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Dianna N. Watkins-Dickerson, "A Black Woman for President: Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Kamala Harris" (UP of Mississippi)
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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Shirley Anita Saint Hill Chisholm Harold Elizabeth Moseley Braun Kamala Devi Harris. At the time of writing this text, only three women of African descent have given successfully recognized bids by a major political party for the office for President of the United States of America. So far, none of them have made it to the White House as commander in chief. Yet now Vice President Harris has shattered the mold of white male leadership as the first woman and person of color, African and Asian descent, to be chosen for such a prestigious and powerful federal position, along with the international authority and prestige it brings. While former Congresswoman Lenora Fulani, Ph.D. and Cynthia McKinney were candidates for the New Alliance Party in 1988 and the Green Party in 2008, respectively, the rhetorical trajectories of Chisholm, Mosley, Braun and Harris in their quest to achieve the nomination for the Democratic Party has gained them not only national coverage, but international prominence, prominence and historical precedence. And their rhetoric is the subject of this book. A Black Woman for President by itinerant elder in the AME church and adjunct professor at the University of Memphis, Diana N. Watkins Dickerson. Diana, welcome to the New Books Network.
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Thank you for having me.
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Diana, can you talk about the impetus for this book? What prompted you to want to write it?
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That's a really great question. I actually started out at Stoneman College as an education major, and this was during the time that no Child Left behind was pushed out. And I was like, I already see the writing on the wall for this. But I also knew that my heart for education stood at the intersections of activism and diversity and ensuring that everyone had an opportunity and a seat at the table. And I realized maybe instead of education, I wanted to kind of move into politics or political science, that I've always been invested in conversations that you don't say at the dinner table. And those are politics and religion. Right. And so I moved into political science my junior year of college. I do not recommend that, but I had an awesome time at Spelman College. One of my favorite professors, actually, Dr. Marilyn Davis, was my senior thesis advisor, and she taught two classes that were so, so important to me. And I still kind of consider those memories so fondly. And that was the American presidency and African Americans in politics. And so that's really where my interest was peaked in American politics, foreign policy. I even remember taking a course with, or two courses, rather, with Dr. Fatma Shafi, who was also at Spelman. And so that's kind of where it began. And then I started asking Questions about women in politics in regard to, you know, what do they do different, how do they think, how do they lead, how do they speak right in front of a public audience? And then that led to other questions. When I went to Vanderbilt for my divinity degree, I still was asking questions about politics in the pulpit. Right. And so those are some of the intersections that you'll see in. In the book. But then when I finished my PhD at the University of Memphis, I really started asking those questions about politics, about black women specifically, and then thinking about these women that have run not just for president, but for mayor, for senior Senate seats, for Congress. Right. So that's really all of my questions started at Spelman. They were, I would say, broadened when I went for divinity school and then solidified into what we see in this text when I finished at the University of Memphis.
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This piggybacks on what you just shared there. But the book's introduction is entitled beyond the Pulpit and the Pew. So that's where the book starts. Talk about starting there.
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Yeah. So many times we see black women when they're speaking in public space. We see them oftentimes in black churches. Right. And so I don't want to say that black women only obtain voice and vision from the pulpit, but oftentimes that's where we see it.
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We see.
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We see it in the black faith tradition. We see it in mosques. We see it in other institutions that are likened to the black church, such as HBCUs. Right. I just said, I went to Spelman College, and this is one of the places where I really found my voice. And so I think it's really important for us not to slide past that. Right. To look at the Jarena Lee's, to look at the Maria Stewarts. Right. To look at the Harriet Tubmans. All of them had some sort of connection to a black faith tradition or institution. And we can even jump all the way to former Vice President Harris, who speaks about being in the black church, being at Howard University, and even pledging a sorority. Right. A traditionally and historically black sorority. So these are spaces where we can often cite or see sight black women, and we can also hear them. And so I thought it was important to also cite or see it black women and really where they begin to form their voice and often the roads that it kind of creates, where they can also find themselves on political stages.
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One of the things I really appreciate about this book, I'm going to try to articulate this simply, but it's. It's rattling in my head a little bit so let's see if I can get it out. Get it out, clearly, which is ironic in a book about, about rhetoric that centers rhetoric. But, but to that end, this book was different than I thought when I, when I, when I first got it in my hands, you know, titled the Black Woman for President, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Kamala Harris. I thought, oh, this is going to be sort of like a three person biography. And you know, in some, in some ways it is for sure, because you, you talk about, you know, their, their three backgrounds, but really this is a book about their rhetoric and it's a book about these three speeches in particular. And then what I felt was really interesting, and I want us to break down more throughout then, is while a very small percentage of the population will ever have the political platform that these three, there's no barrier to hearing their words on that platform, from that platform. And one of the things I did after finishing the book is I went to, I went online and I watched all three of the speeches which were. They're very easy to find and none of them are paywalled, so anyone can go watch them. They're though the Q and A portions tend to get a little lengthy over time. The speeches themselves are all very, you know, very short. You can watch them over lunch. And to be able to partake in them alongside your book was this very sort of demo. Felt like a very, like, democratized experience, which I really loved a lot and helped me get into the book further and get really excited about some of the things that you were talking about. So I really, I loved that experience and the positioning of the book in your research. And so you write that you had two primary goals throughout the chapters. One was charting the implications and phenomenological particularities of womenist rhetorical theory as a reliable, legitimate field of inquiry within communication studies. You know what? And before I even go to your second name, let's stick with that one because that's a mouthful to say. Talk about that goal.
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Yes. So first and foremost, I think one of the things people will see with this book is that, first of all, let's just leave with this. I am part of a D9 sorority and my line name was Webster. And I think I got it honest, right? My line name was Webster. Okay, so we've already said that part. But you know, my goal in using all of this fancy jargon and these big pieces of these big words, right? And you think about all the fancy pieces of paper up on the wall, it's not about that, however, because it is an academic test. And far too often, as I talk about in the book, black women are thought that y' all can't do this, right? And so it's. It's. It's really an attempt, and not an attempt because I did it. It's a quest toward not necessarily proving yourself. But I can do this, and I can do it better, right? And not only am I doing it better, but I don't have to stand in using Eurocentric theories to do so. And that is the ultimate quest of the text is to say, no, I don't have to use center Plato. I don't have to center Aristotle. I don't have to center, you know, Foucault, even though there might be some aspects there, right? This is not throwing the baby out with a bathwater, as they say, which is actually inherently violent rhetoric. But we won't go there today. What I will say, though, is that when we think about blackness and we think about womanhood and we think about black womanhood in particular, there's a. There's a way that we talk, there's a way that we think. There's a way we engage. There's a way that, you know, as Maya Angelou would say, right, In. In her poetry that, you know, just the sachet of our hips. I'm not saying it quite the way that she says it, but there is just a way that we wield words and we wield our experiences and our love and our joy and even our sorrow and sadness within those words, but we don't just say there. Dr. Melville Sampson, who I've written about in and in Other Spaces, actually has a podcast or a digital congregation, I should say, called the Pink Rope Chronicles. And just the other day I was watching. I'm part of the digital congregation. Just the other day I was watching, and she was talking about black joy, right? And so one of the things that I hope to bring is not just a critique, right? But also the. The. The care and the compassion that's still, you know, inherent in the way that we do research, the way that we do rhetoric, the way that we analyze, right? And so even in the text, I'm bringing parts, Big, huge parts of myself in the text. And so phenomenal phenomenology speaks of, you know, experience and situations and. And. And phenomena, right? And so the phenomena of being a black woman in this country is often foregrounded by race experiences, gendered experiences, and class experiences. And anytime you have a gendered or raced experience, it's Automatically classed, right? It's automatically thrust and pushed and diminished right to the sidelines. It's marginalized. And so for me, again, it's saying, you know what? I'm speaking from the voice of a black woman. I am a black woman. I identify as a black woman. My experiences have forced me to stay within my black humanity. My, my, my. My experience as a woman. And far too often, right, those that are marginalized do not get. Have the opportunity to escape that right now. You can have proximity to whiteness. You can have proximity to power and influence, but that doesn't mean you have the opportunity to obtain it or to utilize it or wield it in a particular way. And so that's why I wanted to center my discourse, what I'm trying to write within a framework that fits black women and that cheers black women on. So I would say in a nutshell. In a big nutshell, maybe that's the goal of the book for sure. And not to discount or discredit others in what they do, but that's what I believe that black women do. And I saw that in those speeches.
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What are some of. Or who are some of the authors and politicians or community. Community leaders that you look to while you were doing your research?
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Oh, there are so many. There were so many. In fact, I had to. I have a place where I keep things. It. It's literally titled Things Deleted from the book. Right? Because you just can't. You can't keep everything. And so I would say, obviously, these women, at each. At each heading of each chapter, I take a quote from these women, right? In other spaces and places that we see them speaking in public or on a political stage, and the way they identify themselves, what they're feeling, maybe what they're experiencing or have experienced. And so my first go to was, you know, Shirley Chisholm, Carol Mose Grande and Kamala Harris. They were my. My first teachers in how to craft this book. But I also pull from folks like Kay Cannon, you know, Tony K. Bambara, right. I think about Octavia Butler. Actually, one of my exam areas when I was doing my PhD was in black women's literature. And a lot of people think, okay, you know, literature, religion and rhetoric and what we're talking about in regard to political speeches. I think it's so important, and it makes me remember people that are thrust to the wayside of society and not remembered on purpose. Um, I remember learning about Belinda, who was an enslaved woman who sued for recompense, right? And I was like, oh, man, I've Got to write an essay about her. And along with Phyllis Wheatley. And so these are two women that I remember writing a paper about. Maybe eventually I'll publish it at some point, but I remember reading about them, and these are political activists of their time. These are people that are using poetry to write about their experiences about politics, about faith and religion and spirituality. If we think about Belinda, who could not write, who probably could not read, she signed her name not as Belinda, but with an X, right? And so that talks about the ways in which black folks writ large, right, during that time were. Were refused an education. Now, on the other hand, Phillis Wheatley actually learned how to speak several languages, right? One of them being Latin, which is interesting because my husband teaches Latin. And people are like, he teaches Latin, right? And they automatically assume he. He coaches as opposed to teaching Latin, right? This is for. For. For the highfalutin folks. But in saying all of that, I'm looking at ordinary people and extraordinary people, the people that you may see at the. The library at Spelman College, the people that I got introduced to while I was at Vanderbilt, even the people that I studied with while I was at all of these different places. But I also see folks, and I'll talk about it in. I think it's chapter six. I also talk about folks that are functioning in a local capacity, right? Tammy Sawyer, and take them down 901. And so I'm pulling from anyone and everyone and even from my own experiences, even from my own grandmother, other mothers, aunties, right? And foregrounding those experiences even as we. We are introduced to Michelle, right? I'm looking everywhere because I think we foreground the pieces of paper up on the wall, right? Those fancy pieces of paper, and we say this is what allows you entry. To speak about something that's academic, about something that is meritorious in nature and merit is a farce anyway. But I look to individuals that have not just lived through these experiences, whether they're in the pulpit, in the pew, or on a political stage. But these are people that have pushed through and persevered in spite of white supremacy, no matter where we find them.
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You spoke before about terminology, and you talk in the book about the. The term womanist and womanism and black feminism. Talk a little bit about. About womanism and black feminism, you know, theoretically, ideologically, and how you're. How you use those in the book.
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One of the ways that most womanist scholars will explain the two or differentiate the two, Lavender and purple, right? Stacey Floyd Thomas, who was my advisor at Vanderbilt, wrote An anthology, Deeper Shades of Purple. And I think about the particularities that are attended to within womanism. And it. It begins and it ends with black women's experiences at the center. That's not to say that black feminism doesn't do that, but I think in a stronger sense, because womanism is also a word that's. That's born and bred out of black experience as opposed to feminism. Right. I also, in my own experiences, whether that's in the academy or outside of it, I see ways that feminism as a whole, whether we say, you know, black feminism, whether we say it's, you know, feminism with other cultural groups, you know, we can kind of cut here and go over there. Ultimately, it's still tied in many ways to patriarchy or to white patriarchy or to whiteness, right? And there's this. This. This vying of power, right, Whose voice is centered. I mean, we can see it all over if we just open our eyes in the way in which power is still centered in, you know, white, hetero, patriarchal ways. And so for me, you know, I want to foreground black women's experiences because I'm a black woman, right? And that doesn't mean that black feminism doesn't have its place or feminism doesn't have its place or, you know, whatever, what have you. I think that we can all work together, but I think I liken it also to Black Lives Matter, right? And there were times where these central thought leaders and activists within the Black Lives Matter movement, they were like, okay, listen, we need to go to the table by ourselves. We need to get on one accord within the black community, right? Then we can open it up. And a lot of times, you know, people, you know, perform allyship, perform advocacy. And so I think that's one of the things that I want to, you know, say, hey, like, this is a womanist perspective. But more than that, I think that womanism historically has also been tied to black faith and black spirituality in very particular ways. Afrocentricity in very particular ways. So if we move from religion and into literature, you know, Lenora Hudson leaves just off the top of my head, one of the people that I cite within the text, right? And kind of how my definition of womanism comes about, you know, there's this Afrocentric pull also, too. And it's. It's. It's a little bit more tied to Afrocentricity, I think, as well. So I think that that's how I would regard my perspective. Not necessarily over and against black feminism, but clearly defined as something that is Specifically for black women. Also to a lot of people say, oh, well, I'm a womanist, too. Wait a minute, hold on. Right. Your proximity to suffering, you know, black women that suffer, or black folks writ large that suffer, yes, that's fine. But that's not a term that you're able to claim. Right. And so it's even our own term where we can say, okay, this is my experience. This is not to say that, you know, you can't come with us or we can't work together. But it's something that is sacred, too. I think that, you know, this is. This is something that we're owning. And we're also not just owning the survival pieces or the difficulties, but we're also owning our own devices toward freedom and toward thriving as well.
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So in the book, you've set up these theoretical frameworks for the reader. And then we get to the speeches themselves, the presidential candidacy announcements. And so I would love to spend a little bit of time just going through each of the three of them and just hear from you, really. I invite you to talk about whatever you want to talk about as it relates to each of the three speeches and how they're addressed. And I think it probably makes sense just to go chronological. Chronologically, starting with Shirley Chisholm. So talk a bit about your analysis of Shirley Chisholm's announcement.
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I think anybody, everybody, all bodies should be a fan of Shirley Chisholm. Right. I want to clarify. She was not the first black woman to run for the President of the United States. She was not the first. We often say that because we diminished elite and demonized communist perspectives. And so there is a Communist party. And particularly during that time, you know, we're not too far out from McCarthyism. And so you. You have Charlene Mitchell, right. In 1968. And so I do want to just clarify that. But beyond. And actually, I could not find good. A good grasp of her speech. So I will say that. But for Chisholm, and building off of, you know, obviously civil rights movement, McCarthyism, even, you know, Voting Rights act, you know, this is just 10 minutes ago. All these different things are still kind of happening. Here comes Shirley Chisholm from the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood, right. In New York. And who also has this. This energy. She's petite, but she's fierce and she's powerful. Something that you wouldn't anticipate or expect. And she announces her speech at Gardner C. Taylor's church, Right. Who is a prominent preacher in the black faith community. And one thing I would say for Shirley Chisholm. I wrote a paper about her years before the book, and that's where I really, you know, kind of got interested. But I was like, there's still not enough. Even though there are people that focus on Shirley Chisholm, there are people that speak about Shirley Chisholm's influence. There's a. I think a Shirley Chisholm center at Mount Holyoke. There are all these different places that are dedicated to what Shirley Chisholm did. We talk about her in that regard. And I think there's also a. There's a documentary too, on Shirley Chisholm. I just watched it, actually, and it's great. But when it comes to her as a rhetorician herself, I would say when it comes to her as, you know, really, I would say I project a lot of what I believe womanist rhetorical theory is based on who she was, how she spoke, how she entered into spaces and shifted atmospheres. And so I think Chisholm is the gold standard. I mean, I think we all might say that whether, you know, we identify as woman, as black feminist or, you know, whatever, she's the gold standard. And at the same time, I really did use her, uh. If I'm thinking about mimesis or mimetic devices that, you know, like copying or. Or using her as a template in the way that I crafted my theory, because she uses so many different rhetorical devices that, you know, just anaphora and just, you know, all of these different things throughout her speech that I. That I talk about to. To pull in the. The partially congregation.
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Right.
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Because she's at a church, but she's pulling in a congregation. She's pulling in the black audience. She's pulling in, I'm sure, just like we saw with. With Harris, she's pulling in folks that, you know, are part of the D9. She's pulling in folks that probably went to HBCUs, whatever. But she's pulling in this community in such a way where you're going to pay attention to me, and I may use some of these rhetorical devices or these big fancy words or this big, you know, rhetoric and jargon or what have you. I might use that, but I'm going to wield this in a very particular way, and I'm going to will this in a way that it ignites my base so that they can believe that we can actually move them out in here. Right. And so one of the things that she says at the end of a few documentaries that I've seen and, you know, she says, you know, I want to be remembered, remembered as a black woman who dared to be herself, you know, of the 20th century, of the 21st century, that dared to be herself. Right? And so she already says, hey, I'm going to be myself, no matter who you think I should be, no matter how you want to caricature me. Right? Because that's one of the things that was left from the book, the ways in which she was caricatured by others. Right? And she's. She's. She's made into, you know, this. This welfare queen, even though she doesn't have any children. You know, she's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is who I am. This is what I'm running for. This. These are the people that I'm focused on. And this is the way that I'm going to build. Not just my campaign or the speech that I analyze, but this is how I'm building my legacy.
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I. So I mentioned. I rewatched all after finishing your book. I shouldn't say rewatched. I had never seen any of the speeches live, so I watched the three of them. And the first thing I'll say, because this is a podcast, so people are only listening. They can't see us. When you began talking about Shirley Chisholm, both of us, our smiles and our, like, our. This. This, you know, virtual room that we're in, like, lit up as you were talking about Shirley Chisholm, because I think we will. We just. She invokes that in people, even all these years later. I also had the chance to see some. Some movies. The. The Museum of the City of New York, where I live, had a huge exhibit for her because 2024 would have been her 100th birthday. And being that she was a local here to New York, there was. There was a lot of. A lot of Shirley Chisholm love in and around. But watching that speech and. And thinking about your book and some of these things that you pointed out in her ways of speaking and her ability to command the room was that I noticed, you know, what you saw, if you're. If you watch the. Watch the speech is you really just see the deus, right? Like, we don't get a full room shot. Like, you can't see who else is in the room. You're looking at the de, but the deus is full, and it's full with a lot of white men. There's a few black men as well. It struck me that it would. It's not a dais. We would See today in terms of racial and ethnic makeup. And also, you know, they. Those people in the dais, though they were certainly her supporters, didn't represent the demographic of her district either. And the command she had, like, it was such a commanding speech. And I think people that even know a little bit about her, you know, people that, like myself, who are not alive when she ran for president, but the, you know, unbossed and unbought is something we know, you know, we equate with Shirley Chisholm. And just to see that, you know, to see her beyond that sound bite was really, really powerful, especially in the context of having read your book and looking at that in a different way. Okay, so we go from Shirley Chisholm to Carol Mosley Braun, which admittedly, of the three was one I went into this book knowing the least about was Carol Moseley Braun. And so talk a little bit about her and her announcement so people sleep.
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On Carol Moseley Braun. And I have still, in that document, which I've split up a little bit, things deleted from the book. It's literally titled that, you guys. And I have pieces about Carol Moslebon. And, you know, she. Her. Her recent book, Trailblazer. She really is a trailblazer. I mean, she is the first black woman senator in Congress. She was the first. Right. And I'm not an historian, so I'm not going to try to calculate yet the. The years. I talk about it a little bit in the book, but she is very, very, very, very clever, very smart. Smart. And I remember part of her speech, you know, where she talks about building bridges, right? And so in a time where so many bridges are being burned across the world, where, you know, if we think about, you know, American imperialism, if we think about capitalism, if we think about just European imperialism too, right. If we think about all of these different things. And, you know, this is also a time, if I remember correctly, again, I'm not an historian, the European Union and, you know, trying to think about the euro and the value of the euro, all of these different things are happening. I'm really, really pulling back hard in my American foreign policy class. But she's functioning during this time and she actually, you know, is. Is standing alone, right? Just in the same ways that Shirley Chisholm did, she's standing alone. I mean, I have been one of the only black women or black girls in a space, right? And so I was able to identify with her. Not necessarily. Maybe in some things I've been the first, right? But on such a platform and to, you know, be. I remember reading an essay and I think I talk about it a little bit. Again, one of those things deleted from the book, but where the Daughters of the Confederacy were, you know, trying to get some legislation passed. And she's in the middle of a meeting, and her staffers essentially are pulling her out, like, wait a minute, this thing is happening. This thing is happening. And, you know, she goes into the Senate floor and she's like, absolutely not, right? And so I think we sleep on Mosley Braun, because she wasn't. She only did one term in Congress. I think we sleep on her just. Just longevity. But also I think she's so quiet. She's seemingly quiet. And one of the things I talk about is how, you know, every place you find her, she's smiling. And I think the way that we can think about smile many times as performance, right? I've been told before, like, deep in thought, right? I'm an intellectual, and so oftentimes something will happen, and I'm just deep in thought. It's not because, you know, I don't want to be nice or, you know, whatever. I'm actually thinking. And I've had people, white, black, male, female, why don't you smile? And I'm thinking, leave me alone. Leave me alone. I'm trying to figure. Figure something out. Or it could be, you know, where is that building again? Or it could be, you know, I had this appointment in 15 minutes and, you know, I got pulled behind by something else, or, you know, whatever the case may be. But the way that women in general, that just black women, right? But women in general forcibly smile, and that smile, you know, becomes a performance. But when you see her in her speech, I take the smile. Actually, I don't really go into this that much. But again, things deleted from the book. I think about how she uses that smile to her benefit almost to pull people in. But I've got some things I'm going to say. Some people might not like them, right? And it's not that she's being sly, it's that she's being clever and she's being very particular about who she is, how she sees this country, you know, at her vision for this country, but also her plan to. To push it forward, right? And she talks about building bridges, right? And so the opposite of that is to burn them down, right? The opposite of that. And so, you know, I could probably, from things deleted from the book, I think I'm going to just keep on saying that, that I could actually, like, take all of Those notes, all of that fodder, let's, you know, write another. Maybe not a book, but an essay or maybe a book about other ways that black women think about this is what I'm going to say, but here's what I'm mad saying, right. And so I think that that's something that really reeled me in also. Course, she's at the campus of Howard University, and Howard University is such a special place. I mean, we can think about all of the. The amazing graduates of Howard University. Just a few. Few days ago, Richard Smallwood had a funeral. And so many people were there, dignitaries and special guests. And, you know, Felicia Rashad actually gave some. Gave some words at the. At the. At the ceremony, and she just reeled you in. And so Howard is pushing out folks that are so amazing and so great and so brilliant and so talented, just like other HBCUs. And her son goes there, and he's the one that introduces her. Right. And so I just think that that's so special. And I will say the way that she smiles at her son is as he's, you know, bringing her up is different than the way that she smiles at her audience or other times when I've seen her smiling when she's speaking on a. On a public stage. Right. Whether it's for an interview, whether it's, you know, giving a speech or, you know, what have you, it's very, very different. And I guess I will say, you know, as a mother, I kind of understand that smile. It's. It's just different, and it's not calculated, but it's curious. Curious in the sense of, all right, this is my agenda, and this is what we're doing. Right. And in a way that black women lead, I think. I definitely think that there is a softness, but there's also a structure and a strategy to the way that they lead. And that's definitely something that I saw from her and how she crafted her speech. And, you know, I talk about this politics of, you know, being polite and, you know, if we think about being demure. Right. And also there's performance in there, too. Right. But the ways that black women have to perform in order to get to where they are, but still be able to hold onto their souls. I think it's also something to be studied as well. But Carol Mosley Braun by far goes on to be ambassador to New Zealand, so she's never really left public life. But I think that if more study was, you know, was had and, you know, if we investigated her more, we see a lot of great things about what she did, not just in Congress, but also in other spaces in politics.
- [39:40]
B
It's an invitation for people that are looking.
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Yes.
- [39:46]
B
For a topic. So I, I want to get to Kamala Harris, the third speech that you look at in the book. But before we do, I'm listening to you talk about Shirley Chisholm and Carol Moselbron. I'm reflecting on something which is. I'm always interested when authors are looking at near historical events, Right. Because I think there is a contextualization that only happens with time that doesn't, you know, doesn't necessarily happen right away and in the book, chronologically, of course. I think it's safe to say anyone reading this book, you know, remembers Kamala's speech, whether or not they actually watched it. We were sort of all around and adults at the time. And so on the one hand, I thought, wow, like, would, you know, would that have made. Would that have created a different challenge for. For you as the scholar, as opposed to, say, a Shirley Chisholm? But in hearing you talk about the speeches, I'm now re. Reflecting that. Well, I mean, we have video, but. But a speech is a point in time. And so from that perspective, is the fact that it was not that long ago irrelevant to your analysis? Like, talk. Talk me through that. Talk about that.
- [41:15]
A
So I will tell you, Harris was the hardest one to do.
- [41:18]
B
Okay. She was. Okay.
- [41:20]
A
So I, I think that, you know, highlighting those points like, we were there, we were alive, right? For Mosley Braun, we were alive. But, you know, I was in college. I was still trying to, you know, figure things out, and Harris is different. And there's still so much to be seen from Harris's journey through public life, through. Through politics, political life, her activism. And I think that, yes, time will tell. It's going to be great in 20 years, you know, when I'm already claiming that when this is republished, we can look at it again, I'm speaking that into existence. But you know, and also, even too, you know, as people are getting the book and they're diving in and they're joining their book clubs and they're like, yes, let's read this. Or professors or, you know, crafting their syllabi, it's going to be interesting even. Remember now those that listen to this, and I know, you know as well, right, you write a book, you go through the editing process. And so there are so many things that have happened now that I can't really, you know, talk about in the book because it's already in production. Right. There's a process. It's not just like, oh, I wrote this yesterday. Right. There are things even now that I'm finding and seeing, you know, as Harris is still active, and even her second run for president, you know, I wasn't able to fully delve into because the book, again, was already in production. And so there are little places where I'm able to. To. To pull that apart. But I definitely think it's different. I think it's a little bit difficult because part of me is like, how is this going to play out? Right? And. And part of me, though, is saying she's still doing something that's particular to black women, who black women are, how black women experience public life, political life, how they are, you know, thrust into the public eye as well, and how they're analyzed and caricatured. Again, things deleted from the book. And so with that being said, I do look at Harris a little bit differently because she's still here. She's still very active. She's still alive, knowing what I know after writing. Right. And also, just to be fair, she's up against different challenges, but she's also up against different realities because, you know, with. With Mosley Braun, we have not had anything other than white men become president of the United States, period. We. We have not had it, you know, we've. We've had, you know, a Secretary of State or secretary of State, right. That have functioned, you know, in these roles and in high political roles. But as far as a president or a vice president, no, we just haven't. And so I think one of the good things about writing about Harris is that I get to test out some of the theories that have been learning along the way, whether it's, you know, doing the Master's, doing the PhD and even all the way back, you know, oh, Lord, almost 20 years ago in undergrad. Goodness gracious, stuff will age you real quick.
- [44:55]
B
Right?
- [44:56]
A
But you get to test this stuff out and see, like, does it fit, does it work? And I would say yes, in a lot of different ways. But also there's some breathing room because the vision. I still believe that Shirley Chisholm was trying to cast, Carol Moseley Braun was trying to cast. In some ways, we've experienced it with the presidency of Barack Obama. Right. But in a lot of ways, we still have not. Right. And so I definitely think that it's different. It does make it a little bit more difficult, but it also makes it easier in some ways. And there's a way that Harris is able to build off of the work of the ancestors that have come before her. There's a way that she's able to say certain things. There's a way that she's able to announce her speech not in a historically black church, not in a historically black college, which actually she went to. Howard And I would argue, of course, I would love to have some side by side time with Vice President Harris. That is a dream. I'm just saying that out there, you put it out there, we're speaking it into existence as well. But you know what? If she had chosen Howard as well. Right. You know, that would definitely be a callback. But I think because Mosley Braun already picked it and also because we've had, you know, a black president in recent years, she gets to say, no, I'm going to reclaim and reimagine and recategorize this thing that is said to be awful for us and say no, These women, they've done the work, this man has done the work in our recent memory. Right. And I get to stand on their shoulders and I get to say no, we built this country. Right. We are the visionaries of this country. We have what it takes. If you look at the way that, you know, black folks writ large, we are inventors, we are visionaries, we have economic power, we are decisive, we are smart, we are with it. And so I'm going to stand in front of something that, that signals maybe for some violence, it signals maybe for some, a lack of freedom. And then, no, we're reclaiming this for our own. And you know, we're not going to just rebuild this new house, you know, with these same masters tools. I've got somebody on my left and on my right that have already rebuilt this thing for me and I'm going to use that to my benefit. And I believe that if we think about a society, one that I would argue in some ways is somewhat afro futuristic or, or afrofuturistic, as Dr. Ashley hall would say, one that takes seriously black women, black women's thoughts, black women's beliefs, their ways, their words, their wisdom and their wit, we would see that Harris is able to exist in her ancestors wildest dreams. So for me, Harris, yes, to answer your question, again, a little bit difficult, but it's different and in a good way.
- [48:15]
B
Who's the book for? When you think about readers, the two.
- [48:20]
A
People I thought about the most in writing the book were me and my daughter. So that's, that's, that's first, um, I think that anytime you have a project, whether you're writing a book, whether you are crafting, you know, a piece of art. I can't draw. There are some people that are, you know, amazing artists. Whether you're writing a song, it should inspire you just as much as it inspires other people. And if it doesn't inspire you, if it doesn't keep you up at night, then it may not be any good, right? And so I want to read this sort of book, right? I think it was Toni Morrison, and I think I see it in the very beginning, right? If there's a book, right, that you want to read and it's not out, you need to write it for yourself. This is something that I would want to read. This is something that any Spelmanite would want to read. This is something any HBCU graduate will want to read. Anyone in the black church would want to read. Anyone that. If you're like me and a member of Sigma Yammer Rose Sorority Incorporated, or if you're like Vice President Harris and you're a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, anybody should want to read. This is, you know, political science majors. This is, you know, historians. This is anybody in corporate America, because we can learn from the leadership skills that are displayed and distributed in this text. You know, about these various black women. This is for everybody, too. And so for me, yes, I think about my daughter. I think about, you know, the different things that she will come up against in this world as a little black girl. Some of the things that I've claimed. I mean, I was competitive gymnast. And so this was before Simone Biles, who, you know, is the goat, right? This was before Gabby Douglas, you know, Dominique Dawes was there, Betty Okino and. And. And. And others, right? But we remember the gold medal winners. We remember not from the team, you know, not the Mag 7, right. I love Dominique Doss. Would love to meet her, too. Just saying. But, you know, I remember what it's like, right, Being one of the only ones out there. I remember what it's like being on, you know, a national championship team for competitive cheer, when I took a year off from gymnastics, being the only one. And so definitely that is a target audience is other black women. But I think that there's a way that anyone and everyone can learn from black women's experiences, Black women's leadership, Black women's visions for the future and how they're able to reclaim and reimagine their voice, their. Their vision for the future, and they're able to build not just on, you know, the atrocities of the past, but they're also able to build on the hope. And again, as I said earlier, that joy, that joy unspeakable. They're able to build on that. And they're able to say, in spite of everything that's going on around them. Right. I still have joy, and I'm still going to fiercely hold onto that joy in not just my future, in my daughter's future. And that's something that anyone and everyone can. Can glean some wisdom from.
- [51:43]
B
So we know that you have a file of things deleted from the book. Yes. Are those, is that. Is that file going to make its way into the next book? Is there something else that you're working, like, what is. What is next? I'll leave that as a. A wide open question because some people don't like to talk about, like, if they have a thing, they don't want to talk about the thing yet. But just what. What is next?
- [52:11]
A
What is next? Gee whiz. I was, I was hoping that wouldn't be a question, right? But I was like, no, but I'll say this. I'll say this. What is next? You know, on the one hand, I think what's next right now in the here and now is to see where this book goes, right? I think we don't celebrate long enough. It's a lesson that I've learned, you know, because I am so old and wise. No, I. I feel old when I talk about being a college 20 years ago. I did then. But, you know, it's something that I'm still learning. So I will say for now, I want to hold on to this and enjoy this. I've enjoyed this conversation. And it's also. This conversation has also made me realize that there's so much more to write about. There's so much more to write about when talking about Carol Mosley Braun because people are not familiar enough with her. We still have so much to uncover from, you know, the late, great Shirley Chisholm. We have so much to yet see from former Vice President Harris. And there are others. There are others that are coming into their own. Representative Jasmine Crockett. There's so much to be written and to be said about her. There are others that are on various political stages and not just national politics, but if we think about black women that are mayors. So maybe someone's looking for a dissertation and they'll beat me, but I think about black women as mayors. When I was at Spelman College, Shirley Franklin was in her. I think it was her second term. You know, so who is. Let me think back a couple years ago. What was it? Keisha Lance Bottoms. Right. So. And the way that she had to lead Atlanta and really just the larger metropolitan Atlanta area, which you have Also Gwinnett County, DeKalb County. Right. I think about so many black women that need their stories told. And there are other black women that I would say are unboxed, unboxed and virtually unbothered, and they still take their voices to the streets, and they still are. Are motivated to doing what is just, what is right, what is true, not just for their own behalf, not just for themselves and for their daughters and for their mothers and aunties and, you know, whoever else, but for their communities and the world. So there's much more to write about. I think if I keep talking about the, quote, things deleted from the book, I'm going to haunt myself. But I will say that there's more political riding ahead and also, too navigating other things. You know, my areas primarily are political science, politics, civics. Right. Political communication, also religious communication, the relationship between literature and rhetorical analysis. Not enough people talk about that. And even from black women's health and even social media. I'm a bit of a social media buff, so I did rhetoric and media studies. Those were my foci in the program, in the PhD program. And so there's so much. Right. And it's always, though, going to be about black women. So that the next thing that you read, definitely know it's going to be about black women, or if not black women, definitely women. Because I think we have so much to offer this country. We are educated. We're with it. We are on the front lines and we need to be heard.
- [56:24]
B
Well, this book is A Black Woman for President by Diana N. Watkins Dickerson. Find Diana@ WatkinsDickerson.com or on social platforms at drdnwd. And I am your host, Sullivan Sommer. You can find me online at SullivanSummer.com on Instagram at the SullivanSummer substack@sullivansummer. Thank you for listening to the new books.