By Jessica Weiss ’05  /  Aug 18, 2021

It was a year of presidential impeachment and struggles over African American voting rights—wait, are we talking about 2021 or 1868?

In his new book coming out on Saturday, “The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson,” University of Maryland Distinguished University Professor of English Robert Levine draws the parallels between the centuries. Using archival materials including speeches, newspaper articles and letters, he chronicles the great Maryland-born abolitionist and orator’s changing views on the 17th U.S. president—from initial optimism following President Lincoln’s assassination to his ultimate disillusionment in the prospect of a reconstructed United States that secured Black Americans’ right to freely vote.

“‘The Failed Promise’ is a lesson for our times as we continue to confront our nation’s unfulfilled promise of racial equality,” said Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research.

We recently spoke to Levine about the importance of recovering a Black perspective on Johnson and the continuing resonance of Douglass’ words. This interview has been condensed for length and clarity.

You have a wide interest in American literature and culture, but a particular fascination with Frederick Douglass. Why?
Douglass was a new passion for me when I got to the University of Maryland (in 1983) as he was a Marylander. The more I read by him, the more I was taken with the brilliance of the language in both his autobiographies and speeches. He works in different genres. You have the autobiographer, you have the fiction writer, you have the lecturer, and he edits newspapers and writes columns—so you have all that plus thousands of letters that are available at the Library of Congress and elsewhere. David W. Blight, Douglass’ most recent biographer, terms him a “prophet.” He is a prophet. He looks forward to issues in the 20th and the 21st century.

Speaking of prophecy, it must have been interesting to work on a book that includes perspectives on an impeachment in the midst of another impeachment.
Like a lot of people, I got interested in the Johnson impeachment during the Donald Trump era. In 2017 I was invited to give a talk at the University of Edinburgh and at the University of Paris, so I decided to talk about the Johnson impeachment ... and people were really interested. So, I came home and decided to write an essay and the essay got really long. And then the more I read, the more I thought I might have a short book. And as I was mapping it out, I realized I actually had enough for a standard book. Over time it became less a book about Trump and more a book about the unfinished promise—or what I call the “failed promise”—of Reconstruction.

What surprised you about the hope many Black people had for Johnson at the start of his presidency?
I found in writings by Radical Republicans and Black activists a belief that Lincoln was limited and that Johnson showed much more promise. Right at the start they said, ‘Hey, maybe this is the person we need.’ Johnson was a pro-Union Southerner; he put his life on the line. He was anti-slavery—not during the 1850s, but during the Civil War he turned against slavery. In October 1864, Johnson gave a widely publicized speech in Tennessee. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free enslaved people in the border states, so there were still enslaved people in Tennessee. And he said in that speech that he would end slavery in Tennessee. He was not legally able to do that, he didn't have that power, but he told the Black people in attendance that they needed a Moses and they shouted back to him, “You are our Moses!” And that's something that stuck with Johnson for the rest of his life, an increasingly delusional belief that he was Moses, that he cared about Black people.

But fast forward to the end of 1865 and Douglass and his colleagues are disillusioned.
One of my favorite chapters is about when Frederick Douglass visited Johnson in the White House in February 1866 with eight or nine other people, known as the “Black delegation.” There’s a dramatic moment where they're seeing if Johnson will actually talk to them and make concessions. And when it's clear that he won't, they're walking out of the Executive Office and Douglass says something to Johnson about how he’s turning on his friends, and then Johnson lays into Douglass and Douglass lays into Johnson. The interesting thing here is that there was a renowned young stenographer there who wrote down the entire exchange. And in that exchange Johnson reveals some of his darkest, most reactionary thoughts about the formerly enslaved. That night, the whole back and forth was printed in The Washington Star newspaper, and that article about Douglass’ encounter with Johnson circulates in newspapers across the United States; it was republished in Nevada, in California and in other states across the country. I argue that Douglass deliberately provoked Johnson so as to elicit his true racist views. This moment had a huge impact on how Johnson came to be perceived.

You’ve noted, including in a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, that Douglass’ words have particular relevance in the current debate over voting rights.
Almost every page of my book shows how important voting rights were at the time to Black people, how voting rights are central to U.S. citizenship, how if you aren't allowed to vote, you aren't a citizen—you aren't part of the politics. Douglass gets impassioned about how important voting is to actually feeling that you're visible in the nation. He argues that Black people even fought in wars for the United States, so shouldn’t they have the right to vote? His efforts paid off with the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870, but Douglass soon realized that the new law would not necessarily be enforced. Now it's the year 2021, and I wish voting rights weren't still an issue in our culture, but yes, Douglass’ campaign for Black voting rights in the years right after the Civil War continues to speak directly to the current moment.

The College of Arts and Humanities announces the Fall 2021 Faculty Funds Competition Call for Proposals. All PTK and TTK faculty are eligible for these awards. Deadline for applications is 5 pm Friday, October 15, 2021. Examples of past funded proposals can be found in the ARHU Proposal Library. 

• ARHU Advancement Grants: Up to $5,000 will be awarded to TTK and PTK faculty for projects that advance faculty’s professional advancement in their field and at UMD. Work proposed can be ongoing efforts, a new idea, or the completion of a project. Successful applications must demonstrate 1) how the project meets the faculty member’s professional advancement at UMD, and 2) how the work contributes to the faculty member’s field of study. Funds are intended to support research expenses such as hiring assistants, studio or rehearsal costs, materials, participant incentives, and archives. Funds awarded will not support course releases or classroom-only projects--pedagogical projects must show a link to the faculty member’s scholarly advancement to be considered. Priority will be given to projects that advance promotion goals and/or tenure goals and to applicants who have not won a grant previously.
• Special Purpose Advancement Grant in Equity and Justice: In addition to the regular Advancement Grants, the Dean will award a special purpose fund as part of the ARHU campaign to address racism, equity and justice. Up to $5,000 will be awarded to projects that demonstrate all of the Advancement Grant criteria listed above, plus directly contribute to equity and/or social justice in one’s field.
• Subvention Funds: Funds can cover costs required by a publisher that are assigned to faculty, such as reproduction of images and permissions. Up to $2,000 may be requested. TTK and PTK are eligible to apply. Preference will be given to faculty preparing a product for academic promotion or tenure review. In addition to application documents listed below, applications must include 1) a letter from the unit head confirming a match of the amount requested, and 2) a copy of the publisher contract. Subvention won't cover marketing and promotion related costs.

Required application documents for ALL submissions:

1. Project Description (three pages maximum, single-spaced with one-inch margins, at least 11-point font): Summarize the proposed project’s objectives, approach or method, and activities, as well as expected outcomes. Address significance to the field and include a clear argument for how the work fits into promotion/tenure timeline and purpose. For special purpose funding, make clear the contribution to anti-racism, equity, or social justice.

2. Timeline (one page maximum): List project elements and note when each task will be accomplished during the funding period. Also include timeline for promotion/tenure as it relates to this project.

3. Budget and Justification (two pages maximum): Provide an itemized budget and justify planned expenditures. All project elements and associated costs should be anticipated. Budget categories will vary depending on the project. Include any other sources of funding and whether those funds are committed or pending.

Submission Process:
Combine all application documents into a single PDF file and submit electronically to the ARHU Application Portal (http://apply.arhu.umd.edu) by 5 pm on October 15, 2021.

Post Award Expectations:
A final report will be required one year after award date, summarizing use of funds and achievements. All awarded funds must be spent within a year of award notification; funds not spent within a year will be refunded to the college. Successful applicants will receive specific guidance on further reporting requirements in their award letter.

Awardees must acknowledge ARHU in any reports, presentations, and materials produced by the funding. Funded projects will be featured on the Maryland Center for Humanities Research website, humanities.umd.edu.

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION

The Senior Vice President & Provost and the Vice President for Research invite applications for the Independent Scholarship, Research, and Creativity Awards (ISRCA) from full-time, tenured/tenure-track faculty members at the University of Maryland, College Park, at the assistant professor rank or higher. This program provides several funding options to support faculty pursuing scholarly or creative projects. Funding will be available beginning January 2022 and must be expended within two years of the award date.

TYPES OF INQUIRY SUPPORTED

The ISRCA program defines scholarly and creative pursuits to include both the scholarship of discovery (i.e., the pursuit of knowledge and/or creative expression for its own sake) and the scholarship of integration (i.e., the interpretation and critical analysis of original research or creative expressions). Types of inquiry and methods supported by ISRCA include, but are not limited to: historical, humanistic, interpretive, or ethnographic approaches; explorations of aesthetic, ethical, and/or cultural values and their roles in society; critical and rhetorical analyses; archival and/or field research; development and/or production of creative works. If you are unsure whether your work would qualify, please contact Hana Kabashi (hkabashi@umd.edu) to discuss your proposal.

ELIGIBILITY

All full-time (1.0 FTE), tenured/tenure-track faculty at the assistant professor rank or higher at the University of Maryland, College Park, are eligible to apply.

• Faculty on 9/9.5 month appointments may request summer salary. Faculty on 12-month appointments may apply; however, funds are not to be used as a salary enhancement or supplement.
• Individuals are limited to submitting one application per funding cycle.

FUNDING AVAILABLE

• Up to $10,000 per award
• Estimated 10-12 awards will be made
• Three funding options:
  • Semester teaching release awards: Faculty will be released from teaching duties during the semester for which the award is granted, and the faculty member’s department will receive the funding. As with all release/leave requests, granting of a semester teaching release depends on the ability of the department or program to maintain necessary teaching obligations and operations, and therefore approval of the department chair is required (see Letter of Support Instructions below).
  • Summer salary awards*: Faculty will receive awards as summer salary during the summer for which the award is granted.
  • Research-related expenses awards*: Faculty will receive awards during the semester for which the award is granted. *Note: applicants may combine summer salary and research-related expense requests up to a total request of $10,000.

CLICK HERE FOR APPLICATION GUIDELINES & INSTRUCTIONS

The Joint Steering Council of the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership – MPower – is pleased to announce a new funding opportunity for collaborators at both University of Maryland, Baltimore and University of Maryland, College Park.  Here is the Request for Proposal document for this 2021 Seed Grant Challenge, which invites collaborative research proposals in six themes:

1. Pandemic Readiness, Resilience and Mitigation
2. Racial and Social Justice
3. AI + Medicine
4. Neuroscience and Aging
5. Violence and Crime Reduction
6. Cybersecurity, Homeland Security

Submissions will follow a multi-step process beginning with a Notice of Intent to Submit email due August 2, to be followed by Step 1 Proposals to be due in September 2021.

 Questions may be directed to Adrianne Arthur.

By Kimmy Yam

While news reports and social media have perpetuated the idea that anti-Asian violence is committed mostly by people of color, a new analysis shows the majority of attackers are white.

Janelle Wong, a professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, released analysis last week that drew on previously published studies on anti-Asian bias. She found official crime statistics and other studies revealed more than three-quarters of offenders of anti-Asian hate crimes and incidents, from both before and during the pandemic, have been white, contrary to many of the images circulating online.

Wong told NBC Asian America that such dangerous misconceptions about who perpetrates anti-Asian hate incidents can have "long-term consequences for racial solidarity."

"The way that the media is covering and the way that people are understanding anti-Asian hate at this moment, in some ways, draws attention to these long-standing anti-Asian biases in U.S. society," Wong said. "But the racist kind of tropes that come along with it — especially that it's predominantly Black people attacking Asian Americans who are elderly — there's not really an empirical basis in that."

Wong examined nine sources and four types of data about anti-Asian hate incidents, including from the reporting forum Stop AAPI Hate, Pew Research, as well as official law enforcement statistics, the majority of them spanning the year and a half when the #StopAAPIHate hashtag was trending. She found major contradictions in the prevailing narrative around perpetrators, victims, and the general environment of racism toward Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic. She said such misleading conclusions could be attributed to the lack of context around images, the failure to amplify all aspects of the data or misinterpretations of the research.

A misread of a frequently cited study from this year, published in the American Journal of Criminal Justice, likely contributed to the spread of erroneous narratives, Wong said. The study, which examined hate crime data from 1992 to 2014, found that compared to anti-Black and anti-Latino hate crimes, a higher proportion of perpetrators of anti-Asian hate crimes were people of color. Still, 75 percent of perpetrators were white.

Other studies confirm the findings, Wong wrote. She pointed to separate research from the University of Michigan Virulent Hate Project, which examined media reports about anti-Asian incidents last year and found that upward of 75 percentof news stories identified perpetrators as male and white in instances of physical or verbal assault and harassment when the race of the perpetrator was confirmed. Wong said the numbers could even be an underestimate.

"This is really how crime is framed in the United States — it's framed as the source is Black," Wong said.

Karthick Ramakrishnan, founder of AAPI Data, a data and civic engagement nonprofit group, for which Wong also works, said that the public's perception of perpetrators and victims is largely formed by the images that have been widely circulated — but that they aren't representative of most anti-Asian bias incidents. For example, the videos that have gone viral are more likely to be from low-income, urban areas where there is more surveillance, he said.

"You have security camera videos that are more available and prevalent in certain types of urban settings. And so that's what's available to people in terms of sharing," Ramakrishnan said. "The videos are more viral than if it's something that doesn't have any imagery or video connected to it, like something that's happening in the suburbs, for example."

When they are circulated, they play on a loop with no audio. Even though the videos alone don't provide much detail about what's happening, they dominate our perceptions, Ramakrishnan said.

"There's just something so powerful about these visual images so that no matter what the social science might say, people believe their eyes and especially the images that get played on repeat now," he said.

To read the full article, click below.