Background reading:

• FEMINIST 250: Founding Feminists
• “America’s Founding Feminists: Rewriting America’s Origin Story” — Janell Hobson

Transcript:

0:00:00 Michele Goodwin:

Welcome to 15 Minutes of Feminism, part of our On the Issues with Michele Goodwin at Ms. Magazine Platform. As you know, we report, rebel, and we tell it just like it is, and on 15 Minutes of Feminism, we count the minutes in our own feminist terms, and we dive right in, and that’s what we’re doing as we explore America at 250.

What does that mean for a feminist agenda? What does that mean for women in a nation that’s undergoing significant transition, a nation in which its government is literally wiping away and painting over terms like women, gender, and so much more?

And joining me to think all of this through and to launch this very special effort at Ms. Magazine is Professor Janell Hobson, who’s been a friend and fellow traveler of Ms. Magazine and also led Ms. Magazine with a very special project on Harriet Tubman. 

So, our friends, sit back and take a close listen, and make sure that you look at our website as we track the role, the place, the leadership of women in forming a nation that is still working towards its arc of freedom, autonomy, liberty, and happiness for women. 

Janell, as you know, on our 15 Minutes of Feminism platform, we dive right in. And right now, you’re curating a project for Ms. Magazine and the Feminist Majority, the America’s Founding Feminist Project, a Women’s History Month series, and I want to ask about what inspired this take, a feminist approach, to thinking about America’s 250.

0:02:13 Janell Hobson:

I thought this year was going to be that important year as a milestone. I realize that we have so many interesting competing national narratives right now, those who would recognize our founding as an American democracy through the lens of a kind of multi-racial pluralistic society, and then, there are those who want to take us back to something that’s more exclusive in terms of who is in power with regards to usually white elite men, oftentimes property owning men, and so, the idea that the particular ideas around liberty, equality, and justice for all only pertain to a particular group of Americans. 

I realize that our unfolding as a nation, as well as a world that has been inspired and influenced by the idea of United States democracy, always had to deal with that tension between being exclusive versus being inclusive, and that is what this is about.

0:03:26 Michele Goodwin:

So, Janell, within recent years, there would be those that say, well, that was the past. This is a different day, that people’s ability to be able to vote isn’t conditioned on owning property, that women lead universities and companies and corporations, and there’s even been a Black president, and so, some would say that this kind of vision is not necessary. What’s your response to that?

0:03:58 Janell Hobson:

It’s interesting for those who believe that there’s nothing to learn from the past, because the idea that this is the past, we can move forward, we’ve made progress…and that is true. We have made a great deal of progress. We’ve had a Black president. We’ve even had a woman vice president. And yet, at the same time, we’re seeing different factors in society that want to erase history.

For example, there are examples of certain exhibits that are being taken down. If the vision of our past dares to hint that we were not always founded on the principles of equality, the idea that we shouldn’t talk about the fact that we’ve had slavery, and chattel slavery, specifically, in this country, or that we’ve had this wiping out of Native Americans, or that women have been excluded from voting, from property owning, and so many other ways in which women were treated as second-class citizens. Sure, we’ve made progress, but I think part of the ways that you keep progress is to remember where we started and where we should still go, where we need to be moving forward.

0:05:16 Michele Goodwin:

Well, and to your point, some who fought so hard during various civil rights movements, there’s a Civil Rights Movement that is associated with Fannie Lou Hamer, Dr. King, and others. Civil rights movements that are associated with people who are LGBTQ, civil rights movements associated with women articulating for gender equality. All of those are versions of advocating for civil liberties and civil rights.

I can’t help but think that, for some of them, if they were alive for what is being articulated today, they would weep. Because what I take notice of with this project and what you’ve been saying is that right now, in the halls of government, whether or not the person holds a government seat, are people who are explicitly using language of white supremacy, or people who are explicitly calling for women to be at home, stay at home and shut up. 

0:06:18 Janell Hobson:

Yes.

0:06:26 Michele Goodwin:

That right now, there are projects that have been defunded because they include a focus on women. So, even as you reflect on this very important moment of the past, and doing so honestly, it seems to me that we’re caught into a present that also demands that we search our souls for what is taking shape today.

0:06:56 Janell Hobson:

Yes, and I think what will help us to take stock of what is happening today is to know the history, is to explore the past. As a matter of fact, you brought up someone like Fannie Lou Hamer, and she said, no one is free until we all get free.

And that is very much what we’re dealing with, that if we are seeing certain groups in our society who are being targeted, who are being exploited, who are being oppressed, then we cannot move forward until we all are free. So, her words are important in terms of remembering her as part of the civil rights generation, but also even beyond that. 

One of the things that I liked about being able to bring different scholars and authors together for this founding feminist project is we’re going to learn from historians who will let us know that these issues that we’re dealing with now, we’ve been here before. We have been here before, wanting to encourage women to stay home and not seek education. We’ve been there. That is something that came out of the 19th century.

So, so many of those who are operating today, in terms of those in power, they’re repeating the same narratives from the past, and it’s important for us to know that so we can recognize, oh, we’ve heard this before. And in recognizing that this is not new in terms of those particular forces who want to try to restrict our rights, who want to clamp down on whether we’re talking about gender rights or racial rights, those who champion gender equality, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, whatever, that they have learned from the past, and those of us who believe in progressive rights, we, too, can learn how those in the past also resisted against those types of rhetoric.

0:08:54 Michele Goodwin:

Janell, walk us through, then, the project. And as I’ve taken notice of it with my own little sneak preview, you’re looking to cover some pretty broad territory, and I can imagine that in covering what it is that will be, there will be articles, there will be art, that you put some very specific thought behind how to curate this. So, can you give us a little bit of insight as to the topics that you selected for this reflection and why you selected those particular topics?

0:09:30 Janell Hobson:

Well, this project is actually inspired by an earlier project that I guest-edited, which was the Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project from 2022, which marked her 200th birthday. And so, I found it very useful when I saw the readership that we had for that particular series. People learned so much about just one particular, singular figure, such as Harriet Tubman.

Now, this is an opportunity to look at a number of different figures and a number of different movements. So, in terms of curating this project, I tried to be as inclusive as I could, whether we’re talking about looking at the influence of Native American women in the founding of democracy and the U.S. Constitution, or looking at Spanish-speaking women who were here even before we became the United States of America. There’s this idea that they are foreign.

And we have historians who are like, no, they were here even before we were. We have issues around disability. We have issues around thinking differently about gender and even non-binary status. We have a number of different approaches, including looking at the abolitionist roots of the women’s rights movement, looking at how higher education has always been this battlefield when it comes to women’s education and what women in the past have done to make space for themselves, to actually advance themselves.

0:11:06 Michele Goodwin:

That’s a brilliant point that you’ve made, and it’s the gift that gives now and continues to give into the future, because so much of the advancements that women have made have been with women fighting very hard for that, and they’ve had tremendous allies or sponsors, the various terminologies that are used now to capture the individuals that are willing and want to make space at the table when women have been knocking so hard and kicking at the doors, but that it’s been central to women building this and doing for themselves.

And you mentioned the project that you did before, that you curated before, that involved Harriet Tubman. I see a linkage between both that involves the arts. So, I’d like to ask you about how you perceive the arts as being so critically important and relevant to an intellectual engagement, because you’ve got great people who are curating in this space with you, but you also made it important, both with the prior project and this, to include visuals, and so, I want to know if you could just tell our listeners why that was important for you.

0:12:18 Janell Hobson:

I’m happy to mention that the artist who commissioned work for us, for the Harriet Tubman Bicentennial Project, she joined us again, this is Nettrice Gaskins, to create our signature art for this project, and it’s called Founding Feminists, like the series, and what I like about the artwork is how she presents a variety of women who have occupied a seat at the table.

And that is really what is important about this project. We are occupying a space, and we’re not asking for permission. We’re just there, and that is so important for our art to be, our artists to be able to visualize that for our society, for our culture, and to also recognize other elements, like poetry.

One of our authors, Dana Ellen Murphy, is contributing a piece about Phillis Wheatley and what it meant for her to be a poet. And I especially like her piece because of the ways in which she explores Phillis Wheatley’s imagination, and that imagination to imagine herself not just as a poet, but as someone who could actually take up space in the nation. That’s really what this project is about, that we are here, we belong here, and no matter what anyone says, we will not be erased, and not only will we not be erased, but we’re going to keep moving forward.

0:13:44  Michele Goodwin:

I can’t think of a better way to bring, then, our 15 Minutes of Feminism episode about the U.S. at 250 to a close than by those remarkable words that you’ve just shared, Janell Hobson. Thank you, so very much, for joining us.

0:14:02 Janell Hobson:

Thank you for having me.

0:14:04 Michele Goodwin:

Guests and listeners, that’s it for today’s episode of On the Issues with Michele Goodwin at Ms. Magazine. I want to thank each of you for tuning in for the full story and engaging with us. We hope you’ll join us again for our next episode, where you know we’ll be reporting, rebelling, and telling it just like it is.

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We do read our mail. This has been your host, Michele Goodwin, reporting, rebelling, and telling it just like it is. On the Issues with Michele Goodwin is a Ms. Magazine joint production. Michele Goodwin and Kathy Spillar are our executive producers. Our producers for this episode are Roxy Szal, Oliver Haug, and also Allison Whelan. Our social media content producer is Sophia Panigrahi. The creative vision behind our work includes art and design by Brandy Phipps, editing by Natalie Hadland, and music by Chris J. Lee.