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Reflections on the 104th Anniversary of ASALH
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Reflections on the 104th Anniversary of ASALH

Yesterday, September 9th, marked the Association’s 104th anniversary. As long as Carter G. Woodson’s association lives there is hope that organization will get back right with its founder. This site exists to remind people who know ASALH that its founder’s first and foremost purpose was to create an organization for black people to publish–publish–the truth about themselves. He dedicated the remainder of his life and his resources to publishing the Journal of Negro History, now the Journal of African American History. In 2017, when ASALH’s Executive Board signed to a contract to make the University of Chicago Press its publisher, it broke faith with the past. It lost its way.

Publishing is a business, and once you leave a business, getting back into it is difficult. Most of the members on the board at the time of the sellout, did not understand what it took to publish a journal. Indeed, most some made the inane argument that we lacked a physical printing press, not know that the University of Chicago Press did not literally “press” books any more. Most of the tasks of publishing are outsourced by most publishers–even if they call themselves a “press” or a “publishing house.” Publishing is about making a publication happen financially and being legally responsible for the content. To be sure, anyone with cash and integrity can re-enter publishing, but the business of publishing also requires accomplishing all the tasks and making all the decision that make the final product viable. How this work is done and coordinated changes over time. All businesses change.

This means that as each year passes, ASALH will become more, not less, dependent on the University of Chicago or some other publisher to publish Woodson’s journal. Once fully deskilled as a publisher, ASALH will have to pay the cost of dependency. From the beginning, ASALH decided to cease self-publishing on the basis of status, not money–the new arrangements meant less, not more, net revenue. Indeed, those involved confused revenue for profit, and boasted ASALH would have the money to buy itself the things it needed. Instead, the lasting result was the loss of staffing, as predicted.

Anyone knowledgeable about academic publishing knows that a journal like Woodson’s is shrinking in university library sales, which are the source of the revenue to sustain the journal. As history shrinks as a discipline and as university libraries get their budgets cuts or frozen, they subscribe to fewer title. The carnage is real as the academy contracts, and yet ASALH, through its publishing arrangement with Chicago, is more rather than less dependent on libraries sales. The gambit by publishers with their own platforms is to make an increasing percentage of their revenue from old rather than new articles. They want to compete with JSTOR as an archive. Libraries are committed to continuing access to old journals even when they cannot afford the latest, more expense articles. The long and the sort of this that if ASALH’s publisher cannot make a living off of Woodson’s journal, it will cut it royalties to ASALH, and, if necessary, charge ASALH to publish its journal. In any event, ASALH will have to go along or find another publisher. After all, Woodson’s association is losing its publishing knowledge.

Overtime, my knowledge of academic publishing will be outdated. Frankly, I volunteered by time to ASALH for 13 years, from 2003 to 2015, because of a bookshelf I saw in Marquette’s library that looks like the one here. If you notice, there are bound and unbound issues of the journal. Moreover, there are missing numbers from the early 1980s. Those reflect neglect, not by the libraries, but by ASALH. The journal was being published irregularly, and I vowed to do what I could to change that situation if I had the chance. Everyone comes to ASALH through a door. For some it’s the journal. For others, the Black History Bulletin, the annual black history kit, or the Annual Meeting. I came for the journal and learned publishing to put the business back on its footing. This would have been impossible without V. P. Franklin, and self-publishing would have ended without me. He was the poorly paid editor, and I was the unpaid business manager. Well, ASALH is paying for the expertise of the University of Chicago because it, not ASALH, is the shot caller and gets 50% of all revenue from the labors of new editors–and the old ones too. Yes, Chicago gets a cut of all sales from 1916 to present.

What’s left of ASALH’s in-house publishing program is the Black History Bulletin. A publication for teachers by teachers, it is now one of the oldest self-published journals having been around since 1937. Those on ASALH’s board who care about the tradition of self-publishing should become involved in that publication. It is right with Woodson, and it is the hope for the future.

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.

The Permanent Damage Being Done by the University of Chicago Deal
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The Permanent Damage Being Done by the University of Chicago Deal

Someone asked me what is the permanent financial damage to the Journal of African American History by taking it to Chicago? It is a good question, and the answer is sobering.

1. After five-years, it is likely that the revenue from the journal will be below the $100,000 promised in the initial contract. Chicago has no magic business plan. They are trying to snatch part of JSTOR’s $80,000,000 archive business. With 70 journals versus JSTOR’s 2000, they are nobody. They are trying to increase the revenue from archive sales precisely because they know the new journals business is shrinking and less money will come from new sales. They are trying to force institutions that want a journal to buy both the archive and the new journal. That strategy won’t work for most journals, including ours. Libraries will opt for the old journals that are in JSTOR, Ebsco Host, Centage, and Proquest. If I am right about this massive failure, Chicago will offer much less than $100,000 a year after five years. In fact, they might just ask us to pay them to host our journal. Yeah. They are making a business bet that might be ended by their university. Happens all the time.

2. If ASALH got out of the contract today, we would likely suffer huge short-term damage and some permanent damage. Chicago is trying to sell subscriptions now for 2018 and the geniuses did not realize what this meant. Chicago probably won’t do half as well as we would have done.  Many librarians may take this opportunity to drop our journal as they always need to make cuts. (This may explain why Chicago never tried to ascertain how many customers we had!) Transitions like these always lead to customer losses. There is no way of knowing this in the short run.

The point being made here is that in stealing the decision from the membership and going rogue damage has been done by the Executive Council. We are effectively not the publishers of the journal and would have to rebuild our business already. Most people don’t understand that you cannot shut down an operation and start it back up without there being financial consequences.

If the decision were mine and mine alone, I would lay off any and all staff whose work has been eliminated by the move to Chicago. Financially, it is a no brainer. Boards and organizations, unfortunately, do not work this way. People are carried, and so as ASALH seeks a new basis for funding its journal, it will have to carry the past into the future.

The people who made this decision have cost us $35k a year for five years and untold lost future revenues beyond that. Remember the entire ASALH reserve is $150K or so, which is less than the losses from the deal. They rented out the farm to rich people running an experiment. When it’s over, the field may be less rather than more fertile.

The board members who supported this have to be sent packing. And those of us who believe in self-publishing have five years to lay the ground work for a new financial basis for the Journal of African American History. We have been seriously wounded in the digital revolution–shot by Du Boisians in the House of Woodson.

JAAH on the Brink of Whitrification
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JAAH on the Brink of Whitrification

 

It bothers VP Franklin and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham none that to sell out a century of self-publishing they have had to disenfranchise the membership and make less money. Why let an organization of black folks get in their way? A graduate of the University of Chicago, Franklin with whom I labored for thirteen years gets to be the editor for a whole year at a journal published by his alma mater. For Evelyn, whose ASALH accomplishment before becoming ASALH president was to write a fund-raising letter, this is the crowning achievement of her presidency and her time on the board.

Now both still try to pretend that the white folks who used to work for us, Tapestry Press, was our publisher. This is largely because they do not really know what a publisher is. Believe me, documents will bear this out. They cannot distinguish a vendor from a shot caller. Yet publishers get a cut and are liable for what is printed, thus they are the decision makers. Ask a lawyer filing a libel suit and they’ll tell you who is the publisher. And Chicago has a clause in the contract saying that the next editor has to be agreeable to them. Now, Tapestry had no contract and printed whatever we told them. We could have told them to print that the white man is the devil, and they would have done it. That is what printers do. Say something Chicago doesn’t like, and you’ll meet your boss, baby–even if you own the journal.

The membership does not have to take being disenfranchised and having its authority usurped lying down. Before we were disenfranchised we were told everyone would get a print copy of the journal. That is not true. We were told that the $100,000 would be all profit–the only money they’ll make will come from cheating people out of the promised journals. Indeed, we will make about $35,000 less than before. And our new issues will not be in JSTOR. Worse still, worse of all, we will no longer be the oldest scholarly journal published by a black organization in the world. Nope. We gave that up for the look of being a University of Chicago Journal. Wow, how black is that?

By the way, until now, the board has not voted to give VP Franklin the $5,000 raise he has been looking for. If so, ASALH will make about $40,000 less than it has been making. In ASALH world, where deficit are frequent, this is more money than you know.

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.

 

Woodson, Too Many Former ASALH Presidents Still Won’t Look at the Numbers Before Making Decisions
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Woodson, Too Many Former ASALH Presidents Still Won’t Look at the Numbers Before Making Decisions

These former Presidents who signed the letter in support of taking the Journal of African History to the University of Chicago Press ought to be ashamed of themselves.  Here I speak of Betty Gardner, Robert Harris, Samuel Du Bois Cook, and John Fleming.  Gardner, Harris, and Cook held office when the journal was at Morehouse for that 25-year period, when Alton Hornsby kept the subscribers list and received all the revenue.  He often submitted reports saying they were broke without providing an accounting of the numbers. When the journal returned to headquarters, under the presidency of Gloria Dickinson, it came without either records of subscribers or documents about revenue.  In fact, back in those dark days when these former presidents sat the board, there were no IRS filings, and the only reports they had were cash roll ups.  I will never forget the day when I showed the treasurer that his numbers had to be false, and he sat behind a typewriter and created a new report without documents before him–he made it all up as I had suspected.  Oh, those were dark days–much different from those by the time of John Fleming who agreed to be president in part because I agreed to continue as Vice President for Programs.

So John Fleming should know better than much of what he says about the journal.  It was marginally profitable during his years.  Thanks to VP Franklin’s regular production of the journal and decisions to raise the price slowly from $40 to $150 today, the journal has had positive revenue all these years.  So much so that we started charging salaries and overhead.  Now Bob Harris would not know this, because he was gone.  And John Fleming left in 2009–before we went digital.  Since going digital the revenue increased from $75,000 to a highpoint of $130,000.  With JSTOR’s reduction in fees and leaving our current vendors, our revenue will tip $150,000 for the first time–but how would these past presidents know this.  They would not know about the current finances of the journal because there are no numbers provided by the regime they are supporting.

The letter also states that Woodson’s Appeal made no money.  Now, in 2008 we were getting $1000 plus donations for the appeal, some as high as $5,000.   They are so wrong about that they should be ashamed.  Yet, Cook would have no way of knowing that.  Bob Harris had left the board, and yet John Fleming and Bettye Gardiner should know better, especially John.  I will ask him to personally apologize for that gross misstatement of fact.

Now two of these presidents were involved with the major financial disasters of our time in ASALHland, the Que Street Debacle and the Lost Treasures.

 

 

How Can You Sign on to a Project When No One Gives You Anything Like This?  Selling Out Woodson Without Reference to Numbers, SMH

 

A Telling Vote of Confidence for Treasurer Despite His Lying to Membership and Not Producing Financial Reports
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A Telling Vote of Confidence for Treasurer Despite His Lying to Membership and Not Producing Financial Reports

Much can be said about the Executive Council Meeting of February 24th, but the Regime is denying that the 102nd Business Meeting in Cincinnati has authority over the decision to self publish the Journal of African American History or take on the University of Chicago Press as our publisher.  Pretending that they still have the issue, they are ignoring the much more profitable self-publishing option made possible by the changes in JSTOR’s Current Journals Program.   Never mind that there is three times the profit is self-publishing.   Yet the truth about the superiority of self-publishing is not clear because the Regime is not interested in putting out a projection of the revenue versus expenses for going to the University of Chicago Press.  After more than four months since the 101st Annual Meeting, where Gilbert A. Smith represented $100,000 of revenue as profit, he has still not provided the math.  There still is neither a cost-benefit analysis or a set of expenses that will remain during the period of the proposed Chicago contract.   The latter takes perhaps more work than then regime cares to perform, but the latter is something that a head of household can produce.  If one did not know better, the board will vote to go to Chicago without numbers.

Why Not Present a Draft Report with Everything but the Trivial Amount?

We hear that the numbers are not definitive yet because the current expenses are not accurately known.  Gee, how did we get this far if the board has no handle on the numbers?  And Chicago is poised to make the deal even though it admits it does not have good numbers.  The numbers in question have to do with the current revenue and expenses for print subscriptions.  The other expenses are well known and make up the bulk of the expenses, indeed, the provisional numbers would only change the bottom line on print expenses by roughly 10% to 20%, or $600 to $1,200.  It all involves whether we ship out print an additional 30 or 60 customers.  It is a trivial expense.  Some might call it akin to spoilage.

What Reason or Reasons Would There Be to Not Presenting a provisional Draft?

Well, there is no good reason since the report would be between 98% and 99% accurate.   The problems are twofold.

  1. Such a report would demonstrate that the Chicago Proposal is almost $200,000 less profitable over five years than self-publishing.
  2. It would be also be the proof that Gilbert A. Smith, CPA, misrepresented revenues as profits–in a very major way.

Those who believe in self-publishing produced a comparative report using the same base of data.

Despite This Failure to Do Due Diligence, the Executive Council Gave Him a Vote of Confidence

The Executive Council revealed itself once again more concerned about being on the best terms with one another regardless of how the membership, the legislative body, has been lied to as it was in Richmond.  Never forget that Gilbert A. Smith told the standing-room only crowd at the 101st Business Session that $100,000 in revenue would be profit.  Clearly taking issue on my blog and social media posts about the treasure’s mischaracterization of the $100,000, a board member called for a vote of confidence in the treasurer.   Gilbert easily won the vote–imagine that–despite never addressing the issue of revenue and expenses!  And the board was aghast that roughly a quarter of their members–mostly new–voted no confidence.

Hope for the Future as the Board Is Changing Before Our Eyes

The board was audibly surprised and upset by the number of new board members who were not on board with the sell out.  The truth is, you cannot get many people to sign on to the sell out.  Indeed, I was surprised at a couple of people who put their sympathy for Gilbert A. Smith above his role in lying to the membership by knowingly calling revenue profits.  Yet, everyone on the board should know that they are at odds with the membership on this question.  And Chicago should take note.  The people selling out tradition will be sent packing from the board.  Too many of these folks are here to be self-important at our Annual DC Black History Luncheon.  That becomes clearer every year.