A black feminist historian whose work is being labeled as misleading — and who may have lost her cushy academic job — says it all comes down to an attack on black women.
The New York Times tells the tale of Kerri Greenidge, whose 2022 book “The Grimkes” was hailed for its narrative about a slaveholding family and its work in the abolitionist movement.
Publishers Weekly put the book on its list of that year’s top books, while the American Historical Association handed Greenidge the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, which honors scholars in women’s history and feminist theory.
But the glow has dimmed as the furor over her flimsy factual foundation is being linked to the end of her gig as a tenured associate professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University — and the loss of a book deal.
Myra Glenn, a retired professor of American history at Elmira College, was among the first to question what she was reading in 2024 when she was reviewing the book for a journal.
“I said, ‘Where is she getting this?’” she said. “Boy, it became a major problem.”
Hellbound and Down 