Project proposal for Fall 2023 Introduction to Public History Seminar.
Question:
How do we understand Fannie Barrier-Williams as both a product and a catalyst of her environment? How do we understand her views in both defying and affirming the prejudices of her time? How and where does her own agency come into play?
Narrative:
A Walk Through Humanity: An Interactive Exploration of the Life of Fannie Barrier-Williams
For my public history project on Fannie Barrier-Williams I want to create a physical representation of her life, works, ideas, and the historical events and ideas that shaped her using entanglement theory. This intends to give the audience the ability to explore her as both an individual, in her own perspective timeline, as well as to explore the various historical, personal, and theoretical aspects that are entangled in her views and works in a way that does not limit the viewer to one perspective or impose one message or understanding. This exhibit takes the idea of an open exploration and thought experiment and creates a physical space that invites the viewer to move through events and ideas, both physically and in concept, in a way that does not follow standard historical procedures for learning about the past and allows for the creation of unique opinions and understandings through personal experience and exploration.
Fannie Barrier-Williams’ life gives us an insight into a complicated and rapidly changing portion of American history. Her life and work on the issues of racism, sexism, and the struggles of the working-class in America during the 19th and 20th centuries has earned her a place among the list of great American sociologists.1 Her involvement in significant events like the African American women’s club movement2 and her involvement in the 1893 Columbian Exposition3 are just some of the contributions she made to the movements of Black and women’s rights and equality. The significance of Fannie Barrier-Williams is rarely fully understood, and we can only see the large scale impacts she made when we fully understand and put into context the wide range of written works, events, groups, and charitable contributions she created and collaborated on in her lifetime as well as the people and ideologies she engaged with in the journey of creating her legacy. It is only when we examine the whole of her life that we can also asses the role she played in maintaining prejudices and hierarchical thinking born out of her upper-class and deracialized upbringing and contextualize these actions against the 19th and 20th century struggles for improvements in racial, gender, and class conditions.
I chose to develop this project around the idea of entanglement theory which is an anthropological theory created by Ian Hodder in which he explores how objects, in Hodder’s terminology “things,” are both changed by human nature and change human nature themselves.4 Hodder’s technique maps objects out in webs, stringing together the physical and non-physical to understand the connections between people, our objects, and the cultures we create. These maps can be complex or simple and are used to make a visual representation of an abstract idea like entanglement. While Hodder’s theoretical methodologies focus on objects as aspects of humanity5, I wanted to apply his methods to the broader topic of humanity. Humanity as a concept encompasses not just people but also out ideas and feelings, we exist in a web of emotions, logic, and concept we created, in many ways we are defined by our own creations. By examining this idea of humanity through a single person we can reflect on how the real aspects of someone’s life and actions as one manifestation of human nature.
The exhibit would be structured by taking many aspects such as events of Fannie Barrier-Williams’ life, historical events, other individuals which she interacted with and took influence from, and philosophical and theoretic concepts of the day, and laying them out as individual markers or small displays throughout a space and connecting them possibly through connecting lines on the floor, to demonstrate how all of her ideas and actions are affected by the people, events, and circumstances that surround her. This would allow for the ability to break down the many facets of understanding her as lay them out in a way that allows someone to focus on a specific part of her story or to explore her broadly and get a sense for the whole picture. The finished space would take on the role of an interactive, travelable exhibit that encourages the public to view Fannie Barrier-Williams through multiple lenses and as a collection of contributing factors rather than as a static concept in our history.
One example of the kind of connections that the exhibit could make is Fannie Barrier-Williams works regarding the struggles of working-class Black women6 and how her ideas are now understood through the concept of respectability politics. One point in the web could represent Fannie Barrier-Williams’ ideas on Black women and employment as seen in her essay “The Problem of Employment for Negro Women”7 where she states that in order to gain better treatment and recognition in employment, specifically in the field of domestic labor, Black women need to make themselves professionals and deserving of respect for their work.8 Another point could represent the idea of respectability politics, which is commonly when people of color, especially Black women, focus their efforts on making themselves and other “respectable” by what are mostly white, classist, Eurocentric standards as a form of self-protection from the effects of discrimination.9 This could be countered with Kevin Gaines’ perspective that the push towards respectability was the result of the Black middle-class’ understanding of the need to conform for the sake of safety and the preservation of Black freedom.10
This one connection can then be used to invite the viewer to question how Fannie Barrier-Williams ideas exist in the grey space of progressive and regressive thought, were her ideas beneficial because they saw a positive future for the equality and respect of Black women in the workplace or were they harmful because they placed the burden of making that change on the Black women rather than white society that created the inequality? Does her push toward respectability stem from a place of seeking validation or an understanding of the importance of preservation? How can we understand her words and deeds fairly, and without losing the historical and cultural contexts that helped shape them?
By creating many such connections, we can begin to build a broader conversation about Fannie Barrier-Williams that is open to the viewers interpretation and allows them to create their own understandings based on their experience. This approach can also allow for broader understandings of other groups and individuals not necessarily connected to Barrier-Williams, but who offer complimentary or conflicting viewpoints and approaches to the same issues. One such organization is the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) which operated at the same time as the National Association of Colored Women but chose not to organize on local levels and instead agitated for national change and even took stances and advocated on international policy.11 While the NACW sought to improve the lives of Black women through charitable causes and uplift politics the NCNW was more outspoken against issues of Black employment discrimination and racial, gender, and class hierarchies that were perpetuated even within Black activist communities such as the NACW.12 This alternate perspective challenges the idea that an exhibit about Barrier-Williams needs to present her views as the most correct of her period or that the exhibit should refrain from teaching about ways which her work and her organizations fell short.
Logistics, Consultants, Concerns
An exhibit with subject matter that varies as much as this and that takes a critical but sensitive approach to the past and the figures in it would require consultants to make sure that the subjects are handled accurately and respectfully. Consultants would include individuals with education and experience in history, anthropology, women and gender studies, African American studies, and diversity equity and inclusion. Consultants could be anyone who has worked in their field on similar projects or anyone whose job includes reviewing and providing feedback on client’s projects. For this exhibit consultants with a background in historic projects would be preferred as well as consultants who are fem/women and BIPOC in order to get feedback from members of the community this exhibit would be primarily addressing.
There are many possible set-ups for this kind of exhibit, one of which is as a physical space like a large room where the various points on the web can be constructed as physical markers like plaques or displays with lines on the floor to connect them. This would allow the audience to physically move through the space and would combine movement with visual and tactile aspects, in a way the audience become part of the exhibit as thoughts moving through the web. The flaw to this design is that the audience’s presence might detract from the individual experience, the space can become too loud or crowded and having to constantly avoiding bumping into others can draw the viewer out of the experience.
Other possibilities include creating the web as a form of art piece, possibly a sculpture with hanging images and text to represent various people, places, and ideas which could be connected with string. This would require another way to present the information on each point, either in signage or a pamphlet so that the viewer could connect the images to the information. The downside of this is it is more complicated and less interactive for the viewer and would not give the same immersive experience. The most traditional way to represent the web is as a 2D image, this could be done in a mural with short text to represent each point, although this again doesn’t allow for audience engagement like an exhibit does. Both of these options also restrict the amount of information the project could portray as neither have the same amount of space for text and images or historical elaboration as an exhibit does.
Other factors to consider are the materials, labor, and cost required for each possible project, the exhibit although the most interactive and immersive is going to be the most expensive while a mural would be the cheapest and easiest to create. The option that would be most suitable for a local project would have to be either the mural or sculpture, they would be the most affordable for a community project and require the least space and materials. Also, unlike and exhibit, a sculpture or mural could be a permanent feature or a community space like a park or town building, an exhibit would require a larger museum space and would very likely have to be up only temporarily. All three options would require some labor, for the mural someone would need to paint it, there would need to be an artist to create the sculpture and people to install it, and an exhibit would likely require an entire set of staff to create and manage. A sample list of expenses for an exhibit space could include:
- The cost of a venue space
- The cost of printing and exhibit signage
- The cost of professionally designed graphics and advertisement for the exhibit
- The cost of display cases, frames, plaques, and other display materials
- The licensing and permissions costs for use of images, objects, and texts used in the exhibit
- The cost of staff to assemble, manage, and disassemble the exhibit
- The cost of interpreters to make the exhibit accessible to members of the public in non-English languages and ASL
- The cost of consultants to give input on the exhibit’s materials and themes
- The time necessary to create and design the exhibit space and the exhibit materials
The cost of any of these expenses ranges widely depending on the scale and complexity of the exhibit, but an exhibit like this one would require a budget starting in the thousands and could quickly grow to be very expensive. Feasibility of the exhibit would depend on the funding available and for a project like this a private institution like a museum or university would be best for hosting the exhibit as they would have the space and funding to make it possible.
Overall, there are many possibilities for how to take this project from an idea to a physical piece of public history, depending on the audience for the project different versions of the project will be best. The option which would allow for the most in depth portrayal of the idea of an entanglement would be the interactive museum exhibit but this is also the most expensive and labor intensive option, the version that would be best for a community project would be either a sculpture or mural which could be created by the community with little materials or money and could become a permanent feature to represent the local history. No matter which option is picked the most important aspect of the project will be utilizing the materials and space in a way that encourages the audience to engage with thinking about Fannie Barrier-Williams outside of the common textbook narrative of her life and in the context of the many historic, personal, and ideological factors that affected her life and works. This exploration of her life through an unconventional practice gives the audience the chance to engage in an experimental form of history making, one that questions the rigidity of common practices of understanding history and opens up the possibility of personal interpretation. My hope with this project is to allow the audience the chance to explore and question this aspect of local history similarly to how we have been throughout class which hopefully will allow for a greater understanding of Fannie Barrier-Williams, her contributions, and her legacy as a local figure of social justice and progress.
1 Deegan “Her Life as A New Woman of Color”, xxxiii.
2 Deegan “Her Life as A New Woman of Color”, xxix.
3 Deegan “Her Life as A New Woman of Color”, xxxi.
4 Hodder “Thinking About Things”, 4.
5 Hodder “Thinking About Things”, 4.
6 Barrier-Williams “The New Woman of Color”, 52.
7 Barrier-Williams “The New Woman of Color”, 52.
8 Barrier-Williams “The New Woman of Color”, 54.
9 Pitcan, Marwick, boyd “Performing a Vanilla Self”, 163.
10 Gaines “Uplifting the Race”, 3.
11 White “Too Heavy a Load”, 150.
12 White “Too Heavy a Load”, 154.
Bibliography
Barrier-Williams, Frances. The New Woman of Color: The Collected Writings of Fannie Barrier Williams, 1893–1918, ed. Mary Jo Deegan (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002).
Gaines, Kevin K. 2012. Uplifting the Race. UNC Press Books.
Hodder, I. (2012). Thinking About Things Differently. In Entangled: An archaeology of the relationships between humans and things, 1–14. Wiley-Blackwell.
White, Deborah G. 2000. Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves. New York; London: W.W. Norton.
