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Why did you pursue a career in economics and your particular field?
I decided that I wanted to get a doctorate degree when I was a college senior but I was not sure whether I wanted to pursue the degree in History, Sociology, or Economics since I studied, loved, and excelled in all three areas. Ultimately, I decided to pursue the doctorate in economics because I knew that there were fewer Blacks in economics compared to the other disciplines. I hoped to be able to make an impact in economics by challenging some of the prevailing theories of the gender and racial wage gap that used the veneer of science in order to justify discriminatory practices.
I chose to study at the University of Massachusetts Amherst because I wanted an outstanding heterodox program that focused prominent attention on systemic oppression and the ways in which gender, race, and class processes shaped peoples’ lives and their economic outcomes. The program thrived on interdisciplinarity and expected students to read widely across disciplines as well as within different economic schools of thought. As a result, I was able to write a very unconventional dissertation that examined African-American migrant women’s paid and unpaid work for their families and communities during the early period of the Great Migration by engaging in archival research. I used economic, sociological, and feminist theories for my historical case study of the World War I migrants.
What real life economic impact have you had with your work?
My work has made an economic impact by contributing to the History of African American Economic Thought. My curiosity about Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander first developed twenty years ago when I read her one published article that happened to have focused on women in the economy and my curiosity received another boost after reading Julianne Malveaux’s seminal article on Alexander. Malveaux introduced Sadie Alexander to the profession by researching and writing about Alexander’s exclusion from the economics profession and the implications of this on both the discipline and the production of knowledge more generally. Malveaux analyzed Alexander’s dissertation research on African American migrants from the South to the North. My contribution has been to do deep archival research in search of Sadie Alexander’s economic thinking beyond her dissertation and then restoring it to the cannon of economic thought. It has been a huge and time-consuming undertaking given the enormous amount of records contained in Sadie Alexander’s archives and the need to understand her thinking within the context of her political milieu and the events unfolding within African American history.
I have written about Sadie Alexander’s remarkable life spent in pursuit of the democratic rights of full citizenship for African Americans, including her arguments that full citizenship was contingent upon having economic rights to jobs and other necessities. Indeed, my research was able to reveal that Sadie Alexander was the first African American economist and not George Edmund Haynes who we thought was the first. I also uncovered that it was Sadie Alexander and not Hyman Minsky who was the first American economist to support a federal job guarantee. More importantly, I found that although Alexander became a prominent attorney, she devoted her life to agitating for the rights of African American workers by using very compelling economic analyses in order to make her case. Currently, I am writing both a biography of Sadie Alexander and an edited volume of her extraordinary speeches and writings. They will be out in 2021, the 100th anniversary of when Sadie Alexander finished her dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania. Sadie Alexander had a tremendous intellect and moral compass that guided her civil rights activism and quest for economic justice; I am excited to help restore her to her rightful place in our history.
What has been your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?
My biggest challenge was the difficulty of accommodating lone parenting with my very demanding career as a professor. I started researching Sadie Alexander when my sons were very little but found that it was all but impossible to get them ready for daycare or school, then drive three hours to the archives that were only accessible weekdays 9:30-4:30, and drive back in time so that I could get my children from daycare and/or school. I was able to overcome this challenge when my children were old enough that I could take them with me to an extended stay hotel in Philadelphia where I could be sure that they were safe during the day while I worked at the archives. Women, especially lone mothers, often face this dilemma in the U.S. due to inadequate provision of extended childcare. The other big challenge was getting enough money to live for several weeks each summer at hotels in Philadelphia. I was very fortunate to have received support and funding from my university.
What is your current assessment of diversity in economics? Has this changed from when you first started?
In terms of the U.S., economics graduate programs and departments have become more diverse by nationality since I started in the 1990s. When I started, most graduate students were native-born but now a substantial percentage are foreign-born students. Increased diversity, however, does not mean increased inclusion. There are very few African Americans in the economics pipeline. This is a serious concern for me. African American are those people whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States and whose labor generated the wealth that grew the economy. They have always faced systemic oppression and exclusion from the benefits of national prosperity. The emphasis on “diversity” rather than inclusion and justice has meant a diminished effort to incorporate African Americans into the discipline.
As a profession, we should be asking very fundamental questions about the value of the research that we do and the ways in which we go about doing it. We also need to ask how the continued exclusion of African Americans will affect the theories and policy recommendations that future economists develop about African Americans. I think that history tells us the answer to that question.
What advice would you give to black female economists looking to progress in the field?
For women who are in graduate programs, I would advise them to work with their classmates rather than trying to go it alone. Besides, it is more fun to work in groups. I would tell them that they should always pursue topics about which they are passionate and to not let groupthink influence their choices. If they pursue research on a particular group of Black people, they should make sure that they are using frameworks and theoretical approaches that are consistent with the priorities and lived experiences of that community. In other words, they will need to think very carefully about the degree to which existing theoretical frameworks and accepted principles are valid for their community.
Tell us an interesting fact about yourself!
As a lifelong feminist, I rail against the dictates of domesticity but, quiet as it’s kept, I’m fantastic at the traditional “feminine" virtues of cooking, sewing, baking, and keeping a well-maintained home! Don’t judge me!
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