeping. Having welcomed

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you very much, I have to tell
you how to leave [audience

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laughter] in the event of a fire
alarm. We follow the exit signs

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either here or through the doors
that you came through, and we

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have to gather in the courtyard
by the Triton fountain that you

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may have come in past. We have
one of the most beautiful muster

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points in the university, and
our building was practically

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designed around it, but
hopefully we won't need to do

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that until much later.

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So a warm welcome again. I'm
going to hand back to Tim and

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then look forward to the
lecture. Thank you.

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Thank you, Ian. And it is a
magnificent building, and

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there's lots of geometrical
items of interest outside. So

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I'm looking forward to that
after the lecture. Very shortly

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I'll be inviting Professor
Rebekah Lee, Co-Chair of the BME

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Staff Network, to introduce our
lecturer for this evening. But

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before that, I wanted to say a
little bit about the

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university's work on race
equality, just to help set the

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scene for this evening's event.
About one year ago, the

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University released its Race
Equality Strategy, the result of

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the work of the Race

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Equality Task Force, which was
chaired by Professors Patricia

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Daley, Anne Trefethen and Martin
Williams, and I'm pleased to see

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Patricia and Anne here in the
audience tonight. That strategy

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outlined the University's
commitment to being a diverse,

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inclusive community that stands
as a model for race equality in

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society. As some of the
objectives in that strategy

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include engaging all members of
the University community to

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address racism, to tackle
bullying and harassment, to

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increase the proportions of
black and minority ethnic staff

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in senior academic, research and
professional roles, to admit and

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attract and retain students from
all backgrounds, to create and

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maintain a robust framework for
leadership and coordination of

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EDI, or equality, diversity and
inclusion, it really is a

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comprehensive strategy and a
piece of work that has set the

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foundations for the ambitions we
have at the university on EDI.

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And indeed, the creation of the
post I now occupy emerged out of

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the work of the task force, so I
will be always singing

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its praises [audience laughter].
I'm pleased to report that we

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are making steady progress on
race, equality and EDI. In 2023,

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among other things, we
established a new Joint

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Committee on Equality, Diversity
and Inclusion, which is

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responsible for overseeing
efforts across the collegiate

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University. So this marks a step
change in our work in bringing

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together the university and the
colleges and and taking a

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collegiate University approach.
We've also created new fora

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this year to build and
strengthen our community around

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EDI, including a termly EDI
roundtable that brings together

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senior leaders, EDI
practitioners and champions and

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students from across our
collegiate University. We've

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been piloting various new
initiatives. Just a few weeks

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ago, we ran a successful pilot
student induction on EDI at a

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number of colleges. This
academic year, we'll also be

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piloting a new online report and
support tool for university

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staff as part of our efforts to
strengthen

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our prevention of bullying and
harassment. In addition, the

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Equality and Diversity Unit, or
EDU, will be working with

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Central HR to investigate action
on ethnicity gaps relating to

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staff, as well as explore new
leadership development work to

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help us meet targets for
representation of BME staff at

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senior levels. And indeed, I'm
pleased to say we are making

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progress in improving the
representation of racially

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minoritised staff and students.
We can take encouragement from

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the increasing proportions of
black

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staff in posts across the
university, not to mention the

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higher rates of black
undergraduate applicants and

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admitted students from the UK.
So we are working hard to

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deliver on the race equality
strategy and the broader EDI

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agenda here. But there's still
much, much more for us to do.

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And as someone who was formerly
Race Discrimination Commissioner

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working on racial equality
efforts in Australia,

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I'm keenly aware of the
challenge involved in achieving

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cultural change on race. As much
as we celebrate the rich

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diversity within our collegiate
University, we must also

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continue to push ourselves to
work harder and reflect on the

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legacies of the past, and the
ongoing challenge of realising

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racial equality.

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Which brings us to this
evening's main event, and I'd

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now like to invite Professor
Rebekah Lee to introduce this

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year's Black History Month
Lecturer, Dr Christienna Fryar.

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Rebekah.

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Hello everyone and welcome. My
name is Rebekah Lee. I'm

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Associate Professor in African
Studies, and I'm Co-Chair,

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alongside Aprajita Verma, of the
Black and Minority Ethnic Staff

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Network. The BME Staff Network
supports and advocates on behalf

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of BME academic and professional
services staff within the

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collegiate University.

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Black History Month is a time of
contemplation, reflection, and

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observance for our members, and

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we mark the significant - we
mark and reflect on the

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significant contributions of
many whose lives

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have made a significant
contribution to society, to this

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university and to the histories
around us. But it's also a time

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to reflect on the work that is
yet to be done.

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Also, Black History Month for us
is a time of memory work. And

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memory work is work. It is
labour,

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and it's hard and difficult and
sometimes unseen. So I think

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about that. I want to turn to
introducing Dr Christienna

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Fryar. It is my honour and
privilege to be able to say some

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words about Christienna today.
Christienna is a writer and

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independent historian of Britain
and the Caribbean. She hails

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from Virginia in the United
States and is a product of Duke

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University, where she did her
undergraduate studies, and

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Princeton University, where she
completed her PhD in History.

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She's taught widely at
universities in the United

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States and the United Kingdom,
including as being Associate

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Professor in History at SUNY
State University of New York,

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Buffalo State. She was a
lecturer in the history of

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slavery and unfree labour at the
University of Liverpool. Most

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recently, she was in the History
department at Goldsmiths,

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University of London,

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where she was lecturer in Black
British History and, more

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importantly, was the founding
convener of the MA Black British

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History, the first taught
Masters programme of its kind in

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the United Kingdom.

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I was witness to Christienna's
work at Goldsmiths.

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She brought what I can only
describe as a truly inspiring

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combination of intellectual
rigour and bravery, a deep sense

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of ethics, and advocacy that
black British history

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could be and should be a
collective endeavour. That it's

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not just about intellectual
discovery. It is also many acts

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of empowerment involving history
makers, history custodians, and

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writers

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and archives beyond, well beyond
the academy. Christienna was

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also an inspiring mentor of
many, many young aspiring

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historians of

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black Britain.

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And that work goes on.

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Christienna is also

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engaged in

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many acts of empowerment outside
the academy, and this is

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testament to this kind of
collectivity with which she

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undertakes this intellectual
endeavour. So, she was a BBC

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Radio AHRC Next Generation
Thinker. She has also been

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involved in consulting,
historical consulting very

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widely at schools on curriculum
development. She's a trustee of

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the Black

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Cultural Archives,

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her principal preoccupation,
from which we will benefit

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today. She is currently writing
her first book entitled

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"Entangled Lands, a Caribbean
History of Britain," which will

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be published by Penguin Allen
Lane.

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In many ways, well, I'm positive
this book will be an absolutely

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seminal contribution. It will
put the history of the Caribbean

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at the heart of the making and
the becoming of Britain. And in

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so many ways this is a story
that needs to be told. And so I

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welcome Christienna to Oxford,
and her talk is entitled "Ann

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Pratt,

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Mary Seacole, and Questioning
British History.`' So thanks

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very much [audience applause].

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Thank you all so much. And thank
you, Rebekah, for that very

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generous introduction. Thank you
to the BME Staff Network, the

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Equality and Diversity Unit and
the Mathematical Institute for

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this invitation. And then thank
you to all of you for being here

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at 5:00 PM on [audience
laughter], I mean, it is a

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Tuesday, there's a work day, but
it is also Halloween [audience

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laughter]. So I appreciate the
fact that you are all here, and

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I hope that certainly in the
Q&A, but even in the talk

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itself,

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00:14:11,960 --> 00:14:15,934
this feels like a collective
moment to sort of think about

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history in hopefully some new
ways. Before I start, I also

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want to give a very brief
content note just to indicate

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that there will be a very brief
but vague description of sexual

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assault that will come towards
the beginning of this of this

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talk.

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I'd like to begin by talking
about two women.

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Both women were mixed race
Jamaican women living in the mid

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19th century. Both also wrote
and published narratives about

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their lives. They connected
briefly, although it is hard to

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corroborate that connection.
Certainly one of them knew of

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00:14:52,149 --> 00:14:55,732
the other. One is very well
known, the other is not. One of

231
00:14:55,732 --> 00:14:59,314
these women is considered by
many people to be black, while

232
00:14:59,314 --> 00:15:02,956
many of the much smaller group
who know about the other have

233
00:15:02,956 --> 00:15:06,539
assumed she was white. Most
importantly, one of these women

234
00:15:06,539 --> 00:15:08,390
is considered a crucial part of

235
00:15:08,460 --> 00:15:10,630
black British history, and one
of them is not.

236
00:15:12,230 --> 00:15:16,008
Ann Pratt was born on an estate
in western Jamaica in 1830, and

237
00:15:16,008 --> 00:15:19,550
she was almost certainly the
daughter of an enslaved woman.

238
00:15:19,550 --> 00:15:22,738
Pratt was almost certainly
herself born enslaved. And

239
00:15:22,738 --> 00:15:26,280
you'll note that I'm speaking in
near certainties here, and

240
00:15:26,280 --> 00:15:29,527
although I am fully confident
that Pratt was born into

241
00:15:29,527 --> 00:15:33,129
enslavement, at the moment, the
archival record is tricky to

242
00:15:33,129 --> 00:15:37,025
interpret, her origins extremely
obscured by her own account. And

243
00:15:37,025 --> 00:15:40,863
so it took me nearly eight years
before I felt confident stating

244
00:15:40,863 --> 00:15:42,280
what I believe about her

245
00:15:42,350 --> 00:15:44,600
birth. And I'll return to this
later on.

246
00:15:46,140 --> 00:15:50,116
In November 1859, when Pratt was
in her late 20s, she was the

247
00:15:50,116 --> 00:15:53,964
victim of a crime. Three men
broke into her home and one of

248
00:15:53,964 --> 00:15:57,876
them, "assaulted me personally
and was guilty of a felonious

249
00:15:57,876 --> 00:16:01,019
act, I being a lone and
unprotected female." The

250
00:16:01,019 --> 00:16:04,803
subsequent trial of the men
turned against her, as she was

251
00:16:04,803 --> 00:16:08,587
fined for hurling abusive
language at one of her attackers

252
00:16:08,587 --> 00:16:12,050
in the street. Pratt was
distressed by the unexpected

253
00:16:12,050 --> 00:16:15,834
judgement. She experienced
convulsing fits and was briefly

254
00:16:15,834 --> 00:16:17,309
deprived of her senses.

255
00:16:18,050 --> 00:16:21,643
Police took her first to the
local female prison where the

256
00:16:21,643 --> 00:16:25,236
matron there asked if she would
like to go to Kingston for

257
00:16:25,236 --> 00:16:29,072
change of air. She agreed, but
she did not really know exactly

258
00:16:29,072 --> 00:16:32,544
what that meant. By January
1860, she had been sailed to

259
00:16:32,544 --> 00:16:36,320
Kingston and she was admitted to
the Kingston Lunatic Asylum.

260
00:16:37,620 --> 00:16:40,968
When she was released from the
facility in July 1860, she

261
00:16:40,968 --> 00:16:44,316
published a pamphlet titled
"Seven Months in the Kingston

262
00:16:44,316 --> 00:16:46,510
Lunatic Asylum and What I Saw
There."

263
00:16:47,550 --> 00:16:50,601
She seems to have had
considerable help producing the

264
00:16:50,601 --> 00:16:54,161
text from the Kingston doctor
Lewis Quier Bowerbank. Bowerbank

265
00:16:54,161 --> 00:16:57,664
had spent the previous three
years crusading against the grim

266
00:16:57,664 --> 00:17:01,167
and deteriorating conditions in
the Kingston Public Hospital,

267
00:17:01,167 --> 00:17:02,749
which had joined the asylum.

268
00:17:03,840 --> 00:17:07,169
Many in Jamaica believed that
his grudge was personal. After

269
00:17:07,169 --> 00:17:10,444
all, his first pamphlet on the
subject came out a few weeks

270
00:17:10,444 --> 00:17:13,718
after he had been rejected for a
position as the hospital's

271
00:17:13,718 --> 00:17:16,829
consulting surgeon. So probably
the grudge was personal.

272
00:17:18,110 --> 00:17:21,255
Ignored by most of the Jamaican
medical community, Bowerbank

273
00:17:21,255 --> 00:17:23,989
appealed to the Governor of
Jamaica to no avail. And

274
00:17:23,989 --> 00:17:27,238
actually the two of them really
hated each other. And it comes

275
00:17:27,238 --> 00:17:30,487
across in these documents. So
much so that the Colonial Office

276
00:17:30,487 --> 00:17:32,860
effectively told the governor to
simmer down.

277
00:17:34,340 --> 00:17:37,928
Then he travelled to London in
1859 to speak with the Secretary

278
00:17:37,928 --> 00:17:41,180
of State for the colonies. And
this too was unsuccessful.

279
00:17:42,440 --> 00:17:46,310
Pratt's pamphlet, however, gave
the long running scandal over

280
00:17:46,310 --> 00:17:50,056
the hospital and asylum much
needed leverage. She described

281
00:17:50,056 --> 00:17:54,114
in vivid detail the excruciating
abuse to which the women in the

282
00:17:54,114 --> 00:17:57,423
asylum were subjected, and the
pamphlet is a loosely

283
00:17:57,423 --> 00:18:01,168
chronological account of her
experiences. The nursing staff

284
00:18:01,168 --> 00:18:05,226
teased, insulted, beat, dragged
and humiliated patients. And the

285
00:18:05,226 --> 00:18:08,972
asylum's Matron oversaw all of
this and approved. They beat

286
00:18:08,972 --> 00:18:12,718
patients with umbrellas, ropes,
broomsticks or whatever was

287
00:18:12,718 --> 00:18:13,529
within reach.

288
00:18:14,150 --> 00:18:17,117
They stole patients' food, and
possibly used it to feed the

289
00:18:17,117 --> 00:18:17,810
Matron's pigs.

290
00:18:18,900 --> 00:18:22,266
As relentless as this violence
was - and I am sanitising it

291
00:18:22,266 --> 00:18:25,689
here, something else I will
discuss later on - Bowerbank had

292
00:18:25,689 --> 00:18:29,168
essentially reported similar
acts in his own campaigning, and

293
00:18:29,168 --> 00:18:32,422
so this kind of violence wasn't
enough to really move the

294
00:18:32,422 --> 00:18:36,013
Colonial Office into action. Nor
was the structural dereliction

295
00:18:36,013 --> 00:18:39,100
of the site. Bowerbank had
focused intently in his own

296
00:18:39,100 --> 00:18:42,298
campaigning on the crumbling
infrastructure, the cramped

297
00:18:42,298 --> 00:18:45,777
quarters in which hospital and
asylum patients lived, and the

298
00:18:45,777 --> 00:18:48,190
sewage that flowed through the
facilities.

299
00:18:49,920 --> 00:18:53,678
There was one thing, however,
that did alarm those who read

300
00:18:53,678 --> 00:18:56,936
Pratt's pamphlet, and this
concerned especially the

301
00:18:56,936 --> 00:19:00,256
bureaucrats of the Colonial
Office. And this was the

302
00:19:00,256 --> 00:19:02,949
practise that came to be known
as tanking.

303
00:19:04,180 --> 00:19:07,935
Nurses would punish some of the
women in the asylum by putting

304
00:19:07,935 --> 00:19:11,512
them into the bathing tanks,
which usually still held dirty

305
00:19:11,512 --> 00:19:15,029
water from other inmates' baths.
They would then hold them

306
00:19:15,029 --> 00:19:18,844
underwater for several seconds,
and repeatedly thrust the women

307
00:19:18,844 --> 00:19:19,500
back under.

308
00:19:20,240 --> 00:19:23,630
At least one woman died a few
days after a tanking, and it

309
00:19:23,630 --> 00:19:27,021
probably goes without saying,
but I will still say it: The

310
00:19:27,021 --> 00:19:30,010
parallels to waterboarding are
perhaps quite clear.

311
00:19:31,310 --> 00:19:35,131
"Seven Months" was powerful. It
transformed a local controversy

312
00:19:35,131 --> 00:19:37,400
into a much broader imperial
scandal.

313
00:19:38,340 --> 00:19:41,775
Suddenly the Colonial Office
leaped into action, relatively

314
00:19:41,775 --> 00:19:45,268
speaking, London bureaucrats
began to ask informed questions

315
00:19:45,268 --> 00:19:48,532
about asylum practises that
demanded investigations, and

316
00:19:48,532 --> 00:19:52,140
then used the findings from a
Commission report as inspiration

317
00:19:52,140 --> 00:19:55,633
for an empire wide questionnaire
about colonial asylums. Ann

318
00:19:55,633 --> 00:19:59,012
Pratt was responsible for
changing imperial policy, albeit

319
00:19:59,012 --> 00:20:01,360
very briefly. But she is mostly
unknown.

320
00:20:03,000 --> 00:20:06,010
Mary Seacole, on the other hand,
is much better known.

321
00:20:06,970 --> 00:20:10,585
Born in Kingston, Jamaica in
1805, she described herself as a

322
00:20:10,585 --> 00:20:14,201
Creole with a Scotch father.
Seacole's mother, also described

323
00:20:14,201 --> 00:20:17,934
by her daughter as Creole, ran a
boarding house in Kingston and

324
00:20:17,934 --> 00:20:21,667
was also a respected healer who
used her trusted folk practises

325
00:20:21,667 --> 00:20:24,700
to care for British soldiers
stationed in the town.

326
00:20:25,840 --> 00:20:28,915
Seacole seems to have learned
techniques from her mother,

327
00:20:28,915 --> 00:20:30,560
which she practised as a child.

328
00:20:31,600 --> 00:20:34,992
As Seacole said herself in her
autobiography, "Wonderful

329
00:20:34,992 --> 00:20:38,147
Adventures of Mrs Seacole In
Many Lands," she had an

330
00:20:38,147 --> 00:20:41,420
affection for camp life,
sympathy with the pomp, pride

331
00:20:41,420 --> 00:20:44,932
and circumstance of glorious
war, and a longing to travel.

332
00:20:44,932 --> 00:20:48,741
She travelled to London, Panama
and around the Caribbean Basin.

333
00:20:48,741 --> 00:20:52,253
She put her medical skills to
work during the 1850 cholera

334
00:20:52,253 --> 00:20:55,765
epidemic in Jamaica and Panama,
as well as the outbreak of

335
00:20:55,765 --> 00:20:57,669
yellow fever in Jamaica in 1853.

336
00:20:58,870 --> 00:21:02,319
Seacole is, of course, most
known for the time she spent on

337
00:21:02,319 --> 00:21:05,596
the Crimean War front. The
British military rejected her

338
00:21:05,596 --> 00:21:09,390
applications to join the British
forces as a nurse several times,

339
00:21:09,390 --> 00:21:12,840
and though it pained her to
admit, she had to assume it was

340
00:21:12,840 --> 00:21:13,990
because of her race.

341
00:21:14,960 --> 00:21:18,778
Nevertheless, she funded her own
trip to the Crimea, opened a

342
00:21:18,778 --> 00:21:22,719
hotel and began feeding, housing
and tending to British troops.

343
00:21:22,719 --> 00:21:26,537
She published her autobiography
in 1857 after she returned to

344
00:21:26,537 --> 00:21:27,030
Britain.

345
00:21:28,980 --> 00:21:32,014
I've been thinking about these
two women together for some time

346
00:21:32,014 --> 00:21:34,954
because of an interesting set of
paragraphs in "Seven Months"

347
00:21:34,954 --> 00:21:36,330
that I could not corroborate.

348
00:21:37,460 --> 00:21:41,503
At one point, Pratt described
the particular - one particular

349
00:21:41,503 --> 00:21:45,089
patient at times received
preferential treatment. "Mrs

350
00:21:45,089 --> 00:21:49,263
Brannagan, as the sister of Mrs
Seacole, was allowed a mattress

351
00:21:49,263 --> 00:21:53,371
on her admission. They took away
her shoes and stockings, also

352
00:21:53,371 --> 00:21:57,284
her flannel, but she soon got
them back. It was too evident

353
00:21:57,284 --> 00:22:00,871
that the Crimean heroine
influence was dreaded in this

354
00:22:00,871 --> 00:22:05,044
place. The medical officers will
sometimes condescend to go and

355
00:22:05,044 --> 00:22:08,240
visit this inmate and will sit
down and converse

356
00:22:08,310 --> 00:22:12,225
with her. Seldom are the other
patients housed - are the other

357
00:22:12,225 --> 00:22:15,706
patients honoured with like
favours. When Mrs Brannagan

358
00:22:15,706 --> 00:22:19,374
first came in, she was placed in
one of the cells, but was

359
00:22:19,374 --> 00:22:23,352
subsequently removed to the sick
house. When Mrs Seacole visits

360
00:22:23,352 --> 00:22:26,770
her unfortunate sister, Mrs
Ryan, the Matron I already

361
00:22:26,770 --> 00:22:30,748
mentioned, is vastly polite and
courteous, but her back turned.

362
00:22:30,748 --> 00:22:34,478
The poor sufferer hears and sees
and feels enough. When Mrs

363
00:22:34,478 --> 00:22:35,970
Brannagan first came in,

364
00:22:36,650 --> 00:22:40,133
Doctor Keech desired Night Nurse
Danverson to tell myself that I

365
00:22:40,133 --> 00:22:43,509
must not say anything about the
treatment of the people before

366
00:22:43,509 --> 00:22:46,832
Mrs Brannagan. Mrs Brannagan is
allowed to remain in her room

367
00:22:46,832 --> 00:22:50,101
all day if she thinks proper.
Not so with the rest of us. We

368
00:22:50,101 --> 00:22:52,460
must not go into the cells
during the day."

369
00:22:53,540 --> 00:22:56,865
So this is one of those
snippets, that I'm sure actually

370
00:22:56,865 --> 00:23:00,365
all historians have, where I
didn't quite know what to make

371
00:23:00,365 --> 00:23:03,923
of it. And so it was sitting in
the back of my mind for some

372
00:23:03,923 --> 00:23:07,656
time, and every now and then I
would do a little bit of digging

373
00:23:07,656 --> 00:23:11,039
on it. The problem was that I
had a really difficult time

374
00:23:11,039 --> 00:23:14,073
figuring out who Mrs Brannagan
was, and exactly her

375
00:23:14,073 --> 00:23:17,631
relationship to Mary Seacole. To
my knowledge, Seacole had a

376
00:23:17,631 --> 00:23:21,306
sister, Louisa, but Brannagan
did not appear to be her married

377
00:23:21,306 --> 00:23:23,989
name. So I wondered, maybe Pratt
or Bowerbank

378
00:23:24,060 --> 00:23:27,062
had heard Brannagan when it was
instead Grant. This is not

379
00:23:27,062 --> 00:23:27,520
uncommon.

380
00:23:28,770 --> 00:23:34,086
And Grant was the maiden name of
both Mary Seacole and Louisa. I

381
00:23:34,086 --> 00:23:38,503
wondered if perhaps Mary - if
perhaps Louisa had been

382
00:23:38,503 --> 00:23:42,020
committed to the asylum under a
pseudonym.

383
00:23:43,170 --> 00:23:45,975
And I also couldn't figure out
whether Mary Seacole was

384
00:23:45,975 --> 00:23:48,680
actually back in Jamaica during
the time in question.

385
00:23:50,050 --> 00:23:53,573
A very recent biography of
Seacole has actually begun to

386
00:23:53,573 --> 00:23:57,405
answer some of these questions.
According to Helen Rappaport,

387
00:23:57,405 --> 00:24:01,052
the Mrs Brannagan in question
was not Louisa but Seacole's

388
00:24:01,052 --> 00:24:04,576
half-sister Amelia, of whom
there is actually incredibly

389
00:24:04,576 --> 00:24:08,038
faint traces in the archival
record, which is why I was

390
00:24:08,038 --> 00:24:11,870
having such trouble figuring
this out. So Rappaport was doing

391
00:24:11,870 --> 00:24:15,393
a biography of Seacole, and
found the marriage record in

392
00:24:15,393 --> 00:24:19,164
1843, at which Amelia the half
sister was present. I was not

393
00:24:19,164 --> 00:24:20,710
doing a biography of Mary

394
00:24:20,780 --> 00:24:23,940
Seacole, and so did not come
upon this piece of information.

395
00:24:25,260 --> 00:24:29,189
But as I was struggling to piece
this together and to figure out

396
00:24:29,189 --> 00:24:32,695
what was going on, I began to
think about these two women

397
00:24:32,695 --> 00:24:36,564
together for a different reason.
The specifics of this incident

398
00:24:36,564 --> 00:24:39,888
became less significant to me
than what the paragraphs

399
00:24:39,888 --> 00:24:43,818
symbolised. Pratt and Bowerbank
understood Seacole to be part of

400
00:24:43,818 --> 00:24:47,505
the very same world as Pratt,
both British subjects who were

401
00:24:47,505 --> 00:24:51,253
part of the British world of
which Jamaica was firmly a part.

402
00:24:51,253 --> 00:24:54,940
Seacole is described here as
having clout and authority that

403
00:24:54,940 --> 00:24:56,150
everyone recognised,

404
00:24:56,250 --> 00:24:59,278
as well, of course, as some
expertise in this area. Her

405
00:24:59,278 --> 00:25:02,631
sister reputedly got somewhat
better treatment, and there was

406
00:25:02,631 --> 00:25:05,876
fear that her sister might
report what was happening inside

407
00:25:05,876 --> 00:25:06,580
the facility.

408
00:25:07,950 --> 00:25:11,920
So given that these two women
were so much a part of the same

409
00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:16,146
world that they were actually in
the same building at a number of

410
00:25:16,146 --> 00:25:19,860
points in 1860, I was wondering
why Seacole is so clearly

411
00:25:19,860 --> 00:25:23,638
understood to be British and
part of black British history

412
00:25:23,638 --> 00:25:26,840
while Ann Pratt is not. And to
add to the puzzle,

413
00:25:27,630 --> 00:25:30,020
these women have been racialised
quite differently.

414
00:25:30,830 --> 00:25:33,958
In Britain, Mary Seacole is
understood to be black, which is

415
00:25:33,958 --> 00:25:37,343
somewhat at odds with a tendency
in the UK to consider mixed race

416
00:25:37,343 --> 00:25:40,625
a separate category from black.
And over the years I have heard

417
00:25:40,625 --> 00:25:43,651
from students educated in
primary and secondary schools in

418
00:25:43,651 --> 00:25:46,831
this country that many did not
actually know that Seacole was

419
00:25:46,831 --> 00:25:49,754
mixed race because their
teachers never allowed for that

420
00:25:49,754 --> 00:25:50,370
possibility.

421
00:25:51,220 --> 00:25:54,586
But Seacole is very clear on
this point. She describes

422
00:25:54,586 --> 00:25:58,136
herself and her mother as
Creole. She never calls herself

423
00:25:58,136 --> 00:26:01,930
black, at the same time as she
describes many other people as

424
00:26:01,930 --> 00:26:05,174
black throughout her
autobiography. So it is clearly

425
00:26:05,174 --> 00:26:08,785
a term that she uses and that
she uses as a description of

426
00:26:08,785 --> 00:26:12,641
skin colour, but she does not
use it to describe herself. When

427
00:26:12,641 --> 00:26:16,497
she describes the moment in her
autobiography when the boys in

428
00:26:16,497 --> 00:26:19,925
the street jeer at the
complexions of her and a friend,

429
00:26:19,925 --> 00:26:22,189
she says, "I am only a little
brown,

430
00:26:22,370 --> 00:26:26,117
a few shades duskier than the
brunettes whom you all admire so

431
00:26:26,117 --> 00:26:29,923
much. But my companion was very
dark and a fair (if I can apply

432
00:26:29,923 --> 00:26:32,660
the term to her) subject for
their rude wit."

433
00:26:34,640 --> 00:26:37,859
And when she described the
rejections of her interest in

434
00:26:37,859 --> 00:26:41,531
joining the Crimean War effort,
she wrote, "Was it possible that

435
00:26:41,531 --> 00:26:44,863
American prejudices against
colour had some root here? Did

436
00:26:44,863 --> 00:26:47,857
these ladies shrink from
accepting my aid because my

437
00:26:47,857 --> 00:26:51,190
blood flowed beneath a somewhat
duskier skin than theirs?"

438
00:26:52,740 --> 00:26:56,129
These complexities, of course,
do not move Seacole out of black

439
00:26:56,129 --> 00:26:59,465
British history, but they are
important nonetheless. They give

440
00:26:59,465 --> 00:27:02,855
us rare insight into the ways a
woman of African descent in the

441
00:27:02,855 --> 00:27:05,662
Victorian era understood race
and racialisation in a

442
00:27:05,662 --> 00:27:08,892
historical context where too
many still assume that race had

443
00:27:08,892 --> 00:27:09,740
little salience.

444
00:27:10,910 --> 00:27:14,006
By contrast, Ann Pratt is
understood by many as neither

445
00:27:14,006 --> 00:27:17,157
black nor British, and indeed
confirming that she was of

446
00:27:17,157 --> 00:27:20,474
African descent was was quite
tricky because she never says

447
00:27:20,474 --> 00:27:23,350
that she is, and I will return
to this in a moment.

448
00:27:24,670 --> 00:27:27,888
While Seacole is eager to
establish herself as British,

449
00:27:27,888 --> 00:27:31,510
Ann Pratt is unconcerned with
national or colonial identities.

450
00:27:35,010 --> 00:27:38,082
However, Pratt also knows that
she is operating within a

451
00:27:38,082 --> 00:27:41,262
British context. She insisted
that her pamphlet be sent to

452
00:27:41,262 --> 00:27:44,496
London, and others who read her
pamphlet, like the son of a

453
00:27:44,496 --> 00:27:47,622
former warden at the asylum,
were also clear that part of

454
00:27:47,622 --> 00:27:50,964
what made the treatment of the
women in the asylum especially

455
00:27:50,964 --> 00:27:54,252
unacceptable was the fact that
it was happening in a British

456
00:27:54,252 --> 00:27:54,629
colony.

457
00:27:55,980 --> 00:27:59,239
So why is Seacole British and
Pratt not? I'm gonna think

458
00:27:59,239 --> 00:28:02,842
through this question with you
all today by taking up a series

459
00:28:02,842 --> 00:28:06,215
of ethical conundrums about the
nature of writing history.

460
00:28:06,215 --> 00:28:09,418
Because I believe that the
answers to this question are

461
00:28:09,418 --> 00:28:12,963
actually deeply knotted within
the exclusions inherent in the

462
00:28:12,963 --> 00:28:16,337
way British history is conceived
and practised within this

463
00:28:16,337 --> 00:28:19,711
country. It is not as simple as
merely determining whether

464
00:28:19,711 --> 00:28:23,199
Seacole or Pratt were British,
whatever that term might have

465
00:28:23,199 --> 00:28:26,229
meant to them or anyone else in
the 1850s and 1860s.

466
00:28:26,710 --> 00:28:29,572
But the ease with which
historians write about them

467
00:28:29,572 --> 00:28:32,545
differently, treat them
differently, conceive of them

468
00:28:32,545 --> 00:28:35,958
differently, suggests quite a
lot about the ways that British

469
00:28:35,958 --> 00:28:39,096
history has proceeded, ways, to
my mind, that are wholly

470
00:28:39,096 --> 00:28:42,345
insufficient for understanding
either what happened in the

471
00:28:42,345 --> 00:28:45,483
lives of these women or to
understanding Britain itself.

472
00:28:45,483 --> 00:28:48,731
Put simply, Pratt forced the
Colonial Office to reflect in

473
00:28:48,731 --> 00:28:52,144
1860. She should force us to
reflect now. So let's begin that

474
00:28:52,144 --> 00:28:52,750
reflection.

475
00:28:54,700 --> 00:28:58,368
There's a problem I've been
wrestling with for years. It's a

476
00:28:58,368 --> 00:29:02,156
problem I suspect has no clear
resolution because there are so

477
00:29:02,156 --> 00:29:05,524
many important ethical
imperatives that conflict within

478
00:29:05,524 --> 00:29:09,071
it. It is also a problem for
which my own thoughts will no

479
00:29:09,071 --> 00:29:12,980
doubt constantly shift, and the
ways I solve or handle it in one

480
00:29:12,980 --> 00:29:16,348
moment may prove deeply
dissatisfying to me at another.

481
00:29:16,348 --> 00:29:19,835
You know, I think there is value
in thinking through this

482
00:29:19,835 --> 00:29:23,383
directly and out loud as a
historian, because part of what

483
00:29:23,383 --> 00:29:26,270
I am trying to insist is that
being a historian

484
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:30,151
means sifting through certain
ethical questions and reflecting

485
00:29:30,151 --> 00:29:34,062
on how one solves them, perhaps
even in writing, even though the

486
00:29:34,062 --> 00:29:37,432
discipline's emphasis on
narrative and story encourages

487
00:29:37,432 --> 00:29:41,102
us to elide these issues. I
think that's only a disciplinary

488
00:29:41,102 --> 00:29:44,653
encouragement, it is not a
requirement. Nor am I convinced

489
00:29:44,653 --> 00:29:48,323
that if we pause within our own
work to ask "what am I doing

490
00:29:48,323 --> 00:29:52,054
here?"... That doesn't have to
move us away from narrative or

491
00:29:52,054 --> 00:29:55,725
story. And more pointedly, I
think that this kind of writing

492
00:29:55,725 --> 00:29:57,289
and thinking and wrestling

493
00:29:57,400 --> 00:30:00,663
is especially essential within
Britain, where the discipline of

494
00:30:00,663 --> 00:30:03,722
history has developed within
universities in ways that have

495
00:30:03,722 --> 00:30:06,986
proved fundamentally unsuitable
for certain kinds of historical

496
00:30:06,986 --> 00:30:07,699
investigation.

497
00:30:08,380 --> 00:30:11,149
And we're after a fleeting
moment that we all recognised,

498
00:30:11,149 --> 00:30:14,205
in which universities pretended
to care about certain fields of

499
00:30:14,205 --> 00:30:16,783
study and certain people, they
are once again proving

500
00:30:16,783 --> 00:30:19,505
themselves to be among the
institutions most invested in

501
00:30:19,505 --> 00:30:21,320
suppressing certain modes of
history.

502
00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:25,256
So let me move out of the
abstract. The problem or

503
00:30:25,256 --> 00:30:28,874
question that continues to leave
me flummoxed is how to write

504
00:30:28,874 --> 00:30:32,259
about extreme violence, the kind
that Pratt witnessed and

505
00:30:32,259 --> 00:30:36,052
experienced so much of. And the
context in which I consider that

506
00:30:36,052 --> 00:30:39,728
question, the history of slavery
and emancipation, is also the

507
00:30:39,728 --> 00:30:43,463
field where I believe the modes
and practises of history within

508
00:30:43,463 --> 00:30:46,731
British universities and
academia are fundamentally ill

509
00:30:46,731 --> 00:30:47,140
suited.

510
00:30:48,550 --> 00:30:52,030
If you read deeply in the field
of slavery studies, and for my

511
00:30:52,030 --> 00:30:54,903
purposes today that is going to
include comparative

512
00:30:54,903 --> 00:30:58,218
emancipation, something stands
out if you know what to look

513
00:30:58,218 --> 00:30:58,440
for,

514
00:30:59,450 --> 00:31:02,829
and that is that the history of
slavery is researched and

515
00:31:02,829 --> 00:31:05,976
written very differently in
Britain than it is in the

516
00:31:05,976 --> 00:31:09,180
Americas, regardless of the
place under investigation.

517
00:31:09,180 --> 00:31:12,851
Speaking in very general terms,
historians of slavery based in

518
00:31:12,851 --> 00:31:16,464
the Americas, again regardless
of the region they study, tend

519
00:31:16,464 --> 00:31:20,251
to be considerably more focused
on and concerned with excavating

520
00:31:20,251 --> 00:31:23,339
as much of the lives of enslaved
people as possible.

521
00:31:24,560 --> 00:31:27,239
I think there are a lot of
explanations for this, some of

522
00:31:27,239 --> 00:31:28,210
which are structural.

523
00:31:29,420 --> 00:31:33,140
In the US in particular, social
history emerged in the 1960s in

524
00:31:33,140 --> 00:31:36,744
large part as a promising method
for rewriting the history of

525
00:31:36,744 --> 00:31:40,348
slavery itself so that it was
centred around enslaved people.

526
00:31:40,348 --> 00:31:44,068
And when social history emerged
at the same time in Britain, it

527
00:31:44,068 --> 00:31:45,580
was put to other purposes.

528
00:31:46,810 --> 00:31:50,265
Second, there are so many more
historians of African descent

529
00:31:50,265 --> 00:31:53,891
working in universities across
the Americas, Canada, the United

530
00:31:53,891 --> 00:31:57,120
States, the Caribbean, Latin
America. Well, we know, and

531
00:31:57,120 --> 00:32:00,293
we've just heard, that the
situation here in Britain is

532
00:32:00,293 --> 00:32:01,200
especially dire.

533
00:32:02,940 --> 00:32:05,636
Now, certainly black scholars
are not the only scholars who

534
00:32:05,636 --> 00:32:06,400
can do this work.

535
00:32:07,090 --> 00:32:10,126
Among those leading the charge
in the 1960s in the US were

536
00:32:10,126 --> 00:32:10,950
Jewish scholars.

537
00:32:12,010 --> 00:32:14,910
Yet it is also the case that
black scholars are often more

538
00:32:14,910 --> 00:32:17,662
tuned to what the absence of
enslaved people looks like

539
00:32:17,662 --> 00:32:20,415
within historical scholarship
that should be ostensibly

540
00:32:20,415 --> 00:32:21,300
dedicated to them.

541
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:26,232
Third, piercing together
enslaved people's stories from a

542
00:32:26,232 --> 00:32:29,906
severely compromised archive is
very slow, painstaking, and

543
00:32:29,906 --> 00:32:33,520
interdisciplinary work, and a
lot of the structures around

544
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:37,317
promotion and hiring in this
country make it impossible to do

545
00:32:37,317 --> 00:32:41,114
that kind of slow, painstaking
and interdisciplinary work. So

546
00:32:41,114 --> 00:32:44,850
these are some of the structural
explanations, but they also

547
00:32:44,850 --> 00:32:46,810
combine with some other factors.

548
00:32:48,070 --> 00:32:51,499
There seems to be a tendency to
see slavery within British

549
00:32:51,499 --> 00:32:55,219
history as primarily a matter of
economics and trade. Since the

550
00:32:55,219 --> 00:32:58,764
actual holding of human beings
as slaves largely, though not

551
00:32:58,764 --> 00:33:02,426
exclusively, happens thousands
of miles away from this island,

552
00:33:02,426 --> 00:33:06,088
there has been a temptation to
see the aspects of slavery that

553
00:33:06,088 --> 00:33:09,343
are part of British history as
being solely economic or

554
00:33:09,343 --> 00:33:12,540
commercial concerns first, and
then, second abolition.

555
00:33:13,920 --> 00:33:17,150
There is a geographic sleight of
hand at work here,

556
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:20,789
and I think we also see this in
the different ways that Pratt's

557
00:33:20,789 --> 00:33:22,880
story and Seacole's story have
been taken up.

558
00:33:23,950 --> 00:33:26,451
Now, to be sure, I want to
acknowledge that the

559
00:33:26,451 --> 00:33:29,839
constitutional status of British
colonies was a complex question

560
00:33:29,839 --> 00:33:32,966
that changed over time. So I'm
just going to stipulate that

561
00:33:32,966 --> 00:33:36,302
here. But Britain's colonies in
the Americas were British. They

562
00:33:36,302 --> 00:33:39,377
saw themselves as British, or
perhaps English - again it's

563
00:33:39,377 --> 00:33:41,410
complicated - until 13 of them
didn't.

564
00:33:42,060 --> 00:33:45,605
White settlers in these colonies
conducted themselves at least in

565
00:33:45,605 --> 00:33:48,883
partial accordance with British
laws, recognised the British

566
00:33:48,883 --> 00:33:52,321
throne, expected representation
within Parliament, even as they

567
00:33:52,321 --> 00:33:55,169
insisted upon colonial
legislatures, called upon the

568
00:33:55,169 --> 00:33:58,392
British military for defence
when necessary, travelled back

569
00:33:58,392 --> 00:34:01,401
and forth as their resources
allowed, and built country

570
00:34:01,401 --> 00:34:04,410
estates, civic careers and
family dynasties in Britain,

571
00:34:04,410 --> 00:34:07,472
drawing on the power that their
new wealth gave them. As

572
00:34:07,472 --> 00:34:10,911
historians have noted in great
detail, the British state itself

573
00:34:10,911 --> 00:34:13,490
changed dramatically from the
late 17th century

574
00:34:13,560 --> 00:34:16,986
onward, because of the demands
its growing empire placed upon

575
00:34:16,986 --> 00:34:20,468
it. So we know that these places
were British if we, you know,

576
00:34:20,468 --> 00:34:23,728
put this whole picture together.
And yet, when it comes to

577
00:34:23,728 --> 00:34:27,265
slavery itself, not the trading
relationships or the businesses

578
00:34:27,265 --> 00:34:30,636
or the wealth, but the actual
horrendous experience of being

579
00:34:30,636 --> 00:34:33,841
enslaved in a British colony,
suddenly that is beyond the

580
00:34:33,841 --> 00:34:37,378
purview of British history and
the slow methods required to eke

581
00:34:37,378 --> 00:34:40,639
something, anything, out of
documents whose entire purpose

582
00:34:40,639 --> 00:34:43,955
was to render humans as goods,
as livestock, and as assets.

583
00:34:43,955 --> 00:34:44,950
Suddenly that slow

584
00:34:45,020 --> 00:34:47,900
work has no place here unless it
can be sped up.

585
00:34:49,080 --> 00:34:52,481
But I don't think it can be sped
up. And while there are many

586
00:34:52,481 --> 00:34:55,443
reasons why, as Rebekah
mentioned, I left academia in

587
00:34:55,443 --> 00:34:58,899
April, among them was the deep
realisation that I could not do

588
00:34:58,899 --> 00:35:02,465
the research and writing that I
wanted to do within the confines

589
00:35:02,465 --> 00:35:05,922
of British academia. In other
words, I am not willing to speed

590
00:35:05,922 --> 00:35:09,268
this work up. And part of why
I'm not willing to speed it up

591
00:35:09,268 --> 00:35:12,889
is because writing about slavery
requires a level of ethical care

592
00:35:12,889 --> 00:35:15,796
that I'm not willing to
compromise. Thinking through

593
00:35:15,796 --> 00:35:19,198
this question of how to handle
extreme violence will, I hope,

594
00:35:19,198 --> 00:35:20,460
give some sense of that

595
00:35:20,530 --> 00:35:23,804
ethical terrain. And then
hopefully in the Q&A we can

596
00:35:23,804 --> 00:35:27,135
discuss this a little bit
further. And in particular, this

597
00:35:27,135 --> 00:35:30,240
question of whether there is
room for this work within

598
00:35:30,240 --> 00:35:33,514
British academia right now,
especially as we are seeing a

599
00:35:33,514 --> 00:35:37,070
real backlash, a real post 2020
backlash ramping up nationally

600
00:35:37,070 --> 00:35:38,200
and internationally.

601
00:35:40,110 --> 00:35:43,000
So I found Ann Pratt's case in
2007 when I was doing

602
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:45,782
preliminary dissertation
research, scoping out the

603
00:35:45,782 --> 00:35:49,164
archives to see what kind of
project I might be interested in

604
00:35:49,164 --> 00:35:52,655
doing. And although this was an
exciting discovery to me, I did

605
00:35:52,655 --> 00:35:56,255
not actually discover this case.
A few other scholars had written

606
00:35:56,255 --> 00:35:59,528
about it or were writing about
it. And in fact, this is the

607
00:35:59,528 --> 00:36:02,964
only - working on this is the
only moment in the archives, and

608
00:36:02,964 --> 00:36:04,110
it's actually kind of

609
00:36:04,990 --> 00:36:08,529
it's fine for me now, but at the
time it was kind of a horrible

610
00:36:08,529 --> 00:36:12,180
moment where actually my - I was
at the National Archives. I went

611
00:36:12,180 --> 00:36:15,665
back after lunch to retrieve the
bundle that I was working on,

612
00:36:15,665 --> 00:36:18,873
and it had been removed from my
cubicle because there was

613
00:36:18,873 --> 00:36:22,136
another scholar using it. Of
course, we then had to do the

614
00:36:22,136 --> 00:36:25,455
thing of talking over coffee, as
though this was not, like,

615
00:36:25,455 --> 00:36:28,608
personally devastating to me
[audience laughter]. It all

616
00:36:28,608 --> 00:36:31,982
worked out. But this is the only
time that this has actually

617
00:36:31,982 --> 00:36:32,480
happened.

618
00:36:33,900 --> 00:36:37,643
But what I came later to realise
is that although there were a

619
00:36:37,643 --> 00:36:41,267
few scholars working on Ann
Pratt's case, there was actually

620
00:36:41,267 --> 00:36:45,129
some uncertainty about her race.
Now in some senses, perhaps her

621
00:36:45,129 --> 00:36:48,992
racialisation didn't matter. My
reading of the documents doesn't

622
00:36:48,992 --> 00:36:52,675
suggest that Colonial Office
bureaucrats responded in the way

623
00:36:52,675 --> 00:36:56,478
that she did because she wasn't
white. Nor have I seen anything

624
00:36:56,478 --> 00:37:00,281
to suggest that they even gave
her race much thought. Certainly

625
00:37:00,281 --> 00:37:03,608
many of the patients that
Bowerbank had been advocating

626
00:37:03,608 --> 00:37:04,499
for were black,

627
00:37:04,910 --> 00:37:08,099
and his pleas were ignored. And
something that I've argued

628
00:37:08,099 --> 00:37:11,559
elsewhere is that this scandal
came at a particular moment when

629
00:37:11,559 --> 00:37:14,966
people of African descent in the
Caribbean were falling out of

630
00:37:14,966 --> 00:37:17,885
the groups which British
imperial supporters believed

631
00:37:17,885 --> 00:37:19,939
were due the protection of the
realm.

632
00:37:20,610 --> 00:37:23,772
So in that sense, the fact that
it had been a woman who was

633
00:37:23,772 --> 00:37:26,987
almost certainly of African
descent who had experienced such

634
00:37:26,987 --> 00:37:30,097
violence, doesn't seem to have
had any bearing on Colonial

635
00:37:30,097 --> 00:37:31,310
Office decision making.

636
00:37:32,420 --> 00:37:34,270
It's - except that it mattered
to me.

637
00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:38,472
And ultimately, I think it
matters to how we understand

638
00:37:38,472 --> 00:37:39,790
this series of events.

639
00:37:40,910 --> 00:37:43,863
For those of us who study the
history of slavery and

640
00:37:43,863 --> 00:37:47,262
emancipation in the British
Caribbean, we do not have nearly

641
00:37:47,262 --> 00:37:50,662
as much direct testimony from
black people as we would like.

642
00:37:50,662 --> 00:37:52,780
There are far fewer slave
narratives.

643
00:37:53,450 --> 00:37:56,621
There's certainly no equivalent
to the Works Progress

644
00:37:56,621 --> 00:38:00,144
Administration interviews - and
for those of you who aren't

645
00:38:00,144 --> 00:38:03,785
familiar with that, this is a
body of interviews conducted in

646
00:38:03,785 --> 00:38:07,250
the 1930s as part of the New
Deal in the United States, in

647
00:38:07,250 --> 00:38:10,832
which interviewers travelled
around the entire United States

648
00:38:10,832 --> 00:38:14,062
south interviewing elderly
African American people and

649
00:38:14,062 --> 00:38:17,702
learning about their childhoods
in slavery. This is just a an

650
00:38:17,702 --> 00:38:21,402
incredibly rich set of materials
that historians of the United

651
00:38:21,402 --> 00:38:24,280
States have to work with. There
is no equivalent

652
00:38:24,440 --> 00:38:27,160
in the - for the British
Caribbean.

653
00:38:28,550 --> 00:38:31,932
Whereas enslaved people in
Spanish America and Brazil were

654
00:38:31,932 --> 00:38:34,914
able to testify in church
courts, and some of their

655
00:38:34,914 --> 00:38:36,519
testimonies are found there,

656
00:38:37,370 --> 00:38:41,062
enslaved people in British
colonies had no legal personhood

657
00:38:41,062 --> 00:38:44,878
and were only rarely allowed to
serve as witnesses. And often

658
00:38:44,878 --> 00:38:48,325
when they did serve as
witnesses, it was usually in the

659
00:38:48,325 --> 00:38:51,894
aftermath of uprisings and
conspiracies. Which means that

660
00:38:51,894 --> 00:38:55,895
these materials are particularly
fraught to interpret because of

661
00:38:55,895 --> 00:38:59,034
the levels of coercion that
likely went into their

662
00:38:59,034 --> 00:39:02,788
production. So to have a text,
one that followed the kind of

663
00:39:02,788 --> 00:39:06,358
genre conventions of a slave
narrative written by a woman

664
00:39:06,358 --> 00:39:08,020
whose heritage was unclear,

665
00:39:08,100 --> 00:39:10,790
that to me needed more
investigation.

666
00:39:12,210 --> 00:39:15,305
And one of the difficulties
about writing, or one of the

667
00:39:15,305 --> 00:39:18,727
difficulties of writing about
post emancipation Jamaica in the

668
00:39:18,727 --> 00:39:22,094
19th century is that at times
there actually surprisingly few

669
00:39:22,094 --> 00:39:25,515
racial descriptors. And to this
point I have not found a clear

670
00:39:25,515 --> 00:39:28,285
description of Pratt. And of
course this is before

671
00:39:28,285 --> 00:39:31,489
photographs are a common thing,
so there's no photo of her

672
00:39:31,489 --> 00:39:31,869
either.

673
00:39:33,790 --> 00:39:37,198
Of course it is an important
practise to get out of, to

674
00:39:37,198 --> 00:39:40,666
assume that without a racial
descriptor that a person is

675
00:39:40,666 --> 00:39:44,257
white. But I also had reason to
believe that Pratt was not

676
00:39:44,257 --> 00:39:47,970
black, at least as the term was
understood in 1860s Jamaica.

677
00:39:49,430 --> 00:39:52,626
But if she was of African
descent, the implications were

678
00:39:52,626 --> 00:39:53,300
significant.

679
00:39:54,010 --> 00:39:57,653
The possibility loomed that a
woman of African descent had

680
00:39:57,653 --> 00:40:01,359
fundamentally, if briefly,
transformed health policy across

681
00:40:01,359 --> 00:40:04,817
the British Empire. It also
mattered if during her life

682
00:40:04,817 --> 00:40:08,399
Pratt had moved in and out of
freedom more than one time:

683
00:40:08,399 --> 00:40:12,166
possibly born unfree, and then
experiencing incarceration in

684
00:40:12,166 --> 00:40:16,057
the asylum. And it definitely
mattered if her pamphlet was one

685
00:40:16,057 --> 00:40:19,948
of a long line of narratives,
and in particular slave and post

686
00:40:19,948 --> 00:40:23,838
slavery narratives, a hallmark
of which is the extent to which

687
00:40:23,838 --> 00:40:24,580
they detail.

688
00:40:24,650 --> 00:40:25,180
violence.

689
00:40:26,970 --> 00:40:30,127
So how should we be writing
about the violence inherent in

690
00:40:30,127 --> 00:40:33,552
Atlantic slavery and the various
compromised freedoms that came

691
00:40:33,552 --> 00:40:36,870
after slavery, whether ethnic
cleansing in Latin America, Jim

692
00:40:36,870 --> 00:40:40,241
Crow in the United States south,
or indentured immigration and

693
00:40:40,241 --> 00:40:42,649
widespread degradation across
the Caribbean?

694
00:40:43,710 --> 00:40:46,764
As I think about this question,
there are several competing

695
00:40:46,764 --> 00:40:49,768
imperatives, some of which I
think scholars have discussed

696
00:40:49,768 --> 00:40:52,924
quite extensively, and others
less so. I list them here in no

697
00:40:52,924 --> 00:40:53,790
particular order.

698
00:40:54,540 --> 00:40:58,644
First, the imperative to piece
together and relay what happened

699
00:40:58,644 --> 00:41:02,749
in the past in as much concrete
detail as possible. Second, the

700
00:41:02,749 --> 00:41:06,212
need to explain why slavery -
why exactly slavery and

701
00:41:06,212 --> 00:41:09,611
emancipation were such
horrendous violations, out of

702
00:41:09,611 --> 00:41:13,203
step with a past historical
context that was admittedly

703
00:41:13,203 --> 00:41:17,307
brutally violent. And I think a
lot of times when we talk about

704
00:41:17,307 --> 00:41:21,091
this, the obvious reference
point is the Royal Navy or the

705
00:41:21,091 --> 00:41:24,939
Merchant Marine, which similarly
had very little regard for

706
00:41:24,939 --> 00:41:26,030
bodily integrity,

707
00:41:26,460 --> 00:41:30,597
and that were incredibly violent
institutions. But we see slavery

708
00:41:30,597 --> 00:41:34,610
and emancipation as being out of
step even within that context.

709
00:41:36,070 --> 00:41:38,881
A third imperative is the need
to treat even deceased

710
00:41:38,881 --> 00:41:42,108
historical actors with dignity.
I think there are some fields

711
00:41:42,108 --> 00:41:45,180
that think about this quite a
lot, and others not as much.

712
00:41:46,410 --> 00:41:49,975
Fourth, the knowledge that
oftentimes the only time

713
00:41:49,975 --> 00:41:54,227
enslaved people and free people
emerge as named people in the

714
00:41:54,227 --> 00:41:58,478
archives with stories to tell,
even brief stories to tell, is

715
00:41:58,478 --> 00:42:02,730
because of a moment of unusual
violence or brutality recorded

716
00:42:02,730 --> 00:42:03,690
for posterity.

717
00:42:05,020 --> 00:42:07,994
The literary critic and
historian Saidiya Hartman

718
00:42:07,994 --> 00:42:10,790
explained this dynamic in one of
her articles,

719
00:42:12,050 --> 00:42:16,061
and she writes, "An act of
chance or disaster produced a

720
00:42:16,061 --> 00:42:20,565
divergence or an aberration from
the expected unusual course of

721
00:42:20,565 --> 00:42:25,210
invisibility, and catapulted the
black woman from the underground

722
00:42:25,210 --> 00:42:29,644
to the surface of discourse. We
stumble upon her in exorbitant

723
00:42:29,644 --> 00:42:33,585
circumstances that yield no
picture of the everyday, no

724
00:42:33,585 --> 00:42:37,807
pathway to her thoughts, no
glimpse of the vulnerability of

725
00:42:37,807 --> 00:42:41,960
her face, or of what looking at
such a face might demand."

726
00:42:43,010 --> 00:42:46,297
Hartman then goes on to note
how, despite how little we can

727
00:42:46,297 --> 00:42:49,585
know about enslaved women in
these circumstances, they must

728
00:42:49,585 --> 00:42:52,817
nonetheless stand in for the
experience of enslaved people

729
00:42:52,817 --> 00:42:53,530
more broadly.

730
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:57,988
"Yet the exorbitant must be
rendered exemplary or typical,

731
00:42:57,988 --> 00:43:01,948
in order that her life provides
a window onto the lives of the

732
00:43:01,948 --> 00:43:05,782
enslaved in general. So these
instances of violence are both

733
00:43:05,782 --> 00:43:09,868
often the only thing we have for
a single individual's life, and

734
00:43:09,868 --> 00:43:13,577
must stand in for the whole
experience of enslavement, and

735
00:43:13,577 --> 00:43:17,411
in doing so, we end up repeating
and repeating and repeating

736
00:43:17,411 --> 00:43:18,479
these instances."

737
00:43:20,200 --> 00:43:23,920
A fifth imperative is the need
to avoid prurience. The line is

738
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:27,700
incredibly thin between relaying
and revelling, between stating

739
00:43:27,700 --> 00:43:31,244
what is necessary to understand
the historical dynamics and

740
00:43:31,244 --> 00:43:34,728
hoping to draw out a visceral
reaction of some kind in the

741
00:43:34,728 --> 00:43:35,260
audience.

742
00:43:37,550 --> 00:43:40,498
And then there's a sixth
imperative, and that is the

743
00:43:40,498 --> 00:43:43,946
imperative to treat as precious
every time an enslaved person

744
00:43:43,946 --> 00:43:47,117
shows up with a name and a
story. Here I think about the

745
00:43:47,117 --> 00:43:50,121
work of a colleague, Randy
Browne, who wrote the book

746
00:43:50,121 --> 00:43:52,680
"Surviving Slavery in the
British Caribbean."

747
00:43:53,670 --> 00:43:57,250
Browne's work is different
because he mined the rarely used

748
00:43:57,250 --> 00:44:00,651
archives of 19th century
Berbice, and Berbice had been a

749
00:44:00,651 --> 00:44:04,290
Dutch colony until the until
1792, and under the Dutch legal

750
00:44:04,290 --> 00:44:08,109
system, enslaved people had some
legal rights and could testify

751
00:44:08,109 --> 00:44:09,840
in certain legal proceedings.

752
00:44:10,780 --> 00:44:14,590
So the British, when they took
over Berbice, continued this

753
00:44:14,590 --> 00:44:18,401
system in Berbice alone, which
means that these records are

754
00:44:18,401 --> 00:44:22,402
especially detailed and provide
far more insight into enslaved

755
00:44:22,402 --> 00:44:26,403
people's lives than is typical
in the British Caribbean world.

756
00:44:26,403 --> 00:44:30,340
But especially notable is an
entry in the index of "Surviving

757
00:44:30,340 --> 00:44:34,405
Slavery." Under the category of
"enslaved people," Browne lists

758
00:44:34,405 --> 00:44:38,215
every single named enslaved
person whose story he tells, no

759
00:44:38,215 --> 00:44:42,407
matter how briefly, in the book.
This list runs on for nearly two

760
00:44:42,407 --> 00:44:43,359
full columns in

761
00:44:43,430 --> 00:44:47,629
very small font, and there are
surely at least 100 names in the

762
00:44:47,629 --> 00:44:51,763
entry. And so I think there is a
care here that is guided by a

763
00:44:51,763 --> 00:44:55,897
particular set of ethics, that
every single person he mentions

764
00:44:55,897 --> 00:44:58,850
deserves to be findable in the
index itself.

765
00:45:00,450 --> 00:45:04,098
Seven. The importance of
rejecting the idea that black

766
00:45:04,098 --> 00:45:08,145
history broadly, but the history
of slavery specifically, is

767
00:45:08,145 --> 00:45:12,125
solely a recounting of death,
even as names more often than

768
00:45:12,125 --> 00:45:16,171
not emerge out of the archive in
the context of violence and

769
00:45:16,171 --> 00:45:16,570
death.

770
00:45:19,510 --> 00:45:22,446
Several years ago I faced a
truly difficult moment as a

771
00:45:22,446 --> 00:45:25,330
teacher that crystallised for me
some of this problem.

772
00:45:26,440 --> 00:45:29,136
I was teaching a class on the
early modern Caribbean and it

773
00:45:29,136 --> 00:45:31,968
was a very small undergraduate
summer, although I recognise at

774
00:45:31,968 --> 00:45:34,485
Oxford that is probably par for
the course. But at this

775
00:45:34,485 --> 00:45:37,452
institution in western New York,
it was not par for the course to

776
00:45:37,452 --> 00:45:39,520
be teaching two students
[audience laughter].

777
00:45:40,790 --> 00:45:43,840
They're actually wonderful
students. So it was a really

778
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:47,109
good environment. It was not
typical. And toward the end of

779
00:45:47,109 --> 00:45:50,486
the semester we got to the 18th
century. I'd started in 1491,

780
00:45:50,486 --> 00:45:54,027
let's say, and then the semester
was ending in the 18th century.

781
00:45:54,027 --> 00:45:56,969
And I had assigned Vincent
Brown's book "The Reaper's

782
00:45:56,969 --> 00:46:00,346
Garden," which examines 18th
century Jamaica through the lens

783
00:46:00,346 --> 00:46:03,669
of death, both in terms of the
violence of slavery, the dire

784
00:46:03,669 --> 00:46:06,992
disease climate of the island,
but also - and this is what I

785
00:46:06,992 --> 00:46:10,152
thought was so powerful about
the book and important, the

786
00:46:10,152 --> 00:46:11,460
spiritual practises that

787
00:46:11,530 --> 00:46:14,529
enslaved people developed to see
the dead off to their final

788
00:46:14,529 --> 00:46:17,676
resting place. And for a number
of reasons, I probably wouldn't

789
00:46:17,676 --> 00:46:20,578
assign this book now, but that
was the sort of logic to my

790
00:46:20,578 --> 00:46:21,070
selection.

791
00:46:22,300 --> 00:46:25,484
Unfortunately, the very week we
were supposed to read and

792
00:46:25,484 --> 00:46:28,613
discuss this work, the only
other black professor in the

793
00:46:28,613 --> 00:46:31,907
department died very suddenly
and in terrible circumstances

794
00:46:31,907 --> 00:46:35,147
that I will not relay, given my
thoughts here about how we

795
00:46:35,147 --> 00:46:36,300
handle this material.

796
00:46:37,720 --> 00:46:41,513
All three of us struggled to
handle this book during that

797
00:46:41,513 --> 00:46:41,840
week.

798
00:46:42,490 --> 00:46:45,430
The past was all too present,
and the psychological toll of

799
00:46:45,430 --> 00:46:48,566
processing the implications of
so much death in the past, while

800
00:46:48,566 --> 00:46:51,457
suddenly grieving a beloved
professor and colleague in the

801
00:46:51,457 --> 00:46:54,250
present was too much. And I
think it's probably the only

802
00:46:54,250 --> 00:46:56,945
time in my career that I
actually just cut the reading

803
00:46:56,945 --> 00:46:58,170
for the rest of the week.

804
00:46:59,700 --> 00:47:03,039
And that leads me to my final
imperative or consideration,

805
00:47:03,039 --> 00:47:06,378
which is the way that the
spectacle of black death or near

806
00:47:06,378 --> 00:47:09,888
death seems to be required proof
of the extent to which white

807
00:47:09,888 --> 00:47:13,057
supremacy and racism are
societal scourges that need to

808
00:47:13,057 --> 00:47:13,850
be rooted out.

809
00:47:15,150 --> 00:47:19,014
Western cultures seem able to
process the terrible legacies of

810
00:47:19,014 --> 00:47:23,000
slavery and racism only if there
has been a spectacular death or

811
00:47:23,000 --> 00:47:26,987
near death, especially if there
is video of it. From Rodney King

812
00:47:26,987 --> 00:47:30,913
to George Floyd, what seems to
spark social conscience is video

813
00:47:30,913 --> 00:47:34,531
footage of black men dying or
nearly dying. And this is an

814
00:47:34,531 --> 00:47:37,843
impulse to question. I think we
have to question that

815
00:47:37,843 --> 00:47:41,769
politically first. What does it
mean for so many organisations,

816
00:47:41,769 --> 00:47:45,694
especially in this country, to
preface the reckonings that they

817
00:47:45,694 --> 00:47:45,939
have

818
00:47:46,010 --> 00:47:48,870
undertaken by invoking George
Floyd's death?

819
00:47:49,920 --> 00:47:53,478
What does it say that a British
organisation in particular

820
00:47:53,478 --> 00:47:56,976
requires the death of a black
man on another continent to

821
00:47:56,976 --> 00:48:00,957
understand its own complicity in
or benefit derived from Atlantic

822
00:48:00,957 --> 00:48:01,440
slavery?

823
00:48:02,470 --> 00:48:04,750
But there is a historical
question here as well.

824
00:48:05,640 --> 00:48:09,040
To what extent does a similar
impulse motivate historical

825
00:48:09,040 --> 00:48:12,675
work? Do we include violence
beyond what is necessary? And of

826
00:48:12,675 --> 00:48:15,020
course, necessary is a very
fluid idea.

827
00:48:15,830 --> 00:48:19,833
But do we do that so that we can
prove that slavery was an evil

828
00:48:19,833 --> 00:48:23,775
atrocity? And if we do, whose
needs are we prioritising - ours

829
00:48:23,775 --> 00:48:27,528
in the present? And if we are
prioritising those, then what

830
00:48:27,528 --> 00:48:31,157
responsibilities do we have to
historical actors amid our

831
00:48:31,157 --> 00:48:34,910
operating as historians in the
present, still marred by the

832
00:48:34,910 --> 00:48:36,600
legacies of this atrocity?

833
00:48:37,730 --> 00:48:42,136
These are not new questions. To
return to Saidiya Hartman again:

834
00:48:42,136 --> 00:48:45,864
in 1997, she opened her book
"Scenes of Subjection" by

835
00:48:45,864 --> 00:48:49,796
refusing to include the scene in
which Frederick Douglass

836
00:48:49,796 --> 00:48:54,271
recounted the violent beating of
his Aunt Hester. And she neither

837
00:48:54,271 --> 00:48:58,541
reprints his words, nor does she
describe it in her own words,

838
00:48:58,541 --> 00:49:00,440
and she explains her choice.

839
00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:05,265
And long before Hartman, Mary
Prince was also struck by this

840
00:49:05,265 --> 00:49:09,107
dilemma in her own narrative,
"The History of Mary Prince,"

841
00:49:09,107 --> 00:49:10,900
published in London in 1831.

842
00:49:12,100 --> 00:49:14,309
After retelling the
exceptionally horrifying

843
00:49:14,309 --> 00:49:17,352
treatment of an elder in the
salt ponds of Grand Turk Island,

844
00:49:17,352 --> 00:49:18,580
she paused and reflected.

845
00:49:19,900 --> 00:49:23,533
"Oh, the horrors of slavery. How
the thought of it pains my

846
00:49:23,533 --> 00:49:27,288
heart. But the truth ought to be
told of it, and what my eyes

847
00:49:27,288 --> 00:49:31,042
have seen, I think it is my duty
to relate, for few people in

848
00:49:31,042 --> 00:49:34,858
England know what slavery is. I
have been a slave. I have felt

849
00:49:34,858 --> 00:49:38,673
what a slave feels, and I know
what a slave knows. And I would

850
00:49:38,673 --> 00:49:42,125
have all the good people in
England to know it too, that

851
00:49:42,125 --> 00:49:44,790
they may break our chains and
set us free."

852
00:49:46,030 --> 00:49:49,449
Prince felt a responsibility or
duty to relate what she had

853
00:49:49,449 --> 00:49:52,812
seen, what she had felt, and
what she knew because she had

854
00:49:52,812 --> 00:49:53,610
been enslaved.

855
00:49:55,040 --> 00:49:58,958
So I have come to think of these
ethical challenges as a call to

856
00:49:58,958 --> 00:50:02,936
some form of responsibility, but
from the comfortable distance of

857
00:50:02,936 --> 00:50:06,552
the 21st century, what is our
responsibility or duty? Is it

858
00:50:06,552 --> 00:50:09,988
the same as that which Prince
outlined for herself, even

859
00:50:09,988 --> 00:50:13,906
though we have neither felt, nor
seen, nor known intimately what

860
00:50:13,906 --> 00:50:14,630
slavery was?

861
00:50:15,550 --> 00:50:18,065
And in the time that I have
left, I want to think a little

862
00:50:18,065 --> 00:50:20,794
bit more about this question of
my responsibility to two of the

863
00:50:20,794 --> 00:50:23,310
women whose stories I have
worked with in my own research.

864
00:50:24,210 --> 00:50:26,450
So I will return again to Ann
Pratt.

865
00:50:27,860 --> 00:50:30,230
I felt a responsibility to
figure out her race.

866
00:50:30,980 --> 00:50:34,541
I knew from the way that people
wrote about her - wrote about

867
00:50:34,541 --> 00:50:37,988
her in particular while trying
to discredit her testimony -

868
00:50:37,988 --> 00:50:41,434
that she was not black in the
way the term was used in 19th

869
00:50:41,434 --> 00:50:44,881
century Jamaica. One official
claimed that Miss Pratt, "has

870
00:50:44,881 --> 00:50:48,041
for years past born the
character of a prostitute, has

871
00:50:48,041 --> 00:50:51,545
had connection with black men
and had children the result of

872
00:50:51,545 --> 00:50:55,106
promiscuous intercourse, two of
whom are now alive." And it's

873
00:50:55,106 --> 00:50:58,783
clear from the way that "black
men" is invoked there, that this

874
00:50:58,783 --> 00:51:02,230
was a way to damn her character.
And of course, that insult

875
00:51:02,300 --> 00:51:06,472
does not work if she herself is
black, as in the terminology of

876
00:51:06,472 --> 00:51:10,449
the day. Yet for a reason I
couldn't initially pin down, the

877
00:51:10,449 --> 00:51:14,361
conclusion that she was white
also did not seem to sit well

878
00:51:14,361 --> 00:51:17,100
with what I was reading in her
narrative.

879
00:51:18,350 --> 00:51:21,041
Eventually I kept poring over
the first page of her pamphlet.

880
00:51:21,041 --> 00:51:23,560
And I'll read it. I'll read that
first paragraph for you.

881
00:51:24,910 --> 00:51:28,862
"I was born in the parish of
Hanover, on Paradise Estate, in

882
00:51:28,862 --> 00:51:29,770
the year 1830.

883
00:51:30,510 --> 00:51:34,193
I was the daughter of John
Pratt, long and well known as a

884
00:51:34,193 --> 00:51:37,999
grocery storekeeper, in the town
of Lucea. I was placed, when

885
00:51:37,999 --> 00:51:41,560
about six years of age, under
the care of Joshua Heywood,

886
00:51:41,560 --> 00:51:45,366
Esquire, a late magistrate of
Hanover – while under his care,

887
00:51:45,366 --> 00:51:49,418
I attended the Mico School, then
under the care of Edmond Wilson,

888
00:51:49,418 --> 00:51:51,260
teacher in the town of Lucea."

889
00:51:52,470 --> 00:51:55,145
Now, initially, this extract
doesn't seem especially

890
00:51:55,145 --> 00:51:58,174
promising. It doesn't seem to
tell us a lot about her race,

891
00:51:58,174 --> 00:52:00,900
but I kept puzzling over it
until I made sense of it.

892
00:52:01,670 --> 00:52:02,960
The first line is important.

893
00:52:03,630 --> 00:52:07,459
"I was born in the parish of
Hanover on Paradise Estate in

894
00:52:07,459 --> 00:52:11,223
the year 1830." So Pratt was
born on this date during the

895
00:52:11,223 --> 00:52:15,182
final years of slavery, which in
Jamaica ended in 1834. Now,

896
00:52:15,182 --> 00:52:18,751
alone, that opened up some
possibilities, but it isn't

897
00:52:18,751 --> 00:52:22,321
anywhere close to being
definitive, because there were

898
00:52:22,321 --> 00:52:26,020
many white children who could
have been born on estates,

899
00:52:26,020 --> 00:52:29,265
children of drivers, of
overseers, and of course,

900
00:52:29,265 --> 00:52:33,159
children to slave owners and
plantation estates themselves.

901
00:52:35,120 --> 00:52:37,928
So in this statement and
elsewhere in the pamphlet, I

902
00:52:37,928 --> 00:52:40,788
noticed that Pratt was
distancing herself from both of

903
00:52:40,788 --> 00:52:42,920
her parents, but in very
different ways.

904
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:47,018
John Pratt, the Lucea
shopkeeper, is mentioned only

905
00:52:47,018 --> 00:52:50,182
this once in the entire
pamphlet, and she does not call

906
00:52:50,182 --> 00:52:51,030
him her father.

907
00:52:51,740 --> 00:52:55,445
Later in the text, she refers to
her mother also only once, but

908
00:52:55,445 --> 00:52:58,571
here she does not give her
mother's name, and instead

909
00:52:58,571 --> 00:53:00,249
refers to her as "my mother."

910
00:53:01,030 --> 00:53:04,960
Her mother seems to have been a
continuing presence in her life.

911
00:53:04,960 --> 00:53:08,710
Pratt wrote, "After some years’
residence with Mr. Heywood, I

912
00:53:08,710 --> 00:53:12,278
went home to my mother, with
whom I resided for some time.

913
00:53:12,278 --> 00:53:16,027
After which, in 1859, I left
her, and went to live at Barbary

914
00:53:16,027 --> 00:53:19,595
Hill." So although here too we
don't have any clear racial

915
00:53:19,595 --> 00:53:23,466
descriptors of her parents, we
do have a situation in which she

916
00:53:23,466 --> 00:53:27,215
seems to distance herself from
them in ways that were helping

917
00:53:27,215 --> 00:53:30,299
me build a picture of what might
be going on here.

918
00:53:31,390 --> 00:53:34,730
Her father did not live on that
estate. She gave us his first

919
00:53:34,730 --> 00:53:37,909
name and his last name, his
occupation and the implication

920
00:53:37,909 --> 00:53:41,088
that he lived in town and was
not a steady presence in her

921
00:53:41,088 --> 00:53:44,591
life. And although she does not
give us her mother's name, there

922
00:53:44,591 --> 00:53:47,877
is a sense of a more intimate
and constant relationship, and

923
00:53:47,877 --> 00:53:51,164
the implication is that her
mother lived, at the time of her

924
00:53:51,164 --> 00:53:54,505
birth, on that estate. So I was
beginning to suspect that her

925
00:53:54,505 --> 00:53:57,900
mother was possibly an enslaved
woman in 1830. But still, that

926
00:53:57,900 --> 00:53:58,869
wasn't definitive.

927
00:54:00,150 --> 00:54:03,264
It was the final sentence in
that paragraph that I had to

928
00:54:03,264 --> 00:54:05,520
investigate, and it held the
final clues.

929
00:54:06,400 --> 00:54:09,649
"I was placed, when about six
years of age, under the care of

930
00:54:09,649 --> 00:54:12,899
Joshua Heywood, Esquire, a late
magistrate of Hanover – while

931
00:54:12,899 --> 00:54:16,254
under his care, I attended the
Mico School, then under the care

932
00:54:16,254 --> 00:54:19,556
of Edmond Wilson, teacher in the
town of Lucea." And as I read

933
00:54:19,556 --> 00:54:22,701
this, the frequency of the word
"care" is something that is

934
00:54:22,701 --> 00:54:25,480
playing in my mind as something
to think about more.

935
00:54:26,990 --> 00:54:30,150
Magistrate Hayward's appearance
added more weight to my

936
00:54:30,150 --> 00:54:33,480
suspicion that not only was
Pratt mixed race, but that she

937
00:54:33,480 --> 00:54:35,229
had been born enslaved herself.

938
00:54:36,260 --> 00:54:39,788
Pratt would have been six in
1836, which was in the middle of

939
00:54:39,788 --> 00:54:43,430
the Apprenticeship period across
much of the British Caribbean.

940
00:54:44,310 --> 00:54:47,446
Created as part of Parliament's
1833 Abolition Act,

941
00:54:47,446 --> 00:54:51,126
Apprenticeship was designed as a
four year, four to six year

942
00:54:51,126 --> 00:54:54,987
transitional labour system that
would, in theory, train masters

943
00:54:54,987 --> 00:54:58,788
to become employers. And I want
to be very clear that I do not

944
00:54:58,788 --> 00:55:02,468
buy this language, but this is
the language that was used in

945
00:55:02,468 --> 00:55:06,449
the documents. So it would train
masters to become employers, and

946
00:55:06,449 --> 00:55:10,370
it would train formerly enslaved
people to become wage labourers

947
00:55:10,370 --> 00:55:13,930
by forcing them to continue
working on plantations without

948
00:55:13,930 --> 00:55:15,739
any wages [audience laughter].

949
00:55:17,090 --> 00:55:20,710
For the first 40.5 hours in a
given week, an apprentice

950
00:55:20,710 --> 00:55:24,524
received no payment for work,
and any subsequent work that

951
00:55:24,524 --> 00:55:28,531
they did after was again, in
theory, supposed to be paid. And

952
00:55:28,531 --> 00:55:32,604
here's the critical part. The
Abolition Act freed children who

953
00:55:32,604 --> 00:55:36,547
were younger than six in 1834
automatically, and Pratt would

954
00:55:36,547 --> 00:55:39,780
have been three or four when the
Act took effect.

955
00:55:40,490 --> 00:55:44,207
But the Act made no provision
for these children's care, and

956
00:55:44,207 --> 00:55:48,046
so for this reason many parents
sent their children to live in

957
00:55:48,046 --> 00:55:52,068
towns with friends or relatives.
It is possible that Haywood took

958
00:55:52,068 --> 00:55:55,664
in Pratt while her mother
remained an apprentice, at least

959
00:55:55,664 --> 00:55:59,260
until 1838, when the system was
abolished two years early.

960
00:56:00,380 --> 00:56:03,731
And then finally the school was
the strongest indication that

961
00:56:03,731 --> 00:56:06,867
Pratt had once been enslaved.
She attended a Mico school,

962
00:56:06,867 --> 00:56:09,570
which was a set of schools
established to educate

963
00:56:09,570 --> 00:56:12,651
emancipated children. And I
should say here that part of

964
00:56:12,651 --> 00:56:16,111
what took me so long to figure
this out is that the scholarship

965
00:56:16,111 --> 00:56:19,517
on the Mico schools is actually
incredibly dated. Not in a way

966
00:56:19,517 --> 00:56:22,976
that the scholarship is bad, but
it's just scholarship from the

967
00:56:22,976 --> 00:56:26,328
1930s and the 1970s, and there
hasn't been much subsequently.

968
00:56:26,328 --> 00:56:29,518
So that is part of why I was
struggling to figure out what

969
00:56:29,518 --> 00:56:31,140
was going on with that school.

970
00:56:31,210 --> 00:56:31,550


971
00:56:32,860 --> 00:56:36,727
It was important for me to take
the time to keep coming back to

972
00:56:36,727 --> 00:56:37,030
this.

973
00:56:37,740 --> 00:56:41,817
From the time I first read Ann
Pratt's narrative to the moment

974
00:56:41,817 --> 00:56:44,600
that I was comfortable
describing in print

975
00:56:45,640 --> 00:56:50,201
that Ann Pratt was mixed race
and had been born enslaved, that

976
00:56:50,201 --> 00:56:51,360
took nine years.

977
00:56:52,120 --> 00:56:55,648
And again, as I said, it wasn't
important because I thought her

978
00:56:55,648 --> 00:56:59,177
race and her treatment received
in the asylum was what gave her

979
00:56:59,177 --> 00:57:02,429
pamphlet political power to
those who read it at the time.

980
00:57:03,700 --> 00:57:07,199
It was important because I
needed to know if this was yet

981
00:57:07,199 --> 00:57:10,156
another example of Saidiya
Hartman's "exorbitant

982
00:57:10,156 --> 00:57:13,535
circumstances," in which a
formerly enslaved woman, her

983
00:57:13,535 --> 00:57:17,518
story, her words, her life, only
surfaced because of the violence

984
00:57:17,518 --> 00:57:21,440
visited upon her. It was. And so
I have taken some care in how I

985
00:57:21,440 --> 00:57:23,130
am speaking about her today.

986
00:57:24,450 --> 00:57:27,843
Do you need to know more about
that violence? Is this story

987
00:57:27,843 --> 00:57:31,463
less resonant because I have not
included all of the details of

988
00:57:31,463 --> 00:57:34,574
what she experienced and
witnessed between January and

989
00:57:34,574 --> 00:57:35,140
July 1860?

990
00:57:35,830 --> 00:57:39,102
Should I be required to say more
than I already have to make a

991
00:57:39,102 --> 00:57:41,960
convincing case about the
horrors of this institution?

992
00:57:42,660 --> 00:57:46,045
And if I do have to say more,
what does it say that I have to

993
00:57:46,045 --> 00:57:49,650
endlessly rehearse, in talks and
in writings, her agonies and the

994
00:57:49,650 --> 00:57:52,490
agonies of those who died in
this foul institution?

995
00:57:53,590 --> 00:57:57,566
For me, this all feels like a
trap. There is so much personal,

996
00:57:57,566 --> 00:58:01,354
institutional, and governmental
investment in the idea that

997
00:58:01,354 --> 00:58:05,331
slavery was unfortunate and a
blot, but perhaps not one of the

998
00:58:05,331 --> 00:58:08,676
worst atrocities in world
history, or a profound and

999
00:58:08,676 --> 00:58:12,275
irreparable moral crime and
abomination. Shifting public

1000
00:58:12,275 --> 00:58:16,315
understanding seems to require
constant rehearsing of violence.

1001
00:58:16,315 --> 00:58:20,102
Yet why should the absolute
worst moments of people, of the

1002
00:58:20,102 --> 00:58:24,205
lives of people in the past, be
forever instrumentalised for the

1003
00:58:24,205 --> 00:58:24,900
purposes of

1004
00:58:24,970 --> 00:58:28,151
winning this argument? And if
there is an emerging idea that

1005
00:58:28,151 --> 00:58:31,541
even the dead still deserve some
measure of privacy, should that

1006
00:58:31,541 --> 00:58:34,670
not include enslaved people,
even if that then means we are

1007
00:58:34,670 --> 00:58:37,069
even more limited in what we can
write about?

1008
00:58:38,060 --> 00:58:40,835
To be sure, I don't think this
is the only way to think about

1009
00:58:40,835 --> 00:58:43,700
these questions, and I'd love to
hear in the Q&A what other

1010
00:58:43,700 --> 00:58:45,760
people think about how we might
balance this.

1011
00:58:46,480 --> 00:58:50,018
And I'm also aware that I am now
able to puzzle over this as long

1012
00:58:50,018 --> 00:58:53,021
as I want to, and solve it
however I see fit, precisely

1013
00:58:53,021 --> 00:58:55,916
because I am no longer a
university academic. I think

1014
00:58:55,916 --> 00:58:59,133
that's unfortunate, that I now
feel so much more freedom to

1015
00:58:59,133 --> 00:59:02,672
ponder over the way that I write
about history now that I've left

1016
00:59:02,672 --> 00:59:05,836
academia, because academia is
supposed to be a place where

1017
00:59:05,836 --> 00:59:07,820
intellectual exploration
flourishes.

1018
00:59:09,480 --> 00:59:12,612
Recently I learned about
guarantees of non-repetition

1019
00:59:12,612 --> 00:59:16,267
that are enshrined in the UN's
2006 Guidelines on the Right to

1020
00:59:16,267 --> 00:59:19,690
a Remedy and Reparation for
Victims of Gross Violations of

1021
00:59:19,690 --> 00:59:22,997
International Human Rights Law
and Serious Violations of

1022
00:59:22,997 --> 00:59:26,536
International Humanitarian Law.
And these guidelines broadly

1023
00:59:26,536 --> 00:59:29,959
form some of the legal framework
for reparations activists

1024
00:59:29,959 --> 00:59:33,556
focused on Atlantic slavery.
Within them is this principle of

1025
00:59:33,556 --> 00:59:36,863
guarantees of non-repetition,
which in effect means that

1026
00:59:36,863 --> 00:59:39,590
reparative work after atrocities
and conflicts

1027
00:59:39,730 --> 00:59:42,815
must be done in the spirit of
ensuring not only that such

1028
00:59:42,815 --> 00:59:45,741
events do not happen again, but
that the reparative or

1029
00:59:45,741 --> 00:59:48,933
restitution work itself does not
continue to traffic in the

1030
00:59:48,933 --> 00:59:52,179
principles and practises that
allowed the atrocity to happen

1031
00:59:52,179 --> 00:59:53,190
in the first place.

1032
00:59:53,890 --> 00:59:56,944
And so in the resolution, this
typically means things like

1033
00:59:56,944 --> 00:59:59,843
establishing civilian control
over militaries, ensuring

1034
00:59:59,843 --> 01:00:02,897
adherence to international laws
and norms, providing human

1035
01:00:02,897 --> 01:00:05,796
rights training to law
enforcement and military forces,

1036
01:00:05,796 --> 01:00:06,779
among other things.

1037
01:00:08,210 --> 01:00:11,515
But I think there could be
implications here for historical

1038
01:00:11,515 --> 01:00:14,600
work. Are we inadvertently
continuing to traffic in the

1039
01:00:14,600 --> 01:00:17,575
thinking that allowed Europeans
to turn Africans into

1040
01:00:17,575 --> 01:00:20,715
commodities, that saw such
severe violence as a standard

1041
01:00:20,715 --> 01:00:24,021
facet of society? In other
words, can non-repetition become

1042
01:00:24,021 --> 01:00:27,436
one of the imperatives within
which historians of slavery and

1043
01:00:27,436 --> 01:00:29,309
emancipation work, and should
it?

1044
01:00:30,510 --> 01:00:34,270
So I'll end this evening with a
final story of responsibility.

1045
01:00:35,700 --> 01:00:39,992
In 1850, Nanny Johnston, a 50
year old black woman, was living

1046
01:00:39,992 --> 01:00:44,217
in Port Royal, Jamaica. Once the
chief port, pirate haunt and

1047
01:00:44,217 --> 01:00:48,510
raucous hub of Jamaican social
life, Port Royal was, more than

1048
01:00:48,510 --> 01:00:52,803
150 years after a devastating
earthquake in 1692, a small town

1049
01:00:52,803 --> 01:00:55,120
across the harbour from
Kingston.

1050
01:00:56,360 --> 01:00:59,106
It was a place that
contemporaries described as

1051
01:00:59,106 --> 01:01:02,711
small and cramped and filthy,
and her home, which was near the

1052
01:01:02,711 --> 01:01:06,317
beach, was in an area that some
local dignitaries deemed among

1053
01:01:06,317 --> 01:01:07,289
the town's worst.

1054
01:01:08,370 --> 01:01:12,281
Mary Seacole briefly mentioned
Dolly Johnston in her 1857

1055
01:01:12,281 --> 01:01:16,260
autobiography, and I think this
suggests that Johnston was

1056
01:01:17,040 --> 01:01:20,297
apparently well known in her
community. As a washerwoman.

1057
01:01:20,297 --> 01:01:23,892
Johnston did laundry for some of
the Royal Navy ships that were

1058
01:01:23,892 --> 01:01:24,959
docked in the town.

1059
01:01:25,790 --> 01:01:28,921
On October 3rd she picked up
laundry from the HMS Bermuda,

1060
01:01:28,921 --> 01:01:32,000
which she spent the next two
days washing out in the sun.

1061
01:01:33,100 --> 01:01:35,770
On October 6th, she took a
Sabbath rest.

1062
01:01:36,830 --> 01:01:40,574
That evening, however, she fell
deathly ill. The doctor who saw

1063
01:01:40,574 --> 01:01:44,436
her the next morning immediately
recognised her symptoms. But she

1064
01:01:44,436 --> 01:01:47,596
died that afternoon, October
7th, the first person to

1065
01:01:47,596 --> 01:01:49,820
officially die of cholera in
Jamaica.

1066
01:01:50,800 --> 01:01:54,505
Over the next 15 months, cholera
spread across the island,

1067
01:01:54,505 --> 01:01:57,960
killing perhaps as many as
40,000 people by the end of

1068
01:01:57,960 --> 01:02:00,410
1851, the vast majority of them
black.

1069
01:02:01,550 --> 01:02:04,876
And across much of the archives,
the deaths of all of these black

1070
01:02:04,876 --> 01:02:07,850
Jamaicans were described by
government officials first and

1071
01:02:07,850 --> 01:02:10,974
foremost as a labour problem.
And I think of course, now here

1072
01:02:10,974 --> 01:02:13,948
we are in the middle of the
COVID-19 pandemic, and I think

1073
01:02:13,948 --> 01:02:17,174
we're all like, quite familiar
with the ways that pandemics are

1074
01:02:17,174 --> 01:02:20,450
quickly shifted into discussing
labour and the morality of work.

1075
01:02:21,900 --> 01:02:24,690
Nanny Johnston stands out in my
mind for another reason.

1076
01:02:25,420 --> 01:02:28,628
A decade ago, I published my
first academic journal article

1077
01:02:28,628 --> 01:02:31,996
about this cholera epidemic, and
I misspelled her last name in

1078
01:02:31,996 --> 01:02:33,280
the very first sentence.

1079
01:02:34,460 --> 01:02:37,798
It was an unintentional mistake,
somewhere between a typo and the

1080
01:02:37,798 --> 01:02:40,985
fact that there are actually a
number of spellings of her name

1081
01:02:40,985 --> 01:02:44,070
across various documents and
scholarship. But it stayed with

1082
01:02:44,070 --> 01:02:46,751
me and probably first brought me
to this question of

1083
01:02:46,751 --> 01:02:47,510
responsibility.

1084
01:02:48,360 --> 01:02:51,863
I think as historians of slavery
and emancipation, we do tend to

1085
01:02:51,863 --> 01:02:55,258
think a lot about the duty that
we have to the people we write

1086
01:02:55,258 --> 01:02:58,653
about, especially those of us
whose ancestors, like mine, were

1087
01:02:58,653 --> 01:03:02,156
enslaved. When the black working
poor appear as individuals with

1088
01:03:02,156 --> 01:03:05,282
names and personal details and
lives and families in 19th

1089
01:03:05,282 --> 01:03:08,732
century government documents, I
feel the historian's impulse to

1090
01:03:08,732 --> 01:03:09,810
share their stories.

1091
01:03:10,910 --> 01:03:13,629
But did they, did Nanny
Johnston, intend for the scant

1092
01:03:13,629 --> 01:03:16,646
recorded details of their life
to be picked over and curated

1093
01:03:16,646 --> 01:03:19,465
for a historian's anecdote,
which is something that I've

1094
01:03:19,465 --> 01:03:19,960
just done?

1095
01:03:20,970 --> 01:03:24,238
And if I have, in this instance,
recovered some black history

1096
01:03:24,238 --> 01:03:27,190
from British archives, have I
done so at the expense of

1097
01:03:27,190 --> 01:03:30,352
treating people in the past who
were exploited in life with

1098
01:03:30,352 --> 01:03:33,515
dignity after their death?
Again, I continue to think about

1099
01:03:33,515 --> 01:03:36,573
how widely that video of George
Floyd's gruesome death in

1100
01:03:36,573 --> 01:03:39,735
Minneapolis circulated. And for
what it's worth, I have not

1101
01:03:39,735 --> 01:03:41,370
watched it and never intend to.

1102
01:03:42,220 --> 01:03:45,963
For those who needed it, the
video of his final moments has

1103
01:03:45,963 --> 01:03:49,707
served as proof of systemic
police brutality. But its viral

1104
01:03:49,707 --> 01:03:53,513
replication, with what surely
must at this point be billions

1105
01:03:53,513 --> 01:03:57,319
of views, is itself a form of
violation. So I'll end here by

1106
01:03:57,319 --> 01:04:01,000
asking again, what are our
responsibilities to those whose

1107
01:04:01,000 --> 01:04:05,056
lives and deaths were marked by
state violence? And what else do

1108
01:04:05,056 --> 01:04:09,174
I personally owe Nanny Johnston?
Here I have left out most of the

1109
01:04:09,174 --> 01:04:12,980
details of her agonising death,
because that seemed like too

1110
01:04:12,980 --> 01:04:13,230
much

1111
01:04:13,310 --> 01:04:15,892
of a violation. For now, though,
they are still in my book

1112
01:04:15,892 --> 01:04:18,344
manuscript. But perhaps they
should not stay. Thank you

1113
01:04:18,344 --> 01:04:19,220
[audience applause].

1114
01:04:35,410 --> 01:04:40,652
Well, thank you. Thank you so
much, Christienna. What a rich

1115
01:04:40,652 --> 01:04:41,340
lecture.

1116
01:04:42,320 --> 01:04:46,445
And I was particularly struck,
Christienna, listening to your

1117
01:04:46,445 --> 01:04:49,640
observations about society's
periodic rehearsal

1118
01:04:50,300 --> 01:04:54,378
of the spectacle of black deaths
and near deaths, and hearing

1119
01:04:54,378 --> 01:04:58,523
about your own wrestling with
questions of responsibility as a

1120
01:04:58,523 --> 01:04:59,050
scholar.

1121
01:04:59,850 --> 01:05:03,281
In so much of our work on
equality, we speak of the

1122
01:05:03,281 --> 01:05:07,108
imperative of ensuring that
everyone enjoys equal dignity

1123
01:05:07,108 --> 01:05:07,900
and respect.

1124
01:05:08,850 --> 01:05:11,666
In your lecture tonight, you've
reminded us that dignity and

1125
01:05:11,666 --> 01:05:13,790
respect is also something we owe
to the dead,

1126
01:05:14,560 --> 01:05:17,760
particularly those deprived of
those things in their lifetime.

1127
01:05:18,610 --> 01:05:21,595
And more broadly, you've
challenged us, I think, tonight,

1128
01:05:21,595 --> 01:05:24,477
to confront aspects of
scholarship and society that may

1129
01:05:24,477 --> 01:05:25,609
well be uncomfortable.

1130
01:05:26,720 --> 01:05:31,087
But as many of us would agree, I
hope, discomfort is often a

1131
01:05:31,087 --> 01:05:34,595
prerequisite of societal
progress. So thank you,

1132
01:05:34,595 --> 01:05:38,819
Christienna, for challenging us
to think about our ethical

1133
01:05:38,819 --> 01:05:43,329
responsibilities when dealing
with history and race. And thank

1134
01:05:43,329 --> 01:05:47,696
you for challenging us as well
to continue the conversations

1135
01:05:47,696 --> 01:05:51,562
we've had this month. And
tonight, very shortly, I'll

1136
01:05:51,562 --> 01:05:56,001
invite you to join us in having
refreshments outside where we

1137
01:05:56,001 --> 01:05:57,290
can continue those

1138
01:05:57,360 --> 01:06:01,831
conversations. But before we
adjourn, can I offer a few thank

1139
01:06:01,831 --> 01:06:06,230
yous to Ian Hewitt, Ali Goodall
and Linda Austin here at the

1140
01:06:06,230 --> 01:06:10,485
Mathematical Institute. And to
Rebekah Lee, Aprajita Verma

1141
01:06:10,485 --> 01:06:14,885
who's not here tonight because
she's feeling unwell, and the

1142
01:06:14,885 --> 01:06:18,995
co-chairs of the BME Staff
Network. Also to Lauren Gale,

1143
01:06:18,995 --> 01:06:23,611
Vanessa Worthington and the many
others over the years who have

1144
01:06:23,611 --> 01:06:28,227
built this annual lecture into
an institution. And last but not

1145
01:06:28,227 --> 01:06:28,660
least,

1146
01:06:28,730 --> 01:06:32,435
a big thank you to Marilyn
Verghis from the EDU, who has

1147
01:06:32,435 --> 01:06:36,270
been the linchpin of the efforts
in organising this year's

1148
01:06:36,270 --> 01:06:39,975
lecture and making it a great
success. And finally, once

1149
01:06:39,975 --> 01:06:43,940
again, will you all join me in
thanking Dr Christienna Fryar

1150
01:06:43,940 --> 01:06:47,840
for a sensational Black History
Month lecture. Christienna,

1151
01:06:47,840 --> 01:06:48,490
thank you.

1152
01:06:49,430 --> 01:07:08,560
[audience applause]

1153
01:07:12,690 --> 01:07:15,896
The applause speaks for itself.
That brings to an end our

1154
01:07:15,896 --> 01:07:19,435
formalities. But please do join
us for refreshments outside and

1155
01:07:19,435 --> 01:07:22,697
admire the immense geometric
pleasures of the Mathematical

1156
01:07:22,697 --> 01:07:23,250
Institute.

1157
01:07:40,790 --> 01:07:41,030


1158
01:07:42,580 --> 01:08:02,580


1159
01:08:02,580 --> 01:08:04,870