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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Research takes a fresh look at gender studies

Dr. Amrita Chakrabarti Myers of the Department of History gives a lecture about her new project discussing the interracial relationship between Vice President Richard Johnson and Julia Chinn on Tuesday in the IMU.

More than a dozen people attended a discussion in the Indiana Memorial Union Oak Room on Tuesday afternoon  to listen to and discuss ideas with professor Amrita Chakrabarti Myers  about her latest project, delving into a seemingly lost history of the lives of African American women in the South.

After completing her first project, “Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston,” Myers said she realized there were many more stories to be told about interracial relationships in the southern United States.

Myers, an associate professor of gender studies and history, said she has worked on her newest project, “Hidden in Plain Sight: Julia Chinn and the Challenges of Reconstructing Antebellum Black Women’s Lives,” since she started realizing that some women, particularly ?Julia Chinn, were not living the stereotypical lives of submissive black women raped by powerful white men.

“I really wanted to do a longer study that addressed just that issue alone,” Myers said.

Ph.D. candidate of gender studies Heather Montes Ireland said Myers’ talk was the second of three talks of the Gender Studies Research Colloquium, a series of lectures dedicated to IU gender studies research.

Myers began the talk discussing how the work she did on her first project led her to trace the power and rights given to free black women in the South during the ?pre-Civil War era.

“What does it mean to be free, black and female in the old south?” she said she asked herself.

Myers said her research led her to want to follow the history of a specific family to try to find out how black women gained the rights and power they had when they were, in a sense, one step shy of slavery.

One of the ways Myers said black women were able to gain power was through sexual relationships with white men. Having access to these men provided women with expanded rights.

“They know freedom is just the first stop,” she said.

Myers said she wanted to know what made these relationships that were seemingly consensual last for 20 to 40 years.

Specifically, Myers said she decided to consider the relationship between Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson and Julia Chinn, a black woman.

“Johnson has kind of been erased from history books,” she said. “He was in a relationship that didn’t fit the normal story.”

Despite constantly being referred to as “the bachelor,” Johnson was involved in a long term, committed relationship with Julia Chinn, Meyers said. The couple had two daughters and were very public about their ?relationship.

Despite the marital aspects of the relationship, the couple was unable to officially marry under Kentucky law, she said.

Myers said that even though nobody spoke out against the relationship until Johnson ran for the vice ?presidency and years after Chinn had died, gossip and societal discomfort ?abounded.

She said even though Johnson was definitely not the only white man engaging in sexual relations with a black woman, no other men spoke openly about these ?interactions.

“Everybody’s having sex with everybody else,” Myers said, emphasizing the fact that Johnson’s relations weren’t uncommon, but their publicity was.

Myers said society still has trouble grasping the concept of a consensual interracial relationship at that time.

“I want to know about ?Julia,” Myers said.

She said she doesn’t want her work to be just another biography of Johnson, but instead a story focused specifically on Julia and her two daughters, Adaline and ?Imogene.

Myers said one of the many struggles of this process is that all of the records she encounters were written by white men.

Myers said she has searched all over Kentucky and Washington, D.C. looking for pieces of information about Chinn’s life.

“I call myself a historical private detective,” Myers said.

During the talk, Myers presented one political cartoon that explained the stigma that surrounded Johnson and Chinn’s relationship.

She said people were convinced the social norms they had become accustomed to would be turned upside down, making black women into high society ladies and allowing abolitionists to have a friend in the White House, even though Johnson was pro-slavery.

“There were a couple of times when she said things that gave me chills,” Ireland said.

After her talk, Myers opened the floor for questions, and the following discussion consisted of students asking about the focus of her research and what she wants to learn from Chinn’s life.

“I want to know everything about her,” she said.

Myers said she hopes this specific story will help her to unlock the diversity of experiences and relationships afforded to black women from this time and region.

“There’s a multiplicity of experiences,” she said. “That’s the point.”

The group talked about Myers’ difficulties in her research, including searching for one of Johnson and Chinn’s descendents.

“Fundamentally, when you put black women in the center, it disrupts everything,” Myers said of her research.

Because society has essentially erased major chunks of the stories of black women in America during this time, research like this is vital to essentially retelling history, Ireland said.

“She is able to tell us something entirely different,” Ireland said.

Myers said learning about these relationships is important if society wants to better understand how black women lived in the Antebellum period in the South.

“I think it teaches us a lot,” she said.

Myers said even though the work is never easy, it can be very rewarding.

“It’s amazing what you can find out if you’re patient,” Myers said.

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