It’s not every day that the White House acknowledges the breadth and impact of your professional work. Needless to say, the invitation to the nation's capital took Alison Parker by surprise.
Parker serves as chair and Richards Professor of American History at the University of Delaware. She visited Washington, D.C., on May 8, joining the White House for its announcement of a national initiative to increase the representation of women’s history across the country, especially through the U.S. Department of Interior and the National Park Service.
President Biden signed an executive order in March, during Women’s History Month, to “strengthen the National Park Service’s recognition of women’s history,” according to White House press materials. The executive order provided directives for the Department of the Interior, calling for increased representation in national parks across the country to honor the legacy and contributions of women and girls.
“Following the president’s executive order, and this latest announcement, you will start to see the commissioning of new historical studies, the addition of new monument designations, and revisions to museum displays, websites and other materials to make sure they are accurate and inclusive,” Parker said. “This is exciting for many reasons, in particular because it’s an opportunity to recognize history that hasn’t been told. We can tell new versions of old histories to showcase and honor women’s history.”
For years, Parker has studied gender, race, disability, citizenship and law in U.S. history, with a specific focus on women’s history and Black women’s history. She has also served as co-chair of UD’s Anti-Racism Initiative, or UDARI.
UDaily spent a few minutes with Parker, discussing her recent White House visit, research and forthcoming work at UD and in her field of study.
What is UD’s involvement in this new initiative through the Department of the Interior?
Parker: UD is already participating in researching and writing historical studies; the History Department has recently received grants from the National Park Service, and we hope to participate in future studies on women’s history, too. For the grants we currently have received, UD history faculty members Hannah Kim and Bonnie Lewis are serving as co-principal investigators, along with a colleague at Delaware State University. Their work will focus on the writing of a historical study of segregation and desegregation in Delaware schools, and the development of curricula and training that can be used in pre-K through grade-12 classrooms to fulfill a mandate of House Bill 198 to infuse Black history throughout the curriculum. They will be writing an inclusive history that takes gender as well as race into account.
For those unfamiliar with your work, what areas do you study, teach and research?
Parker: I’ve been studying women’s history for decades and I have written three monographs, or single-authored books, plus co-edited a few others, that focus on bringing women into key stories in American history. My first book was on the history of women in censorship activism at the turn of the last century — those who advocated for co-censorship laws and trying to protect children from what they called at the time “impure literature.” I subsequently wrote a book about Black and white women’s intellectual thought, to understand how they perceived themselves as women with rights, at a time when there wasn’t a right to vote at the national level. My last chapter in that book was on Mary Church Terrell. She is relatively famous in Black women's history because she’s the co-founder of the NAACP. However, when I looked for biographies of her to understand her political thoughts and make connections between the positions she advocated, there was no biography written for adults. The biographies on Terrell were written only for children and teens. At that point, I decided my next book would be a biography about her — to appeal to a larger readership. Once Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell was published in 2020, I have received many different speaking invitations and opportunities, including appearances on podcasts, based on my book on Mary Church Terrell. The National Park Service invited me to participate in several events. They reach an enormous number of Americans each year, and if women’s historians can help them tell these stories, we can all have a more complete understanding of American history.
Is that how you received an invitation from the White House?
Parker: President Biden signed an executive order in March that focused on women’s history, and in January, I chaired a panel at the American Historical Association called “Hidden No More: Uncovering Women’s History Through the National Park Service.” I think this might have led to the invitation from the White House. In addition, I’m on the Advisory Board of the National Women’s History Museum. That panel led to important connections and, since then, I’ve been talking with park rangers about how we at UD can participate more in telling these stories. I spoke with a Kansas park ranger who is the head of Brown v. Board of Education site. He reached out to me to facilitate a grant they were offering for historians to study the cases and the history of segregation and desegregation in states that had cases come to the court. Delaware was one of those states. I agreed to work with him, got together a team of co-principal investigators and put together a grant proposal. I didn’t personally decide to join in. The two faculty members from UD are history department faculty. Bonnie Lewis and Hannah Kim. We worked together with colleagues at Delaware State University. One of their professors, Dr. Anton House, is a third PI. These grants are for doing historical study of desegregating in Delaware and after that, for creating teacher training guides and curriculum.
Do you foresee another book coming soon?
Parker: I’m currently researching a woman named Mary Hamilton. She was a civil rights activist during the 1950s and 1960s and a member of CORE — the Congress of Racial Equality. I’m hoping to explore the Supreme Court case that she won that focused on questions about how Black women should be treated in court rooms. At the time, the judge and lawyers would only call her by first name while others got an honorific. She insisted on being called Miss Hamilton, and not just addressed by her first name. Law school students today are still learning about that Supreme Court decision.
At UD, what are you working on presently?
Parker: I’m the founder of the University of Delaware’s Anti-Racism Initiative, or UDARI. We’re in the process of conducting a search for UDARI’s future leadership, and I am supporting the search for three new Faculty Fellows who will co-lead UDARI. I’m also coming to the end of my term as chair of the Department of History. I’m looking forward to more research and teaching in the future.
Article by Christopher A. Vito
Photo by Evan Krape
May 28, 2024
