Christina Cecelia Davidson, "Dominican Crossroads: H.C.C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation" (Duke UP, 2024)

Summary

Podcast Summary: New Books Network – African American Studies Episode: Christina Cecelia Davidson, "Dominican Crossroads: H.C.C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation" (Duke UP, 2024) Host: Kiana Knight
Guest: Dr. Christina Cecelia Davidson
Date: November 26, 2025

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Overview of the Episode

This episode features Dr. Christina Cecelia Davidson discussing her book Dominican Crossroads: H.C.C. Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race-Making in the Age of Emancipation. Dr. Davidson’s work illuminates how the life of H.C.C. Astwood—a border-crossing minister, diplomatic operative, and social trickster—offers fresh perspectives on Black identity, the intersections of morality and race, and shifting forms of diplomacy in the 19th-century Caribbean. The conversation traces Astwood’s journey across the Caribbean, U.S., and Dominican landscapes, and explores how religion, morality, and racial negotiation created new spaces for Black citizenship and political power.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Dr. Davidson’s Path to the Project and the Field

• Personal and Academic Influences: Davidson describes how undergraduate research in the Dominican Republic and connections with religious communities (especially the African Methodist Episcopal Church) piqued her interest in the historic links between African Americans, Dominicans, and Haitians ([03:35]).
• Original Dissertation and the Shift: Her dissertation focused on AME presence in Haiti and the Dominican Republic, but her research evolved into a different book centered on 19th-century hemispheric history ([04:50]).

“I was really interested ... in the ways in which people used language and language of morality to argue their case to gain an upper hand.”
— Dr. Davidson [05:41]

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The "Moral Politics of Race-Making"

• Concept Genesis: Davidson explains that while courts and property disputes drove initial research, the recurring invocation of "morality" in sources led her to examine how ideas of virtue, duty, and Christian values intersected with racial categories in the 19th century ([05:41]).
• Morality & Race as Power: She argues that race and morality were deeply intertwined, acting as “currency of power” in negotiations over citizenship and political belonging.

“Discourses of morality end up constructing race, or in some instances for Astwood, deconstructing it. You construct and you deconstruct and it's...a currency of power, I argue.”
— Dr. Davidson [08:51]

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Astwood’s Biographical and Analytical Treatment

• Astwood as "Cross-Border" Figure: Astwood’s mixed heritage and migratory life (Turks and Caicos-born, lived in the DR, US naturalization, US consul in DR) exemplify the intersecting racial, national, and social boundaries of the period ([09:24]).
• Trickster/Trickery Archetype: Davidson frames Astwood both as a historical actor and as an embodiment of the “trickster” or “tigre” (Tigere Dominicano) figure—a symbol of racial negotiation and resourcefulness in the Black diaspora ([12:38]).

"He's somebody who is very much representative of the times and is not afraid to use this moral politics...to his advantage."
— Dr. Davidson [11:58]

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The "Tigre Dominicano" and Black Diaspora Tricksterism

• Tigre/Tigreaje as Survival: The concept is traced to Dominican urban history—often applied to poor, darker-skinned men as upwardly mobile “social climbers” spanning boundaries of class, race, and law ([12:38]).
• Diasporic Trickster Parallels: Davidson draws connections to trickster figures in African American folklore, arguing this archetype links Dominican experience to broader Black diasporic narratives and complicates simplistic readings of Dominican "denial" of blackness ([13:45]).
• Blackness and Playfulness: The trickster is playful yet dangerous—a metaphor for the hustle and negotiation embedded in Black history across the Americas ([15:27]).

"When we really consider the Dominican case as part of that [diasporic trickster] we bring Dominican historiography...into more of a Black studies space."
— Dr. Davidson [13:30]

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Rethinking Black Political Strategy & Black Internationalism

• Nuances Beyond Heroism: Davidson challenges the urge to cast Black historical figures solely as liberators or heroes. Astwood’s actions show the multiplicity of Black responses to white supremacy—sometimes self-serving, sometimes collective, always complex ([16:39]).

“To talk about black people and to claim their full humanity, I think it’s really important to show all kinds of historical figures, all kinds of reactions to white supremacy...sometimes for themselves, sometimes...for their nation, and sometimes more broadly for black people. And Astwood does all of those things at one point or another, but he’s not somebody who you can easily place as a liberatory figure.”
— Dr. Davidson [17:00]

• Power in Discourse: Following Astwood exposes how “discourse becomes a form of power” that shapes political, diplomatic, and religious relations in 19th-century Santo Domingo ([18:10]).

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Working with Fragmented and Silenced Archives

• Archival Challenges: Davidson details the “treasure hunt” of following Astwood through disparate archives—often contending with gaps or state silence around non-official Black and Protestant histories ([21:37]).
• Reading Between the Lines: She uses genre, rumor, and indirect evidence to reconstruct hidden networks—especially in the case of church records, social organizations like the Odd Fellows, and confidential government dealings ([22:50]).

"...by understanding who was on Astwood’s side and who was against him, I’m able to piece together some of the stuff that must have happened ... behind closed doors."
— Dr. Davidson [24:37]

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Black Protestantism’s Influence on Dominican Political Life

• Religious Networks: The arrival of Black Protestantism (AME, Wesleyans) via African American migrants and British Caribbean missionaries shaped key intellectual and political figures in Puerto Plata and beyond ([26:02]).
• Intersection with Liberalism: Protestant churches offered alternative social and educational spaces, particularly under liberal governments. Their presence provoked anxieties and pushback from the Catholic hierarchy ([28:47]).
• Political and Social Influence: Protestant ties facilitated elite networking, language tutoring, and informed debates over secularism and public education ([29:45]).

"Protestants, they’re not necessarily out there to convert Catholics, but they do exist, right? ... under a liberal government...they can exist."
— Dr. Davidson [28:50]

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Gender, Class, and Black Respectability

• Masculinity and Power: Astwood’s maneuverings were shaped by gender. His claim to leadership relied on both Black and mainstream ideals of male respectability, blending church authority with social mobility ([31:53]).
• Overlap and Divergence: Davidson explores how Black male authority converged with Catholic and Protestant concepts of masculinity, but also led to conflicts when these ideals were challenged ([33:10]).

"For him, a lot of it is black respectability and black male respectability. And, and through that, you get ideas about leading the home, leading government. This idea of the head man."
— Dr. Davidson [32:07]

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Major Scholarly Interventions and Contributions

• Bringing Dominican History to Black Studies: Davidson wants to center Dominican narratives within Black Atlantic and diasporic studies, breaking from the traditional siloed focus on nation-states or "whitewashed" Dominican narratives ([34:24]).
• Race and Diplomacy: She highlights the role of race and morality in shaping US–Dominican relations in the 1880s—an underexplored facet of diplomatic studies ([35:00]).
• Complex Contact Zones: By linking sites like New Orleans, Puerto Plata, Santo Domingo, and Port-au-Prince, Davidson maps the region as a crossroads of diplomatic, religious, and racial negotiation ([36:45]).
• Morality as Method: Across her work, she demonstrates how moral discourse served as a tool of both racial construction and resistance ([37:38]).

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Memorable Quotes & Notable Moments

• "I mostly just wanted to know what happened with Columbus’s bones."
  — Dr. Davidson, on her initial curiosity ([11:20])

• "Astwood as trickster...a little bit of playfulness, there's a little bit of danger there. There's a little bit of, you know, hustle."
  — Dr. Davidson ([15:10])

• "To claim their full humanity, it's really important to show all kinds of historical figures, all kinds of reactions to white supremacy."
  — Dr. Davidson ([17:10])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:35] Davidson’s early experiences and motivation for studying Dominican history
• [05:41] Creation of the “moral politics of race-making” concept
• [09:24] Astwood’s biography and why he anchors the book
• [12:38] The "tigre" figure and Black trickster archetypes
• [16:39] Challenging hero/villain binaries in Black internationalism narratives
• [21:37] Navigating archival silence, rumor, and evidence
• [26:02] The role of Black Protestantism in Dominican society and politics
• [31:53] Gender, class, and respectability in Astwood’s trajectory
• [34:24] Davidson’s scholarly interventions and cross-regional impact
• [39:02] Future projects: expanding the study of Protestantism and religious networks

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Closing

Dr. Davidson concludes by sharing thoughts on her forthcoming projects, which will further explore Protestantism, race, and morality in the Caribbean and Black Atlantic, as well as transnational religious and migration networks into the early 20th century ([39:02]).

Quote:
"I'm really interested ... in that broader story as part of a kind of a network of religious movements and really a US kind of religious vision for the island..."
— Dr. Davidson ([41:09])

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Host: Kiana Knight thanks Dr. Davidson for her insights and urges listeners to engage further with Dominican Crossroads ([42:00]).

Transcript

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[Kiana Knight]

So welcome to the New Books Network and African American Studies, a channel of the New Books Network. I am your host, Kiana Knight, and today I'm speaking with Dr. Christina Davidson about her insightful and beautifully researched book, Dominican Crossroads, HCC Astwood and the Moral Politics of Race Making in the Age of Emancipation, published with Duke University University Press in 2024. And so in this conversation, we will explore how Dr. Davidson brings together Dominican, Caribbean and hemispheric histories to illuminate the moral and political worlds of the 18th century. It is a book that challenges familiar narratives and asks us to rethink the intersections of diplomacy, religion, and racial politics through the life of HCC Astwood. Dr. Davidson, thank you so much for joining me today.

[Dr. Christina Davidson]

Yes, thank you so much for having me.

[Kiana Knight]

Yes. First, I want to start by having you tell us a little bit about your backstory and what led you to the history profession.

[Dr. Christina Davidson]

Sure. So I, I did my undergraduate studies at Yale, and when I was a sophomore, I joined the Mellonlays Undergraduate Fellowship and had my first research experience, independent research experience, in the Dominican Republic in 2007 when I was fortunate to participate in, I was an intern for the United Nations. They had a office down there for researchers who were working with women in developing countries. That was called Instra. And I also, while I was there, joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church, having grown up as an AMD in the United States. And so that led me to learn more about the connections between African Americans and Dominicans and Haitians through religious affiliations, religious organizations. And that got me really interested in, in the history of the island, African American history, black history writ large. And so that brought me to graduate school. And so I was in graduate school at Duke University, and through my studies there, I wrote a dissertation on 19th century A& E presence in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And after I graduated with my PhD, decided to write a whole different book. So that's how we get Dominican Crossroads, which is actually based on 19th century. I think you said 18th in your introduction. So 19th century hemispheric history.

[Kiana Knight]

Awesome. And so Dominican Crossroads examines the intersections of race, morality, and diplomacy. And so I'm wondering, how did you arrive at the concept of moral politics of race making.

[Dr. Christina Davidson]

Right. So it wasn't immediately apparent to me when I started off writing this book. I was thinking a lot with some of the later chapters of my dissertation of which Aswa does feature, because he's the main historical figure that I obviously feature in Dominican Crossroads. He was a minister in the AMA church. And in the last chapters of my dissertation, he gets involved with the. With descendants of African American immigrants who went to haiti in the 1820s, and at that time Haiti had unified the whole island. And so he ends up meeting people who had migrated to Saco Domingo, which later became part of the Dominican Republic, and through his interactions with them as a minister of the AME Church, and they eventually affiliate with the AME Church, ends up in a lawsuit for church property. And so my dissertation goes over that and I have a, for the article that will kind of talk about that particular case. And I was really interested not just in the lawsuit over church property and who ends up working the property per se, but the ways in which people used language and language of morality to argue their case to gain an upper hand. And so in following Aswood, I started to see this all over the place, right? In documents about him, but also in broader, you know, documents of the era, whether American, Dominican and so, or Dominican and so, and also in the Dominican Republic during the late 19th century, you have a whole conversation around what is social morality, right? This concept of morality potentially outside of the Catholic Church. And so ideas about morality are not just religious, although I try to trace them very carefully in the Protestant and Catholic veins, as they're kind of appearing in different religious documents, but they're also about society, duty, and importantly, politics. And so the moral politics of race making, because race is also a very active kind of register in which people are thinking. In the 19th century, particularly in the post emancipation period, they're very closely linked with ideas of morality. Just as race and Christianity are mutually constitutive, so is concepts of morality which are coming out of Christianity for many people at this time. And concepts of race and what potential black citizenship can look like and how that manifests in politics is kind of what I study here in this book, particularly international politics and to a certain extent, national politics in the Dominican Republic. So in the moral politics of race making, that idea is how it basically kind of traces this juggling between how discourses of morality end up constructing race, or in some instances for Aswood, deconstructing it. You construct and you deconstruct and it's, it's Basically a currency of power. I, I argue.

[Kiana Knight]

Awesome. And so Dominican Crossroads wasn't intended as a conventional biography, yet Aswood's life animates the book in a lot of ways. And so how did you decide on this biographical, yet very analytical approach?

[Dr. Christina Davidson]

Right. So Estwood is a person who straddled all kinds of borders. Most immediately, if we're thinking in the 19th century register, he was a person of African and European descent. So he was a lighter skinned black person who very much kind of inhabited a kind of cross borderness. And that's exhibited too in his life. So not just in, in his skin color and like who he was associated with through his family, but also the fact that he did literally cross borders. He migrated. He was born in the Turks and Caicos Islands, ended up migrating to the Dominican Republic, lived there for a number of years, marrying, migrated to the United States, naturalized, came back as the U.S. consul to the Dominican Republic. But I didn't know all of that. When I first started researching him, I encountered him again as a minister of the ANA church. And the thing that one knows, if you know anything about Dominican history, is that he was a really polemical figure in the Dominican Republic and is best known in the doctor for his attempt to lease Christopher Columbus's remains to a US businessman. And then the idea would be ahead of the bicentennial of Columbus's discovery, he was going to kind of parade them around the US and kind of get people really interested in that celebration that was coming up in 1892. And so, excuse me, it wasn't the bicentennials, the quadrant, in any case. My, my point is that, that Astwood, he does this, this thing that ends up getting him fired and he, he doesn't leave office. And so he has all of these controversies that follow him. And I decided to feature him heavily in this history because I think that he really embodies what I say is a trickery figure, somebody who sits at the crossroads, who engages in what Dominicans would call Tigaraje or he said tigre. He's somebody who is very much representative of the times and is not afraid to use this moral politics that I was talking about earlier to his advantage. And so that's why one of the principal reasons that I focus on him, and mostly I just wanted to know what happened with Columbus's bone. And so once I started really investigating that case, I had to know more.

[Kiana Knight]

So you mentioned the Tigre Dominicano as an analytical framework for understanding the kind of Dominican blackness that Aswood embodied and So I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about what this archetype reveals about racial negotiation and survival in the 19th century.

[Dr. Christina Davidson]

Right. So what's interesting in researching the figure, like the Figuere figure, is that, you know, this really comes out of 19th century Dominican Republic. That phrase is actually associated with the late 19th century, and it was reserved for poor men, typically of like, darker skin tones, who are migrating from the countryside into the city. Right. They're kind of looked at as somewhat of a racial other, definitely a class other, and they're social climbers. Right. And so from a Dominican historical perspective, this is somebody who is kind of navigating, I say, in the shadows, but somebody who's kind of doing what they're not typically supposed to do in terms of social climbing. Right. But we also know that across the African diaspora we have many kind of trickery, trick their figures. Right. It's definitely part of African American folklore as well. Right. And we can think about, like Burt Rabbit, for example, in the US south, tricksters, I also use the admin. Right. Are also kind of these scoundrelly figures that come in African American folklore. And so I really kind of work through this concept not just in terms of Dominican historiography, but like diasporic historiography. And what I try to talk about is that when we really consider the Dominican case as part of that, we bring Dominican historiography and Dominican history into more of a black studies space. And that allows us to think a lot about Dominican constructions of blackness. Right. That are not perhaps as forthright or as always, as like, apparent as you might get in the African American or the Haitian case. This, however, does not mean that Dominicans deny their blackness. Right. As has been the stereotype. Right. Or has been discussed in US historiography on the Dominican Republic, and particularly for the 19th century, when many people could just simply could not escape that. And when you have political leaders like Gregorio Luperon or Ulises A. Roe, who are men of visible African descent, descendants of Haitians who are in power. And so I. I really wanted to think a little bit about the ways in which Dominican blackness or the Tigre can be kind of a metaphor for Dominican blackness. And it's a little bit of a playfulness, there's a little bit of danger there. There's a little bit of, you know, hustle. Right. A hustle that is indicative, not just a Dominican ness.

[Kiana Knight]

Right.

[Dr. Christina Davidson]

Or a Dominican way of being, if we're kind of thinking about the Titaraje, but also of a Black diaspora way of being, that it connects the Dominican Republic to the black diaspora. And so I think that that's really important just to push against some of the narrative that tried to whiten the Dominican Republic or try to disconnect it from its African heritage.

[Kiana Knight]

So one of my favorite parts of this story that you tell is that Aswood's trickery in a lot of ways complicates what we traditionally think of as expressions of black internationalism and ideas of resistance. And so I was wondering if you could speak to how you think this reframing changes how we understand black political strategy, broadly speaking, I think due to.

[Dr. Christina Davidson]

The immense amount of violence and just the extreme pessimism about what black citizenship, the opportunities for it in the 19th century, the 1880s, are right on the cusp of coming into Jim Crow, if we're thinking about it in the US Context, the nadir of the black experience here in the US and because of that, we need black heroes, right? We need to tell stories of liberation. However, we do know that in humanists, right, there is a multiplicity. And so to talk about black people and to claim their full humanity, I think it's really important to show all kinds of historical figures, all kinds of reactions to white supremacy and all kinds, all kinds of ways that individuals of African descent were trying to claim power, sometimes for themselves, sometimes for themselves and their family, sometimes for themselves and their nation, and sometimes more broadly for black people. And Astwood does all of those things at one point or another, but he's not somebody who you can easily place as a liberatory figure, right? And so, and it's also not somebody, I argue, and I really try hard not to do this, that we can judge, having not been in his shoes. And so rather than take a kind of moral stance on his strategies, I try to pick out what he's doing and demonstrate the multiplicity of the black experience, for one. And also ways in which, by tracking his use of moral discourse, we can see how power is flowing in Santo Domingo in different venues, whether that is in counselor dispatches or, you know, governmental records in Santo Domingo or missionary letters that he's writing back to the United States. And so I think that it's really important as a method to think about how, you know, discourse actually becomes a form of power which he is trying to claim for himself and also for the Rome, Coca Cola, for the big, for the small, the short and the tall, peacemakers, risk takers, for the optimists, pessimists for long distance love, for introverts and extroverts. The thinkers and the doers for old friends and new Coca Cola for everyone. Pick up some Coca Cola at a store near you.

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[Kiana Knight]

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[Dr. Christina Davidson]

There's no Milo here who picked up.

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[Kiana Knight]

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[Dr. Christina Davidson]

It was just the five of us. So this was all planned.

[Kiana Knight]

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[Dr. Christina Davidson]

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[Dr. Christina Davidson]

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[Dr. Christina Davidson]

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[Dr. Christina Davidson]

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[Kiana Knight]

Okay, thank you so much. I have a question about your approach to the archive, and you were speaking a little bit on it, about how you tried to allow Aswood's multiplicity and complexities to exist and come through in your writing. And so you draw multiple national archives in very different places. And so I was wondering if you could speak about some of your biggest archival challenges and how you used rumor and silence as part of your evidence.

[Dr. Christina Davidson]

I think whenever a historian is tracing one figure or using what I say is one figure as a guide, in this case, case Bastwood, there's always challenges to, like, see if this person will actually turn up right in the archive. So there's that kind of treasure hunt. And. And that's a challenge. I think finding. Finding records about, for example, the AME Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 19th century Dominican records, this is a challenge. It existed it was for a time robust in the 1880s. Robust being 100 plus membership in the heart of Santo Domingo. That's challenging because that's not a history that the Dominican state has celebrated. And so there are multiple challenges to piecing together an alternative history. The history of Odd Fellows. The Odd Fellows as an organization in the Dominican Republic, for example, you documents about that, right. And so for me, I think, you know, I. I used Aswood as my guide primarily because. Right. It. Well one, it tells a good story. But after that he actually allows me like his, his life story allows me to tell multiple people's life stories, right. By tracing his trajectory from the Turks and Caicos to the Dominican northern coast. I get to talk about what it was like for people in the Turks and Caicos who were salt. They were basically salt excavators, right. Enslaved workers and then were part of his family. And then after British emancipation, they continued to work in the salt lagoons. I get to talk about Puerto Plata as this, you know, jewel of the Caribbean, right. And trade there and talk about African American immigrants who also feature when he goes to Puerto Plata, but also Samana, right. And so he's meeting all of these people. I talk about after Samana, he ends up in New Orleans during Reconstruction. And I talk about that social milieu. And it was very. It becomes, you know, at each place I get to kind of trace what he would have seen, what he would have experienced. And then he ends up back in Sarto Domingo. And at that point I talk some about the environment in Santo Domingo, but I'm really delving into his dispatches or this Columbus Bones case or letters of recommendation. And it becomes more of a study of genre. That's where I start really thinking more about the moral politics of race making and thinking a lot about how if we take case studies of how certain. How we can trace the discourse within certain kinds of documents, we can actually trace how power flows. And this becomes most apparent when we're thinking about secrecy in a couple of instances, but I'd say most prominently in the seventh chapter, which talks about records of recommendation. And there by understanding who was on Astwood side and who was against him, I'm able to piece together some of the stuff that must have happened, the events that must have happened behind closed doors within the sugar industry and taxes on them, or relief from taxes that didn't happen, money that Aswood stole from American investors versus not. And how they're involved with the sugar industry. And so that becomes a way for me to kind of unveil what historian Jaime Dominguez has called the shroud of secrecy.

[Kiana Knight]

So you mentioned that finding records on the AME Church in the 19th century in the Dominican Republic was a little challenging, given that the state did not celebrate that history, which is a surprise since religion plays such a central role in your narrative. And so I'm wondering if you could speak to how black Protestantism shaped Dominican political life and international relations during this period, broadly.

[Dr. Christina Davidson]

Right. So in terms of political life, I think that there's. It does it, but it does it in a way. Again, these are. These are new claims that I'm making. Right. So black Protestantism is existent on the island from the 1820s, when African Americans. There's a mass movement to Haiti. Haiti governs the whole island in the 1820s, from 1822 to 1844. Right. When we'll get Dominican independence, some of those African Americans settle in parts that later become the Dominican Republic. We could think notably about Sabana, but also Puerto Plata and the capital, Satoromino. They set up churches. Those churches, by the 1830s are become part, at least in the north, of the British Wesleyan Methodist Church, even though many of the immigrants previously were affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States. And so the British Wesleyan Methodists are. They're British. Right. And they're Methodists. And they have churches, notably in the Turks and Caicos. Right. And the Turks and Caicos Islands are very close and have a long history of commercial intercourse with the. With Haiti and the Dominican Republic. And so, or at least I should say the northern part of this bandola. And so they end up sending missionaries from the Turks and Caicos. And you have this kind of economic, religious and social relations that are taking place between the British Caribbean via the Turks and Caicos and the northern coast of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. How does that impact? Well, a lot of the political thinkers that come to power in the 1880s actually either are born in Puerto Plata or course through Puerto Plata. So again, I'm thinking about Gregorio Luperon. I'm thinking about Uduces, a role both of who are educated by Wesleyans in the church in Puerto Plata. But I'm also thinking about Eugenie Maria de Hostos, who spends time in the 1870s in Puerto Plata and comes. He's a Puerto Rican philosopher, and he ends up being very influential in the government of Gregorio Luperon in 1879 into 1880, and some of the liberals presidencies that come afterwards, setting up normal schools, advocating for secular education. All of this opens up space then for Protestants. People who are Protestant are typically descendants of these African Americans in the 1880s, right? But you also have newcomers or people who are Protestants, for example, in other places like the Dutch Caribbean, the British Caribbean, who migrate. And some of these people are light skinned, some of them are darker skinned, some of them are labor migrants. And in this time, it's mostly, you know, traders. It's not. It's not the people associated. Who would later become associated with the. With the sugar cane industry and San Pedro Nagaris, for example. We're talking about a decade or two decades prior to that big explosion. And so this is more of an organic kind of movement that is more associated with liberals than people think about, typically. And Protestants, they're not necessarily out there to convert Catholics, but they do exist, right? And there is a sense that under a liberal government, right, that they can exist. They're preaching in Spanish, they're preaching in English. They're doing kind of dual things, right. When ministers come through, or bishops, in the case of the A and E Church, they do come through in the 1880s. And I document some of this in the fifth chapter. You know, Catholics are attending those services or at least try to see, like, who are these black bishops coming through. And so the political culture is one where they have the ear of the person who becomes president and later dictator, Ulises A Ro. They have the ear of people who are coming up from Puerto Plata or right, and are in politics in Santo Domingo. They are teachers. Some of the people are teachers to important political figures like Tasmira Lemoya received education from one of the pastors and they're tutoring them in, like, English. And so there are people, the Protestants have influence, and this is kind of recognized by the Catholic Church, but not overtly. So I talk about how in the 1880s, the Archbishop Nethino comes in, you know, he becomes archbishop, and he starts putting out in the Bulletin Ecclesiastical, the ecclesiastical bulletin of the. Of the Catholic Church, all of these epistles or letters, right, about Catholicism and. And also how Protestantism is so bad and how it's associated with, you know, the ultra liberal school of, you know, the normal Lisas, basically. And so. And so they're attacked, but it's all very implicit, right? And so I think really paying attention to what is not side reading between the lines allows to see what the political influence is. And really it's more of a promise of a threat than a real threat to the Catholic Church and its traditional power.

[Kiana Knight]

Could you speak to how Gender and class shaped Aswood's maneuvering within both Dominican and US and Turks black political circles.

[Dr. Christina Davidson]

Well, surely it helped him that he, you know, he was male. Right. So he's able to kind of do all this stuff. And, and I think that's one of the. One of the regrets of my book is like, this is a heavily, you know, male book within that. I really do try to do a gendered analysis of Astwood and his kind of the ways in which masculinity comes to play and concepts of masculinity comes to play in his worldview. But for him, a lot of it is black respectability and black male respectability. And, and through that, you get ideas about leading the home, leading government. This idea of the head man. Right. The authority that one has over home, over na, over government, over political power is what makes him a man. Right. In this case. And morality is all over that as well. Right. And so for him, I would say his kind of construction of masculinity plays into, you know, what we might read about in like, respectability politics, right. In the US that plays very well or maps very well on Dominican respectability politics. And so one of the things that I talk. I talk a little bit about in, I think chapter five again, and also some of chapter four, is how there is this kind of way in which traditional Catholicism, thoughts about black respectability, black male authority, you know, male authority in general, all kind of converge. And there's overlap. Right. There's also real points of divergence which ends up getting, you know, at least people who identify as descendants of African Americans in trouble down the line. But. And Asthwood as well. But for him, I think gender and being a man during this time does allow him to claim morality through the church and through his position as counsel.

[Kiana Knight]

So I want to transition now to talking a little bit about your interventions. And so how do you see Dominican Crossroads contributing to ongoing debates in African American history and Africana studies and scholarship on black internationalism?

[Dr. Christina Davidson]

Okay, so Dominican Crossroads is a labor of love, for sure. It's definitely. It's a history that focuses on Dominican 19th century history. Right. It, I mean, and. And it's interim, and it really tries to take Dominican history and put it in conversation with African American history and US Diplomatic history. So that sort of work hasn't really been done. There hasn't been a history of, for example, US Dominican relations of the 1880s. This book does that. And it also brings Dominican history, as much as we like. A lot of the new work has definitely and thinking about works by Ann Eller, of course, and talking about 19th century Dominican studies. Andrew Walker, Right. And there's so many people I'm gonna. I'm gonna forget if I start naming everybody, right? They're. They're doing a lot of work and a lot of scaffolding for me to talk about the Dominican Republic in this moment. These are people who the historiography has started to talk about the era of unification, right? They've started to talk about Dominican War of Restoration and how Dominicans and Haitians came together, right? They're starting to talk about how the US plays the huge factor in the constructions of Dominican racial ideology and how Dominican, Dominican elites, right, the thinkers and the politicians of the late 19th century are constantly concerned about US intervention and are trying to position themselves away from Haiti just so that they could get the US off of their back. And so people who have written about all this work, right, Cyrus Wieser, for example, is another big name, all provide the scaffolding as well as those who have worked. Professor Song, for example, Ni Kin Song and Jaime Dominguez, right, Who have worked really a lot on this period and on the dictatorship of the role. What Dominican Crossroads does that is different is that it also brings into conversation New Orleans. It brings into conversation US Reconstruction as real key factors to think about Dominican politics and US Figures within Dominican politics. It excavates what's happening between Santo Domingo and Port au Prince when we're thinking about the councilship in Santo Domingo being placed under the Haitian legislation, legation, right, as this kind of real threat to how Dominicans, Dominican elites, political thinkers at this time, want to position themselves in relationship to the United States. And so for me, Dominican Crossroads is trying to make a number of interventions. One, it's trying to bring Dominican history into black studies. Two is trying to think about US Diplomacy and really argue the case that race was essential and how people were thinking about diplomacy at this time. Three, is trying to think about the Dominican Republic in relation to Haiti and the US as this, you know, and other people have gone before, again, as this middle ground, this crossroads. But what does that mean in terms of diplomacy? Three, it's trying to think about variations of religiosity in the Dominican Republic. Or maybe that's four, I don't know. Variations of religiosity in LA. Dr. Not just Dominican Catholicism or Dominican voodoo or popular Catholicism, but also thinking about Protestantism as a real historical legacy and opening up what could possibly be like the visions of what people thought about for black citizenship not just in the us, not just in Haiti as a possible alternative, or Liberia as a possible alternative, or the various other places, but also in the Dominican Republic. Right. And so I think that it's really important to think about these people as intellectual thinkers. And I just would place, you know, another, another intervention that I'm really trying to get at is for people to take seriously the morality discourse that, you know, surges in all of the documents of this era as part of a race making process. And so my book really does. And I try to do that as a method throughout.

[Kiana Knight]

Wow, thank you so much. So before we wrap up, I want to ask what projects are you working on next? And do they continue to explore similar questions about morality, race in the black Atlantic?

[Dr. Christina Davidson]

They do. I have a number of projects and I'm pretty. I'm like, oh, we'll see which one of them actually gets done. So, you know, talking about them now, I'm like, oh, I hope I'm not signing myself up for something that I'm like, oh, I hope I complete that. So I have, I'm working on if people have read perhaps chapters one and two of the book. It talks a lot about Wesleyans, the British Wesleyan Church. And so I'm working a lot with those records, trying to get a fuller sense of what, what the Wesleyans were doing in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and their observations, which are really interesting and detailed for the whole course of the 19th century. And so I'm hoping to provide a broader history of Protestantism and race and morality and kind of British connections. Right. But instead of more of a diplomatic view, as if we're thinking about, for example, the works by Julia Gaffield, thinking more so within the religious vein. So that's, that's one project I have on the back burner front, depending on the week. And I'm also thinking a lot, not just backwards, but forwards into the early 20th century with other religious movements, not just in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, but more broadly to Latin America in the early 20th century. Of course, we get US occupations of Haiti in 1915, of the Dominican Republic in 1960. Team. Around that same time, there is a massive ecumenical push from the United States towards Latin America. And that includes large conferences. For example, in Panama, right. Right around the Panama Canal, in the Canal Zone, around, you know, how are we going to evangelize this region, this Latin American region? And they basically pinned together the idea of Christian brotherhood and American brotherhood right together. And so I'm really interested in that overlap. I'm interested that through those practices we get Puerto Rican missionaries evangelizing to Dominicans in places like San Pedro Natariz and SA Domingo. And so I'm interested in that broader story as part of a kind of a network of religious movements and really a US Kind of religious vision for the island at the same time that you get intense labor migration and I would say more of a grassroots spirituality coming out of like the garden movement or, you know, Dominican Liberismo for example. And so with Papa Liborio as being, you know, a crime figure. And so I'm really interested in that as another potential project. So right on the cusp of starting new stuff and we'll see what sticks.

[Kiana Knight]

Well, Dr. Davison, thank you so much for this rich and illuminating conversation and for sharing Dominican Crossroads with us and our listeners. And you've been listening to New Books in African American Studies, a channel of the New Books Network. I'm your host Kiana Knight and thank you for joining us.