CBH Talk | “We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance” with Kellie Carter Jackson and Lauren N. Williams

In We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance, historian Kellie Carter Jackson presents a radical reframing of Black resistance, exploring the many forms of activism employed against white supremacy over centuries, and offering a fundamental corrective to the historical record.

Rebutting the simplified view that Black resistance to white oppression can be reduced to the binary between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary”, Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice and offers a deeply researched and nuanced examination of the breadth of Black responses to oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women.  

The topic echoes the Center for Brooklyn History’s 2020 project Brooklyn Resists, an exhibition (now on-line), special collection, and community collecting project that presents stories of the many ways Black Brooklynites responded to systemic racial injustice, connecting the protest movement in the wake of George Floyd’s murder to generations of activists and leaders who came before. 

Lauren N. Williams, who oversees projects related to race, identity and inequality at Guardian US, leads Carter Jackson in conversation, which promises to complicate this long-simplified history. 

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Participants

Kellie Carter Jackson is the Michael and Denise ‘68 Associate Professor of Africana Studies and the Chair of the Africana Studies Department Wellesley College. She is the author of We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance and the award-winning book, Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Nation, the Boston Globe, CNN, and a host of other outlets. 

She has been featured in numerous documentaries for Netflix, PBS, MSNBC, CNN, and AppleTV.  She has also been interviewed on Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, MSNBC, and countless podcasts. She co-hosts the podcast, “This Day in Political Esoteric History” with Jody Avirgan and Nicole Hemmer. She is Executive Producer and Host of the award winning You Get a Podcast! The Study of the Queen of Talk, formerly known as Oprahdemics with co-host Leah Wright Rigueur. Carter Jackson served as a Historian-in-Residence for the Museum of African American History in Boston and is commissioner for the Massachusetts Historical Commission. She lives in the suburbs of Boston with her husband and three children. 

 

Lauren N. Williams is the deputy editor, race and equity at Guardian US, where she oversees news, enterprise, and project-based journalism on matters of race, identity, and inequality. Previously, she was a senior editor at The Atlantic covering human-interest and culture stories. Prior to joining The Atlantic, Williams was a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Before that, Williams was the features editor for Essence. She assigned and edited stories on topics such as reproductive rights, gun violence, politics, public health, and social justice. Features she's worked on have won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists. Williams started her journalism career at More and Marie Claire magazines, where she wrote across the culture, news, and lifestyle sections. She has a B.A. from Georgetown University and is from Brooklyn.