“For most people, slavery was a system in which people were bought and sold, and it was certainly that. But it was also a system in which bloodlines were mixed,” she says. “That created all kinds of problems that people tried to bury.”
“I think White Southerners, in particular, have always wanted to play that down, but I think color is so much a part of Black peoples’ lives that we can’t pretend that it doesn’t exist the way White Southerners do — not all White Southerners,” she adds. “Many White Southerners are quite open about this, but the prevailing view was that ‘Well, this didn’t happen very much.’”
Gordon-Reed, a graduate of Harvard Law School, teaches courses on slavery and law and is the editor of Race On Trial: Law and Justice in American History, and co-author with Vernon Jordan of Vernon Can Read: A Memoir.
Writing history is an extension of her work as an academic, says Gordon-Reed.
“It fits in naturally to what I do,” she says. “There are three components to an academic life. Teaching students, working in community and the third pillar is scholarship. This is scholarship.”
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