preservation projects

ABWH Director’s Message

January 19, 2025

To: ABWH Membership

           "The impulse of humanity toward social progress is like the movement in the currents of a great water system, from myriad sources and under myriad circumstances and conditions, beating onward, ever onward toward its eternity, the Ocean."

          ~Anna Julia Cooper, "Alpha Kappa Alpha, Souvenir," December 29,1925  

Dear ABWH family, it is my pleasure to write and say “thank you” for entrusting me with our collective forward movement. I hope the beginning of your year and semester have been smooth, even during these rocky times. As incoming National Director, I have spent the past three weeks communicating with the new leadership team and with former Executive Council members. I am grateful for the heartwarming congratulations that have poured in and especially appreciate the hands-on support from the immediate past National Directors, Shennette Garrett-Scott and Erica Armstrong Dunbar.

We are surrounded by fire, ice, politics, war, pain, and foolishness. Yet our purpose as ABWH members and work as historians continues to flow, as Dr. Anna Julia Cooper stated, "beating onward, ever onward." When Soror Cooper (called “Sis Annie” by her loved ones) offered her remarks a century ago in Washington, D.C. on the occasion of celebrating her doctorate from the University of Paris, Sorbonne (Souvenir, 1925), she affirmed that, every person has the “right to grow." I am proud to be a part of an organization committed to advancing humanity and humanities as part of social progress and universal human rights. We work, as ever, against fabrication, artificiality, and erasure of truth. ABWH Truth is perennial--a fact in which I take solace as I embark on my tenure. Below are three starting points for our forward movement.

TRANSITION: As incoming officers, our first task has been to attend to the details of transition: Vanessa Holden (National Vice Director), Shannon Eaves (Secretary), Natanya Duncan (Parliamentarian), Amanda Hall (Treasurer), and I have been working with Shennette Garrett-Scott and outgoing officers to get the Executive Board online. In the past three weeks, we have migrated our website (a task years in the making), begun gaining access to email communication and financial accounts, and started to outline areas we need to address to ensure we are all ready to move forward in our positions. Thank you in advance for your patience as we make this transition—we are still gaining access to email accounts, so know that a response will be forthcoming from some representatives, but some will take a bit more time. We are also preparing for the transition of the Membership and Social Media communications teams, so expect more formal messages and newsletters soon. My leadership approach is to make sure our organizational structure and business is in order—first—so we are prepared to make interventions in our profession and in the world.

ORGANIZATION: Accordingly, our second task is internal organization. This coming Friday, the Executive Council will meet as a body and, there (in accordance with our Constitution and Bylaws), I will charge all committees. The Executive Council will be charged with the responsibility to engage a team of general members so we can, collectively, identify issues, tackle challenges, and make plans--big and small. We already have much on our plate, from learning how to manage email systems, ensuring our accounts and offices are in order, and clarifying the ABWH historical record, to planning for the 2025 ASALH conference and pre-planning future symposium events. Taking time to set up our committees will be slow work, but will ultimately ensure we have consistent communication between leadership and members so we can move forward with plans more quickly down the line. I am grateful for the folks who have agreed to serve and are already making themselves available for this work—in addition to all other obligations. They have already shown me that we are truly in this together.  

MENTORSHIP: I have also begun to focus on a third task: leadership development and succession planning. The next National Director will be charged with hosting the ABWH 50th Anniversary symposium and I am beginning work now to set that person up for success. We have much work to do to create a public archive of our collective labor. Several have done this work before to establish physical and digital archives that document our foundation and development   (including Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, Janice Sumler-Edmond, Ida Jones, Wanda Hendricks, Francille Rusan Wilson, Lopez Matthews, and Kenvi Phillips). My charge will be to make ABWH history and archival details more accessible to the general body. Specifically, I will work to create a more complete database of past ABWH officers, prize winners, and luncheon speakers so we can build a robust bibliography useful for discussions about Black women's historiography. I look forward to continuing documentation efforts, recognizing the generations of scholars who built this organization, and celebrating the work of past ABWH leaders in order to better prepare those who will take up the baton in the next few years. In addition to looking back, I also wish to sustain and grow the mentoring tradition of ABWH--without which I would not be who or where I am. For me, regenerative leadership means that looking back to give past leadership their flowers should work in tandem with identifying a broad set of new leaders and supporting their growth in the Association.

I attended my first ABWH Luncheon in 2000, and became a life member in 2003. It is an honor to be in this position to strengthen our community. Again, thank you for your patience as we take time to get ourselves in order. John Bracey often reminded me that, “whatever you pay attention to grows.” Know that my attention is on ABWH. I may not be swift, but my intent is to be thorough in supporting this sustainable community with collective practices that benefit all. Together, the Executive Council and I are readying ourselves to move onward.

Ever onward,

Stephanie Y. Evans

-----------------------------------

Dr. Stephanie Y. Evans

Professor, Georgia State University

ProfessorEvans.net  

National Director, Association of Black Women Historians

ABWH.org