Black Protest Research Articles

Anti-Black Violence, Police Brutality, White Supremacy

256 Feminist Studies 46, no. 2. © 2020 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Statement of the Feminist Studies Editorial Collective June 3, 2020 Anti-Black Violence, Police Brutality, White Supremacy We collectively represent the oldest journal of interdisciplinary feminist scholarship in the United States. We write this statement in the midst of events that magnify a long history of unceasing anti-Black violence in the United States, and we do so to express our pain, rage, and vigilance. Along with this statement, we make available for open access our most recent articles about Black protest. The mass protests in response to the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade, among many, many other African Americans, remind us of the words of Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks: revolt occurred “because it became impossible for [them] to breathe.”1 The current uprisings are part of a long history of Black resistance and liberation movements—the Haitian revolution, Black Power and the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Apartheid movement —that have inspired other freedom movements around the world. But they are also distinct because of their roots in the Movement for Black Lives, which was founded and organized by queer Black women to create a world that values Black life and centers Black joy. This movement affirms the work and intellectual labor of Black women and queer, 1. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, new ed., trans. Charles Lam Markmann (1952; London: Pluto, 2008), 176.  257 trans, and disabled people who use feminist and queer pedagogies to critique hierarchical organizations and charismatic leaders. The uprisings take place in the third month of a COVID-19 pandemic that has devastated Black lives. The healthcare system has long failed Black people, but especially so under an administration determined to gut the Affordable Care Act. Low-paid healthcare workers, janitors, domestic workers, transportation workers, and those working in the gig economy have been forced to work without proper personal protective equipment, belying the notion that they are “essential” workers. Racial capitalism has rendered vast numbers of people disposable through staggering layoffs . The US state’s failure in the domains of health and economic protection stands in especially stark contrast to its spectacularly militarist crackdowns on protesters using tear gas, rubber bullets, and low-flying army helicopters. The Trump administration’s necropolitics are on full display: it has determined who will live and who will die by enacting violence in the name of preserving law and order and by pursuing neglect and austerity measures that have so far contributed to the deaths of approximately 200,000 people and a deadly economic collapse. As uprisings continue and cities burn across the country and popular media and conservative portrayals decry violence toward property, we reiterate our commitment to challenge violence against people— structural and physical—and the environments they inhabit. We recognize that racialized narratives shape the violence and note how, when white bodies instigate violence, it is often overlooked. We acknowledge and condemn the hardships that property damage causes to those who are economically struggling. But we refuse to be distracted from the key principle: the non-negotiable value of Black lives, minds, and bodies. As we collectively grieve specific lives lost, we also know there are countless others whose names we will never hear. The unrest we see is the culmination of years of terror visited upon Black people of all kinds. The death of Black men at the hands of the police has now provoked a series of protests, but until the killing of Breonna Taylor in Louisville, we had never seen such large-scale protests over the death of a Black woman. And we see over and over again that queer and trans people such as Tony McDade who die at the hands of the police are not grieved publicly, their humanity not seen. We salute projects such as #SayHerName and #BlackTransLivesMatter that have raised awareness of the depth of state violence against all Black people. 258 We recognize the bravery of those who protest white supremacy and stand in solidarity with them—amid a deadly pandemic, people are putting their lives at risk for this principle. Their demands for change...

Metaphors

To what degree can race relations, driven by media perception or inadvertent errors in speaking, be overcome by personal, positive, interactions? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, a retired, white, widowed woman lives in a predominately black neighborhood. Her African-American husband is long dead and she has made every effort to integrate herself into her black community. She is longtime friends with her neighbors, particularly the 16-year-old boy, Zion, who comes over daily to give her dog a diabetes shot and assist her with chores around the house to make extra money. However, as the Black Lives Matter protests escalate in the community, the narrator increasingly becomes the target of hate, sometimes for no reason, sometimes because of her thoughtlessness. Her relationship with Zion continues to falter until he sheepishly takes the side of those in the community and separates all ties with the narrator. He returns the various gifts she has given him over his life because he wishes to leave his childhood behind and take up the fight against oppression. This story, like all After Dinner Conversation stories, has suggested discussion questions at the end.

“I Teach the Audience How to Watch My Shows”: An Interview with Kristina Wong

When I conceived of the Theatre Journal special issue on Minor Asias, artist Kristina Wong came immediately to mind because of work she had done in Uganda and her embodied political performance as an elected official in Los Angeles Then COVID-19 and the latest wave of Black Lives Matter protests delayed the interview, and in the interim Wong started the Auntie Sewing Squad, which sewed thousands of masks for communities in need In the wake of all these events, Kristina and I reconnected to discuss the links of politics and performance and the transversal relationships between different minoritarian communities © 2020 Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved

An Education in Black Women's Activism

An Education in Black Women's Activism John Frederick Bell (bio) Kabria Baumgartner, In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America. New York: New York University Press, 2019. 286 pages. Figures, appendices, notes, bibliography, index. $35.00. Education has been a civil rights battleground since before the Civil War. From the failure of the New Haven "African College" in 1831 to mob attacks on the Canterbury Female Seminary in 1833 and the Noyes Academy in 1835 to the Roberts desegregation case in 1849, contests over access to schooling and higher learning helped define the northern Black freedom struggle. After abolition itself, the right to education was a chief priority for African American reformers. For many Black leaders, the issue was personal. Encountering racial discrimination as students helped make lifelong activists out of some preeminent abolitionists, including William Howard Day, Henry Highland Garnet, and William Cooper Nell. But if exclusion or expulsion from school is where narratives of Black men's activism begin, it is often where narratives of Black women's activism end. Alexander Crummell is rejected from General Theological Seminary and becomes an exponent of racial self-determination. Rosetta Douglass is ousted from Seward Seminary and becomes a side note in her famous father's biographies. Kabria Baumgartner's In Pursuit of Knowledge gives women like Rosetta Douglass their due. Her monograph, the first book-length treatment of its subject, shows how personal struggles for education inspired and empowered antebellum Black women to demand "equal school rights" for their communities. Prior historians of race, gender, and education in this period have concentrated mainly on African American alumnae of Oberlin College who hailed primarily from the West and South. Baumgartner shifts the focus to student and teacher activists in the Northeast. Some of the characters in this book—Sarah Mapps Douglass, Charlotte Forten, Sarah Parker Remond—will be familiar to historians of Black abolitionism. Others like Ursula James, Rosetta Morrison, and Eunice Ross likely will not. Together, these women's school experiences and subsequent teaching careers form the connective tissue of Baumgartner's narrative, which she divides into two parts. The first half examines private female seminaries, while the second analyzes public [End Page 531] schools, specifically in Massachusetts. The author's fastidious research yields a wealth of new information about the Black student experience in each of these settings. Baumgartner uses these findings to demonstrate the crucial role Black women played in making education integral to the fight for civil rights. Collectively, they deployed their own brand of social protest, an "ethic of Christian love," which set them apart from vicious adversaries and steeled them against retribution (p. 16). While its contributions are singular, In Pursuit of Knowledge is indebted to pathbreaking works of historians like Jane Dabel, Erica Armstrong Dunbar, and Martha S. Jones, whose influence Baumgartner acknowledges. Starting in the late 1990s, these and other scholars began re-envisioning the history of Black protest in the antebellum North by placing African American women at its center. Their research recovered female participation in political entities more often associated with Black men, such as fraternal orders, vigilance committees, and Colored Conventions. But their histories also recognized the myriad other institutions of civil society through which African American women shaped public culture, from church auxiliaries and schools to lyceums and literary associations, mutual aid circles, war relief agencies, and antislavery societies. Confronting intersecting forms of racial and gender prejudice, Black women displayed their respectability through these private organizations and then used that authority to agitate publicly for racial equality and women's rights. Not all of their advocacy was discursive, however. Carol Lasser describes how African American women at Oberlin College "shaped their lives themselves as texts" and "performed the abolition for which others argued" through their daily pursuits of education, piety, and refinement.1 Likewise, Erica Ball highlights Black women's (and men's) efforts "to live an antislavery life" by approaching every aspect of their private lives in light of the freedom struggle.2 Collectively, these scholars not only reoriented a historiography that had privileged men's activism, they also revised the definition of "activism" itself to account for the unique situation of African...

‘Lower types of cranks, crooks and racial bigots’? The Universal Negro Improvement Association and black political violence in the United States, 1918–1930

This article examines the involvement of the black nationalist Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in black political violence in the early-interwar period in the United States. Evidence suggests that the UNIA was the organisation most often involved in black political confrontations, and the article discusses how the state, the black and white press and other black activist organisations may have both benefitted from and perpetuated the UNIA’s reputation for political violence. The essay argues that the UNIA’s involvement in violence against other black organisations and groups can be explained partly by the intensity of the ‘war of words’ among prominent black leaders in the United States, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey. Furthermore, the article suggests that ethnic and gender differences within the American UNIA itself could exacerbate pre-existing tensions between different groups of Garveyites. Contextualising black political violence in these ways allows us to move beyond a reductionist view of grassroots Garveyites as prone to violence. Instead, this approach allows us to better understand the relationship between the famous ‘war of words’ and the kinds of tensions, confrontations and violence that sometimes occurred at grassroots level between supporters of different black organisations and groups. The article contributes not only to the growing historiography about the UNIA at grassroots level, but also to discussions about the militarisation of black protest during World War I and in the 1920s, including the use of self-defence and paramilitary-style tactics by people of African descent in the United States.

“In Defiance of Judge Taney”: Black Constitutionalism and Resistance to Dred Scott

“In Defiance of Judge Taney”: Black Constitutionalism and Resistance to Dred Scott TIMOTHY S. HUEBNER In 1857, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the most infamous decision in the history of the United States Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney denied that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, could be citizens of the United States. In doing so, Taney wrote these memorable words: “It is difficult at this day to realize the state of public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration of Independence.... They had for more than a century before been regarded as being of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race ... and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”1 Decades before the Court’s deci­ sion, African-American leaders in the North had fashioned their own understanding of their relationship to America and its founding documents. Confronted with the Supreme Court’s decision, African Americans refused to surrender. They neither accepted the rul­ ing’s legitimacy nor its claim that they had no place in the national community. In­ stead, African Americans held tightly to their own distinctive vision of equality—black constitutionalism—and in so doing helped redefine citizenship in the Civil War era. Black Citizenship and Black Constitutionalism Citizenship was an elusive concept in the early American republic. The Constitution itself used the term sparingly. The word “citizen” appeared mostly in referring to requirements for holding federal office and in describing the types of suits heard by federal courts. The one part of the Constitution that referred to the rights of citizenship—Article IV, Section 2—seemed to leave the matter of defining such rights to the states: “The 216 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” From the text alone, moreover, the relationship between U.S. cit­ izenship and state citizenship was unclear. Equally ambiguous was whether the Bill of Rights served as a list of rights for all U.S. citizens, or whether it also limited state power and thus related to state citizenship. In some instances, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights seemed to use the words “citizen,” “person,” and “people” interchangeably, a source of further confusion. During its early history, Congress passed no specific leg­ islation to clarify such matters. Given the indeterminate nature of the concept of citi­ zenship, as well as textual ambiguity about the institution of slavery (the word “slavery” was never actually mentioned in the Consti­ tution), the question of black citizenship was an open one.2 At the time of the ratification of the Constitution, apart from an enslaved population of nearly 700,000, approximately 59,000 free black people lived in the United States, which included about 27,000 free blacks who resided in the northern states.3 Soon after the ratification of the Con­ stitution, northern free blacks attempted to craft their own understanding ofthe founding documents and blacks’ relationship to the nation. In doing so, they championed citi­ zenship and rights for all African Americans, free and enslaved.4 In 1799,for example, the free black community of Philadelphia, an emerging center of black protest, submitted a petition to Congress making such an ar­ gument. Led by Absalom Jones, a remark­ able former slave from Delaware who had purchased his freedom and become the first priest of the first black Episcopal Church in the United States, the Philadelphia black community called for the end of the African slave trade and criticized the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. The petitioners noted that neither the Constitution nor the Fugitive Slave Act mentioned black people or slaves. Rather, when slaves were referred to, it was Leader of the free black community of Philadelphia, Absalom Jones called for the end of the African slave trade. He argued it violated the Constitution, which referred to slaves as “persons.” always as “persons.”5 For...

Student resistance movements in higher education: an analysis of the depiction of Black Lives Matter student protests in news media

Popular media shapes societal perceptions and discourse. The growing use of news media in higher education practices (outreach, admissions, and campus communication) have heightened the need for institutional leadership to not only understand the general impact of popular media but also to comprehend students’ representation, as well as the acquisition and dissemination of media content. In this study, authors present a media content analysis of newspaper coverage of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the well-known periodical, the Chronicle of Higher Education. Ultimately, this study demonstrates (1) organizational leadership can be influenced and disrupted to promote racial justice and (2) the discursive treatment of the BLM in popular media and, and by extension, in the United States’ public imagination. Overall, this study suggests that in situations where institutional policies perpetuate racial inequity, BLM student movements have the capacity to complicate existing discourse about Blackness in higher education and catalyze substantial social change.

“There Is NoNewBlack Panther Party”: The Panther-Like Formations and the Black Power Resurgence of the 1990s

“There Is No<i>New</i>Black Panther Party”: The Panther-Like Formations and the Black Power Resurgence of the 1990s

Augustine Tolton’s Struggle as a Black Catholic against Discrimination as Portrayed in From Slave to Priest by Caroline Hamesath and They Called Him Father Gus by Roy Bauer

This thesis aims to analyze how Black Catholics overcome the discrimination against their life in American society during the nineteenth century and also to explore what are the impacts of Black Catholics struggle portrayed in the biographies entitled From Slave to Priest and They Called Him Father Gus. The interdisciplinary approach applied in this thesis are including literature, sociology, and the concept of time and macro to micro by McDowell are used to enhance the analysis of Black Catholics’ struggle against the discrimination that they got in American society during the nineteenth century.The findings of the thesis show that Black Catholics did some actions to overcome the discrimination against their life in American society. The actions done by Black Catholics are the sign that they work hard struggling against the discrimination from whites, Catholic Church, and Black Protestants. Also, since this thesis highlights the impact of Black Catholics’ struggle, it indicates that the struggle of Black Catholics, represented mostly by the struggle of Father Augustine Tolton, give the positive impacts such as maintaining the good relation among black and white Catholics, inspired Black Catholics to keep struggle for their faith and inspired the establishment of Black Catholics’ organizations. Key words: Black Catholics, Father Augustine Tolton, Struggle, Impacts

Sexual Identities and Racial Attitudes among Black, Latinx, and White Individuals

Some recent studies suggest that lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people are generally more racially progressive than heterosexuals. However, the findings of these “political distinctiveness” studies are up for some debate. Other studies find no sexuality gaps in racial attitudes, and these studies overlook the possibility of bisexual people having unique racial perspectives. These distinctiveness studies also ignore the possibility of racial and sexual identities influencing racial attitudes at the same time. In using the American National Election Survey of 2016 as a data source (N = 3,987), this work found limited and conditional support for a sexuality gap in racial attitudes. In most cases, heterosexual people and sexual minorities converge in their racial interpretations, but there are some cases of stark differences between heterosexual individuals and lesbian-gay counterparts. Finally, an analysis of intersecting identities displayed some instances where the impact of a sexual identity varied by a person’s racial background. For example, Black and Latinx bisexual people did not perceive racism or internalize racial stereotypes at especially high levels, but Latinx bisexual individuals were more supportive of Black protests against the police than Black bisexual individuals.

The Black Protests: a Struggle for (Re)Definition of Intimate Citizenship.

Próby zmiany prawa regulującego dostęp do aborcji w Polsce, podjęte przez polski Sejm w 2016 i 2018, zainicjowały intensywną społeczną mobilizację i szerokie protesty społeczne, określane wspólną nazwą „Czarnych Protestów”. Tę mobilizację traktujemy jako próbę (prze)definiowania obowiązujących pojęć obywatelstwa, a w szczególności jako wyraz poszukiwania nowego modelu obywatelstwa intymnego, czyli publicznego przedefiniowania praw dotyczących prywatnej, intymnej sfery. Celem autorek artykułu jest analiza wspomnianych (re)artykulacji intymnego obywatelstwa. W pierwszej części tekstu autorki opisują, czym były Czarne Protesty oraz Ogólnopolski Strajk Kobiet, a także przybliżają kontekst ich powstania oraz postulaty. W drugiej części zdefiniowana zostaje kategoria obywatelstwa, a w szczególności obywatelstwa intymnego. Następnie przedstawiona zostaje metodologia badań. W ostatniej, analitycznej części artykułu autorki rekonstruują wizje obywatelstwa intymnego wyłaniające się z analizowanego materiału empirycznego.

Transgressive Leadership and Theo-ethical Texts of Black Protest Music

ABSTRACTLimited academic publications analysing the theologies and ethics of historic Black Freedom Struggles have resulted in minimal inclusion in broader theological and ethical canons. In this article I explore the role of music in Black Freedom Struggles, especially the historic Civil Rights Movement, to argue that such music was a transgressive tool that expanded leadership positions and produced new theo-ethical and socio-political texts. These organic oral texts were published through alternative methods, expanding activists’ theological and ethical beliefs about the social and political struggles in which they participated. Finally, I suggest that protest music in the contemporary Movement for Black Lives offers a view into the lived realities and commitments of participants as they continue the tradition of using music as a theo-ethical and socio-political tool.

Claiming the Shipyard, the Cowboy Hat, and the Anchor for Women: Polish Feminism’s Dialogue and Struggle with National Symbolism

This article examines the evolving role of national symbolism in Polish feminist discourses and activist practices since 1989. Three case studies involving symbolic appropriation are presented; in each, cultural signs of great importance to the national imaginary are put to work for women’s equality in acts of resistance to nationalist rhetoric. The first case is the graffiti reportedly seen on the wall of the Gdańsk Shipyard during the 1980 Solidarity strike: “Women, do not disturb us, we are fighting for Poland.” The sign and the story behind it came to play an important role in feminist debates about national belonging and exclusion. The second example is the 1989 election poster featuring Gary Cooper, twice transformed by feminists. Finally, the article examines the struggle between nationalists and feminists over the “fighting Poland” sign associated with the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. The Black Protest of 2016 creatively transformed this symbol, which led to much public debate and several court cases. This article argues that Polish feminism is engaged in contestation of the dominant understanding of nationhood imposed by right-wing, male-centered forces and the Catholic Church. Responses to the post-1989 resurgence of nationalism have constituted key dividing lines between strands of feminist activism and thinking in Poland. The two competing strategies have been pathos and irony. The Black Protest seems to mark a new stage in these developments—one that corresponds to Victor Turner’s communitas, with its characteristic turmoil and symbolic intensity.

Students’ experiences with black South African protest fiction in the fourth year English language classroom at a comprehensive rural-based university: a case study

Students’ experiences with black South African protest fiction in the fourth year English language classroom at a comprehensive rural-based university: a case study

Rage – beyond the Point of Boiling Over

Rage – beyond the Point of Boiling Over

Dissent Dressing: The Colour and Fabric of Political Rage

Dissent Dressing: The Colour and Fabric of Political Rage

Gendering Resistance to Right-Wing Populism: Black Protest and a New Wave of Feminist Activism in Poland?

The rise to power of the populist Law and Justice Party (PiS) in 2015, and its growing authoritarianism, has politicized thousands of Poles and brought large-scale protests back to Polish streets. Women have been at the forefront of these struggles, aligning the previously unpopular quest for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy with the larger resistance to the ruling party. In particular, the proposal to restrict the abortion law sparked mass mobilization in 2016, with Black Protests turning into a formative experience for many of the previously nonactive participants. This article sheds light on this most recent wave of feminist activism in Poland and its forms of action, from a generational perspective. It scrutinizes in detail the narrative of a “new generation of activists,” who claim to change the contours of Polish feminism, making it more inclusive, more creative and bolder. It reports on the shift, unfolding slowly since the 2000s, from the institutionalized feminism of nongovernmental organizations to less formal, grassroots forms of engagement that combine online activism with organizing on the ground. However, while the latter is often assumed to be skeptical toward the European Union’s “gender equality” framework, the article reveals how, within the context of growing authoritarianism, the youngest cohorts in particular return to the liberal strand of feminism, characterized by the language of human rights and an uncritical gaze toward the European Union. The article ends with a reflection on the proclaimed ‘newness’ of feminism in Poland, as articulated by the new generation of activists. The absence of intergenerational dialogue and transmission of knowledge, it is argued, render past feminist struggles in Poland invisible and forgotten and strikingly leaves unquestioned the legacy of previous neoliberal and patriarchal governments that led to the erosion of women’s rights in postsocialist Poland.

The Substantive Representation of Women in Poland

AbstractThis article examines the substantive representation of women in Poland after the 2015 parliamentary elections. By looking at the case of the Black Protests, in which tens of thousands of demonstrators, wearing black, defended women's rights by protesting a proposed total abortion ban, it revisits the existing approaches to substantive representation. Hanna Pitkin's definition is used as a starting point, but then broader questions concerning women's interests, agents, and sites of representation are considered. This article identifies a variety of interests but argues that in Poland, conservative interests dominate in parliament, although feminist interests are voiced too, especially by nonelected agents in extraparliamentary sites. This article makes an important contribution to the research on women's political representation because it deals with unexplored aspects of representation in Central and Eastern Europe.

“To Ferguson, Love Palestine”: mediating life under occupation

ABSTRACTIn Ferguson, Missouri, Palestinian activists and black protesters created a transnational collective identity defined by what some scholars call a “community of feeling” following the murder of Michael Brown in August 2014. This paper focuses on the transnational politics of the Ferguson Movement through a textual analysis of digital media discourse and interviews with local community activists. Findings reveal that activists generated a transnational collective identity based on their shared experiences of oppression and resistance, which activists made visible across various digital platforms, including social media, blogs, and livestreaming. Informed by the literature on social movements, collective identity, and affect, the authors move beyond theoretical analyses that emphasize activists’ communicative practices as strategic; instead, this article underscores the affective linkages that led to the development of a transnational collective identity within the movement.

Hot venus, cool modern: voice, body, and the hungry gaze as sites of black feminist re-inscription in Ann Petry’s The Narrows

ABSTRACTAnn Petry’s The Street, a bestseller when it appeared in 1946, has come to define her legacy as a novelist and public intellectual. Perceived as a disciple of Richard Wright, Petry has often been configured within the black protest tradition, which obscures her narrative experimentation and attention to rich, aesthetic detail. This essay places Petry in a more expansive and dynamic cultural context by examining The Narrows, her 1953 novel, as an exemplar of “hybrid modernism,” which combines social realism with aesthetic experimentation. In focusing on the subversively blowsy, bluesy Mamie Powther, the black woman simultaneously at the novel’s periphery and integral to its unfolding, this essay analyzes Petry’s investments not only in the blues and the African-American musical tradition, but in her incorporation of the cinematic conventions of film noir; particularly in the re-inscription of the figure of the femme fatale as (Hottentot) Venus. Rather than simply a passive recipient of the male gaze, Mamie can be interpreted as an active agent in her own right, a modern woman capable of sexual agency and erotic self-assertion as embodied in the active desire of her own hungry gaze and corporeal appetites.