Taking History Out of Ivory Hands
The project is called Labor Pains. Where the hell did ‘Myth & Marrow’ come from?
The Myth is the history book version of America: a clean, linear story of rugged individualism, free markets, and the self-made man. The Marrow is the truth: the messy, physical, exhausting reality of the bodies that actually built and sustain the country.
I don’t have a PhD. I don’t have a tenure-track position. But what I do have is 20 years of studying history and presenting it in every form imaginable for every audience imaginable. My undergraduate degree is in World History, with minors in Sociology and Theater. My graduate work was in Special Education.
That mix might sound random, but it is actually my superpower. My background in Special Ed gave me the tools to scaffold information—to break down complex, heavy concepts so they are accessible to different learning styles and comprehension levels. My background in Theater taught me that facts don’t stick without feelings.
I love history. I love the stories I learn, and I love sharing them. I have always needed the arts to make sense of the past. I remember being in AP US History and choosing to read the novel Snow Falling on Cedars to explore Japanese Internment. I didn’t just want the dates and the legislation; I needed a story, even a fictional one, to help me imagine the ins-and-outs of life during that specific moment.
The Need for Public History I believe there is a desperate need for people like me right now in the United States. We need people who just love history—messy, complicated, real history—and who want to share it in as many ways as possible. We need to take the stories out of the ivory towers and put them back into the hands of the people who lived them.
The Labor Pains Project For the past year, I have been doing exactly that with the Labor Pains project. I have been digging through archives in Albany, NY, and Oakland, CA, looking for the stories of Black women’s labor. It has been exhausting, exhilarating work.
Now, I am taking the next step. I am planning on submitting a manuscript of this work to a conference in September.
My hope isn’t just to get published. My goal is to share this work with other historians so we can get to work on collecting more stories. The dream is that Labor Pains isn’t relegated to just Albany and Oakland, but that I can build a team to collect these oral histories from all over America.
Below is the abstract for the paper I am working on. It’s a “sneak peek” into the argument I am making—that we cannot understand the American economy without understanding the specific bodies that built it.
If this resonates with you—if you are a historian, an artist, or just someone who loves the truth—I’d love to connect.
Connect with MetaCocoMom
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Connect with Jae Gayle (Artist- Public Historian)
- LinkedIn: @JaeGayle
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- Podcast: Dispatches from the Conductor’s Cabin (Available on Spotify)
Follow the Labor Pains Project
- Main Website: laborpainsproject.com
- Project Blog: laborpainsblogs.com
- Instagram: @laborpainsproject
Abstract: Myth and Marrow
American history and capitalism are inextricably bound to the bodies of Black women. This bond is the “marrow” of our nationhood, yet it is consistently obscured by the “myth” of a sanitized, progressive history. This project argues that for 250 years, the American economy has relied on a critical paradox: Black women have provided a Care Economy—building the safety nets, schools, and logistical networks the State refused to provide—while simultaneously experiencing a Deficit of Care from that same State.
By tracing labor from the antebellum period to the modern gig economy, and utilizing archival records from Albany, NY, and Oakland, CA, this research reveals that Black women’s labor functioned not just as work, but as a “somatic tax.” The findings demonstrate that the systemic extraction of this labor is not a market failure, but a market feature. Ultimately, this project posits that we cannot fix the American healthcare or economic crises without first addressing this deficit. If we design policy to care for those who have historically anchored the nation’s economy without protection, we inevitably secure the safety net for everyone.
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