history professor Kendra Field co-curates dC exhibit on Black feminism

UNIVERSITY by Arvind Pillai Staff Writer

Kendra Field, associate professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at Tufts, co-curated a new exhibition at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C.

The exhibition, titled “We Who Believe In Freedom: Black Feminist DC,” opened in March and was created in partnership with the National Women’s History Museum. The endeavor goes hand in hand with Field’s past work and research, including her book “Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War,” which draws heavily on African American family history and archival research.

Field explained the goals and content of the exhibition, which will be on display through September 2024, in an email to the Daily.

“‘We Who Believe in Freedom: Black Feminist DC’ tells the stories of Black women and feminists who fought long and hard, bravely and creatively, for their rights and place in society,” she wrote. “This exhibition showcases the past, present, and future of Black feminism within and beyond the nation’s capital.”

Richard Reyes-Gavilan, executive director of the DC Public Library, also spoke on the exhibition’s significance.

“The Library’s partnership with the National Women’s History Museum is an opportunity to amplify the voices of activists and leaders known to too few,” Reyes-Gavilan wrote in a statement to the Daily. “It is a step towards recognizing the importance of Black women’s outsized contributions in the struggle for freedom and justice.”

Field explained the process for setting up the exhibition, in partnership with both the libraries and other colleagues.

“My longtime colleague Dr. Sherie Randolph and I co-curated this exhibition together over the last year. I covered the earlier (post emancipation) era, and Dr. Randolph covered the civil rights and Black power eras,” Field wrote. “It was wonderful to have the opportunity to explore more deeply the intergenerational communities that shaped several of the DC individuals I had encountered in my previous research as a historian.”

Zoe Schoen (LA’19), a project administrator and research assistant for the African American Trail Project, helped with research for this project. She spoke more about the work that went into preparing the exhibition.

“I mostly was looking for images and archival documents that we could show that would be compelling,” Schoen said. “One of the things that was really important to us was to try to find archival audio of the women who were featured speaking in their own voices.”

Schoen added that to help tell the story of the Civil Rights Movement, the team worked with local activists to collect personal photographs and items. Field noted how the late 19th and early 20th century stories that she researched in the creation of the exhibit were inspiring to her too.

“It was a gift to see how their work and communities in DC shaped the powerful lives, choices, and movements of future generations, of the civil rights and Black power generations, from Pauli Murray to Loretta Ross,” Field wrote.

She also explained how the culmination of her previous research and work experience helped her create the exhibition, highlighting specifically her expertise in family history.

“As a historian, my approach to the past and to storytelling has always centered on biographies and life histories,” Field wrote. “Exploring an individual life in depth, and in context – the particular struggles an individual was up against, and the creative, brilliant, and often surprising ways in which they responded – can reveal so much about American history, expanding our collective imagination for the past, and for the present.”

Schoen elaborated on the importance of the exhibit in its present-day context.

“I think it’s a radical exhibit, and it highlights some unsung heroes of the reproductive justice movement,” Schoen said. “It certainly establishes that the Civil Rights Movement began well before we tend to think that it

Goldstein talks trans health care, COVID-19

GOLDSTEIN continued from page 18

Robbie championed. Now, the patient’s preferred pronouns are pretty visible in the medical record, and there’s a clear bed policy that the patient gets a bed [of] their preferred choice.”

Goldstein said that today, the political landscape around trans healthcare is worse than it was when he was with the program. He encourages everyone in public health to lift up the trans community.

“We have a role to … educate the community to know that trans care is lifesaving care,” Goldstein said. “Genderaffirming care is lifesaving care.”

Goldstein ran for Massachusetts’ 8th Congressional District in 2020 but lost to incumbent Stephen Lynch in the primary. That same year, he received a call from his boss at the time, Rochelle Walensky, who asked him to join her team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For two years, Goldstein worked in public health policy at the national level.

“That work allowed me to go and visit states and cities and counties and understand local public health in a way that I didn’t before,” he said. “Through that process, it inspired me to want to come back home and to do work … to improve the health of people that were right around me.”

When the commissioner position opened up at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Goldstein jumped at it. Now, as Goldstein embarks on the new role, he hopes to ensure that Massachusetts remains a leader in access to reproductive care. He is also focused on main - taining access to health care as the state and country end their COVID-19 emergencies and using the lessons from the past three years to invest in public health infrastructure for the future.

Dave Munson (M’09), a physician with the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program’s Street Team, worked with Goldstein at the Sharewood Clinic and remembers him as a “damn good doctor.”

“I think Robbie has a dynamic personality. He is really passionate about underserved populations and marginalized populations, those communities, and I think that was clear, even back then in terms of the passion and the commitment that he brought to the work,” Munson said. “He has this natural leadership quality about him where he is able to relate began, and I think it argues also for the radical nature of Black feminism, in particular the way that Black feminism has constantly pushed the wider feminist movement to expand.”

Field said that talking about the past, and the origins of movements and language, is critical.

“I think a lot about the proximity of this past – how so many living today have grandparents whose own parents or grandparents experienced the end or immediate aftermath of American racial slavery,” Field wrote.

Schoen pointed out that issues discussed today, including those surrounding women’s autonomy, were also discussed by formerly enslaved people.

“There were women coming out of enslavement who had already started to think about to a lot of different types of people.”

Despite his new role leading the Department of Public Health, Goldstein has not forgotten his peers at Tufts who are also working to create change.

“We joke often that all of us have decided to use our Tufts degrees to do good, but not necessarily to make money. … We’re all so proud of that,” he said. “The same is true for my Tufts Medical School classmates, … people who have made a tremendous impact on public health and health care. And that makes me really proud to say that I’m part of that cohort and I am friends with those people.”

Bravard said that Goldstein is one of the most generous people she has ever met. She remembers Goldstein and his husband letting her stay at their place once when she was sick, and frequent- some of these structures and how they were operating, and the need for women to come together to support each other and to fight for really radical ideas that expanded well beyond the category of women,” Schoen said.

Schoen said that, from personal experience, Field was a great fit as a co-curator for this exhibit.

“[She] is particularly an expert in Black genealogy and Black family history,” Schoen said. “I think she brought attention in the exhibit to not just these women but to their biographies more broadly. … I think when we can understand people in a more complex way that goes beyond just their public persona, we can also understand what drove them to dedicate their lives to particular struggles.” ly letting others stay over during residency.

“Robbie has always been very much one of the most dedicated clinicians I’ve ever met. He just goes above and beyond for everyone,” Bravard said. “He was always the one staying late and making sure that everyone was getting the absolute best care they possibly could.”

Goldstein is proud to be a Jumbo, and said that he hopes current Tufts students continue to listen to the community and incorporate equity into all their work.

“Especially for students who are coming through right now,” Goldstein said, “I would challenge them to think back and to not think about incremental change, but to think about dramatic, wholesale change that really does benefit the most amount of people.”

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