Winter Books: Critical Histories
2/7/20 - In a special edition of our winter books episode, we talk with three of our favorite herstorians about American icons that could use a rewrite: Harriet Tubman, George Washington, and McDonald's.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
NYT's Dana Goldstein has read nearly 5,000 pages of current American History textbooks
Authors featured:
Erica Armstrong Dunbar, author of She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman
Alexis Coe, author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington
Marcia Chatelain, author of Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America
TRANSCRIPT: WINTER BOOKS: CRITICAL HISTORIES
[Ads]
(0:15)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: She's Ann Friedman.
Ann: She's Aminatou Sow! [Laughs]
Aminatou: Hi.
Ann: Hello.
Aminatou: Do you want me to do the agenda?
Ann: Yes! Oh my god, yes.
Aminatou: I love this Trading Spaces that's happening today.
Ann: Me too.
Aminatou: On today's agenda we have a very special books episode with some of our favorite herstorians about three American icons: Harriet Tubman, George Washington, and McDonald's.
Ann: Is McDonald's an American icon?
Aminatou: McDonald's is bad girl. I'm not saying you love to like the food but the brand penetration is lit. It's how you know other countries have democracy. I'm like agnostic on the food but as a brand, the arches? Iconic.
Ann: Strong branding.
Aminatou: Strong branding.
[Theme Song]
Ann: All these herstorians have recently-published books but I also think about this episode as just an appreciation in general for the work that female historians are doing, and these historians are doing in particular, to aspects of American life, some figures of American life, that have been misunderstood frankly in ways both positive and negative.
(1:45)
Aminatou: I really like your use of the word misunderstood because I think that I get really frustrated whenever a conversation turns and people go "Why did I not know this?" I'm like hmm, you probably don't know because you're not reading books so that's your own personal, you know?
Ann: The top-line issue.
Aminatou: Right. The top-line issue is people don't read. So if an issue is new to you -- and this is not to shame anyone. It's like if an issue is new to you it just means it's probably new to you. There is literally too much content. And that's like one strain. But I think the thing that has been a very pervasive feeling of, you know, some low-level kind of despair for me is everything that I think I know I am understanding in a new way and there's something both very freeing about that and also terrifying.
I was taught this in a mass-education kind of situation. What are you trying to tell me that I did not understand it correctly? And I formed assumptions and entire worldviews based on information that was in context like not correct. I am really deeply appreciative that women historians -- and I even feel complicated saying women historians.
Ann: Sure.
Aminatou: Because I'm like they're historians. But the truth is having a different perspective also means that they get to do their work and they get to fix everyone else's work, you know?
Ann: Get to.
Aminatou: That's something I've just been thinking a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot about. Both okay, this is freeing and also wow, I know nothing.
Ann: I've also been thinking about the work that these historians are doing in the context of the kind of debate and conversation about textbooks and in public education specifically. My former -- former/forever work wife Dana Goldstein who is now a New York Times reporter wrote an article a couple weeks ago about the vast differences in textbooks depending on where you're reading it. And sometimes that's even technically the same textbook from the same publisher but they calibrate it to different states.
(3:48)
And I feel like that is speaking to what you're saying about oh, there are just so many gaps in everyone's knowledge and I think that is especially true when it comes to the baseline knowledge that we provide students in this country. So I think that especially because the subjects of these books are all things that are mentioned in history textbooks in this country for example it makes it all the more important that these historians are doing the work to kind of say okay, I know you know these three lines from what you had to learn at whatever point you learned American history but guess what? There's more.
Aminatou: Well first up I spoke to Erica Armstrong Dunbar who's the author of She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman and this book is fascinating for many, many, many, many reasons. One, it's hyper-accessible and also I -- you know, Harriet Tubman is one of those people that I'm like I know Harriet Tubman. I know Harriet Tubman. I'm a black person. I know Harriet Tubman. Like I know her. And it turns out I did not know her.
Ann: Wow.
Aminatou: And I'm so, so, so glad that I read this because I think that, you know, that feeling is so familiar of just thinking like okay, I know this name. It exists for me on this multiple levels of understanding. Having someone really interpret the primary sources and give you a new understanding of actually what this person's life means and what it means in the context of today was such a powerful read for me, so here is Erica Armstrong Dunbar.
[Interview Starts]
Erica: Erica Armstrong Dunbar, She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman.
Aminatou: Ugh, the title. The title alone. How did you decide on that?
Erica: Yeah, you know, it was really the sort of brain child of my fabulous editor/publisher Don Davis. And we knew that the film was going to be released on Harriet's life in 2019 and so we thought it was really kind of a good time to rethink Harriet Tubman. And what I wanted to do was to try and present a fresh kind of more modern look at Tubman. Tubman as a woman, as a mother, as a -- as a lover, as a warrior, as an underground railroad conductor, as a civil war soldier. But I wanted to do it in a way that could reach different audiences and basically people of different ages, generations.
(6:28)
And so I thought, you know, I want to tell this -- her story -- in a way that would resonate with kind of younger women, women who are thinking about the power that they have inside of themselves that needs to be unleashed. And maybe I was watching Beyoncé's Lemonade. Maybe I wasn't. But it sort of came to me that, you know, every time that Tubman went down south to Maryland to set people free that each time she was coming to slay. And that's how the title sort of came about.
Aminatou: I love that you said that you wanted to portray her as all these different things because I think that when I think about historical figures that are kind of in that same strata as she is we basically canonize them right? Then they don't get to be humans. They are stand-ins for all sorts of things which is very well-deserved. But I think that you so successfully made her into a human being which I think is . . . it's important for so many reasons and to me it's important because she's a black woman and black women are, you know, it's like you get to be everything for everyone else but are you a human being at all? And I'm just really curious how that process went for you because it's a page-turner and there's so much life into it that I think it is so different from your kind of stereotypical history book.
(8:02)
Erica: Yeah. Thank you for saying that because I'm a historian, I'm a writer, and I believe deeply that history should be accessible to everyone. You shouldn't have to have a PhD to read it, to understand it, and to feel like, you know, you're a part of or connected to that history. And so that's kind of what I wanted to do for Tubman. I mean there are some good biographies of Tubman. Nothing that's been written within the past like 15 years or so. And what I wanted to do -- exactly what you were just saying, the sort of think about Tubman through a different lens. We're so used to kind of the image of Tubman, kind of an older woman, head covered, hands clasped, slightly bent over. And that's not the image of Tubman that I think we all need to have in our minds when we think about her.
I mean in actuality when she was working as a conductor on the Underground Railroad she was young. She was in her 30s and early 40s. And of course we don't really have photos of her until after the Civil War but I wanted us to think about her as a child. Who was Harriet Tubman when she was five and called Araminta Ross? That was the name she was given. Think about her as a teenager, as a young woman in love and as a young woman who made the decision to flee, to feel slavery, and then also make the same decision to come back time and time again. I wanted us to think about her and love, who she loved, how she loved. She loved hard.
(9:50)
When you think about that she came back for her entire family so many times, risking her own life, that's love. And also thinking about her post- -- kind of her life post-slavery which most people don't do. It's sort of like oh, the Civil War ends and that must be the end of the story. Well it really wasn't. And that was part of the process of trying to get people to think about her, but also through all of these stages but to do it in a way that connects the reader.
So I used phrases in the different sections of the book that would hopefully connect a younger generation. So, you know, there's a section called Call Me Mrs. Davis which was about Tubman remarrying post-slavery. And to think about her relationship with her second husband. So there were different ways. I also worked closely with an illustrator because we don't have photos of Tubman prior to the late-1860s. I was like okay, I want the reader to be able to visualize her. Let's have an illustration of her as a child. What was it like to be enslaved as a child? So those were some of the techniques I used to help readers think about Tubman differently.
Aminatou: Yeah. And, you know, one of the running themes in the book is really about the dollar value that's placed on her and her family. And it is something that has stayed with me for a long time, especially because we keep having this conversation about, you know, is she going to replace Andrew Jackson on the 20 dollar bill? Who's the president that's going to do that? And I just thought it was such a powerful way of making the reader understand that, you know, American capitalism is at work since before slavery and really thinking about that. I would love to hear your thoughts about making a decision to have that be a theme in the book.
(11:55)
Erica: Yeah. Well of course all the conversation about Tubman on the 20 was kind of in the front of my mind and I can -- I would bet 20 dollars that this current administration will not put her on the 20 dollar bill. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Really? You don't think this is the administration that is going to give us Tubmans? Wow, I wonder why. [Laughs]
Erica: I'd bet more than 20 on that.
Aminatou: I'd bet you a Thomas Jefferson that you're wrong.
Erica: I'd bet you a Ben Franklin. Because we've had that conversation so much and because there was so much interest in having Tubman on currency that, you know, I'm hoping that we all just sort of take a moment and maybe the book, maybe the film, maybe other conversations will help us think about what it means to put someone who was enslaved, someone who had a value, a monetary value attached to their body, what does it mean to put them on currency?
And that's not me saying I don't want Tubman on the 20 at all. It's simply saying that I'm hoping that we have more conversations about the way we attach value to black life. Whether that's enslaved people in the 19th century, 100 dollar runaway ads for Tubman, or if it's the way that school districts place amounts of money on the students that they're going to teach for a year and how those values change depending upon your zip code.
You know, I think that I wanted us to think deeply about the value of black life both in slavery and in freedom. And in many ways all the conversation about Tubman on the 20 was the sort of perfect portal into that conversation.
Aminatou: Yeah, that's such a powerful thing to hear you talk about that someone who probably would've been bought for a couple of those 20 dollar bills might be the face of them. And so I really appreciate that in reading this book so many conversations that are in kind of the fore of our culture are also coming alive because every couple of years I feel that there is a resurgence in interest about Harriet Tubman. It's like there's the movie; there's this 20 dollar bill conversation. There are so many things. And yet I am still struck by the fact that she is not a figure that every single American knows which is a thing that our school system should probably fix.
(14:35)
Erica: Yeah, I was . . . it's funny, I have a 15-year-old son and he showed me one of these little Tik Toks, these little videos that all the young people are doing these days. It was supposedly a college campus. It was supposedly Harvard. I have no documentation about that. But this person was going around, a young person, and asking students on the campus -- holding up a picture of Harriet Tubman -- saying "Do you know who this person is?" And they'd say "Yeah, that's Rosa Parks" or Sojourner Truth. Everybody but Harriet Tubman.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Erica: And so what was really interesting was when the students didn't show the picture but said "Do you know who Harriet Tubman is?" they all said "Oh yes, she's a conductor on the Underground Railroad." And that was it, like there was no additional information. And so what I wanted to do in this book in particular is to challenge people who think they know Tubman, like to ask them "Do you really know who Harriet Tubman was?" Like do you really know? Because I know the answer to that is no, not really. [Laughs] They think they know because it's the one page in their high school history textbook that had a picture of her in the top of the corner and probably one of Frederick Douglas somewhere nearby too and that was kind of it.
(16:00)
Aminatou: Yeah, you know, I think one of the things about the history of her that I have kind of never understood and I think maybe the movie also contributes to this is this idea that she was guided by these visions and the images that predicted her future. She would have dreams about where the danger was and what guided her actions.
And a thing that I really appreciate that you did in the book, and I say this as someone who is not religious and not spiritual at all, but that you encourage readers to take this leap of faith, you know, that she was taking and really thinking about one's life with a sense of purpose. I don't know, that has really just stayed with me from this reading experience and really trying to see what does it mean to have this record of a historical woman and also what does it mean for the path that we are all supposed to take in our lives?
Erica: Yeah.
Aminatou: And so I would love to hear you talk a little bit more about that leap of faith and also what you were trying to accomplish writing that way.
Erica: I wanted so much for us to see Harriet through Harriet's eyes. And Harriet Tubman really, she fashioned herself as a servant leader. She really did think that -- and she said this over and over again later in her life when she told about her trials and tribulations and her triumph as well -- she always placed her belief in God, her deep faith at the sort of front of everything. She didn't like to take credit for all that she did. She was someone who definitely liked to work behind-the-scenes but she always put her god first in her life.
(17:58)
As a historian I'm challenged sometimes by my peers to think as secularly as possible, right? We don't want to bring kind of religion or spirituality into -- because it's subjective it's whatever. And I feel like well if you're writing a biography or something that is biographical of someone you really must understand where they came from and sort of thinking about the power of Christianity for enslaved people in the 19th century, that was what got people up every day and it was what got people to survive and live and Tubman was no different from that.
She really did -- of course in terms of modern medicine we know that Tubman was struck in the head, she had a skull fracture from an overseer who threw a two pound weight that collided with her skull. We know that that trauma in this day and age would have been diagnosed in different ways right? And she had these spells that came after this trauma and she called them sleeping spells or what have you. Of course we would probably call them seizures today right? And we probably -- there would be all kinds of diagnoses attached to her.
She saw it of course as an event that triggered her closeness to God. She saw these seizures as moments where she was closer to God and had some kind of connection, inspiration, and really that he spoke to her through these visions and through these sleeping spells or seizures.
(19:45)
And so because she believed that and spoke to it her entire life it would be I think really problematic not to include that. But I also, you know, the same moment where she has this kind of religious wakening or this deep connection to God, we also need to think about that moment as something that made Tubman a woman who lived with a disability the entirety of her life. And we don't think about that. We don't think about Harriet Tubman as someone who lived with a disability but she did.
Aminatou: Ugh, I love that and also I love that you're teaching. It just makes me feel that sometimes the right people are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing with their lives.
Erica: Oh, you can come tell my students that. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Oh my gosh, they are so lucky. I feel like I'm getting emotional. It just made me very emotional to read that. It was like a very lovely read so thank you so much for writing that.
Erica: Thank you. You know, I feel kind of fortunate and obligated as someone who's decided to kind of dedicate their lives to telling the stories of black people, specifically of enslaved women, I realize how privileged I am to be in a position to write their stories and to move them from the margins to the center of what we call the American narrative. And with that privilege also comes an obligation to say their names.
Aminatou: Thank you so much for joining us on Call Your Girlfriend this week.
Erica: It was such a pleasure. Thank you.
[Interview Ends]
Ann: Let's take a quick break.
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(22:52)
Ann: Okay, next up I spoke with Alexis Coe who we are both a fan of. She's the author of You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington. And I love this book for all the aforementioned reasons about kind of correcting history textbook narratives but I also love this book on kind of a meta level because it is Alexis really critiquing the way that historians, the predominantly male historians of the presidents, have gone about their work and the ways they're kind of trying more to impress each other and be in dialogue with each other than get the history right. And I am really here for that layer on top of just all the juicy details about George Washington. So here is Alexis Coe.
[Interview Starts]
Ann: Alexis thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Alexis: Thank you for having me back.
Ann: Okay. First and foremost why George Washington? For you.
(23:50)
Alexis: Look, I'm as surprised as anyone. I love presidential history. I'm a political historian. The thing with Washington is every single time I picked up a biography I got very little from it. I didn't get any closer to him and I kept noticing that they all had the same preface which was to say he's the marble man. He's too perfect to be real. And first of all you never call a subject perfect. That's really strange.
Ann: It seems like admitting laziness.
Alexis: It's also admitting an intense bias that you are revering this subject so how can you possibly really look at him in a truthful manner? And so I started checking primary sources because that's what you do as a historian. I checked receipts. And their interpretation simply did not match up with what I was seeing in the archives and I realized oh god, I have to write a book on this guy.
Ann: There's a few things I love about this, and one is I love that you've kind of given a name to this group of male historians who have written all the definitive biographies of Washington and you call them the thigh men. I would love for you to explain that.
Alexis: The thigh men of dead history. The thigh men is what I call Washington biographers who have been -- I just don't want to say a lot of them have been male; they have been almost entirely male. In the last 100 years there have been three women to write a biography on him including me and I am the only woman in the last 100 years, the only woman historian, to write a book about him. And it shows.
The thing with these men is they're just obsessed with his masculinity which I thought was a foregone conclusion. It's George Washington. He's the general, like he won the war. End of story. Why do we need to obsess over that? Very quickly I realize that they love his thighs. They drive them wild and they talk about them so much. They talk about them in really homoerotic ways. They talk about the way he grips a horse. They'll spend paragraphs on it. It's like totally inappropriate. It's like look up here, he's got eyes.
(26:05)
Ann: [Laughs]
Alexis: I think because of this obsession with masculinity that was so ridiculous. It allowed me to have fun with a subject that a lot of people don't think is fun and I think if history is boring it's the historian's fault. If you can have fun with a subject and you can sort of see that angle then you have to ask yourself okay, if they're obsessed with masculinity what are they missing? Because they're so monomaniacal about it. And I realized that they have zero interest in women which is not like a huge realization. But to a point that they had sort of broken a lot of historian rules and they had repeated these myths through generations. We're talking about hundreds of years men have just been repeating these same stories about for example Washington's mother or about his wife. His mother was terrible and tried to thwart him; his wife was perfect and an angel. You know, we all envision Martha Washington wearing that bonnet and as an older, kind lady. I don't agree.
Ann: Well it's funny because when I hear you say it that succinctly I think oh, that totally fits with this hyper-masculine narrative. It's like he had to overcome his overbearing mother and then like found this perfect help-meet for the rest of his life. Like these almost fit these archetypal ways of viewing femininity like on the flip side.
Alexis: Absolutely. Instead of saying look, Washington was his mother's eldest son which means that in the time period because she was a widow he was essentially her head of house and she had to defer to him, this like 11-year-old kid, on a lot of issues. And they were partners and then when he grew up and she said go out there into the world she helped him become who he was going to be. And the thigh men act like she thwarted him at every turn.
(28:00)
What was interesting to me was not only what I could see which was a strange obsession with his masculinity and calling him a great man but also, you know, we're looking at someone who was raised by a single mother who had strong relationships with women. You know, we would talk about that with ease say with Barack Obama or this is a bad example but Bill Clinton, but why don't we talk about Washington in that way? Because it somehow emasculates him I think in their eyes.
Ann: You also mentioned that there are other stories that these historians kind of just perpetuated. And it made me think about the conversation that we had on the show about The Odyssey and what happens when a book where the translations have been built on men's interpretations of something for years are suddenly reconsidered by a woman, and doesn't necessarily mean that the new insights are gendered. I mean I know you picked this example about the women in his life but I also think that one thing I loved about your book is it is just in general a fresh take on some of these myths that those of us who grew up in the US reading really boring, bland history textbooks inherited. And I'm wondering if you could talk about a few other myths that you were able to bust in the course of writing this book.
Alexis: I think that there's the impression that George Washington was a great general and he simply wasn't.
Ann: [Laughs]
Alexis: Lost more battles than he won. And so the question is 1) why do all these books spend so much time talking about the revolution and all the battles and all the battles that he wasn't that great at and also wasn't really present for a lot of them? Most of the generals were in their tent on a hill looking down on the battlefield. He certainly rode his horse around and occasionally got involved and in his younger days he fought but the leader of the revolution isn't out there in the frontlines.
(29:55)
So the question is what was he doing and how did we win? And he was a great strategist in the court of public opinion. He tasked people in each colony, they're sort of in-between colonies and states at this point, and he said gather these stories about British cruelty. And in particular I'm interested in stories about women who are alone or with older relatives because their male relatives are fighting in the war. I want to know what's happening to them when British soldiers are around because we have to show the world that they are cruel. And it's also really good propaganda because this war wasn't a year. This war went on for seven years and you really have to keep people engaged and you can't do that with just the initial thrill of rebelling. You need to sustain that.
And so there were a lot of incredible stories that he recognized and sort of pushed. Congress would put out these periodicals and then those would make their way around the country. He also was a spymaster and he loved it and he was really good at it because he knew how to sort of hold his tongue. And he would get really involved in the drama of it and I thought oh my god, this is so much fun. Why aren't we learning about him as a propaganda master, as a spy master? You know, you learned a lot of that through his story. And I thought you know what? No battles. I'm going to give them a chart so they know what's what if they want and there's a sort of chart at the beginning of each section, each chapter, in order to situate the reader and give them the tools they need to be okay, I understand presidential history. I understand this era. I understand the founders and now I want to know what Washington was doing at this moment.
(31:50)
Ann: Yeah, and it's interesting too because that feels like such a more . . . it feels like of such modern interest. Like there are way more people out here trying to shape narratives and do PR than there are people being generals in the year 2020, you know?
Alexis: Absolutely. I had no idea that he would be this relevant now. It's incredibly relevant because a lot of his fears are being realized. Washington had two fears: he feared the rise of partisanship -- there were no political parties at the time -- and so he created the cabinet. That wasn't in the constitution. He created it and he built this team of rivals with Jefferson and Hamilton going at each other, but of course that fight spilled out into the street. And so that was the connection like oh, the partisanship started with Washington, it was his worst nightmare, and he sort of inadvertently helped it formalize.
And the other thing that's really interesting is his farewell address is almost entirely about foreign influence and about the risk and how foreigners can put men who are actually just after their own interests, who are corrupted, in the highest office. They'll become rich with power and they'll be serving foreign entities because they need to continue to do that to perpetuate the cycle in order to hold on to power.
Ann: Oh man, wow.
Alexis: I know right? A shock of recognition.
Ann: Like too close. Too close to the bone. Is there a sort of fact you uncovered or a moment in this process where you were truly, truly shocked? Like something you had really come to hold true from reading all these books that you were like oh my god, it's really just not accurate?
Alexis: Yes, oh my god. Here's the thing: women historians have a lot of work to do. They have to recognize and introduce women who have been dismissed and excluded from the narrative and then they have to check men's work because we find out what we think we know we don't. The moment I realized that things were off came when I was reading Ron Chernow's biography. He's lauded as this great storyteller and he is and he describes two scenes. Both didn't check out when I went to the primary sources, and I confirmed this. I was so certain that I had to be wrong because he's like a Pulitzer Prize winner. I checked it with the Washington papers. I checked it with Mount Vernon. They both confirmed that I was correct, he was wrong.
(34:20)
He in order to be this great writer, you know, fudges. The first instance was when Washington was in his early 20s and according to Chernow Washington's mother shows up at Mount Vernon, his plantation, which I call a forced labor camp, and she is like a bat out of hell. She's so angry. She demands to know what his plans are. You know, he uses the phrase "She arrives like a wrath of God." And he goes on and on about the scene she makes. And I thought my god, how embarrassing for Washington to have to report this to his general.
So then I go to the archives and I look at this letter that Washington sent to his general and it doesn't say that at all. It literally says the arrival of a good deal of company among whom is my mother, alarmed at the report of my intention to attend your fortunes, which is just a misreading by Chernow. What he's saying is she's worried that I said I would work for you for free because I can't afford it.
Ann: Oh wow.
Alexis: That was the first moment that blew my mind. That's really different than the wrath of God and a bat out of hell. And then the second thing was Chernow claims that Washington's mom wrote to the Virginia assembly and asked for a pension. They were giving older women and older people pensions, but particularly widows, because the war was hard on the older population. Inflation, soldiers coming through, it was extremely stressful. They lost family.
(35:55)
And so this was like a normal thing, but she never did that. She never wrote the letter. She definitely talked to her neighbors, everyone talks to their neighbor in a crisis, and she was a strong personality, but she never wrote and asked for help. And of course she wouldn't do that because her son is leading the war effort. He's famous. He's the most famous person in the world. It would be embarrassing for him. But Chernow says that she does.
Ann: Oh wow.
Alexis: And so he makes this case like she's so awful and you completely believe it and it's wildly unfair.
Ann: I am so happy you wrote this book. That's all I'm going to say about that. [Laughs] I'm wondering, you kind of described -- you said earlier these are things that are expected of or this is the role of the kind of woman historian who's coming in now after there have not been such critical examination of a figure like Washington on so many levels. I'm wondering if you feel that is a burden, an opportunity. Do you resent it? Do you love it? What are your feelings about occupying that space?
Alexis: All of the above. I think it's a great opportunity for young historians and I mean any historians who have felt like they've been boxed in or they couldn't get tenure if they didn't talk about a certain thing. It's also overwhelming because there's so much work to do. You have to find the women who need their stories told. You have to tell them correctly. They often don't have a lot of information in the archives and then we have to apparently check men's work. And I do feel like that is -- that's a little bit of a burden in that women will feel spread thin but it's so important. Women and people of color need to take on presidential history.
(37:45)
At the same time you have the rise of 50 first women too, the bad-ass ladies, that sort of thing in those books which come in the form of 50 short paragraphs or something like that. They're useful to a certain extent. I think they're great for introducing people. But then you read those paragraphs and they're repeating the same thing you could find in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article. They're not adding anything. They're often not told by historians. And so that bums me out, and so there's both so much opportunity and a lot of missed opportunity.
Ann: Right. And also along that line I know that you have a I don't want to say special relationship because that has some sort of political foreign policy overtones.
Alexis: Ooh.
Ann: But a special relationship with the other historians that are on this week's show and I wonder if you can talk about that.
Alexis: It's so exciting to be on the same episode with them. I blurbed Marcia's book. Erica blurbed my book and then I put Erica in the George Washington TV series that comes out in late February on the History Channel that I made with Doris Kearns Goodwin. And the three of us, you know, we study really different things but we're all really supportive of each other. We're in contact. We send each other -- there's a lot of heart emojis going on and we're just rooting for each other. It's really lovely to be in the same episode with them because we . . . I would say that a lot of historians are friendly to each other. There's #twitterstorians. But these are unique relationships.
Ann: Alexis thank you so much for being on the show.
Alexis: Thank you. It was so nice. Thank you for your support.
[Interview Ends]
Aminatou: I have to say that the best feeling about reading this book on the purely superficial level which my friends are so tired of hearing me say this is the feeling of saying "I'm reading a presidential biography" when people ask you what you're reading. I was like oh, this is what dads feel like all the time.
Ann: It's the lumpy genes of the literary world.
Aminatou: I know. I'm like you know what? What a flex. I hope Alexis writes a biography of every single president so I stay in the business of feeling good about having read a presidential biography.
Ann: Also having a favorite presidential historian? Love it.
Aminatou: I know. I'm telling you this is what dads feel like all the time.
Ann: All the time.
Aminatou: I get it now. I get it now. I have one. Lit. Okay, next up I'm very excited about this interview because it was done by Jordan Bailey, producer here at Call Your Girlfriend. So just on a pure fan level I'm excited to listen to it. And Jordan talks to one of our favs, Marcia Chatelain, who is the author of Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America.
[Interview Starts]
[40:35]
Marcia: My name is Marcia Chatelain. I'm an associate professor of history and African-American studies at Georgetown and I'm the author of the new book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America.
Jordan: Wonderful. I was really excited to talk to you because my dad, my grandfather, and my grandfather's twin brother are all black McDonald's franchise owners.
Marcia: Oh my gosh.
Jordan: Yeah. [Laughs] Your book really -- you know, it was squarely relevant to me. So I'm very familiar with McDonald's and with franchising and how it works but for our listeners who aren't as familiar can you just start out by explaining what exactly a franchise is and tell us a little bit about the relationship between the corporation and the business owners?
Marcia: So when we think of franchises in the United States we mostly think of fast food: your McDonald's, your Taco Bells, your Wendy's. But franchising is actually a model that's used in many businesses. So whether you work out at Orange Theory Fitness or you get your hair done at Dry Bar there are a lot of different types of franchised businesses and I think they are quintessentially American because they offer the promise of the American Dream if you are obedient and follow the rules.
(41:55)
But part of what I explore in Franchise is in African-American communities particularly McDonald's has meant a lot of things that are distinct meaning opportunities for African-American economic advancement, community building. There's some intersection with the Civil Rights Movement. So while there are many types of franchises in the United States for African-Americans who are really trying to build something for themselves and their community it can sometimes take on a totally different meeting.
Jordan: I'm really interested in the black franchise owner experience and a lot of this book is about that. Can you just give us the briefest history of what happened when McDonald's started pursuing black franchisees in the late '60s and sort of why they did that and what motivated the push to get more black business owners in McDonald's?
Marcia: Absolutely. So prior to 1968 McDonald's was very much a suburban brand that was targeting mostly white bedroom communities outside of cities. After Martin Luther King's assassination and the uprisings that happened as a result some white business owners didn't want to do business in black communities and there was a big federal push to develop black businesses as a response to some of the frustrations that people were feeling in the inner city.
And so McDonald's realized that if they recruited African-Americans to franchise stores in predominantly African-American communities they could have a very loyal consumer base. And so in many ways there's this perfect moment in which people are questioning what's the new direction for civil rights after King's assassination? The federal government is promoting business and McDonald's is seeing a consumer opportunity.
Jordan: So you write a lot about the hope that black business ownership through franchising would sort of create a pathway to equality. Can you talk more about that and how things actually played out?
(43:50)
Marcia: So this is where the story gets particularly complicated. And so from the view of 1968 or 1969 a McDonald's seems like an incredible opportunity for a community that is losing a lot of retail business, that has struggled to find first jobs for youth, that doesn't have a lot of opportunities for people to patronize a black-owned business. This is an incredible solution and it's backed by a lot of members of the civil rights establishment.
I talk about in the book how people who are heroes of the civil rights movement, a lot of them pivoted to fast food franchising because it was considered the next step in black freedom. But as the story unfolds we discover that fast food can only do so much and while African-American communities are being left behind by federal anti-poverty programs, by community development resources, I argue that the franchise starts to take that role. So it is the place where people can meet. It is the place where people register to vote. It is the place where a person can find an advocate in the community. And I talk about how that's such a mixed relationship because at the end of the day I'm a big believer that it is people power that gets things done and not corporations.
Jordan: I mean I was surprised by a lot of that. I was surprised to see that Julienne Bond actually was involved in franchising, that the NAACP took on some of the struggles that black franchise owners were facing. You started to mention some of the ways that the government was failing black communities in different ways that McDonald's stepped in. Can you talk more about some of the gaps that McDonald's filled that were left by the state?
Marcia: So for black McDonald's franchise owners they really saw themselves as part of a long tradition of black businesspeople playing that special role. So prior to the 1960s when there's a little bit more federal protection for black citizens the black business owner was the person who lent money to families, who ensured that there were college scholarships, who may have advocated on behalf of someone who had been arrested or in trouble with the law.
(45:58)
And in some of those similar ways I found in the book that these black McDonald's franchise owners, even though some of them became very wealthy doing this, were still very connected to their customers. And so they could be depended upon in times of disaster to provide emergency food or they would be the ones who made sure there were field trips for schools that had very little resources for kids.
There was a big trend prior to the 1960s when McDonald's didn't hire women because they felt like -- it's like everything sexism. So they thought they were too distracting and I guess they would seduce everyone as they tried to serve them food and so it was the African-American business owners who actually brought black women into the stores as employees and that helped a lot of families who needed dual incomes.
And so I see this weird relationship between a fast food restaurant where in some communities it's just a place to buy a hamburger and in the black community it becomes the center of activities that again I argue because of racism can't be met by the state.
Jordan: You started to touch on this but I was really interested in the chapter where you talk about the uprisings in LA after Rodney King and you talk about how there were McDonald's restaurants in the community that were black-owned that were untouched during the uprisings. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Marcia: Yeah. So this is like a famous story that circulates in a lot of business textbooks and I hear people tell me the story all the time. I've heard black franchise owners tell the story. I've heard McDonald's executives tell the story. Essentially after the uprisings after Rodney King was beaten by police officers and the officers were acquitted McDonald's put out a statement when things started to quiet down in LA that none of their stores that were African-American franchised were hit in the uprising.
(47:50)
And I thought that was such a strange thing to say because it suggested that there was so much good will for McDonald's and black people and that this good will started in the 1960s that McDonald's was kind of writing about itself like it was a civil rights hero.
Jordan: Right.
Marcia: And I was like this is kind of a strange tone to take. McDonald's writes itself into the story of civil rights immediately after Martin Luther King is assassinated and what's been kind of brushed out of the frame is the fact that McDonald's was the target of a lot of sit-in activism in the 1960s. Targeted because they had separate ordering booths or black people were refused service or couldn't work there. But that history kind of got erased and I feel like they were able to rewrite themselves into this new narrative because of the success of black franchise owners.
Jordan: Yeah, can you actually talk a little bit about the boycotts and the sit-ins at McDonald's? I remember the story about the McDonald's in Pine Bluff in Arkansas.
Marcia: So part of the fight to create federal protections against discrimination and public accommodations which led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 were activist groups like the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and CORE, the Congress On Racial Equality. They would do sit-ins like we've seen some of the iconic footage from Greensborough in 1960 and people would go into places where they would be denied service and they would just sit there and they would take so much abuse from racist crowds and from the police to prove a point about how unfair this was.
And so for most Americans they associate that kind of activism with people sitting on lunch counter stools. But what I found is that McDonald's was the target for this throughout the south and there's this incredible story of this woman who's part of an activist group. They go into McDonald's to challenge their racist serving practices and the manager closes the restaurant and locks everyone in. The protesters then realize they've turned off all of the air conditioning and they're just sweltering in there and they see a mob outside and they're not sure what's going to happen.
(50:05)
One young woman who was part of the protest, someone throws ammonia at her face. I mean the intensity of this type of protest and its access at something like a McDonald's gives us a lot of pause. And so much of the story of civil rights that young people are introduced to is Rosa Parks and buses and then lunch counters and then everything's fine. But all of those things seem really in the past and I love the opportunity to kind of bring McDonald's into the frame of that story because it's something that I think has really been lost but there's something really powerful and poignant to think about how McDonald's was actually this contested space for so many years.
Jordan: Right. And I'm curious about that too because clearly it was a contested space and there were a lot of problems going on there but at the same time you wrote about how, you know, during the Jim Crow era black Americans couldn't go out to eat. They couldn't eat in restaurants and if they did there was often a lot of public humiliation associated with that. And so am I correct that McDonald's and other fast food restaurants sort of provided an opportunity for black Americans to eat out in public?
Marcia: Yeah, so after the rise of fast food in the 1970s and when they started to target African-American customers, you know, I think it's so easy for us to dismiss something like fast food because we can think of it as not special today because it's everywhere. But I often tell people think about what it must've been like in 1970 for an African-American who had been terrified to go to restaurants because they don't know how they would be treated, who has only enjoyed about six years of federal protection, to go places, to be able to walk into McDonald's, order something, and then know that it will be okay.
Jordan: Right.
(52:00)
Marcia: And so a lot of the early advertisements, a lot of the marketing of McDonald's to black communities, is that you can come here and you won't have any problems. When I've been on the road for this book tour it's so interesting the number of older African-Americans who remember the first time going to a McDonald's. This woman shared a story with me recently about how her grandma learned how to make ice cream so that her grandkids and her children never had to stand at a colored window to get ice cream from the local ice cream shop.
Jordan: Wow.
Marcia: And she said "I remember the first time I went to a McDonald's and got a milkshake and it wasn't a big deal." And those are the kinds of ways that I really want to be empathetic and sensitive about people's consumer choices that can be so easily judged.
Jordan: Right. I'm interested in your framing of how McDonald's became black because there's this sort of stereotype about the relationship between McDonald's and the black community but that does actually have some truth to it. It feels like McDonald's more than any other fast food restaurant has a sort of special relationship to blackness. How did that happen?
Marcia: So when I talk about McDonald's being black sometimes people push back and say "But everyone eats McDonald's." I'm like yes, everyone eats McDonald's but it doesn't mean the same thing. And I think because McDonald's found so much success in selling to African-Americans in the early 1970s they realized that some of the aesthetic choices and some of the language, the music, and the celebrities that they use to market to black people they could use for broader audiences. So there's a way that the McDonald's commercial uses some of what they would call crossover strategies on the early side. They're really the first fast food restaurant to do direct appeals to African-Americans and see it successful and then Burger King and other fast food companies followed suit.
(53:55)
But I think the reason why McDonald's is also racialized as black is because in black communities a lot of things happen at the McDonald's. And so because of sometimes a lack of resources for places for senior citizens or young people to hang out it becomes a hangout spot. It is a place that you see a lot of extra curricular activities being promoted whether it's gospel choir tour shows or their sponsorship of athletics I think also played a large part of it. The McDonald's All-American Basketball Team is a very important accolade for young athletes. And so there's this way that it kind of tethered itself to things in the popular culture that are black that allowed people to see it through that prism.
Jordan: So this book is deeply, deeply researched. I'm actually curious how long did it take you to do all the research for this book?
Marcia: 9.3 million years. [Laughs] I've been obsessed with this, that's the thing. I get these fixations and the rabbit hole is deep.
Jordan: Right.
Marcia: I think it took about I would say about four to five years of visiting archives and talking to people and thinking through the research. If I had my way I would've written like ten volumes, like one for every year of some aspect of McDonald's but my editor was like you've got to cut this short.
Jordan: It has to stop somewhere. [Laughs]
Marcia: It has to stop. But I think I wrote this book in response to what I thought was a lot of negative judgment, particularly of black people and the way they ate. And so sometimes when people pick up this book they think it's going to be about food deserts and it's going to be about health disparities but it really is a social history of how we got there and it's also just a plea to just be compassionate before we judge why a person is consuming fast food or why they're having their children eat fast food or why despite all of the compelling arguments about, you know, patronizing one business over another people might make a choice that we don't understand, I really, really want the food justice movement to think more broadly about race, about their tone when thinking about communities of color. And also to understand that our allegiance and our loyalty to fast food sometimes has very little to do with the food and a lot to do with a set of feelings that this industry can actually make us feel.
(56:30)
Jordan: After doing all this research I'm curious what your relationship to McDonald's is.
Marcia: You know, before I started this book, I think this may be 15 years ago, I just kind of stopped eating a lot of fast food. I ate it all the time. I was in graduate school, I didn't have a lot of money, it was so convenient, but I started to get a little concerned by just how dependent I was on fast food so I just stopped kind of eating it but I still adore it. And I want to make it very clear that I have over the years found myself in a class position where my diet is more varied because I have more choices and more access and I still find fast food fascinating. I still think McDonald's fries are the absolute best.
Jordan: Yes.
Marcia: I don't want anyone to come for me for that statement. I still think the promotional materials are interesting. I love looking at happy meal toys. And so I feel like McDonald's has been with me through my life cycle. I ate it a lot as a kid and a young person and I'm now -- it's an object of study for me and fascination and it's a place where I can have a lot of my nostalgia. And so this is -- I think I probably embody the point I tried to make in the book that there are a lot of ways to have relationships with McDonald's that have nothing to do with the food.
[Interview Ends]
Aminatou: Jordan's voice is so soothing also. It's like yummy voices, you know? Her and Gina.
Ann: Producers.
Aminatou: Love to hear it. The history, we've covered it all. You don't need a textbook. We're done here today.
Ann: See you on the Internet.
Aminatou: Yeah, see you at our next meeting. [Laughs] You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favorite platforms. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back. You can leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf. Our associate producer is Jordan Baley and this podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.