Ajena Cason Rogers: Amplifying Voices of African American Women

This article was developed from two oral history interviews with Ajena Cason Rogers that Lu Ann Jones conducted in October and November of 2020. The interviews are part of two projects: Women’s Voices: Women in the National Park Service Oral History Project, made possible by a grant from the National Park Foundation, and Telling Our Own Untold Stories: Civil Rights in the National Park Service.

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Ajena Cason Rogers’s passion for American history is deeply rooted in family history. On her mother’s side are Virginia ancestors like James Apostle Fields. Born into slavery, his family escaped to Fort Monroe in 1863. Following emancipation, Fields thrived as he gained access to education, the vote, and the right to own property. From South Carolina, meanwhile, her father’s parents joined the early 20th century African American migration north to find steady employment in Washington, DC, and the means to invest in their children’s education. Rogers’s parents met at Hampton Institute, now the storied HBCU Hampton University. Little did she know when she joined the National Park Service in 1984 what a source of strength and inspiration her family history would be.

Discovering a Superpower

Ajena Rogers at the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Courtesy of Ajena Rogers

Rogers grew up in Roanoke, VA, near the Blue Ridge Parkway, the first place she worked for the National Park Service. Her primary job was collecting fees at a park campground, but, like many summer seasonal rangers, Rogers got to do a little bit of everything. A co-worker encouraged her to try first-person living history, an interpretation technique that changed her life. When she stood before an audience portraying historical figures, Rogers discovered that her shyness dissolved behind their personas as she spoke on their behalf. “By being somebody else,” she said, “I was brave enough to get in front of the crowd.”

When she created the program “Granny Foster Remembers,” Rogers drew on scholarship about life among Black Appalachians. To her surprise, the research echoed stories she heard at family and church gatherings and the verbal artistry of her Grandmother Cason’s descriptions of growing up in South Carolina. Rogers had an epiphany: “The people who raised me” mattered. “Granny Foster” allowed her to share the wisdom and honor the practices of the women who nurtured her—an experience that moves her still.

• Ajena Rogers on the "Granny Foster Remembers" program

  
  

  During an oral history interview with the NPS Park History Program in 2020, Ajena Rogers speaks about recognizing the importance of personal experiences in a park program.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS Park History Program

  Date created:

  01/14/2022

  Audio Transcript

  ROGERS: That program was the way that I was able to reach visitors to the Blue Ridge Parkway in a way that I never knew I could. It is through that program that I finally started finding my space. [getting choked up] And realized that I was valuable. Yeah. Yeah. And that my experiences were significant, and the people around me were significant, not people to be discarded or overlooked or tossed away. Yeah.

Ajena Rogers in character as Granny Foster, interpreting the experience of an elderly Black Appalachian woman in the 1900s.

Courtesy of Ajena Rogers

• Ajena Rogers: Valued Identities

  
  

  Ajena Rogers talks about communicating the experience of being Appalachian, African American, and a woman through the Granny Foster interpretation program at Blue Ridge Parkway.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS Park History Program

  Date created:

  01/14/2022

  Audio Transcript

  ROGERS: Well, they were always valuable to me. To be shown as being valuable outside of me was an important thing for me to discover. What I would say in my Granny Foster program is that ‘I can tell you what it’s like to be Appalachian, colored and a woman.’ If you notice those three identifiers have almost always so long in the larger society been put down as being less than. And those are all parts of me. So you get those three things layered on top of you, and it makes you feel super small. Or it can.
  
  But doing my program, I was able to show others—and, at the same time, show myself—no, this is an experience to be valued. As I’ve said before. You may have overlooked it but look what you missed. Look what you missed. It gave me courage to be able to use my voice and explain that. Now, at age twenty-something, I wouldn’t have been able to articulate that. I just knew that I had more strength than I gave myself credit for. I hadn’t been able to summon that. But it was in me the whole time. Because my people had given me that strength. I just didn't know I had it. I had a superpower that I didn’t know I had.

First-Person African American Interpretation: Pain and Privilege

In 1991, Rogers accepted a permanent job as an interpretive ranger at the Booker T. Washington National Monument, located on the Piedmont Virginia plantation where the future educator was born. An innovative park superintendent encouraged living history demonstrations. As Rogers prepared to portray Jane, Booker’s mother and a cook for the white Burroughs family who owned them, she connected with a growing community of first-person interpreters who were pioneers in living history representations of enslaved people. In the early 1990s, what would become a sea change in African American history was beginning at historical sites not far away. Rogers trained with cutting-edge interpreters at Colonial Williamsburg and drew support from peers.

During Rogers’s tenure, interpretation at the Booker T. Washington National Monument evolved from benign discussions of rural crafts to the hard “emotional history of slavery, race, and racism.” Park rangers asked, How can we portray African American life in the mid-19^th century in ways that are relevant to audiences 150 years later?

Rogers answered that question by depicting Jane, who prepared meals over an open fireplace while caring for her young son. Rogers’s own toddler Joe portrayed Booker.

Rogers might have been playing a part, but she discovered the pain of representing an enslaved mother and the power of first-person interpretation. In between interpretive programs, for example, Joe played chase with Amanda, a white girl who portrayed the owners’ granddaughter. When it was time for the program to start, the children had to go their separate ways. Why couldn’t they continue to play together, Joe asked repeatedly.

A photograph of Ajena Rogers and her son Joseph, portraying Jane and Booker Washington at Booker T. Washington National Monument.

Courtesy of Ajena Rogers

• Ajena Rogers and Joe at Booker T. Washington National Monument

  
  

  In an oral history interview with the Park History Program, Ajena Rogers shares a story about her son and a moment where she felt a connection to the history and people associated with Booker T. Washington National Monument.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS Park History Program

  Date created:

  01/14/2022

  Audio Transcript

  ROGERS: I said, “Because you can’t.”
  “Why?”
  And I had to look at my son and say, “Because it’s not our place.” But that moment is when I suddenly felt a connection with Jane, Booker’s mother. Trying to explain to a child the stupidity of race and position. And it was in that setting where he had grown up, with the cabin behind the catalpa tree, the smell of the food cooking from the fire. And it became really real that second. The power of first person became real.

The deep empathy that Rogers felt shook her. And while she could shuck off her costume and escape the character, she knew that Jane and women like her “couldn't do that. I’ve never forgotten that.”

Nor has Rogers forgotten what it felt like when white visitors assumed their own roles and started addressing her as if she were indeed an enslaved woman, not an accomplished woman portraying an historical figure.

• Ajena Rogers: Roles and Reality in Interpretation

  
  

  Ajena Rogers describes the challenging role of being an African American interpreter talking to visitors about the experience of someone who is enslaved.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS Park History Program

  Date created:

  01/14/2022

  Audio Transcript

  ROGERS: And they would start talking to you as if they were the white plantation mistress and master and could order whatever they wanted you to do. And to hear someone speak to me like that, a college graduate, a woman who has a child that she’s providing for. And to have someone dismiss you, not even knowing who you are or whether, and not even caring, that was a tough situation to be an African American interpreter talking about the slave experience. I think that’s why it’s so difficult to get someone to portray someone who is enslaved.

How did Rogers find relief from the emotional labor of portraying an enslaved woman? She turned to interpreters doing similar work at other sites.

• Ajena Rogers: "To speak for those that could not speak for themselves"

  
  

  In an oral history interview, Ajena Rogers described finding strength with other interpreters working at similar sites.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS Park History Program

  Date created:

  01/24/2022

  Audio Transcript

  ROGERS: Constantly they were saying, ‘We do this because it is an honor. It is an honor to speak for those that could not speak for themselves. To tell their story.’ Whenever it gets tough, that’s what I would draw on.

Ajena Rogers at Valley Forge National Historical Park, interpreting in the role of Abigail Freeman, a camp follower with George Washington's army during the American Revolution.

Courtesy of Ajena Rogers

“What About the People in the Background?”

Ajena Rogers as Hannah Till at Washington's Headquarters Kitchen, Valley Forge National Historical Park. Rogers used research and costumed living history interpretation techniques to introduce visitors to the experience of African American women during the American Revolution.

NPS

After Rogers became an interpreter at Valley Forge National Historical Park in 1997, she surveyed primary sources for information about African Americans who served General George Washington and soldiers at the Revolutionary War encampment in Pennsylvania. A visitor’s question nudged her to learn more about “Negro Hannah” and other domestic workers. The visitor asked, “‘What about the people in the background? What about the people that you don’t hear about all the time? Who were the ones keeping the food cooked and cleaning and all of these things?’”

At the time, Rogers couldn’t answer the questions. But she started digging deeper to find information about the woman whose name she finally determined to be Hannah Till, a cook for Washington’s military household. As it turned out, Washington hired Till’s services. Her enslaver pocketed one portion of her pay and Till saved the rest so she could buy her freedom. She succeeded.

Rogers’s costumed interpretation of Hannah Till was popular, and the park decided to film it. On the day of the taping the dynamics of race--past and present--played out once again when her young daughter confided in her.

• Ajena Rogers: Dynamics of Race, Past and Present

  
  

  Ajena Rogers spoke about a day when her costumed interpretation of Hannah Till, a cook for General George Washington and soldiers during the Revolutionary War, was being filmed at Valley Forge National Historical Park, presenting an experience of racial dynamics informed by both past and present.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS Park History Program

  Date created:

  01/24/2022

  Audio Transcript

  ROGERS: Just as I’m about to put her on the bus, she says, ‘Mom, a boy made fun of me today because of the color of my skin.’ I didn’t have time to unpack that bomb that she had just dropped on me. All I could do was kind of get her on the bus and then zoom over to try to do this filming at the site. And (laughs) I was really miffed. And so normally when I portray Hannah, I am cutting something and talking about it and stirring this, and just talking about life. But that day? Hannah was mad! Because what was running through my mind was--no we didn’t go this far, 250-some years, for my daughter to be subjected to the same prejudices and biases that Hannah had been, that my mom had been, that I had been subjected to.
  
  When I look back and hear the stories of what they went through during slavery and Jim Crow and segregation, I always felt that I had benefited from that. And I didn’t get the blatant bias, prejudice. But I got it still. I had hoped that my six year-old would not have to go through that herself. So that just made it all come out. So when I’m talking about Hannah, it’s just talking about how you have to take it. How you have to wear the mask. You can’t speak the way you want to speak. You can’t lay the person out like you want to. You have to nod. You have to step back. Or pretend like you’re not even there, that you don’t even hear it. That double consciousness. And it’s pretty much the only way you can survive. So I wanted, that ended up coming out in the presentation as I’m talking. At the very end it says yes, I will mind my mouth. I will step back. I will be quiet. So it just was a way for me to just say even in these times, you still have to do that. And use her as a way to vent and voice what so many African Americans continue to feel so many years later.

Finding Her Own Voice

While stationed at Valley Forge, Rogers assumed new responsibilities and sought new opportunities. She took on natural resources interpretation and pursued a master’s degree, all while she juggled the joys and demands of motherhood and being married to an NPS Chief Ranger. Peers recognized her expertise as a living history interpreter of African American life, and she received invitations to speak at professional conferences. Rogers realized that she had something to say in her own voice as well as in the voices of historical figures. She became “more comfortable speaking as a national park ranger” and she had “come to the conclusion that I can’t be quiet. But it was a slow, steady transition over time.”

In 2010 when Rogers became a supervisory park ranger at the Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site in Richmond, the arena for sharing her views grew. She found personal inspiration as she learned more about Walker, the entrepreneur who advocated for civil rights and education for African Americans and women. Rogers came to realize that she shared a “superpower” with Walker—an ability to “negotiate and navigate and get people to come together” to get things done.

• Ajena Rogers: On Maggie Walker

  
  

  During an oral history interview, Ajena Rogers shares personal inspiration and qualities that connected her with Maggie Walker. Rogers became a supervisory park ranger at Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site in 2010.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS Park History Program

  Date created:

  01/24/2022

  Audio Transcript

  ROGERS: I think I became conscious of that skill five years ago. Or that it was something that was not something everyone has. I think I recognized it simply through studying Maggie Walker, the way she moved through her world. Oh, that is actually something that you develop and use. I had been using it all the time. But it was, again, putting a name on a skill that when I saw and read about how Maggie Walker could take people who normally would not even get along with each other in the same room, and get them to move together to do something that was going to be better for everyone--that’s like oh, that’s what I tried to do. Not consciously, but subconsciously tried to do that. I really admired how she could tell you off, and you would go, “Oh, thank you. I really needed to hear that.” Yeah. So I want to be more like Maggie Walker in that way. (laughs) But sometimes you can use the fact that people will look at you and be ready to dismiss you. And then you can hit them when they’re not looking. Yeah. And have some effect there. Use what you have. Use what you have.

Ajena Rogers, sculptor Toby Mendez, Liza Mickens (great-great-granddaughter of Maggie Walker), and Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney unveil the Maggie Walker statue to a crowd. The statue was dedicated on July 15, 2017.

NPS

One of Rogers’s big concerns is the small proportion of NPS staff who are African American. Even at a place dedicated to Black history like the Walker home, at the time of our interview in 2020 she was the site’s sole African American employee. “It should not be that I’m the only Black person on our staff!” She looks to predecessors and her own training for the skills and temperament to create change.

• Ajena Rogers: "That's why I'm here"

  
  

  In an oral history interview, Ajena Rogers comments on the privilege and burden of the experiences, training, and opportunities along her path.

  Credit / Author:

  NPS Park History Program

  Date created:

  02/24/2022

  Audio Transcript

  ROGERS: I’m often brought back to the story of Queen Esther in the Bible where her Uncle Mordecai says to her, “Well, what do you know that this isn’t what you had been being prepared to do?” I’m not quoting that quite right. But who is it to tell you that this isn’t why you have been prepared and put in this position, to do this thing to save the people? That is my charge sometimes, I feel. That I have had these experiences and been put in this place where I have been trained by the Park Service and trained in the Park Service to speak eloquently as possible under some duress, but still be able to form my thoughts, to get those points across to someone who hasn’t met a person who might have had that background or experience. I have a platform to channel that to a broader audience than just a few people. So that’s the privilege that I feel. And I feel the burden of using that, in coming across with that. So it’s a privilege and a burden. And I know you’ve probably heard that back and forth at times. Wouldn't trade it. That’s why I’m here.

Coming Full Circle

Some three decades after Rogers first directed family stories into the figure of “Granny Foster,” she used living history once again to pay homage to family. After she learned more about her great-great-great-grandmother Martha Ann Fields, on occasion she embodied her as a guest interpreter at Fort Monroe National Historic Site in Hampton, Virginia. The fort is near where, in 1619, colonists forcibly brought the first Africans to British North America. It is also where Union troops accepted “contrabands” who had escaped bondage during the Civil War. Rogers donned period clothing and portrayed Fields, who witnessed three of her children sold and the fourth escape to freedom on his own, then shepherded the remainder of her family from slavery to refuge at Fort Monroe. This time the historical figure was blood kin, and the voice of the interpretive ranger carried on the stories of her ancestors.

More Resources

Videos

• The View from the Forge: Hannah Till

• Who Else Was Here: Discovering Untold Stories at Washington's Headquarters

• Oral History Interview with Ajena C. Rogers, July 6, 2015, at the Library of Virginia

Reading

• Valley Forge Women
• "A Birthplace That Experienced Slavery, The Civil War and Emancipation," Booker T. Washington National Monument
• Maggie L. Walker National Historic Site website   
• Sparks, Lisa Vernon. "Descendants of early contraband slaves gather for tribute to ancestors at Fort Monroe". The Daily Press. May 4, 2019.

Lu Ann Jones is the oral history program coordinator for the National Park Service Park History Program in Washington, DC. Learn more at the NPS Oral History Website.