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Reflections on the Self-Publishing Tradition on ASALH’s 106th Birthday
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Reflections on the Self-Publishing Tradition on ASALH’s 106th Birthday

The ASALH Election of 2021 is over even if the winners have not been publicly announced. If anyone who ran is right with Woodson in wanting to bring the Journal of African American History back home, neither presidential candidate mentioned it—nor did anyone else running for the Executive Council.

With no one standing up for Woodson’s tradition of self-publishing, I am indifferent to the outcome of the election and am increasingly pessimistic to the Association’s future as a publishing entity. Without its premier journal being self-published, ASALH is becoming nothing but a professional coping organization (a meeting place for black scholars in what they see as a cold, white academic world).  The academic market for the journal is shrinking not growing, and the University of Chicago has no solution to that problem—no one has. As I have constantly posted on this site, there are other models that don’t rely on the academy, but ASALH is increasingly becoming absorbed into it.

Yet, I warned in 2016 that if ASALH gets out of the business of publishing, it will find itself unable to publish on its own.  Just as people think they can remove themselves from farming for years, then return to the land and make a living from it, so ASALH’s leading members suffer the same illusion about publishing. Few families that ever leave farming succeed when they attempt to return.  All businesses change and if you are not there keeping up with it in real time, you will be left behind and are largely trying to return to a new business. Closing a business is much easier than reopening one in a changed world.

If I am right, this is a sad moment for ASALH’s self-publishing tradition.  ASALH will become increasingly dependent on white publishing firms to get its scholarship before the world.  It is likely that ASALH, rather than making modest money on the JAAH, will have to pay for it to be published.  This is the legacy of the outgoing board, especially the officers who joined the it in 2016. 

Let’s hope this is not the case, and someone picks up the issue of getting right with Woodson.  If not, let’s hope some other entity run or owned by black people creates a suite of black history journals to meet the need to tell our history.  The tradition of black folks publishing their own scholarship is bigger than ASALH, and it’s right with the Woodson tradition.

History from the Community Up
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History from the Community Up

Since the 1990s, I have witnessed many talented historians, including some truly gifted ones, go without any real opportunity to practice their chosen profession. I have watched a rare few claw their way into the ranks of the tenured after being adjuncts for years. Most of us become academics because we want to think, write, and teach. Because I have always guarded myself against undo influences on my thinking–always skeptical or willing to be unconvinced–I have ever believed that the profession might have little for me. Yet I have been fortunate to ply my trade, but I was always willing to be a historian outside the academy. This is why I have always believed in ASALH and came to respect Carter G. Woodson–who did precisely the thing I thought I might have to do. He only lasted a year at Howard University and was saved for two years by his friend John Davis at West Virginia Institute. Before and after these experiences, he existed as a historian trained on his own dime and surviving outside of the academy.

The historical profession’s associations cannot imagine themselves serving anything but the academy, and then only from the top down. K-12 teachers, junior college professors, and independent scholars all feel less than welcome at gatherings, and publishing in one of the leading journals is but a dream. I spent a lot of time over thirteen years intentionally trying to be more democratic and inclusive than Woodson. Yet try as some of us did, the tendency of ASALH and all organizations occupied by academics is towards professional separation, hierarchy, and perceived prestige. Every time ASALH has tilted too far towards academics, its well-being has suffered. What is true for ASALH, I fear is true now for the entire academy.

Historians need to rethink their relationship to the university, the public, and one another. Attached to the academy, with its high cost structure, historians-in-training are running up enormous debt. Everyone who thinks about it for a moment knows that graduate programs could operate on weekends only. Societies unattached to the academy are able to publish journals at a fraction of the cost because they are free from course releases, graduate student stipends, and the ever-escalating demands of university libraries who increasingly don’t subscribe to journals anyway. Associations with their own peer-review programs could put a seal of approval on scholarship that gets preserved in their databases and then published anywhere the author, the rightful copyright holder, desires. Through local branches, historians who are from the community can promote history. Not just local history, but whatever history is being produced by the historians.

Implicit in all of this is that many of the historians, if not most, will be considered amateurs. Yet many would be history professionals outside of the academy. They will be teachers, museum workers, church historians, journalists, and former community leaders. I am convinced that America has been and remains a history wasteland precisely because we leave it to professionals rather than growing history from the community up.

Vote Right with Woodson
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Vote Right with Woodson

Our journal was independent and more profitable until a crew of people, led by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Gilbert Smith, Sharon Harley, and Mr. Self-Determination, VP Franklin, decided that a century of self-publishing was enough.  To achieve this feat, they misrepresented the truth about the finances and ultimately disenfranchised the membership, and now the JAAH is under the management of the University of Chicago.   Yes, we still own Woodson’s journal but now we are so mis-educated that we need managers to make the very same arrangements we had been making.  Go figure.  You have seen the first product of the University of Chicago and the ink covers the page the same way it did when we directed a printer to do it.  They changed the font on the cover, but gee we could have done that too.  And the pictures look just as cheesy as always.  That is the nature of black-and-white images on non-glossy paper.

For Officers

ASALH is currently electing new folks for the board–though not enough of them.    For officers, please vote for Lionel Kimble and Kaye Wise Whitehead.  They were right with Woodson.  Unfortunately, no one would run against Evelyn and Gilbert, so just don’t vote for those positions.  And please do not vote for Barbara Dunn.  I have known her for years, and supported her for most everything.  Yet despite being an advocate of Woodson’s Mis-education of the Negro, folks she was a leading spirit of selling out tradition.  Hurt my heart, but yes, it’s true.

For the Executive Board

Among the people who sold out Woodson who are running for re-election are Janet Sims-Wood, Sharon Harley, James Harper II, and Dorothy Bailey.  Please do not vote for them.  Let them go about their business. They have done enough damage.

In general, I am for people I know are right with Woodson.  Lionel Kimble has organized a slate, and I am for that slate.  I also am For Anita Shepard of the Jacksonville Branch.  She is Right with Woodson.  Please vote for her or one of the following on Lionel’s slate.

 

JAAH Assimilated by Chicago
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JAAH Assimilated by Chicago

How Much Is Due to Ignorance?

When the regime running ASALH started down the road towards selling out to a university press, they did not fully comprehend the concept of a publisher for a scholar journal.  They thought of ASALH as having a white commercial publisher in the Tapestry Press, and they clung to this position even as I tried to school them.  Though a publisher in its own right, we hired Tapestry to provide us with some publishing services. They copy-edited and designed the journal, then sub-contracted the printing and fulfillment.  For this they were paid a fee, and could not claim the copyright, could not claim the revenue, and did not promote the journal or become liable for the veracity of the content.  They were a vendor; we were the publisher.  We were liable for what we put before the world.  We were our own Big Poppa.

As a result, our brand was out front, and our vendors stood in the background, for the most part.  JStor itself is so big that even though they were never our publisher, we were and are on their platform and so they branded along with us, though they are technically.   How much of this education in publishing sunk is unknown. These folks were trying hard not to hear me.  Some knowledge, however, did slip in.  Most grasped that a publisher is not a print, lol.   Well, they increasingly understood things, at least in theory, even as they kept saying to folks that we had had a white publisher in Tapestry.

What they did not really did not understand is what it means to put your journal under the management of a publisher.  They kept harping on still owning the old intellectual property and the journal itself.  Yet ownership and control are two different things!  And as publishing scholars, many of the board members should have known that.  We own copyrights and yet don’t control them–that is an academic reality.  I kept trying to tell them that the Chicago contract would be akin to owning a farm and continuing to do the labor but putting yourself under the management and control of a white company.  The publisher is The Man.  They call the shots.  You become “one of their” journals.  They control you, past and present.

To see the difference between being the publisher and the content provider is best seen on what is happening in JSTOR Archive.  We still self-publish the Black History Bulletin, so I looks as we would want it.  We don’t publish the Journal of African American History and we don’t control the copyright of the previous journals, so it appears as the University of Chicago–the Journal’s Big Poppa–would have it.

ASALH as Publisher

 

Chicago as Publisher of Journal of Negro History

Well, Here is how the article from the Journal of Negro History now appear under the University of Chicago’s control of ASALH’s intellectual property from the days of yore.  Oh the ASALH branding is gone, disappeared. If you did not know, you would not know, that the Journal of Negro History was published by the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.  It says, published by The University of Chicago Press.  Why? Because the regime gave them the control over the copyright and they decided how to brand it and they now “publish it.”  Mighty white of them, at it?  Now, actually, mighty dumb of black folks.

 

Half Assimilated or Given a Modest Bit of Branding?

When you are the shot caller, or the publisher, you decide how things appear, how they are branded unless a contract clause prevents you.  It is mighty nice of them to decide that the Journal African American History articles, those from 2002 forward will remain on JSTOR’s platform and still carry the ASALH brand.  Or perhaps the assimilation process for ASALH’s JAAH is simply not complete.  Feels good to be half-assimilated, rather than wholly gone, huh?

Now, I note that something else is different with the newer, JAAH articles on JSTOR’s platform.  It appears that you can no longer see the full text on JSTOR for articles published after 2009.  You can only download the pdf.  Why that is unknown to me.  Was this done by Chicago as the new publisher of old things?  I’m clueless, and I imagine so are the powers that be at ASALH.  Publishers are shot callers, not the folks who are content providers.

Not Everyone Is Down with Being Assimilated

If you are even just a pluralist or multiculturalist who believes in some modicum of self-determination, none of this sits right with you.  It looks like ASALH begged to be assimilated by the mighty Borg, AKA, the University of Chicago Press.  Here’s my facebook thread about it from October 11, 2017.

Well, Now that You Have a White Boss the Remedy Should Be Familiar

For ASALH people who do not like this state of affairs, all you can do in the short-run is scream bloody murder and complain about white supremacy.  Mind you, the regime asked for this.  For less money than we were making, they wanted to get close to Chicago and let them publish us.  They said it was all profits and that Chicago just adored our journal.  We were free, self-standing for a century, but some black folks wanted back on the plantation.  Self-Determination did not feel right!  So now black folks can complain to white folks about how they are being done wrong, smh. Don’t blame white people; we have only ourselves to blame.  We asked to be incorporated, then signed on the dotted line.

Selling Out Tradition at a Financial Disadvantage
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Selling Out Tradition at a Financial Disadvantage

 

After disenfranchising the members of ASALH at the 101st Annual Meeting in Richmond, denying our constitution and by-laws and throwing out a motion during discussion, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham got the board to compound her extra-constitutional action by authorizing her to sign the contract with Chicago. So much in this letter is inaccurate, but what is missing is more important. I will keep it to six points.

1. The contract with reduce our profit from the journal by $35,000 a year.

2. The officers told the membership in Richmond that the we would receive $100,000 in profit each year from the new relationship, but in fact the expenses that ASALH will incur will total almost $70,000–unless ASALH lays off staff.

3. The officers told the membership that every member would receive a print copy of the journal, and they will not. Only certain categories of members will receive a print copy–over half of the members will not.

4. Although ASALH will own the journal, we will be content providers and not publishers. We would own the farm and work the farm, but the white university press will manage us. Because of our scholarship, editing, and brand, we will feed them and ourselves, leaving us less profit than we make now.

5. Tapestry Press worked for us, now we will work for Chicago.  They were paid a fee for services, not a percentage.  They took no risk, we did.  We were liable for what we said–this is what publishers do. Publishers are shot callers and risk takers.  Now, Chicago is our publisher, and we are no longer the oldest black published journal in the scholarly world.  That title now belongs to The Journal of Negro Education.   As our publishers, Chicago will manage the affairs and cut us a check when we produce content.  Without an examination of either numbers or facts, our board believes Chicago can do it better and make us more money–and they won’t.   That is because they still really don’t understand what publishing is.  Now, those of you who love status more than independence, who love taking care of others as they tell you what they are doing for you, who love the ice in the other person’s cup–the ice that you put there, then you should be happy with this new era of ASALH.

6. New issues of The Journal of African American History will no longer be part of JSTOR’s database, and so each year the JSTOR archive will become less useful to scholars.

One fact will let you know how little the President still knows about the journal publishing business even a year later. Chicago is far from the leading publisher of journals. It is a very small fry with less than 100 journal. Sage publishes about 1,000 journals; Wiley, 1,500 journals; Frances Taylor, 2,100; Elsevier, 2,500 journals, Chicago publishes three times less than Cambridge or Oxford, less than the University of California Press, and not much more than Duke and North Carolina. It looks big only in the eyes of Penn State University Press and the University of Illinois.

Here is the letter in its entirety.

 

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