Chapter 10: Redress and Restore: The Search for Founding Black Mothers

In the era of COVID-19 and global racialized unrest, we are witnessing citizens tear down monuments, statues, and interrogate hero-making. Some historians, and even Senators, decry The 1619 Project which centers the foundational contributions of Black Americans to democracy and our nation. What is it about the ways we teach and live history as a nation that unearths such contention? Whose images, stories, and lives will replace the empty pedestals in the American pantheon? Abolition is often framed as the “conscience of the nation” (Saul, 2020) and its characters white or male.¹ What does it say about us as Americans, if we erase, omit, or diminish a core part of our conscience? What is it specifically about the presence, words, and actions of Black women and black womanhood that Americans want to forget or ignore when they are so integral to the current moment and movements of the past (Yee, 1992)?