The book in question, titled “The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family,” won the 2023 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize in women’s history and/or feminist theory. However, an American Historical Association web page devoted to previous recipients of the prize no longer lists the book or its author, Kerri K. Greenidge.
Greenidge no longer holds her once tenured position of associate professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora at Tufts University, which conducted a peer review of the book and found errors and lack of citation, a university spokesperson told the newspaper. Greenidge’s author page on publisher W.W. Norton & Company’s website also no longer lists the book.
The fallout follows a critical review of the book by historian Myra C. Glenn, who described the book as “deeply flawed” and “riddled” with factual errors, baseless claims and references to nonexistent archived material, including letters purportedly exchanged by abolitionist sisters – Angelina and Sarah – in the Grimke family.
Greenidge denied making anything up or plagiarizing any material but acknowledged she may have “misattributed” some citations.
Greenidge now becomes one of the latest high-profile cases of a Black woman scholar whose work is being called into question over lack of evidence and lack of originality.
Such criticism felled the presidency of Claudine Gay, the first Black woman to lead Harvard, who resigned from her post in 2024 amid allegations of plagiarism.
Greenidge is by no means alone in her belief that criticism of scholarship produced by Black women is racially motivated, or that, as she told the Times: “The attack on Black women academics is real.”
“[L]et’s stop pretending Black women aren’t catching hell in higher education,” Dr. Carey Yazeed, a consultant who addresses workplace hostility toward Black women, wrote in the wake of the Claudine Gay case, which she described as a “witch hunt.”
Despite Greenidge’s claims that attacks on her work were racially motivated, the Times article does not indicate that Greenidge offered any proof to contradict the allegations that she lied or failed to properly cite other people’s work.
