Welcome everyone my name is Christina
Jackson and I'm an Assistant Professor
of Sociology here at Stockton University
and I wanted to first give thanks to
Alyssa and to the Holocaust and Genocide
program here at Stockton University for
putting this on I'm just so excited to
just be able to have a conversation
about this especially in this time
period right now so thank you I also
want to especially thank and give thanks
and welcome residents from Atlantic City
so I know there's a number of people
here from Atlantic City and I just want
to say thank you and I'm so glad that
you're here I'm excited to be a part of
this conversation tomorrow I will be
talking a little bit about my Black
Lives Matter Atlantic City involvement
so I'm on the core team with a couple of
other members who are also here and also
I'm going to be talking a little bit
about my research about disadvantaged
spaces and making some connections
between those that are morally inferior
and inner-city ghettos today so it
should be for a really good conversation
so I have the pleasure of introducing a
good friend of Mine one of my
colleagues and I actually call my twin
because we both have twins Reverend
William Williams I started at Stockton
here Fall in Fall 2015 and I was
invited to speak give a talk to the very
beginnings of the Black Lives Matter
chapter and I did a talk on Sociology
and Racism and then from there we formed
a relationship and a partnership where I
joined the core team and we over the
past year we've had monthly forums in
education educational sit ins on a
variety of topics that affect the
African-American community under the
Black Lives Matter framework Reverend
Williams is an esteemed leader
well-known community organizer and
Reverend in Atlantic City and I'm so
pleased to be able to work with him I'm
also so pleased for him to be here to be
able to speak with us so
Reverend Williams I'm glad and thankful for
to be able to to give the opening
remarks today and know that we will have
a chance and opportunity to to really
hear some Dr. Von Joeden-Forgey as she
said dynamic and creative presentations
over the the course of this weekend and
today by our keynote speaker and so to
you Doctor thank you for inviting me and
for allowing me to be here very humbled
and very gracious to some friends and
colleagues and the struggle in the fight
it's great to see y'all today and to be
among you today to our keynote speaker
welcome and thank you and glad that you
were able to be here with us today Mr.
Williams and my wife Joyce Williams
wanted to be here today and was going to
be here we are going out of town
tomorrow driving to Cincinnati with the
family and so she's home with William
the fourth and James and Julia and her
mother-in-law my mother-in-law her
mother getting things ready for us
but a very grateful to my wife who is my
rock and my friend and all of the the
things that are important in life so
very much appreciate her I won't be
long as you know I don't really know
what opening remarks are so I'm just
going to talk and give and hopefully Dr.
Williams I will be able to you will be
able to kind of pick up and move on and
keep us moving in the way that we need
to move know so I hope these words like
I said set the stage for what will be
and I like what you said again Dr. Von
Joeden-Forgey a dynamic and creative
weekend to not only dialogue amongst
ourselves but to also continue a
strategy of action a strategy of action
that will speak to the more conscious of
our country and and I talked about that
and
want to promote the both the dialogue
but the action that will speak to the
more conscious of our country because
I'm reminded of Dr. King's sermon
entitled Transformed Nonconformist that
he gave in 1966 and he says that we are
not makers of history we are made by
history are shaped by the patterns of
the majority he poses the question are
we shaped by the patterns of majority
and he goes on in his sermon to tell us
and to give a metaphor about a
thermometer and so some of you might
know this sermon he says go to your home
and look for the thermometer and he says
if you look on the wall and read the
thermometer if it's seven degrees inside
that thermometer will say 70 if it's 80
degrees inside that thermometer will
read 80 he said the thermometer is only
a mere instrument that registers the
temperature of the room and he goes on
to say that there's another instrument
likely in your home and if it's 7
degrees 70 degrees in your home and you
want it to be 80 degrees then you push
it up a little until it reaches 80 and
he said we know that instrument to be
the thermostat which changes the
temperature of the room and most people
he in his sermon said and I believe that
we probably agree somewhat today most
people are thermometers that only record
and register the temperature of the
majority opinion and not thermostats
that transform and regulate the
temperature of a society and Dr. King
encouraged and that sermon and not
believe he even encourages us
today to be thermostats and to change
the moral temperature and many of us my
brothers and sisters I know are already
or have begun the necessary work to
change the moral temperature of this
country and others will be a part of
this weekend's dialogue in order to
engage in some sort of temperature
reading for themselves and I hope that
you in this weekend you might be able to
be both
and not either or both be ready to open
yourselves and receive the information
that might have you look at the moral
temperature of our society and be ready
to act as thermostats leaving this
weekend with concrete actions that you
will do to end the genocide of Black
lives and so the question might be asked
what do concrete actions look like and I
think before we answer that question
that question what are concrete actions
and what are the things that we want to
do don't we first have to understand the
problem we must first understand what
the problem looks like and so we know
that the hashtag Black Lives Matter was
created in 2012 after Trayvon Martin's
murderer George Zimmerman was acquitted
for his crime and was
Zimmerman trial turned into was an
attack on Trayvon Martin phrases like
well he was wearing a hoodie or phrases
like he wasn't in the right space at the
right time or phrases like well he
fought back though Trayvon was
protecting himself from his assailant
the the trial became more about who
Trayvon Martin was or maybe better said
what he wasn't it was like he wasn't
human so in 2017 and so in 2012 Trayvon
Martin became like a piece of shackled
property that could be easily beaten
discarded and left for dead and no one
would be held legally responsible for
his death the Black experience in
America is grounded in white criminal
perpetrators kidnapping Black bodies and
forcing these bodies into inhumane
conditions and I don't like to think of
I don't like to call the the American
slave trade or American slavery I don't
like to put that shame and that that
sort of thing on the victim but I'd like
to think of the think of the
perpetrators as kidnappers the
right the white criminal
perpetrators as kidnappers and
kidnapping victims from their homeland
we're familiar with the less than
human legislative
language we're familiar with
media depictions throughout the
centuries we're familiar with the red
lining and gerrymandering we're all too
familiar with how white kidnappers of
Black bodies have sought and found ways
to dehumanize Black people and as a
result of this dehumanization countless
deaths countless State section murders
countless prisons countless food
shortages countless acts of economic
depravity countless repossessions
countless acts of miseducation
stereotypical depictions countless drug
infiltrations countless sudden and
slow acts of violence as Dr. Crest Dr.
Jackson has taught us throughout her
time with us all these things were
happening against and on and towards
Black and Brown bodies resulting in
genocide and so when we speak of
genocide we speak of the broader
tyrannical scheme of a
state-sanctioned violence to include all
the ways in which of Black people are
intentionally left powerless at the
hands of the State and when we speak of
genocide we're talking about all the
ways in which Black lives are deprived
of our basic human rights and dignity I
was at the Matthew Sandusky lecture this
earlier this week and he was staunch in
his objective his objective as he told
us gathered there at that time he said
he wants child sexual abuse to
completely end he didn't say well you
know statistically nothing can truly end
but we can if we can ensure that a
number that the number of cases dropped
by this and that percentage then we'll
be happy no he didn't say any of that he
undoubtedly unapologetically and with an
unwavering command said that his demand
is that all child sex abuse must end
and my brothers and sisters gathered
here today we must demand the same for
Black lives when we classified the
deaths of Black and Brown bodies as
genocidal atrocities spearheaded
promoted and protected by these United
States of America from its beginning
then we must utilize the collective
arsenal's of our hearts and minds and
resources to demand the same and ending
of the genocide of Black lives we must
end capital
punishment we must end the money bail
system we must end the mass surveillance
of black communities we must
demilitarize law enforcement especially
in our schools we must demand that past
criminal history is no longer used to
determine the eligibility the housing
the education the license the voting the
loans the employment and other services
and needs we must demand the inclusion
of trans queer and gender non-conforming
humans into anti-discrimination and
civil rights protections so that they
can be ensured of the full access to
employment health and housing and
education and so when I asked what do
concrete actions look like and it looks
like investments in education and looks
like investments in health it looks like
investments in the safety of black
people instead of investments in the
criminalizing caging and harming of
black people so this weekend as we have
dynamic and creative dialogue be
prepared to read the moral temperature
of our society but also be prepared to
do something about changing this
temperature and before I sit down I want
to tell this story I was telling
speaking to it with Dr. Von Joeden-Forgey
when we first had a conversation and I
was telling her a story about my son
William and William he's a William the 4th
before he came to me and trying to get
my attention and at two years old and he
was trying to speak to me and get my
attention and pointing to his feet and I
said yeah your feet your feet yay
something like that and he kept coming
and pointing and saying daddy my feet my
feet and so I look at his foot I
said yeah it's okay and I said you know
go back and play and over and over again
he kept coming to me crying and and
saying daddy my feet my feet and so I
stopped what I was doing and look at the
but his foot and begin to look a little
closer and saw a splinter in the bottom
of his foot it was small but a splinter
nonetheless my wife his mother and I
worked together to get it out and you
know when we get out splinters and if
anybody he cried he pulled away he moped he
did all the things that he was supposed to do
but when we got it out he looked at his
foot he gave us a smile and he felt and
noticed the difference my sisters and
brothers I tell this because the
movement for Black lives is an outcry of
the pain the devastation and the
resistance caused by the constant
targeting exploitation and perpetual
oppression of Black and Brown people I
tell this story because the movement for
Black lives is the pushing is the
pushing of the thermostat to change the
moral temperature of a society and to
tell and to demand the oppressor that we
are human and to notice our humanity I
tell the story though 400 years of
slavery though mass incarceration though
the original Jim Crow and the new Jim
Crow though a broken education system
though gentrification and institutional
racism though these things are more than
just a splinter in the body of America I
tell this story because the outcry for
Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter is
true the outcry for black lives to
matter is deafening the outcry for black
lives to matter is persistent and our
collective and unified response must be
immediate indecisive you know what I was
doing when William was trying to get my
attention I was watching a football game
like me many of us must stop doing
something something so trivial we must
stop what we're doing and pay attention
it means that we might have to change
our strategic plans it mean that we
might have to move financial resources
around it means even from an
institutional point of view and we are
now it means that we might have to
understand the classes that we're
offering the students that we admit
admit the stances that we take we might
examine the promote promotions that are
earned the investments that are made are
the divestments that are done the voice
in the platform that we have here today
as a University ask people we must use
and we must use it to our fullest
advantage even on our personal on a
personal level we must consider what
we're doing in our homes the lessons we
teach our families
there's a book that author by the name
of Thandeka it's called Learning
to be White and she writes in this book
Learning to be White she tells a story of
a White man named Jack and he he
recounts the story of as a five-year-old
boy that his parents gave him a birthday
party and invited all of his relatives
that had children to the birthday party
she writes that he remembers going to
the gate to his of his backyard calling
his friend over to join them his friend
was Black entered the yard and
immediately she writes that Jack became
aware of how uncomfortable his parents
were with the presence of this with a
presence of his Black friends among them
he knew by their looks he knew by their
actions that he had done something wrong
and was shamed and sorry for it my
sisters and brothers what we learned
here this weekend is going to be
awesome and with a dialogue in that
dynamic and creative discussion that we
have here today is going to be
worthwhile but it's mood it means
nothing if we don't take this back to
our home if we don't make sure what
we're teaching in our the teaching of
people in our homes and in our
neighborhoods how to be highly critical
thought provoking thermometers and
simple action needed something needs to
be done type of thermostats if we don't
do this then it means nothing if we
don't ensure that the people who live
with us that are in our neighborhoods
that are that are around us in our
cohorts are learning this information
and being changed by this information
then it means very little so I encourage
you to do something my last story in my
Christian Judeo-Christian background we
have a story called the Good Samaritan
and when Jesus is questioned by someone
with the question who is your neighbor
he tells the story of the Good Samaritan
and he asked the person telling the
story who is the one that was the
neighbor and the asker of the question
says the one who showed compassion and
in this story Jesus says go do
likewise sisters and brothers after this
weekend is over I encourage you to go be
compassion go be justice after this
weekend is over I encourage you to go be
an agent of hope and change fulfilling
the vision that we have outlined today
the genocide of Black and Brown bodies
must end we have to do it we can't just
talk about it the talk is going to be
good the conversation is going to be
dynamic and creative but let it not just
in there let it result in some action
Genocide of Black the Genocide of Black
lives must end no if ands or buts Amen
well I want to thank Pastor Williams for
those strong and wonderful remarks I'm
just going how important the work that
everybody here is doing will do this
weekend and hopefully will all continue
to do after this weekend I remember when
I spoke to Pastor Williams we had what
for me was a really great conversation
on the telephone and I got off the phone
and my family was there they said what
who are you talking to I said that was
the best conversation I've had in many
many years and so I'm so delighted that
Pastor Williams took time out of
planning I know for this trip to come
here tonight and to speak to us so thank
you thank you so much again and I have
the honor tonight of introducing our
keynote speaker Dr. Chad Williams who is
the Associate Professor and Chair of the
Department of African and Afro-American
studies at Brandeis University and also
I'm honored to say a friend of mine an
old friend I won't say how old of mine
he earned a BA with Honors in History
and African-American studies from UCLA
and he received both his MA and his PhD
in History from Princeton University he
specializes in African-American and
modern United States history African
American military history the World War I
era and African American
intellectual history his first book
Torchbearers of Democracy
African-American soldiers in the World
War I era which some of you may have
read was published in 2010 by the
University of North Carolina Press it
was widely praised very well received as
a landmark study and won the 2011
Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization
of American Historians The 2011
Distinguished Book Award from the
Society of Military History and the
Designation as a 2011 Choice Outstanding
Academic Title he's co-editor of
something else that you all may be
familiar with the Charleston Syllabus
Readings on Race Racism and Racial
Violence published then it was initially
a kind of workshop right and bringing
together various resources to deal with
the Charleston Massacre and the violence
that we've seen before and since then
it's now out by University published by
University of Georgia Press in 2016 as
well as a collection a collected volume
Major Problems in African American
History the second edition recently
published also in 2016 Chad has
published articles and book reviews in
numerous leading journals and
collections he has earned fellowships
from the American Council of Learned
Societies The Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture the Ford
Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson
Foundation he is currently completing a
study of W.E.B. Du Bois  and World War I
which I can't wait to read and it is
with great honor that I introduce him
today to speak about oh the title I
don't have it up here with me you will
tell them the title of your talk thank
you very much Chad thank you all
thank you so much for being here
good evening everyone
thank you for being here this is a true
privilege and honor to be a part of this
event Pastor Williams I think you know
very well what opening remarks are tough
act to follow tough act to follow but
I'm certainly going to do my
best and live up to your very high
standards want to thank Roz and Lisa for
spearheading this event
when Lisa emailed me so that she would
like for me to be the keynote speaker
she knew I was going to say yes there's
no way that I was going to going to turn
her down but it was truly privileged to
be able to be a part of such an
important program one that is incredibly
timely I'm actually teaching a Black
Lives Matter class this semester so to
have the opportunity to think about
Black Lives Matter in the context of
genocide was certainly a treat
and a responsibility as well so again
I'm very grateful for the invitation and
thank you everyone for being here this
evening when Lisa asked me to be the
keynote speaker for this workshop and
described its focus and goals I was
immediately intrigued what would it mean
to look at African American history through the
lens of genocide how would such an
approach change the types of questions
we asked about the meanings and legacies
of racial atrocities committed against
Black people one of the potential
implications of a genocide framework for
contemporary movements for Black freedom
justice and equality and how would this
affect the practice of African American history
itself in terms of research teaching and
engaging with the broader public for
Historians of the Black experience in
the United States racial violence and as
long memory are unavoidable we work in
archives and with texts that are stained
in blood the specter of death individual
and collective is always present in what
we do and haunts us in ways that are
often unexpected this is especially true
today as a Black Lives Matter Movement
has shown a glaring light on both
vigilante and state-sanctioned violence
inflicted upon Black people events of
the past three-plus years since the
birth of the Black Lives Matter Movement
have raised important questions about
the role of
Historians of the Black experience
during a time such as this indeed I
thought quite a bit about my own
responsibilities as a Historian as a
Black Historian in relation to my own
sense of vocation and practice now I say
I have always been attuned to my
personal and intellectual proximity to
the subject matter I teach and I write
about and I say without any hesitation
whatsoever that what I do as a Historian
is and must always be connected to the
present I stand on the shoulders of
Historians like W.E.B. Du Bois Carter G
Woodson John Hope Franklin Nell Irvin
Painter Darlene Clark Hine Robin D.G. Kelley
who are all a part of a tradition
of using history to illuminate as well
as inspire the long struggle for Black
freedom and justice when I think of
these pioneering scholars I'm reminded
that they too grappled with the
historical legacies and contemporary
realities of racial violence and its
genocidal qualities they both faced and
confronted history in ways that spoke to
their sense of commitment to linking the
lessons of the past to the challenges of
the present
for me the June 17th
2015 Massacre of 9 African Americans
at Charleston South Carolina's
Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church
through these issues into stark relief
Charleston will be remembered as one of
the most devastating incidents of racial
violence in this nation's history in
part because of the act itself but also
because of the moment in which it took
place so this evening I like to share
with you how I responded to Charleston
I do this not to necessarily uphold myself
as a model but to instead offer
potential approaches to our practice of
African American history and how to confront as
Pastor Williams was saying the question
of racial violence how to act on this
question of racial violence as genocide
in both history and in memory but before
jumping to Charleston in order to
provide some context of where I'm coming
from it's necessary for me to take a
step back to the Fall semester of 2014
that's the master I taught one of my
staple classes at Brandeis University
introduction to African and Afro-American
Studies just weeks before the start of
the semester on August 9th a Black
teenager named Michael Brown was shot
and killed by a White policemen in
Ferguson Missouri in the days leading up
to the beginning of class protests
erupted in Ferguson and other cities
across the country
on December 3rd
2014 as my class neared conclusion a
Staten Island Grand Jury decided not to
indict a White police officer in the
death of a Black man 43 year-old husband
and father of six Eric Gardner whose
death had been officially ruled a homicide
again protests swelled the
streets of cities from coast to coast
several of my students in fact after our
class ended that December day left
campus and went into Downtown Boston to
participate in the protests that were
taking place there so these two events
book ended my semester and in between
there's also the non indictment of
Darren Wilson who killed Michael Brown
and there was Ezell Ford
Akai Gurley
Tanisha Anderson
John Crawford
young Tamir Rice
so in this context I talked
I taught the narrative and the life of
Elano Equiano I taught the souls of
Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois  I taught
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
I taught Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon
I taught Assata Shakur's Autobiography
I taught the new Jim Crow by
Michelle Alexander the class and the
materials we grappled with that semester
took on a heightened relevance this was
on the one hand intellectually and
pedagogically invigorating but it was
also incredibly hard work I had to steel
myself for every class I had to prepare
and anticipate the looks of sadness
frustration confusion anger despair
in the face of many of my students who
realized that the issues essentially in
the past that we're reading about we're
still very much a part of their present
this was made all the more difficult
because I too felt these same emotions
we oftentimes fail to acknowledge the work
that teaching the histories of
violence and genocide entails it can
take a serious toll and I think this is
especially acute in the case of American
racial violence so when I read from The
Souls of Black Folk and W.E.B. Du Bois ask
how does it feel to be a problem that is
not simply a benign query an innocent
question and it tears at me knowing that
that question remains as relevant today
in 2017 as it did when Du Bois published
his book in 1903
while classes in Fall semester 2014 may
have ended in early December the
challenges of the racially turbulent
moment that we were in certainly
continued my Winter break that year was
in part spent responding to a media
firestorm created by a series of tweets
by one of my students who was also the
undergraduate department representative
of the department that I chair at
Brandeis who at the time expressed her
lack of remorse for two New York City
Police Officers who were killed on
December 20th of that year this was
quite a mess believe me but I knew where
she was coming from 1961 James Baldwin
famously said to be a Negro in this
country and to be relatively conscious
is to be in a rage almost all the time
I knew what this student had expressed was wrong
but as a Historian as a Black
person I also knew and understood her
rage so the Spring semester of 2015 began
with the campus incredibly tense and
many of my students both enraged and
traumatized I taught two classes that
semester the Black Intellectual
Tradition and the History of the Civil
Rights Movement and every class assumed
an added sense of urgency even a campus
discussion following a screening of the
film Selma had a charge to it that was
palpable the present seemed inescapable
in everything that we did so needless to
say I looked forward to the Summer and a
much-needed break but as many of us know
that's oftentimes easier said than done
on the morning of June the 18th 2015
like countless other people across the
country and across the world
awoke to a nightmare a previous night
9 Black men and women had been
slaughtered during an evening bible
study service in Charleston South
Carolina's Historic excuse me
Emanuel African and Methodist Episcopal
Church among the dead Reverend Clementa Pinckney
the church's pastor and in
South Carolina State Senator I read the
initial reports in stunned disbelief I
woke up that morning not quite sure to
believe what I was actually reading in the news
as details unfolded disbelief
turned to profound sadness the gunman a
22 year old White supremacist named
Dylann roof sat with the Bible study
group for an hour before opening fire
the victims ranged in age from 26 to 87
a five-year-old girl played dead to
avoid being killed another survivor
recalled Roofs chilling words as he
methodically reloaded and then unloaded
his weapon you are raping our women and
taking over our country my sadness
turned a rage over the next day my mind
shifted to the historical significance
of what had taken place I began to
immediately situate Charleston in the
long history of White racial terrorism
inflicted upon Black people from slavery
to the present I thought of the 1822
Denmark Vesey slave insurrection which
led to the hanging of 35 Black
conspirators and Charleston's AME Church
being burned to the ground I thought of
the violence of reconstruction in states
like South Carolina and the killing of
Black political and community leaders I
thought of the thousands of lynchings in
the American South many justified in the
name of defending White womanhood
I thought of White supremacy in South Africa
and Rhodesia Dylann Roof sported a jacket
in this picture but it's a jacket
with the flags of Apartheid-Era South
Africa Rhodesia on it so I was
thought of these White supremacist
regimes and their attendant violence I
thought of the sixteenth street Baptist
Church bombing in Birmingham in 1963 and
other attacks on the Black church
I thought about the meaning of this
tragedy in the era of America's first
Black president a time that not
coincidentally was marked by the visible
proliferation of Black death the
Charleston Massacre albeit in the worst
way imaginable opened a bloody door to
this country's racial history I wondered
what people have the courage to walk
through it vapid calls for renewing the
conversation on race a soothing focus on
Black forgiveness and ill-informed
discussions about the Confederate flag
did absolutely nothing for my confidence
over the course of 2 days it became
painfully evident that the vast majority
of people lacked the necessary
historical awareness to engage in
serious dialogue about Charleston much
less subject themselves to critical
introspection so my rage now turned into
frustration and we all know nowadays
when you get frustrated what do you do
you hop on Twitter right
so that's what I did
now what was I thinking here
other than I probably should have been asleep
or doing something more productive with
my time there's quite frankly in
infuriating assumption amongst many
well-meaning people who just so happened
to be White most of the time that having
conversations about race and racial
violence in particular is not work
that it's about sharing your feelings
that is somehow a form of group therapy
that when you're done talking you're
going to feel better about yourself and
feel better about the world you're
living in moreover the burden to lead
these conversations at least in the
context of the University almost always
falls on faculty of color there is a
disregard for the intellectual and
emotional labor this entails we are seen
as having the natural ability to talk
about race civil rights social justice
ignoring the fact that we have invested
countless hours in reading and training
ourselves on these subjects so at this
moment I was quite simply tired of
having the burden placed on me and my
fellow colleagues of color to do the
work that White people many of my
colleagues included should be doing for
themselves something so simple as
reading a book any book any book about
the myriad issues associated with the
Charleston shooting so after venting a
little bit I had to remind myself what
it is that I do what my responsibility
is as a Historian and as someone whose
sense of vocation is deeply bound in the
traditions of civil rights activism and
affirming the dignity of Black lives so
in this moment of frustration I recalled
the Ferguson syllabus brilliantly
initiated by Georgetown University
Professor Marcia Chatelain in the
aftermath of the Ferguson uprising
that crowd-sourced reading this quickly
became a vital tool for educators
throughout the world to learn about the
wide range of issues at the core of
Ferguson and apply them to the classroom
given the magnitude of what took place
in Charleston surely something
comparable was being developed
on the evening of June the 19th I did a search
for Charleston Syllabus and to my
surprise found nothing social media and
the blogosphere have emerged as vibrant
spaces for both production and
dissemination of knowledge about
African American history and its
relation to our contemporary racial
environment hoping to harness this power
I reached out to Wayne State University
Associate Professor Kidada Williams and
University of Iowa Assistant Professor
Keisha Blain who is also one of the
cofounders of the African American
Intellectual History Society I broached
the idea for Charleston Syllabus similar
to the Ferguson Syllabus to raise
critical historical awareness about
recent events and serve as a resource
for educators and the general public
more broadly and then we started tweeting
started tweeting out book titles other
Historians quickly jumped in and Keisha
linked our work right to the African American
Intellectual History Society website
other historians recognizing and
immediately making the connection
between the Charleston Syllabus and our
role as scholars and scholars of color
in particular in teaching about race
that our work mattered and within an hour
Charleston Syllabus was trending
then other people started jumping in as well
including many who were outside of the
Academy they suggested titles but they
also expressed their thanks clearly
a hunger for information existed that was
not being met as that first night
continued to unfold the hashtag was
picked up by several online activists
associated with the Black Lives Matter Movement
and this reinforced very
profoundly the importance of Black Lives
Matter as both a protest movement and as
an intellectual project
so it became clear in that span of 24 hours
that we had tapped into something and I
believe that Charleston Syllabus hashtag
resonated so powerfully because it was
part of a tradition of Black scholars
and intellectuals engaged in radical
scholarship in pedagogy as well as
making it accessible to the public and
connecting it to the broader struggles
of civil rights and social justice work
of community formation in the truest
sense of the term this also sparked
imaginations sparked the
imaginations of people all over the
country all over the world for that
matter of how we can best learn about what
happened in Charleston and how to act on
that knowledge libraries picked it up
directed Charleston Syllabus displays
museums like the MOMA picked up
Charleston Syllabus connecting it to the
brilliant artwork of Jacob Lawrence
educators of various types found ways to
incorporate Charleston Syllabus into
their practices and even more
cutting-edge pedagogical approaches like
Hip Hop Ed also picked up the
Charleston Syllabus Keisha Kidada and I
discussed various ways that we could
keep the Charleston Syllabus Movement
going next steps so it was serendipitous
when later that Summer the University of
Georgia Press contacted me about
transforming the Charleston Syllabus
into a book we all agreed that this
would be a unique opportunity to create
something that could be accessible for
educators and lay readers alike so we
basically put all of our other work on
hold and threw ourselves into preparing
the book which was done in the matter of
3 absolutely crazy months
the book ultimately contain 66 readings
primary source documents op-eds an
article in book excerpts most drawn from
the original online Charleston Syllabus
but with some new additions and thinking
about the book we wanted to center
racial violence and racial terror as a
central thread so we included readings
on the horrors of the Middle Passage
we included readings on post emancipation
violence on lynching on policing and
mass incarceration but we also wanted to
demonstrate the long history of Black
resistance to White supremists violence
so we included readings on the vibrancy
of slave communities readings on the
Black church as an institution readings
on anti-lynching activism on Black self
defense efforts during the Civil Rights
Movement and readings on the long
history of combating the Confederate
flag in the blur of completing the book
it was hard to imagine just what type of
impact it would have but I am pleased
that it has been embraced as an example
of engaged scholarship and how to take a
moment of trauma and transform it into
an opportunity for historical
consciousness raising and critical
thought one of the questions I suspect
this workshop will grapple with
beginning tonight and continuing
tomorrow is how do we get people our
colleagues and the larger public to see
and understand the history of racialized
violence inflicted upon Black people
as in fact genocide we must remember is
that this is not simply an academic
matter the urgency of this question goes
hand in hand with the urgency of
reckoning with this country's history at
a time of profound crisis is imperative
that today we marshal all the tools at
our disposal in order to respond to this
moment to demonstrate that because of
its genocidal history America can in
no way claim greatness but by coming to
terms with its past perhaps it can
achieve some measure of maturity and
aspire to become something better we all
have a role to play in that struggle and
sometimes you can start with something
as simple as a tweet
thank you for your time
