Black History

Exhibit celebrates Black Panther Party in stories and portraits

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 22:52:38 +0000

Exhibit celebrates Black Panther Party in stories and portraits Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/22/2026 - 15:52

The documentary exhibit “Revolutionary Grain,” open now through March 15 in the Macky Gallery, highlights the stories of former Black Panther Party members and ongoing struggles for racial justice

This spring, the ��ý�� Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS) and the Department of History, together with the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History, present the traveling exhibition “Revolutionary Grain: Celebrating the Spirit of the Black Panther Party in Portraits and Stories” in the Macky Gallery.

The exhibition, open now through March 15, was created by California-based artist and photographer Suzun Lucia Lamaina and honors the legacy of one of the most influential movements in Black American history.

As part of Black History Month programming, the exhibition will be accompanied by a panel discussion with former Black Panther Party members Gayle Dickson, Aaron Dixon, Ericka Huggins and Billy X Jennings, alongside Lamaina and CAAAS Director Reiland Rabaka, on Thursday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m. in the Norlin Library Center for Global British and Irish Studies Room (M549). The discussion will focus on the history and legacy of the Black Panther Party and its relevance in today’s political climate.

Living history

Hear firsthand accounts of the history of the Black Panther Party and the 1960s Black Freedom Struggle—along with their legacies in Trump's America. The program is part of the accompanying events for the traveling exhibit "Revolutionary Grain: Celebrating the Spirit of the Black Panther Party in Portraits and Stories" that is on display through March 15 in the Macky Gallery.

What: A panel discussion with former Black Panther Party members Gayle Dickson, Aaron Dixon, Ericka Huggins and Billy X Jennings, alongside CAAAS Director Reiland Rabaka and photographer Suzun Lucia Lamaina.

When: 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 12

Where: Norlin Library Center for Global British and Irish Studies Room (M549)

Learn more

Additional programs featuring former Panthers will take place throughout that week on campus.

The “Revolutionary Grain” exhibition features a social-documentary photographic essay of portraits and personal narratives from more than 50 former members of the Black Panther Party. Lamaina spent five years traveling across the United States to interview and photograph participants, offering them the opportunity to tell their own stories.

“This work is meant to spark conversation,” Lamaina explained of the project, noting that the exhibition coincides with the 60th anniversary of the Black Panther Party’s founding and ongoing struggles for racial justice in the United States. The exhibition situates the movement’s history in what Lamaina describes as a new phase of the Black Freedom Struggle in contemporary America.

Founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California, by Bobby Seale and the late Huey P. Newton, the Black Panther Party initially focused on addressing police violence in Black communities. By the late 1960s, the party had become a national and international symbol of resistance, establishing nearly 50 chapters across the United States and an international presence in Algiers, North Africa.

“Putting on the Black Panther uniform and committing our lives to the liberation struggle changed the purpose and meaning of our entire identities,” Dixon wrote in his 2012 memoir My People Are Rising: Memoir of a Black Panther Party Captain. “It was a liberating experience. Societal restriction and conformities dropped by the wayside, leaving a fearless, defiant, powerful human being. We no longer looked at ourselves in the same way, nor did we look at the system and its representatives in the same manner. We were the freest of the free.”

In addition to its revolutionary political stance against capitalism, imperialism and fascism, the party launched “survival programs” that provided free breakfasts, medical services and other essential resources to thousands of Black Americans. Despite its community-based activism, the Panthers were frequently targeted by federal authorities, with the Nixon administration labeling the party “the greatest danger to the internal security” of the United States. A number of its members, among them Fred Hampton in Chicago, died at the hands of police officers.

The exhibition seeks to counter decades of misrepresentation by bringing first-person accounts from former members to the foreground, connecting their experiences to present-day debates over racism, police violence and political organizing.

“At a time during which the Trump administration and its supporters are rewriting history and representing versions of the past that downplay or even erase the critical significance of the Black Liberation Struggle of the 1960s and 1970s—of which the Panthers were an integral part—it is all the more important to shed light on the movement’s complexities and give our students, faculty and the community one more opportunity to engage with aging Panther members in meaningful ways," says Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, a professor of history and the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History. "This is a university campus, and it is a celebration, but also a reappraisal, with the help of key actors, of a complex struggle that has also problematic chapters. History is messy, but our students deserve better than what many in Washington have in store for them.”

The exhibition is co-sponsored by the departments of English, Ethnic Studies and Women and Gender Studies and the Center for Humanities and the Arts.

All events are free and open to the public. No tickets are required. For more information, contact Thomas Pegelow Kaplan at thomas.pegelow-kaplan@colorado.edu.

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The documentary exhibit “Revolutionary Grain,” open now through March 15 in the Macky Gallery, highlights the stories of former Black Panther Party members and ongoing struggles for racial justice.

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Top image: Former Black Panther Party members Emory Douglas (left), Kathleen Cleaver (center) and Barbara Easley Cox (right). (Photos: Suzun Lucia Lamaina)

Listening to the preacher: Martin Luther King Jr. on collective morality

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 18:21:16 +0000

Listening to the preacher: Martin Luther King Jr. on collective morality Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/15/2026 - 11:21

Anshul Rai Sharma

Among the many reasons that Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy matters is because it refuses cynicism and moral fatigue

Jan. 19 marks Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day to commemorate King’s life and an opportunity to revisit his political practice. In this current moment when crises intersect—as economic inequality widens, housing and healthcare insecurity grows and geopolitical uncertainties strengthen—many of us experience a quieter crisis of moral fatigue. The scale of what is wrong can numb our attention.

One of the many reasons King’s legacy matters is because it refuses cynicism. Fifty-eight years after his death, we are faced with the same question as he: How do we turn “this fatigue of despair into buoyancy of hope,” to use the preacher’s own phrase? In an era saturated with calls to save the world through individual moral ambition, King's approach may offer better and more productive alternatives by inviting a shared reflection on moral fatigue across societies, from the United States to India.

Anshul Rai Sharma is a PhD student in the CU ��ý�� Department of Geography.

As a national leader, King was always alert to that which people share beneath their divisions. In his speeches, he always articulated a common humanity: "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny." This network of mutuality made him see social divisions as unnatural and morally indefensible.

As a young man, his train journey from Atlanta to Connecticut allowed him to witness how Black people sat separate from whites up to the Mason-Dixon line. But north of it, that barrier disappeared, revealing the arbitrariness of racial divisions and setting him on a lifelong path toward reconciliation. If, as W.E.B. Du Bois famously observed, the problem of the century was the problem of the color line, King's response was to wage a struggle against this separation through nonviolence.

In doing so, King was informed by an amalgam of influences, from Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of nonviolence to Walter Rauschenbusch’s social gospel. King wrestled with each philosophical idea and method as he exercised his own conscience. Added to this was his experience in organizing—from Montgomery’s bus boycott to the Poor People’s Campaign in Chicago, each, in its way, shaping and expanding King’s conception of humanity. The result was a moral geography without borders—one that may offer a way out of fatigue.

King’s life and practice

Throughout his life, King presented groups with moral demands attuned to their social position. From African Americans, he demanded nonviolent discipline in protest, a rigorous collective practice capable of transforming suffering into political force. From northern white liberals, he asked for more than verbal agreement with racial equality. As he put it, “It is one thing to agree with the goal of integration legally; it is another to commit oneself positively and actively to the ideal of integration.” From Southern white moderates, he demanded courage to overcome fear, to break with social consensus and to persuade others.

I read this strategy, unique to King, as a widening of moral responsibility. To separate morality from social life was, in his view, to empty it of force.

Similarly, individual ethical commitments that remained confined to belief, civility or legal agreement were insufficient because they left unjust structures intact. Instead of placing morality above or apart from social relations, King embedded it within them.

The result was a slow and gradual forging of solidarities, which transcended religious and class divisions. The Montgomery bus boycott, for instance, brought together Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Episcopalians. Though some clergy at times resisted King’s call to address social realities—instead suggesting that such matters be left to courts—King reminded them that “[a]ny religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.” In doing so, King redefined the church’s role as a moral actor accountable to the material conditions of people’s lives.

During his 1959 visit to India, Martin Luther King Jr. was introduced at a public gathering as a fellow “untouchable." He was featured on a stamp in India in 1969. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

His moral appeal transcended class divisions as physicians, teachers and lawyers stood alongside domestic workers and laborers in marches, united by King's vision of common life. Thus, social uplift became a shared undertaking in which no group stood outside responsibility. By grounding ethics in social struggle, King laid the foundation for a politics aimed at social reform.

‘I am an untouchable’

Social reform, in any credible sense, must begin from the lived realities of those most affected by injustice and confront the structures that sustain inequality. Not only did King’s philosophy align with Gandhi’s non-violence, it was also informed by a deep encounter with caste as a form of structural oppression.

During his 1959 visit to India, King was introduced at a public gathering as a fellow “untouchable,” a term then used to describe Dalits, those placed at the bottom of caste hierarchy and historically subjected to extreme social exclusion. Initially taken aback by the comparison, King reflected on its meaning: “Yes,” he said, “I am an untouchable, and every Negro in the United States of America is an untouchable.” He recognized the shared condition of social degradation produced by social systems. Such systems were deemed moral evils that demanded organized dismantling. Speaking of race and caste, he continued, “We have a moral mandate to get rid of this evil system.”

In this respect, King’s project of racial integration and equality resonates intimately with that of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the early-20th-century Dalit intellectual and political leader and principal architect of modern India’s constitution. Born into an “untouchable” caste, Ambedkar argued that political freedom without social reform was hollow and that democracy in independent India could not survive unless caste was dismantled at its roots.

While King is most often read alongside Gandhi, more enduring intellectual and strategic affinities lie with Ambedkar. Both leaders share historic trajectories, where King, the son of a Black preacher, rose to become a national leader of the U.S. Civil Rights movement; and Ambedkar, born into a Dalit family, became India’s foremost leader of the oppressed castes. These parallel lives help us see how both thinkers understood social oppression as systemic and placed social reform at the center of a nation’s political life. In 2017, Martin Luther King III, during a visit to India, emphasized the shared legacy of King and Ambedkar.

Moral ambition in contemporary times

Martin Luther King Jr. was intimately aware of how working people and the poor possess moral agency even when systems limit their options, and he campaigned to make people see this for themselves. This recognition is the beginning of self-respect, notes CU ��ý�� scholar Anshul Rai Sharma. (Photo: U.S. Information Agency Press and Publications Service)

It is against this background that contemporary articulations of morality appear inadequate. Recent calls for ethical renewal often focus on individual responsibility while leaving social relations largely unexamined. Consider Dutch author Rutger Bregman's 2025 book Moral Ambition, which asks people to dedicate their time to improving the world—yet his framework reveals assumptions that, while indicative of our times, need to be reviewed.

Bregman argues that scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs, engineers and lawyers must become "morally ambitious" and that this is the pathway to solving the world’s most pressing issues. But his framework dismisses ordinary people, describing them as "herd animals" who "do what we're taught to do, accept what we're handed, believe what we're told is true."

Where King recognized the masses as capable of spiritual awakening, Bergman’s articulation of morality strips them of agency, seeing ordinary people as passive followers "sticking to the script that goes with our kind of life."

In thinking about this notion of moral ambition, it is important to remember that modern life still divides labor between activities that are or may seem as menial and routine and those that are seen as creative and ideal. A major portion of working people, especially caste minorities in the Global South and racial minorities in the United States, fall into the former category. To label such populations as "herds" or suggest they lack moral ambition refuses genuine engagement with the actual forces that shape people's lives, forces deeply felt and understood by both Ambedkar and King.

A portion of King’s enduring appeal lies in this recognition. Ordinary people face real economic and social constraints that shape their choices. These may include the struggle to make rent, raise children, navigate discrimination and survive without reliable state support. King was intimately aware of how working people and the poor possess moral agency even when systems limit their options, and he campaigned to make people see this for themselves. This recognition is the beginning of self-respect.

In his sermons and speeches, he spoke to the part of our being which is a gift, our ability to live dignified lives despite and against inequalities and oppressive structures. Through King’s words, people could see the constraints but also the real meaning of their lives, encouraging them to organize and to act. From Washington to Mumbai, from university halls to churches, this was the transformation that the preacher from Atlanta sought.

This is King's enduring gift, a moral framework that refuses to separate the personal from the social, that sees ordinary people as agents and that understands justice as something we create together rather than await from authorities or technocratic experts. As we face our own moment of moral fatigue, perhaps the question we should ask ourselves is not how to become more “morally ambitious” but how to bring home and amplify the latent moral energies that do not promise rapid or universal solutions, but that remain the quiet foundation of how communities endure, resist and remake the world.

Anshul Rai Sharma is a PhD student in the Department of Geography at the ��ý��. His research focuses on caste, urban dispossession and housing in the city of Bengaluru, India.

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Among the many reasons that Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy matters is because it refuses cynicism and moral fatigue.

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Top photo: The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Washington, D.C. on Aug. 28, 1963. (Photo: Agence France-Presse/Wikimedia Commons)

Rosa Parks: 70 years beyond the bus seat—a lifetime of activism

Julie Chiron — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 18:14:17 +0000

Rosa Parks: 70 years beyond the bus seat—a lifetime of activism Julie Chiron Mon, 12/01/2025 - 11:14

Bradley Worrell

CU ��ý�� historian Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders delineates misperceptions surrounding ‘the mother of the Civil Rights Movement’ and the Montgomery Bus Boycott while highlighting Parks’ enduring legacy

When people hear the name Rosa Parks, they likely picture a quiet, tired, older African American seamstress who refused to give up her seat to a white patron on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus on Dec. 1, 1955.

Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders

But as ��ý�� historian Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders explains, 70 years after Parks’ act of civil disobedience—and the Civil Rights Movement it helped ignite—there is a lot Americans tend to get wrong about that defining moment, which she says is far more complex, courageous and enduring.

“Many people still think of her as a tired seamstress and an old lady, but she was just 42 years old, she was the secretary of the local NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) chapter and she had been politically active in campaigns previously,” says Lawrence-Sanders, a Department of History assistant professor who specializes in African American history, including the Civil Rights Movement.

Notably, Parks was not the first Black person to be arrested for violating Montgomery’s segregated bus seating rules, Lawrence-Sanders says. She explains that civil rights activists had been looking for a test case to initiate a city-wide boycott to push for integration of the bus system and Parks was deemed a promising candidate.

“In class, I tell my students why Rosa Parks was chosen—because she was considered a respectable older woman who was married. Also, although she grew up in a working-class family and worked as a seamstress, she had completed high school, which was a rare achievement for Black Southerners then,” Lawrence-Sanders says. “There were teenage girls like Claudette Colvin who had been arrested before but weren’t chosen because, unfortunately, movement leaders did not view them as the right public face for a court challenge.”

Arrest prompts the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Rosa Parks was arrested on Dec. 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama.

Days after Parks’ arrest, Black leaders in Montgomery organized a city bus boycott. On Dec. 5, 1955, about 40,000 Black bus riders—representing the majority of the city’s bus commuters—boycotted the city transit system.

Seven decades after the bus boycott, Lawrence-Sanders says many people don’t fully appreciate the herculean task of organizing the endeavor, the sacrifices it required and its duration. She says that when she asks her history students to guess how long the bus boycott lasted, they typically say about a few weeks or a month. In truth, it lasted 381 days.

There also tends to be a misperception that the bus boycott was a spur-of-the-moment act—but that was not the case, Lawrence-Sanders says.

Black leaders working for civil rights in Montgomery had been waiting for an opportunity to challenge the city’s segregated bus system—and after Parks’ arrest, they leapt into action with astonishing speed—all without email, social media or other modern technologies. Flyers were printed and distributed by hand by the Montgomery Women’s Political Council, and churches became organizing hubs.

“The Montgomery boycott was planned—not spontaneous,” Lawrence-Sanders says. “Activists were organized and strategic.”

Organizers established vast carpool systems that operated as shadow transit networks, but many Black men and women trudged on foot for miles to and from work every day rather than use the city’s segregated bus system, Lawrence-Sanders says. In some cases, wealthy white women offered rides to their Black domestic workers, which sparked some controversy within Montgomery’s white community, she notes.

And while leaders were chosen for the movement, including a young Martin Luther King Jr., decisions were democratic: at mass meetings, ordinary citizens voted to continue the boycott despite the challenges, Lawrence-Sanders says.

“There are obviously people who are considered leaders of the movement, but ordinary people in the community are making these sacrifices to try to overturn a really unjust system,” she adds.

Montgomery amid the broader struggle for civil rights

Lawrence-Sanders says it’s important to understand the Montgomery bus boycott in the scope of the larger Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s.

“At the time, we’re just about one year in time removed from the Brown vs. The Board case, which sets off initial school desegregation battles. In my African American history course, I try to make clear (the idea) that ‘The Supreme Court decides it, but it is not decided,’” she says. “There is not a single moment where all of the schools in the South have abandoned segregation; there are multiple local battles for the next two decades or so.”

“We know from images at the time how violent some of those battles became in Little Rock, Arkansas, and in Mississippi and other places.

And then, just months before the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago was abducted and lynched after allegedly flirting with a young white woman while visiting family in rural Mississippi, in violation of Southern societal norms at the time.

The brutality of Till’s slaying and the acquittal of the men charged with his murder drew international attention to the long history of lynching in the South in particular, Lawrence-Sanders says. What’s more, Till’s murder laid bare the limitations of U.S. democracy at a time when the United States was engaged in a Cold War with the Soviet Union, where America was portraying itself as the home of liberty and justice, she adds.

“I think the Cold War context is really important, as international media actually picks up what is happening in the United States surrounding the lynchings and murder of Black people and Black children,” Lawrence-Sanders says. “Emmett’s mother’s decision to have an open casket to show what happened to him is a turning point, I think, for some people who may have been unaware of the brutality of the violence of the Jim Crow South.

“The fact that the men that are charged with his murder are acquitted was not a surprise to most people who were familiar with the Jim Crow legal system, but it may have been shocking to those people seeing it for the first time.”

It was against that backdrop that civil rights activists pushed for desegregated busing in Montgomery, often facing intimidation, violence and arrests, Lawrence-Sanders notes. It bears mentioning 70 years later that there was no guarantee their efforts would ultimately prove successful, she adds.

Victory in Montgomery comes at a cost

Handwritten reflections from Rosa Parks on her arrest.
Click to see full document.

On June 5, 1956, a Montgomery federal court ruled that any law requiring racially segregated seating on buses violated the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees all citizens—regardless of race—equal rights under state and federal laws. The city appealed that ruling, but on Dec. 20, 1956, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court’s ruling.

Montgomery’s buses were officially integrated the next day.

Lawrence-Sanders says the success of the Montgomery boycott is now seen as one of the first successful mass protests on behalf of civil rights in the United States, setting the stage for successive actions to bring about legal protections for African Americans. It also resulted in Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a national civil rights leader and solidifying his commitment to nonviolent resistance, she notes.

At the same time, Lawrence-Sanders says it’s important to recognize that there was a cost to be paid for the people who participated in the Civil Rights Movement.

“Activism was never glamorous, protests like sit-ins were disruptive and unpopular at the time,” she says. “Activists faced danger and hostility. We praise them now, but they weren’t celebrated then. We fail to recognize that many people involved in the Civil Rights Movement either died young or struggled for the rest of their lives.”

A number of civil rights leaders had their homes bombed or were killed for their activism, including King. As for Parks, she and her husband moved to Detroit in 1957 after they both lost their jobs and she received death threats.

“She never stops being an activist, though,” Lawrence-Sanders says. “She was involved in the Black Power movement in Detroit, in the anti-apartheid movement and pan-African causes well into the 1980s and 1990s. Like a lot of activists then and now, Rosa Parks protested segregation, sexual violence, unjust imprisonment and apartheid; she understood that solving one issue didn’t end the struggle.”

Parks was later recognized for her efforts, receiving the Congressional Gold Medal in 1992—the highest honor the nation bestows on citizens. At the same time, Lawrence-Sanders says that Parks spent her last years in near poverty, living in a modest Detroit apartment and at one point facing eviction before a rich benefactor came to her aid.

An enduring legacy for civil rights

Lawrence-Sanders says that when she teaches students about the Civil Rights Movement, she instructs them to avoid the trap of seeing those leaders one-dimensionally, in that one moment of their lives.

“History tends to freeze these activists in these celebrated moments, like Rosa Parks in 1955—but she lived for 50 more years and never stopped being an activist,” Lawrence-Sanders says. “The most important part of Rosa Parks’ legacy is her long life of activism—not just the one act we all know about. She made a decision that ignited one of the most important acts of civil disobedience in U.S. history—and then she kept fighting for justice for five decades more.”

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Rosa Parks was arrested, fingerprinted and briefly jailed for "refusing to obey orders of a bus driver."

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Black History Month celebration emphasizes building the ‘beloved community’

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 22:07:13 +0000

Black History Month celebration emphasizes building the ‘beloved community’ Rachel Sauer Mon, 02/03/2025 - 15:07

Rachel Sauer

While speakers acknowledged the change and uncertainty of the moment, they encouraged hope and the importance of continuing to work toward justice

The afternoon began with a karibu, the Swahili word for “welcome”—not just to the Glenn Miller Ballroom or the ��ý�� campus, but to the beloved community “where everybody is included and nobody is excluded,” said Reiland Rabaka, founder and director of the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS), in opening the CAAAS Day Black History Month celebration Saturday afternoon.

The celebration came, as several of the speakers acknowledged, during a time of great change, when many are feeling the anxiety that often accompanies uncertainty.

CU President Todd Saliman (left) and Reiland Rabaka, Center for African and African American Studies founder and director, emphasized the importance of compassion in the present moment.

“I have spent many decades watching progress and regress,” said CU ��ý�� Chancellor Justin Schwartz. “We seem to step forward and then back and then forward again.”

In emphasizing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation that, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” Schwartz noted that the arc “is not smooth like a rainbow,” but rough and jagged. “The arc does not bend on its own, people bend the arc. Collectively, we bend the arc toward justice.”

Todd Saliman, president of the University of Colorado, told those in attendance that “we are not changing anything until we are required to do so by a lawful order. We’ll keep our eye on the ball and continue to do our work. At this point, there’s very little we’ve been required to do lawfully.”

Saliman added that the University of Colorado remains committed to all of Colorado and encouraged people to “approach each other with compassion right now.”

CU Regent Wanda James, the second Black woman and third Black regent in the history of CU, was forceful in pointing out the lack of Black leadership within the CU system, while Annett James, president of the NAACP of ��ý�� County, emphasized the importance of accurately told history during Black History Month.

“History must be approached as a discipline rooted in fact,” James said, “not interpreted by those who wrote it.”

��ý�� Mayor Aaron Brockett, while acknowledging the “struggle, setback and oppression” in ��ý��’s history, said that “in the days and years to come, we will continue to build the beloved community here in ��ý��.”

Carrying the theme of building the beloved community, Rabaka emphasized that “we are going to keep doing this and we shall not be moved.”

Nandi Pointer (right), a PhD student in the College of Media, Communication and Information, performs with her brother, Shegun Pointer.

CU Regent Wanda James (center, black baseball cap) observed that "this is a deep Black History Month for us for a lot of reasons."

CU ��ý�� Chancellor Justin Schwartz emphasized that the "arc (of the moral universe) does not bend on its own, people bend the arc."

Denver musician Enmanuel Alexander performs at the CAAAS Day Black History Month celebration.

Reiland Rabaka, a CU ��ý�� professor of ethnic studies, said that in the work of building the beloved community, "we are going to keep doing this and we shall not be moved.”

Angel Anderson (left) and Tyreis Hunt (white shirt), both MFA students in the CU ��ý�� Department of Theatre and Dance, and Constance Harris, an MFA graduate from the department, perform with Parris Fleming (on trumpet).

Denver musician Parris Fleming (left, on trumpet) performed with (left to right) Tyreis Hunt, Constance Harris and Angel Anderson; Hunt and Anderson are MFA students in the CU ��ý�� Department of Theatre and Dance, and Harris is an MFA graduate from the department.

While speakers acknowledged the change and uncertainty of the moment, they encouraged hope and the importance of continuing to work toward justice.

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Breaking the color barrier in baseball leadership

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 19:01:20 +0000

Breaking the color barrier in baseball leadership Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/30/2025 - 12:01

Jared Bahir Browsh

Fifty years after Frank Robinson became the first Black manager in Major League Baseball, the league is struggling with a significant decline in Black players and leaders

As Black History Month begins Feb. 1 and Major League Baseball celebrates the 50th anniversary of Frank Robinson making his debut as the first Black manager, the sport is at a point of introspection with the lowest number of African Americans players in Major League Baseball since the 1950s.

The milestone is both a reminder of how far baseball came since segregation and how delicate inclusion efforts are in baseball and other institutions in the United States.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the CU ��ý�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

As the United States emerged from World War II, Plessy v. Ferguson and Jim Crow laws continued to keep the country largely segregated. The war, however, was also a turning point for African Americans, who demonstrated that their service was of equal value to others who fought in the war.

One such soldier was Jackie Robinson, the first athlete to letter in four sports at UCLA. His teammates Kenny Washington and Woody Strode broke the color barrier in the NFL in 1946, while he did the same in baseball the following year—seven years before Brown v. Board of Education determined that “separate but equal” thresholds for segregation were unconstitutional. Jackie Robinson’s last season as a player was 1956, the same season a young Frank Robinson debuted with the Cincinnati Reds.

In 1972, the Reds played the Oakland Athletics in the World Series. By that point, Frank Robinson had been traded twice and spent the season playing for Jackie Robinson’s former team, the Dodgers.

During Game 2 of the series in Cincinnati, Jackie Robinson was honored 25 years after breaking the color barrier in baseball. During his speech accepting the honor, he appealed to MLB leaders to hire the first Black manager, an opportunity he never got despite his expressed desire to manage a team. Jackie Robinson died nine days after his speech—Oct. 24, 1972—never seeing Frank Robinson hired as the first Black player-manager two years later.

Robinson was traded to Cleveland during the 1974 season after openly campaigning for the manager position with the Dodgers. Cleveland was the first American League team to sign a Black player in 1947, Larry Roby, and broke ground again 28 years later by hiring Robinson. He was the first player to win MVP in both the National and American League, but had a rocky tenure with the team, often being pushed to play when he wanted to focus on managing and butting heads with the star player, Gaylord Perry. He did lead the team to its first winning record in eight years in 1976, the last season he played, before being fired during the following season.

Inclusive Sports Summit

Inclusive Sports Summit

We change the game: Embracing the value of inclusive sports and recreation

When: 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 5

Where: Dal Ward Athletic Center and Main Student Recreation Center

During this summit participants will

Identify challenges, opportunities and best practices for advancing diversity, equity and inclusion work as practitioners and supporters.
Learn tangible takeaways to build bridges and build unity across similarities and differences.
Build skills and practice techniques for addressing inequities to help increase student retention, engagement and success.
Connect with departments and programs across campus that are available to support students, staff and faculty.

The Inclusive Sports Summit is free and open to faculty, staff, students and community members.

Robinson went on to manage the San Francisco Giants and his former team, the Baltimore Orioles, winning manager of the year in 1989. He was fired from the Orioles during the 1991 season—the year Major League Baseball had the highest percentage of African American players in the league, 18% of all players. The following season, Cito Gaston became the first African American manager to win a World Series.

Robinson continued to work in the league office after his time with the Orioles, returning to the dugout after being tapped by MLB to manage the Montreal Expos, which the league owned at the time. The team moved to Washington D.C. in 2005 and his final season as manager was the first season for the newly founded Washington Nationals.

Declining youth participation

The dearth of opportunities for African Americans to coach and assume leadership positions in sports is not new; however, baseball has seen the most precipitous drop in participation, down to 6% during the 2024 season.

Contributing to this drop is the lack of African Americans in leadership positions, with only two African American managers, Ron Washington (Angels) and Dave Roberts (Dodgers), and one general manager, Dana Brown (Astros). In spite of these paltry numbers, three of the last five World Series winners have been led by African American managers.

The numbers are even worse in college baseball, with only 5% of players and 3% of managers in Division I identifying as African American in 2024; of these 26 managers, 17 were from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The lack of visible leadership affects scouting, mentorship and even participation when players cannot see a career in the sport they love if they do not make it to the major leagues.

The low numbers of African American athletes in the college pipeline to the major leagues is only one of the reasons for the continued decline of African Americans in professional baseball. Like many sports, the privatization of youth sports is forcing many lower- and even middle-income families to reconsider their children’s participation in baseball. Local governments and schools have slashed recreation and athletic budgets, leading to more expensive sports like baseball to be cut, which in turn leads to a higher reliance on private leagues.

In 1975, Frank Robinson became Major League Baseball's first Black manager, assuming the role with the Cleveland Indians. (Photo: Jeff Robbins/Associated Press)

Many families ultimately balk at the cost of playing baseball, steering their children into more accessible sports as youth and high school baseball is increasingly privatized. The relatively low number of Division I baseball scholarships (11.7 maximum per team) and programs (300) compared to basketball (13 maximum scholarships across 352 schools) and especially football with 133 teams at the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level, 128 teams at the Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) level and with 85 maximum scholarships per team in FBS and 63 per team maximum in FCS. This also leads some families to encourage their children to focus on other sports to earn a college scholarship.

Even if amateur baseball players get drafted and signed, minor league salaries are so low that the same issues can arise that exist in youth baseball: players who cannot afford to remain in the sport. Minimum salaries are between just under $20,000 and $40,000 depending on the level, which is a significant increase from 2022, when minor league players unionized and negotiated a raise from a minimum salary between $4,800 and $17,500.

Salary expectations have led many scouts to focus on international players, particularly from Latin America, where teams will make verbal agreements with children as young as 12 in spite of the fact that teams technically cannot sign players until they are 16. MLB turns a blind eye to these agreements that often push children as young as 10 from countries like the Dominican Republic to leave school to pursue baseball. These players may be given performance-enhancing drugs to make them look more mature and artificially improve their athleticism. These players are ripe for exploitation, including lower salaries since they are beholden to Major League clubs with which they make these “handshake” deals—while their families take out loans based on future earnings, which may never appear.

Hope for long-term results

Economics and leadership are not the only factors in the decline of African Americans in professional baseball. The sport has declined as “America’s pastime” for decades, and for many is considered less “cool” than sports due to its slower pace—as well as kids’ alternative activities in the summer months—leading to a drop in viewership, especially among young viewers.

African Americans have also been historically discouraged from playing certain positions, particularly the on-field leadership positions of catcher and pitcher, the latter of which is the most visible position in the sport. This position “stacking” has historically impacted all sports, including basketball (point guard) and football (quarterback) due to discriminatory and false assumptions that African American players were not intelligent enough to play those positions. Basketball and football have seen dramatic shifts at these positions while baseball still sees limitations for African Americans at certain positions.

As with viewership, some of the issues pushing African Americans from baseball are emblematic of the decline in baseball’s overall popularity. However, there are some glimmers of hope for the future of African Americans in the sport. The House v. NCAA settlement will allow schools to increase the number of student athlete scholarships up to the roster limit, which is 34 in Division I—nearly triple the current limit.

Frank Robinson had a distinguished career as a player before becoming a manager. (Photo: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images)

The opportunity to earn compensation directly from schools may also support continued involvement in the sport. Much like name, image and likeness opportunities, however, revenue sharing will disproportionately go to the top-earning sports: reports from school point to about 75% of revenue sharing going to football and 15% going to basketball with other sports sharing the rest.

Outside of the college ranks, MLB has been actively involved in a number of initiatives to try to increase participation among young players, including Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) that was started in 1989 and is now sponsored by Nike. Players like Jimmy Rollins and recent Hall of Fame inductee C.C. Sabathia are both alumni of the program, but results have been less impactful in recent years with fewer alumni from the United States advancing to professional baseball. MLB also runs the Dream Series in Arizona, a training academy focused on African American pitchers and catchers, in conjunction with USA Baseball during the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The Andre Dawson Classic, named for the Hall of Fame player, is a round-robin tournament for HBCU baseball programs that runs every year at the Jackie Robinson Training Complex in Florida.

There is hope these efforts will yield long-term results and reverse the decline of African American players in baseball. The sport still needs to address its diminishing cachet among young sports fans in the United States and the lack of African American mentors and leaders in the sport, but some of the structures are there to encourage a renaissance of great Black baseball figures 50 years after Frank Robinson broke the managerial glass ceiling.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the CU ��ý�� Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Fifty years after Frank Robinson became the first Black manager in Major League Baseball, the league is struggling with a significant decline in Black players and leaders.

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Frank Robinson at Nationals Park. (Photo: Nick Wass/Associated Press)

Historian still making a strong case for Black Majority

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 22:53:30 +0000

Historian still making a strong case for Black Majority Rachel Sauer Mon, 01/06/2025 - 15:53

Bradley Worrell

CU Adjunct Professor Peter H. Wood’s seminal 1974 book on race, rice and rebellion in Colonial America recently celebrated its 50th anniversary with an updated version

If Peter H. Wood wants to stump some University of Colorado history majors about early American history, he’ll ask them which of the original 13 colonies was the wealthiest before the American Revolution and also had an African American majority at the time.

“Often, they will see it as a trick question. Some might guess New Jersey or New York or Connecticut, so most people have no idea of the correct answer, which is South Carolina,” says Wood, a former Rhodes Scholar and a Duke University emeritus professor. He came to the CU ��ý�� Department of History as an adjunct professor in 2012, when his wife, Distinguished Professor Emerita Elizabeth Fenn, joined the department.

Peter H. Wood has been an associate professor at CU ��ý�� for more than a dozen years, following a lengthy career teaching American history at Duke University.

South Carolina colonial history is a topic with which Wood is intimately familiar, having written the book Black Majority: Race, Rice and Rebellion in South Carolina, which was first published in 1974 and has been described as one of the most influential books on the history of the American South of the past 50 years. W. W. Norton published a 50th anniversary edition of the book in 2024.

Recently, Wood spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine about how he first brought the story of colonial South Carolina to light, reflecting on how the book was received at the time and why this part of history remains relevant today. His responses have been lightly edited for style and condensed for clarity.

Question: How did you become aware of this story of colonial South Carolina, which was unfamiliar to many Americans in 1974 and perhaps still is today?

Wood: I knew when I was an undergraduate that I wanted to study early American history. After a two-year stint at Oxford in the mid-1960s, I came back to Harvard for graduate school.

At that time, the Civil Rights Movement was going on. I’d been very interested in those events, as most of my generation was, and I wanted to see how I could put together my interest in interracial problems with my interest in early American history.

What I found was that early American history was very New England-oriented in those days. Ivy League schools were cranking out people writing about the Puritans, and when they wrote about the South, they would mainly write about Virginia. They talked about Jefferson and Washington. South Carolina had hardly been explored at all. There are only 13 British mainland colonies, after all, so to find that one of them had scarcely been studied was exciting.

Specifically, I was motivated by the Detroit riot in 1967, watching it unfold on television in the summer of 1967. Roger Mudd, the old CBS reporter, was flying over Detroit in a helicopter the way he’d been flying over Vietnam. He was saying, ‘I don’t know what’s going on down there.’ I realized that he was supposed to be explaining it to us, but he didn’t really have a very good feel for it himself. No white reporters did.

And the very next morning I went into Widener Library at Harvard and started looking at colonial history books to see if any of them covered Black history in the very early period … and South Carolina was completely blank. So, that was what set me going.

Question: If there wasn’t any significant scholarship about South Carolina prior to the American Revolution, particularly about African Americans living there, how did you conduct research for your book?

Wood: I went to the South Carolina State Archives in Columbia, not knowing what I would be able to find. I understood that if I did find materials, they would be written by the white colonists … because enslaved African Americans were not allowed to read and write. There wasn’t going to be anybody who was African American keeping a diary.

But what I did find was that the records were abundant. That’s partly because these enslaved people were being treated as property; they had a financial value. So, when I would open a book, there would be nothing in the index under ‘Negroes’ (that was the word used in those days). But I would look through the book itself and there were all kinds of references to them. They just hadn’t been indexed, because they weren’t considered important.

At every turn, there was more material than I expected, and often dealing with significant issues. …

And when you’re researching early African American history, you learn to read those documents critically. The silver lining of that sort of difficult research is that it forces you to be interdisciplinary and to use any approach you can.

Black Majority by CU Associate Professor Peter H. Wood was updated for its 50th anniversary in 2024. First published in 1974, the book broke new ground in showing how important slaves were to the South Carolina economy in Colonial times.

So, I ended up using some linguistics and some medical history (about malaria) and especially some agricultural history. Most people back then—and most Americans still today—don’t realize that the key product in South Carolina was rice. I argued successfully and for the first time in this book that it seemed to have originated with the enslaved Africans. The gist of the book is that these people were not unskilled labor; they were skilled and knowledgeable labor, and it was a West African product (rice) that made South Carolina the richest of the 13 colonies.

Question: With regard to Black Majority, you made the statement, ‘Demography matters.’ What do you mean by that?

Wood: I realized early on that demography was a very radical tool in the sense that it obliges you, or allows you, to treat everybody equally. In other words, to be a good demographer, you have to count everybody: Men, women and children, Black and white, gay and straight—everybody counts equally. As a born egalitarian, that was appealing, especially in a period where there were lots of radical ideas bouncing around that I was a little leery of.

But demography seems very straightforward, as in: All I have to do is count people. So, the very title of the book, Black Majority, is a demographic statement. It’s not saying, ‘These people are good or bad’ or anything else. It’s just saying, ‘Here they are.’ It becomes what I call a Rorschach test, meaning it’s up to the reader as to what they want to make out of these basic facts. …

The book—especially in those days—was particularly exciting for young African Americans, because they’d been told they didn’t have any history, or that it was inaccessible.

Remember, this was even before Alex Haley had published Roots. I actually met Alex while he was working on his book, because I was one of the only people he could find who was interested in slavery before the American Revolution. Most of the people who were studying Black history—which was only a very small, emerging field in those days—were either studying modern-day Civil Rights activities and Jim Crow activities, or maybe the Civil War and antebellum cotton plantations.

Question: You initially undertook your research on this topic to write your PhD dissertation. At what point in the process did you think your findings could make for a good, informative book?

Wood: Very early on, I thought I wanted to write a book. I mean, I wanted to be able to publish something and I wanted to start at the beginning. … If I could go all the way back to 1670, when this colony began, and find records, and tell the story moving forward—instead of going backwards from the Civil Rights movement—I wanted to do that.

If I could write a book about that, then it would show lots of other people that they could write a book about Blacks in 18th-century Georgia or 19th-century Alabama, for example. All of those topics had seemed off limits at the time.

So, I was going to start at the beginning and move forward and see how far I had to go to get a book. I thought, ‘I’ll probably have to go up to 1820,’ but by the time I got to 1740, by the time I got through the Stono Rebellion—which was the largest rebellion in Colonial North America, in 1739, and it was unknown to people—I had enough for a book.

I had enough (material) for a dissertation so I could get my degree, but I also had enough for a book. And, luckily for me, it was just at the time when there was a lot of pressure on universities to create Black Studies programs, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

That put a lot of pressure on New York publishers to find books about Black history. And so, Alfred Knopf in New York took the book and gave me a contract within two weeks. I was very lucky in that regard: That was a moment where it was just dawning on everybody that, ‘My goodness! There’s a huge area here where we have not shone a searchlight.’ …

I'll tell you a funny story. At Knopf, they said, ‘You should go talk to our publicity director,’ because they were excited about this book. I walked into her office, and she was this burly, blonde advertising woman. Her face just dropped. She said, ‘Oh, Dr. Wood, I thought you were Black!’ And then she brightened up. ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘I'll get you on the radio.’ (laughs)

Peter H. Wood, here exploring chimney remains, is revising his book Strange New Land: Africans in Colonial America, which will be published in an expanded edition this year.

So, that just illustrates, if I’d been Black, it would have been even better, but at that point, anything was grist for the mill, especially if it was opening up new territory in American history.

Question: That actually raises a question: Did you face any criticism as a white author writing about Black history, like author William Styron did?

Wood: That was the controversy about William Styron’s 1967 book, The Confessions of Nat Turner. Styron was a white Connecticut author, and quite well-informed and well-intended. He had been raised in Virginia himself, so he’d grown up with versions of this story.

He was not a historian. Still, he wanted to try to write about Nat Turner’s rebellion from Turner’s perspective. So, he had the freedom of a novelist, of trying to put himself inside Nat Turner’s head. That effort was troublesome to a lot of folks.

It bothered some Black folks because it was a white author trying to do that and showing a complicated version of things. It was also upsetting to some white folks. If they knew about Nat Turner at all, it was that he was some crazy madman who killed people, so the idea that you should try to get inside his head, that was upsetting to them.

But, in answer to your question, I was lucky in that … the critique that white people shouldn’t do Black history had not really taken hold. At that time (1974), very little was being written about African Americans in Colonial times … and so there was a desire for anything that could shine some light on the subject.

Question: Why do you think Black Majority has maintained its staying power over the years? And what changes were made for the 50th-anniversary edition that W. W. Norton published?

Wood: As I’ve said, it came along at the right time. Along with other works, it opened up a whole new area, and so early African American history is now a very active field.

When I did the revisions for this 50th-anniversary edition, I didn’t change it drastically, because it is a product of the early 1970s, of 50 years ago. I think the points I made then have held up pretty well. That’s why I’d say it has been influential in the academic community, but for the general public, not so much.

Question: Why do you think that is?

Wood: It’s very hard to change the mainstream narrative, especially in regard to our childhood education about early American history. From elementary school on, we hear about Jamestown and about the Puritans; we learn that colonists grew tobacco in Virginia, but almost nothing beyond that. …

I think that’s part of our failing over the last 50 years. The idea of having a national story that everyone can agree upon has fallen apart, and I wish we could knit it back together. It may be too little, too late. But if we if we can ever manage to knit it back together in a more thorough, honest way, African Americans in Colonial times will be one of the early chapters.

Twenty years ago, I worked on a very successful U.S. history textbook called Created Equal, where I wrote the first six chapters. Even then, our team was trying to tie all of American history together in a new and inclusive way—one that everyone could understand and share and discuss. … I hope that book, and Black Majority, is more relevant than ever.

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CU Adjunct Professor Peter H. Wood’s seminal 1974 book on race, rice and rebellion in Colonial America recently celebrated its 50th anniversary with an updated version.

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Top image: Remnants of rice fields along the Combahee River in South Carolina. (Photo: David Soliday/National Museum of African American History and Culture)

60 years after the Civil Rights Act, ‘the activism continues’

Anonymous — Tue, 02 Jul 2024 06:00:00 +0000

60 years after the Civil Rights Act, ‘the activism continues’ Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/02/2024 - 00:00

Rachel Sauer

CU ��ý�� scholar Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders reflects on what has and hasn’t changed since 1964

Over a five-year span between 1865 and 1870, following the end of the Civil War, three constitutional amendments were ratified to end slavery (the 13^th), make formerly enslaved people U.S. citizens (the 14^th) and give all men the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” (the 15^th).

In the decades that followed, however, and despite provision that “the Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation,” various states and municipalities passed “Jim Crow” laws, abused poll taxes and literacy tests to limit voting and condoned racially motivated violence to enforce segregation and disenfranchise African Americans.

But on July 2, 1964, in the midst of a civil rights movement that had been growing in voice and numbers for many years, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (CRA) into law. This act integrated public schools and facilities; prohibited discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion and national origin in public places and in hiring and employment; and created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders, a CU ��ý�� assistant professor of African American and U.S. history, notes that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "shows what a major legislative change can accomplish, but beyond that, what else happens? The activism continues.”

Sixty years later, the Civil Rights Act is still considered a landmark of U.S. legislation, but does it mean today what it did in 1964?

“Similar to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the CRA is something we almost take for granted as something that has existed for a good chunk of most people’s lifetimes,” says Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders, an assistant professor of African American and U.S. history in the ��ý�� Department of History. “Everything from Brown v. Board on—the Montgomery bus boycott, sit-ins, all these things were leading to this Civil Rights Act.

“I think for civil rights activists, though, it’s a complicated story. A lot of the actual issues that lead to material conditions being different for Black people still have not changed enough. We haven’t closed the racial wealth gap, there’s still structural racism in policing, housing and employment. As violent as the moments at lunch counter sit-ins were, in a way the harder thing is saying, ‘Black people should be able to live in this neighborhood’ or ‘Black and white kids should be going to the same schools’ or ‘Black people are experiencing discrimination at these jobs and people in positions of power are keeping them away.’ People now are being told it’s either unfixable or it’s not a problem, and this is where we’re at 60 years later.”

Protecting civil rights

For almost 100 years following the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and despite three constitutional amendments that ostensibly ensured equal rights and legal protections for African Americans, most experienced anything but—and not just in the South, but throughout the United States. In Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court even ruled that segregation didn’t violate the 14^th Amendment.

So, it wasn’t just a culmination of big events that occasionally garnered media attention—Ku Klux Klan marches, the Tulsa and Rosewood massacres, the murder of Emmett Till—but the daily experiences of “redlined” neighborhoods, “sundown” towns, denial of employment, wage inequity, separate entrances and a hundred other inequalities and injustices that germinated the civil rights movement.

Residents of Montgomery, Alabama, walk to work during the 381-day bus boycott that began in December 1955. (Photo: Don Cravens/LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images)

“One of the things I always show my students about the March on Washington is what people were actually asking for, and that the desire for jobs and equal employment were such a huge part of why the march occurred,” Lawrence-Sanders explains. “We get caught up in MLK’s famous speech about integration, but one of the demands of the march was an end to police brutality and police violence, which is something they wanted in the Civil Rights Act that didn’t make it in there.”

As the civil rights movement increasingly gained footing and voice, federal officials were increasingly called on to respond. In the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Congress established the civil rights division of the Department of Justice as well as the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights “to provide means of further securing and protecting the civil rights of persons within the jurisdiction of the United States.”

When John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, he initially postponed supporting anti-discrimination measures, but soon couldn’t ignore the state-sanctioned violence being perpetrated against civil rights activists and protesters throughout the country. In June 1963, Kennedy proposed broad civil rights legislation, noting in his announcement that “this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”

After Kennedy’s assassination, Lyndon Johnson continued pursuing civil rights legislation. After a 75-day filibuster, the Senate voted 73-27 in favor of the bill and Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law July 2.

‘The activism continues’

“Now we tend to forget that this was not the end of the movement,” Lawrence-Sanders says. “A lot of further legislation followed. We were still seeing violent desegregation and busing well into the ‘70s.”

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Aug. 28, 1963. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Housing discrimination, addressed in the Civil Rights Act of 1968, was another big issue—and remains one today, Lawrence-Sanders says. “We still deal with housing segregation and discrimination, and it’s often treated as the exception instead of structural racism, which has become a boogeyman term. The act in ‘68 had provisions about how renting and selling and financing a house can’t be discriminatory based on race or sex, and people violate that constantly. There was an article in The New York Times last month about a woman trying to buy a condo and the seller backed out because she’s Black.

“The frustrating thing about this is that Black people have always suspected that these incidences of racism happen and been called crazy or paranoid, and when these articles appear, Black folks are saying, ‘No, we’ve proven it, not just with the knowledge of how we’ve been treated over time, but it’s finally been exposed by data.’ When I was living in New York City, there were undercover investigations that discovered that taxis don’t stop for Black people, rental apartments don’t rent to Black people at same rate as white people, real estate agents are steering Black people to certain places and steering white people away.”

An important legacy of the CRA is that it established enforcement mechanisms for addressing discrimination, but it stopped short of addressing all the ways structural racism exists in society, Lawrence-Sanders says. It also often gets caught in selective historical memory.

“I think that’s why people tend freeze Martin Luther King in 1963 and the March on Washington,” she says. “Because after the CRA passed, activists were asking for things that went too far for the government. Collectively, we tend to have no use for activists when they demand more and say, ‘That wasn’t enough, we want more, we want to go further.’ The CRA shows what a major legislative change can accomplish, but beyond that, what else happens? The activism continues.”

Top image: President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law. (Photo: Cecil Stoughton/Lyndon B. Johnson Library and Museum)

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CU ��ý�� scholar Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders reflects on what has and hasn’t changed since 1964.

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Artists celebrate Black womanhood, presence and connectedness

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Feb 2024 23:43:58 +0000

Artists celebrate Black womanhood, presence and connectedness Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/06/2024 - 16:43

Rachel Sauer

New exhibition opening Friday at CU Art Museum created by socially engaged artists-in-residence to honor Black girls and women

Like the “Mona Lisa” whom she mirrors, “Lona Misa” is keeping her secrets. Her expression is unknowable, and a million thoughts could be swirling behind her calm eyes.

She is a testament to the growth and evolution of her young artist, Kiana Gatling of Denver—a recognition of talent and value, of being an artist whose work is deserving of gallery walls.

Von Ross (left) and Charlie Billingsley consider how best to display "Lona Misa" by Kiana Gatling.

That’s not always an easy evolution for women, and especially for Black women, says Charlie Billingsley, who recognizes the profound power in a woman declaring “I am worthy.”

“That’s one of our goals here,” Billingsley explains, “to tell Black women, ‘What you create is good enough. What you create is amazing. You are amazing.’”

The “here” is "We CU: A Visual Celebration of Black Womanhood, Presence, and Connectedness," a new exhibition opening with a celebration from 4:30-6:30 p.m. Friday at the University of Colorado Art Museum; it will be on view through July 13. “We CU” is created, curated and presented by Billingsley and Von Ross, founders of the Museum for Black Girls in Denver and inaugural artists in the Socially Engaged Artists-In-Residence program created by the CU Art Museum and University Libraries.

“When we say, ‘We see you,’ what we’re saying to Black women is ‘we see you beautiful,’” Billingsley explains. “We see you amazing. We see you talented. We see you courageous. We’re saying to Black girls and Black women, ‘We want you to see yourselves as we see you.’”

‘You don’t have to be what you see’

One afternoon last week, with the ingredients of the exhibit fully formed in their minds and on paper, but in progress throughout the exhibition space, Billingsley and Ross consider the “Lona Misa.” Her 4-foot by 5-foot canvas is propped against a far wall and the two women stand chins on fists contemplating her.

If you go

What: Opening celebration for "We CU: A Visual Celebration of Black Womanhood, Presence, and Connectedness"

When: 4:30-6:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 9

Where: CU Art Museum

Learn more

“She needs her own space,” Ross observes, and Billingsley nods.

“But is that wall too big?” Billingsley asks, pointing to an expanse of blank-for-now wall, against which an assortment of empty frames lean. Some of the frames are very old and reminiscent of ones they came across in the University Libraries archives—one of the many benefits of being artists in residence, Ross says.

“We get to see all these amazing art works, go through the archives and have access to these collections,” Billingsley says. “And that’s another thing we want to accomplish with ‘We CU,’ because a lot of times Black people don’t have this kind of access, so we want to show people that they belong in these spaces.”

Billingsley and Ross are considering whether to hang “Lona Misa” by herself or to surround her with empty frames—the frames being a motif that extends from the Museum for Black Girls.

“The frames are empty because you don’t have to conform to what society tells you (that) you should be,” Ross explains. “Oftentimes, Black girls don’t feel that the way they are is OK. They feel like they have to change, like they have to be different, so we’re saying that you don’t have to be what you see.”

Charlie Billingsley (left) and Von Ross partner on creating the exhibit "We CU: A Visual Celebration of Black Womanhood, Presence, and Connectedness."

‘We honor you’

The theme of authenticity runs through the exhibit, which Billingsley and Ross envision as a home. The various rooms and artifacts of home are represented “because home is where you’re your most authentic self,” Billingsley says. “You don’t have to talk a certain way or dress a certain way. With this exhibit, we’re inviting you into our homes.”

Against one wall, there’s a low green couch encased in plastic, because it’s the good couch and the plastic is how you keep it from getting dirty, Ross says. Against another wall is a salon chair with a clear plastic dryer hood, the kind under which many women have spent many hours.

“As Black women, these are the artifacts of our lives,” Ross says. “We want there to be that recognition and we want to say that these things have value. They matter.”

The exhibition highlights words and quotations that contextualize and exemplify the countless ways to be a Black woman in the world “and to show that words matter,” Billingsley says. “We want to show how impactful words are on Black women.”

The flow of the exhibition will take visitors to a dining room, on which places are set for some of the many, many roles Black women fulfill, and then to a room filled with flowers.

“That’s our ‘thank you’ to Black girls and women,” Billingsley says. “This is our garden, and as they come through this is how we say, ‘We honor you.’”

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New exhibition opening Friday at CU Art Museum created by socially engaged artists-in-residence to honor Black girls and women.

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Luminaries celebrate a more diverse, welcoming campus

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Feb 2024 22:41:02 +0000

Luminaries celebrate a more diverse, welcoming campus Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/02/2024 - 15:41

Clint Talbott

Co-star of The Color Purple joins Colorado governor, CU president and chancellor, along with a cadre of artists, to celebrate the Center for African and African American Studies and Black History Month

Being Black on campus two decades ago was difficult, but the ��ý�� has worked to improve its culture, says Aba Arthur, who costarred in last year’s production of The Color Purple.

Arthur joined a half-dozen luminaries—including Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, CU President Todd Saliman, CU ��ý�� Chancellor Phil DiStefano and ��ý�� County NAACP President Annett James—to hail CAAAS Day, a Colorado event recognizing the university’s Center for African and African American Studies.

Because CAAAS Day falls on Feb. 1, the celebrants in the Glenn Miller Ballroom Thursday also marked the beginning of Black History Month.

CU ��ý�� graduate Aba Arthur, who co-starred in The Color Purple and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, was a featured speaker at Thursday's CAAAS Day celebration. (Casey Cass/CU ��ý��)

Arthur, who graduated in 2005 with a bachelor of fine arts in theatre and a minor in political science, took to the stage and reveled in the moment: “Wow, y’all, this is a moment. To walk up and see the words ‘Center for African and African American Studies,’ it’s amazing.”

She acknowledged all the work it took to create the center, noting that “every student wants to be respected and heard … their ancestry respected.”

Acknowledging the difficulties she faced at CU ��ý��, she also praised the university, specifically mentioning Bud Coleman, professor of theatre and dance, who helped her get a comprehensive education. “I always credit CU and the Theatre Department for who I am today.”

CAAAS was officially launched on Feb. 1, 2023, and encompasses a research center, an arts program and student-service support. Reiland Rabaka, professor of African, African American and Caribbean Studies and the center’s founder and director, said the center was a “wild dream that we have worked long and hard to turn into a reality.”

He noted the university’s first Black graduates—Charles Durham Campbell in 1912 and Lucile Berkeley Buchanan in 1918—and added, “We are their wildest dreams.”

Tracing the 98-year history of Black History Month, Rabaka said, “Every month is Black History Month in the CAAAS.” He said he had always conceived of the center as a sanctuary, a place where people could come together in compassion to learn from the totality of Black experience.

“Here, we don’t have to make ourselves small. We can be who we are, Black and beautiful,” Rabaka said, crisply enunciating each syllable of “beautiful.”

Quoting Frederick Douglass, Rabaka noted that progress springs from agitation: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. … Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.”

Nonetheless, Rabaka praised the powerful people who came to celebrate the center. They returned the compliments.

Shawn O'Neal (left), a CU ��ý�� assistant teaching professor in Africana studies, and Reiland Rabaka, CAAAS founder and director, at the CAAAS Day celebration Thursday. (Casey Cass/CU ��ý��)

Polis, who issued the proclamation establishing Feb. 1, 2023, as CAAAS Day, said Coloradans need to strive for equality not just in February, but all year, adding that the center was integral to the effort. “It’s a key part of our work of building a Colorado for all. … We want to make sure that everyone has a place to succeed in our state.”

Introducing DiStefano, Rabaka called the chancellor a “brother” and “mentor.” DiStefano said the center is achieving its goals to be a place of connection and creative expression.

Saliman, the university president, characterized Rabaka as a force to be reckoned with. “I brag about the CAAAS everywhere I go. It is such an incredible symbol of what CU ��ý�� commits to.”

Saliman added that the university is not diverse enough but that the center is a key to correcting the imbalance. People need a place where they belong, he said, so that “they don’t just want to come here; they want to stay here.”

Underscoring the center’s focus on the arts, J. Benjamin Burney, a graduate student in interdisciplinary media art practices, performed a spoken word poem. Shawn O’Neal, an assistant teaching professor in Africana studies, and Kalonji Nzinga, assistant professor in the School of Education, performed rap music. Jarrett Rashad, a professional dancer, did a dance performance set to poetry.

Closing the festivities, Rabaka said, “We are fighting for freedom not just for Black people, but for all people. Our destinies are intertwined. … Another way and another world is possible, but only if we work for it.”

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Co-star of The Color Purple joins Colorado governor, CU president and chancellor, along with a cadre of artists, to celebrate the Center for African and African American Studies and Black History Month.

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Hearing music, finding connection in many rhythms of life

Anonymous — Wed, 31 Jan 2024 19:19:59 +0000

Hearing music, finding connection in many rhythms of life Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/31/2024 - 12:19

Reiland Rabaka, a CU ��ý�� professor of ethnic studies, joins The Ampersand to discuss art, activism, the importance of building community and how his first-grade teacher introduced him to W.E.B. Du Bois and changed his life

Listen to The Ampersand

Would there be a Reiland Rabaka without music?

Maybe, but certainly one who is less joyful, less connected, less attuned to the ebbing and flowing of the world and the universe around him.

Of the multitudes he contains, music is his great love, the place he comes home to, the cadence of beating hearts and clapping hands and walking feet.

But musician is just one thing about him. Intellectual, activist, artist, writer and someone almost impossible to stump in a game of “Name the Back-Up Band.”

As a ��ý�� professor of ethnic studies and inaugural director of the Center for African and African American Studies, Rabaka exists at the junction of multiple disciplines, identities and interests—the epitome of “ANDing.”

Reiland Rabaka is a ��ý�� professor of ethnic studies and inaugural director of the Center for African and African American Studies. Photo by Kylie Clarke.

He recently joined host Erika Randall, associate dean for student success in the College of Arts and Sciences, on "The Ampersand,” the college’s podcast. Randall—who is a dancer, professor, mother, filmmaker and writer—joins guests in exploring stories about “ANDing” as a “full sensory verb” that describes experience and possibility.

Their discussion started at church and roamed broadly from there.

Rabaka: My first love is gospel music. So, I grew up as a youth minister of music. My mother is actually a theologian, so my mother is the minister, you know. Everybody kind of knows I'm a PK, which means a preacher's kid. I think they just assume that it's my pops, but it's actually my mom. So, that shapes not only your spirituality, but also a gender consciousness because of the way that women are treated in the church, the way that women are erased. And so, my first love remains Mahalia Jackson, Albertina Walker, Shirley Caesar, Clara Ward. These are the kinds of folks my mother and my grandmother were listening to. James Cleveland, Thomas Dorsey, I could do this all day.

Randall: But to get this litany out…

Rabaka: It's really important to roll-call that. I think that probably unlike a lot of other, you know, African-American musicians, my first musical love was, and remains, gospel music. Every day before I listen to anything secular, I listen to a gospel album. After my prayers and my meditation, I start with the music. So, African-American sacred song is my foundation.

I will be keynoting the National Spirituals Conference this month at the University of Denver, and they know that I have a love affair with, first and foremost, the spiritual. So, what they used to call Negro Spirituals, this is the music, the soundtrack of our enslavement. These are songs of not simply heavenly salvation, but earthly liberation.

For me, there's always been a connection, at least from the African-American church I come out of, there's always been a connection between the social gospel and social justice. There's no way we can talk about spirituality that is removed from the material, the actual physical world that we live in. And so, after gospel, Erika, I grew up so poor that as strict as my mother was, she allowed me to play jazz because when I was nine years old, I got my first $100 bill for playing a jazz gig. I thought it was monopoly money, I didn't know it was real money.

Randall: You hadn't seen $100.

Rabaka: Yeah. And I gave it to my mother. She hugged me. She held me. It was a bittersweet moment because when I look back, and just to be real with you, that's also probably the day my childhood ended. You can't just be a little kid when you’re fixing to help your mama make rent from now on. So, as long as you didn't miss Wednesday night prayer meeting, choir rehearsal and church on Sunday, then you can go and swing.

And I was part of a generation, what they were calling it, was a jazz renaissance going on. You know, with folks like Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, who I went to high school with, by the way, Roy Hargrove. Growing up in Texas…

Randall: Yeah, Texas and jazz. How did that connect?

Rabaka: Well, you know, part of my family being Creole folk from next door in Louisiana, so going back and forth to the jazz and heritage festival. In Texas, hearing gospel, hearing blues just as much as I'm hearing jazz and R&B and funk and soul and hip-hop. And let's not forget the Caribbean-influenced reggae music.

Randall: That was in your house or that was in your head and heart?

Rabaka: That was in my head and heart more. I think that being a kid from the projects and going to all art conservatory schools—I didn't go to regular school, so I never went to a school with a football team or a basketball team or something like that. I went to all art schools and at the time, they would allow one African-American per grade. I literally spent the bulk of my youth training to be a musician. And the way that they trained me, Erika, you've got to be able to play everything.

So, I played klezmer. I played polka. I played country and western. I played Tejano. I played bar mitzvahs. On top of all of the jazz and the gospel and the blues and the soul and the funk, baby, the funk, baby, oh, the funk. You know? For me, it's that versatility, I think that's actually what allowed me to go from the projects to the professor where I'm at.

Randall: That versatility of thinking.

Rabaka: It opens you up.

Randall: Right.

Rabaka: Here's the thing, and I really, really want to stress this and I think maybe this is why somebody like me is able to be on the faculty at the University of Colorado for nearly 20 years. In the schools that I went to, especially by the time I get to junior high school and high school, there's this weird inversion of the junior high school and high school experience.

So, your popularity isn't based on what kind of car your parents drive or how much money they have in the bank account or how big your house is. It's based on your talent. It's based on your gift.

Guess who was the most popular? I said papa-la.

Reiland Rabaka has researched and written extensively about the confluences of music, civil rights, feminism, art and liberation.

Randall: Boom. Boom.

Rabaka: Kid is cool. I went to high school with Erykah Badu. I graduated from the same high school as Norah Jones.

Randall: Norah Jones went to Interlochen, which was my—that's my home.

Rabaka: You see what I'm saying?

Randall: I feel you.

Rabaka: I went to the same high school as Edie Brickell.

Randall: What?

Rabaka: You see what I'm saying?

Randall: I know. So, there was a lineage. There was an expectation or just a mentoring or it was a pressure in that world if you're coming through, or were you the pressure? Because you came through and set the stage.

Rabaka: When your family's depending on you to eat…I think for a lot of the other kids, this was a hobby. But for me, this was the way that I was going to literally swing myself from the projects into an arts conservatory university, an arts conservatory college, so on and so forth. Got accepted to Cal Arts. Got accepted to most of the… I mean, I don't know what school I did not get accepted to.

Randall: And at the end of the day, because you had all these capacities, did you feel like the pressure is on me to get a job in music or now I've got these opportunities, I need to shift to something more stable, air quotes?

Rabaka: If I can be honest with you, I think because I'm first generation, I think folks were just happy I was going. I did get some of the, "You sure you shouldn't be a business major?"

Randall: Was that mom, or was mom always in your corner?

Rabaka: No, it was more my grandmother. My mother's, in some ways, spiritually speaking, a very free spirit, interfaith, open to a lot of things. And to be honest with you, I'm probably the daughter my mother never had. I'm my mother's middle son. I have an older brother and a younger brother, shout out to Robert and Randy, those are their names.

Randall: The three R's.

Rabaka: Yeah. And they got the more conventional… I mean, both of them are named after their fathers. And my mother just went left field, you know? So, I can rock and roll.

Randall: That's why you're always going left.

Rabaka: You know what I'm saying? Because I'm left-handed and when I found out Jimi Hendrix was left-handed and Barack Obama was left-handed and W.E.B. Du Bois was left-handed.

Reiland Rabaka recently joined host Erika Randall in a wide-ranging conversation for "The Ampersand" podcast. Photo by Kylie Clarke.

Randall: OK. Bookmark on Du Bois. So, we're going to go back to Texas one more time and I want to talk about Mrs. Robinson. Because if you're going to say Du Bois, she was the first person to say that name to you. Can you tell me the story in a way you've never told the story before so you can hear it? Because it's a good story.

Rabaka: You know, I think that being precocious and really, when you when you grow up in the church like I did and you start playing, I mean, I was so young they sat me on phone books. So, in the African-American church, they actually cultivate, quote unquote, giftedness, talented-ness, I'm making up words for you.

Randall: We like that here.

Rabaka: And it's one of those things where there's a unique culture within the African-American church of, they say in terms of our gifts and our talents, and you can see this is what works for me as a as a professor. In African-American church culture, it's the cultivation, it's the nurturing of everybody is gifted. See? God don't play favorites.

But if you don't use it, you lose it if you don't consciously develop it. So, all those hours I'm sitting there practicing, when the other kids had video games. You know, I used to feel tight because they could play Sega and Atari and all the cool games. We didn't have that.

Randall: Commodore 64.

Rabaka: You see? So, we didn't have all of that kind of stuff. I wasn't able to see Jordan do all of those crazy… because the TV wasn't on most of the time. I mean, even if you have a TV, it's got the little antenna, you know, with the clothes hanging off it with the foil on the back of it and everything. But if you don't have your electricity on, if you don't have running water, so on and so forth. I think that a lot of the time where I felt tight, I felt maybe a little economically traumatized, humiliated, demoralized, I was in that practice room.

I was knuckling and brawling, attempting to evolve myself. And the reality of the matter is, I had a multiracial, multicultural group of teachers that nurtured this talent. So, on the one hand, the foundation is the African-American church. However, the church sends us out into the world. As you know, one of my favorite spirituals is called “Go and See the World.” And this is something my grandmother will sing to me, often, she sings it often.

Randall: She's still here to sing to you?

Rabaka: My grandmother—I'm sorry, this makes me emotional—my grandmother turns 96 tomorrow. And my grandmother is one of the great loves of my life. And the others, of course, being my other grandmother and my mama. My grandmother, I think you can do the math, if I'm from Texas, my grandmother's 96, Juneteenth was issued 158 years ago.

My grandmother's grandmother was enslaved. So, it's not a coincidence that I would come out an African-American studies professor, that I speak with love-laced words, that I'm trying to bring some level of human understanding to what's going on. Even the rapport, the bond that we have, that culture, Erika, taught me to also check for your life and your struggles. So, it's not just about me, it’s about you and we.

Randall: That's when you say “ubuntu” [a Zulu word roughly translated to “humanity toward others” or “I am, because you are] in your signature.

Rabaka: There you go. So, I am because we are. And how can you and I rescue and reclaim our humanity together? Instead of avoiding my Africanity, the fact that I’m African-American, what happens if we put that front and center and do it in a way that’s not antagonistic to you? And I acknowledge as I just spoke to you, asking about your mother, asking about your son, and so on. The humanity, the shared humanity that we have, for me, that’s what it means to come out of Texas. I mean, this is the state that Juneteenth is all about.

This is the state where I grew up with nine HBCUs that I could throw a rock out of my grandmother’s yard and break a window, and I didn’t do that, but this is how close the HBCU is. I grew up seeing African-American youth with books and dress smart and the richness of that, and also the fact that I didn’t grow up in an all-black neighborhood. I grew up surrounded by Mexican-Americans. I grew up surrounded by Asian-Americans, some Indigenous folks. Because again, you got New Mexico on one side, Oklahoma, Arkansas. I could just go on and on.

Randall: What corner were you?

Rabaka: Dallas.

Randall: Dallas. OK.

Rabaka: But let me answer about Mrs. Robinson, my first-grade teacher. I was, again, young and precocious, a ball of energy. My mother would always say, “Whatever you give the other kids, you need to give him three times as much.” Mrs. Robinson knew that she could speed-dial my mother. In fact, all she needed to say was, “Don’t make me call your mother” and I would back down.

So, it’s Black History Month, Mrs. Robinson has these little placards, larger than a postcard size, of different Black History Month figures. So, you know, Ella Fitzgerald was on one, let’s see, Billie Holiday, you name it. Jesse Owens, Paul Robeson, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes…

Randall: Jackie Robinson.

Rabaka: You see what I’m saying?

Randall: Yeah. Yeah.

Rabaka: I thought I should get Duke Ellington or Billie Holiday or Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, I could just do this all day long. And I sit up here, I thought at that time, this is my little first-grade mind so just bear with me, I got a Frenchman Du Bois.

Randall: Du Bois.

Introduced to W.E.B. Du Bois by his first-grade teacher, Reiland Rabaka has subsequently researched and written extensively about him.

Rabaka: Right? Because again, I got some Creole folk right on the other side. And I stormed up to Mrs. Robinson’s desk, you know how kids can be, and I can’t believe it, it’s Black History Month, everybody else got Black people and I got a white man, I got a French man named Du Bois, and everything. And she gave me a good talking-to that changed my life.

And this is the power of teachers. She said, “Reiland, if you spent as much time actually reading as you do sitting up here trying to criticize my teaching and what I’m doing, if you don’t go sit down, I’m going to call your mama, boy.” You know? So, I ran back to my desk, sat down, read the card and everything.

I still had my lips stuck out, but I read the card or whatever. And the more I read, the more fascinated, the more intrigued… It actually said that Du Bois went to an HBCU, Fisk University, in Nashville, Tennessee.

So again, my grandmother lives within walking distance of an HBCU. I’m thinking, “Wow, wait, what’s going on?” Then I come to find out that this person had achieved two bachelor’s degrees, two master’s degrees and the equivalent of two PhDs. One of them, he studied at the University of Berlin.

The fact that he was well-traveled, well-read. When I saw photos of him, he was well-dressed. And then there was a connect from the preachers that I’m seeing in the African-American church to the jazz musicians, Miles Davis got, what, GQ Man of the Year was it 10 times in a row? At least seven times in a row. I mean, this guy was clean.

Randall: Yes.

Rabaka: And so for me, learning about Du Bois and the fact that he connected his intellectual pursuits with his social justice pursuits. You know, he founded sociology in the United States of America, he also founded the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, February the 12^th, 1909. Mrs. Robinson walked me into the library, and she just said, “Hey, if you really want to read something, here's some of his books.” Of course, I couldn't make them through it at the first grade, so once they got the children's-level book about Du Bois’ life, I think I kept that checked out.

Randall: It just said stamp, Reiland.

Rabaka: You know what I'm saying?

Randall: Stamp, Reiland.

Rabaka: And it changed my life, to be perfectly honest with you. So not only was he an intellectual, not only was he an activist with the NAACP work,I find out that he wrote five novels.

Randall: The novels he wrote blew my mind. You introduced that to me. That was a gift from you.

Rabaka: Isn't that incredible?

Randall: Yeah, and in the novels, he's also bringing his story forward.

Rabaka: Historical fiction, sociological fiction. I didn't even know such genres existed.

Randall: And it feels like they really were born of the Black experience.

Rabaka: Absolutely. It’s what we would call Afro Modernism. And I think this would explain my preoccupation with the Harlem Renaissance, and in fact, many people say that Du Bois’1903 classic The Souls of Black Folk was a precursor to what happened 15 years later with the beginning of the Harlem Renaissance.

Randall: And when you talk about him being a proto-interdisciplinarian, proto-intersectionalist, and on this podcast, a proto-ANDer, because he is making it up, making it up and transforming through that need not to categorize.

Rabaka: For me, Du Bois is a model, an incessant model because Du Bois was able to be a social scientist, an intellectual, an artist, five novels, nine volumes of poetry, three dozen short stories, two dozen plays, I could go on and on and on, and an activist. So, for me, I mean, maybe those labels fit what I'm up to best—intellectual, artist, activist—maybe those three things, I'm kind of cool with. But I don't want people to silo me off into only one of those.

And I think, Erika, has academia forced folks like you and I to reduce ourselves in order to fit into these little tenure schemes?

Randall: Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that is one of the things where this notion of pushing the idea of we are more than just the category we got hired in has felt so critical to me. We have been stuck into a frame.

Rabaka: And they forced you to in order to achieve tenure. Now, the second some folks achieve tenure, they explode.

Randall: Yeah, and then you can kick back. And you're like, “I've always been into this. I was always doing this trouble.” Did you feel a freedom, or did you come in with it?

Rabaka: You know what, I think I'm not a good example, just because African-American studies is always left of field in the American Academy because of how Eurocentric, heteropatriarchal the American Academy can be. So, my field has always been transdisciplinary. By that I mean I'm in a field, I'm in a discipline that transcends and transgresses the borders and boundaries, the very artificial and arbitrary borders and boundaries of academic disciplines.

What if African-American studies is more about the community than it is the campus? What if African-American studies is actually about me literally being a bridge from the community to the campus, from the campus to the community?

Click the button below to hear the entire episode.

Listen to The Ampersand

Photos at the top of the page by Kylie Clarke.

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