Category / Antiracism

by abritt

Crespino Interviewed for Atlanta History Center’s New Film “Monument: The Untold Story of Stone Mountain”

Trailer for “Monument: The Untold Story of Stone Mountain”

Dr. Joseph Crespino, Department Chair and Jimmy Carter Professor of History, was interviewed for the Atlanta History Center’s first-ever original documentary, “Monument: The Untold Story of Stone Mountain.” The film provides a window into the making of the largest monument to the Confederacy in the world, including aspects of its history that are often glossed over. The Atlanta Journal Constitution recently published an article about “Monument,” in which they cite one of Crespino’s comments from the film. Read a quote below from the AJC piece below along with the full article: “Atlanta History Center’s first documentary takes on Stone Mountain.” Also view the documentary itself on the Atlanta History Center site: “Monument: The Untold Story of Stone Mountain“

“It was finished in 1972, more than a century after the end of the Civil War.

“The park, Emory University historian Joseph Crespino says in the film, is ‘a place that memorializes people who fought for a version of the country that we reject today.’

“‘A lot of people just don’t even know,’ Cynthia Spence, co-chair of anthropology and sociology at Spelman College, says. ‘They’d don’t understand that Stone Mountain, as well as many Confederate monuments all over this country, were very intentionally placed to keep Black people in their places.'”

by abritt

Candido and Chira Receive Social Justice Grant through Emory Provost Office

Dr. Mariana P. Candido
Dr. Adriana Chira

Two History Department faculty members have received a grant from a program within the Emory Office of the Provost designed to foster research and scholarly work that advances social justice. Dr. Mariana P. Candido, Associate Professor, and Dr. Adriana Chira, Assistant Professor, are collaborating on a project titled “Land Dispossession, Inequality and the Legacies of Slavery in Africa and Latin America.” The project envisions the creation of an open-access digital resource on these themes, two undergraduate courses at Emory, and trips to Cuba and Puerto Rico. Read a fuller description of the initiative below, along with other projects funded through this program: “Emory awards funds for five faculty projects focused on arts and social justice.”

“This project, conducted in collaboration with Mariana Dias Paes at the Max Planck Institute for Law and Legal Theory, will study land dispossession in Africa and Latin America and establish an open-access digital resource that shares critical historical documents, transcripts, legal papers and other records relating to the topic. The grant also funds the creation of two undergraduate courses on the politics of development, rural transformation and food sovereignty that will combine a trip to Puerto Rico and Cuba with in-class instruction.“

by abritt

Andrew G. Britt (PhD, ’18) Publishes Article in ‘Journal of Latin American Studies’

Andrew G. Britt

Dr. Andrew G. Britt, a 2018 alumnus of the History doctoral program, recently published an article in the Journal of Latin American Studies. Titled “Spatial Projects of Forgetting: Razing the Remedies Church and Museum to the Enslaved in São Paulo’s ‘Black Zone’, 1930s–1940s,” the piece excavates the history of the former headquarters of Brazil’s Underground Railroad and a longtime museum to the enslaved. The article emerged out of Britt’s dissertation, which was advised by Drs. Jeffrey Lesser and Thomas D. Rogers. Britt is Assistant Professor of History and Digital Humanities at the UNC School of the Arts. Read the abstract of the article below along with the full piece.

“In the shadows of a Shinto torii (gateway) in São Paulo’s ‘Japanese’ neighbourhood rests the city’s first burial ground for enslaved Africans. Recently unearthed, the gravesite is one of the few visible remains of the Liberdade neighbourhood’s significance in São Paulo’s ‘Black zone’. This article excavates the history of the nearby Remedies church, the headquarters of Brazil’s Underground Railroad and a long-time museum to the enslaved. The 1942 demolition of the Remedies church, I argue, comprised part of a spatial project of forgetting centred on razing the city’s ‘Black zone’ and reproducing São Paulo as a non-Black, ethnically immigrant metropolis.”

by abritt

Anderson Analyzes Midterm Elections on ‘Democracy Now!’

Carol Anderson on Democracy Now!

Dr. Carol Anderson appeared on the television program Democracy Now! in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections. Anderson analyzed the significance of the elections for the future of American democracy and discussed the outsized role that the outcome of the Georgia senate race would play in determining the course of that future. Anderson is the author of many books, including, most recently, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). She is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department. Watch the segment on Democracy Now! above or at the following link: “‘American Democracy Hangs in the Balance’: Carol Anderson on Midterms, Georgia Races & Voting Rights.”

by abritt

Anderson Speaks at 10th Annual Athens Democracy Forum

International premier of Dr. Carol Anderson’s film I, Too.

Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently participated in the Athens Democracy Forum in the Greek capital. The event – now in its tenth year – is convened by the Democracy & Culture Foundation in association with The New York Times. Anderson screen her film I, Too at the forum (marking the film’s international premier) and discussed how voter suppression tactics in the U.S., particularly those that limit the right of American-Americans to vote, are threatening American democracy. Read an excerpt from the New York Times’s coverage of the event below, along with the full article here: “TikTok, Fake News and Obstacles to the Ballot Box.”

Carol Anderson — a professor of African American studies at Emory University in Georgia and the maker of a documentary titled “I, Too,” which was screened in Athens — kicked off the debate with an urgent entreaty for voter registration to be simplified.

One of the first things that we have to recognize, in the U.S. context, is that you have the rise of what we call voter suppression laws,” she said. “These laws were targeted at key elements in the population to ensure that they would have multiple obstacles to have to jump over” to vote.

Those groups are then blamed for not voting, when in fact, they faced, and continue to face, “obstacles that look race-neutral, but that are racially targeted. What we have to do is dismantle the barriers to voting.”

by abritt

Klibanoff Quoted in ‘AJC’ Article on Dubious 1950 Murder Conviction

Hank Klibanoff, from WABE

Hank Klibanoff, Director of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently quoted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The piece focuses on the 1950 murder trial of Clarence Henderson, a Black Carrollton sharecropper convicted of murdering a White Georgia Tech student under highly-questionable circumstances. Prompted by a new book, The Three Death Sentences of Clarence Henderson, the Carrollton county District Attorney is revisiting the case. The Associated Press also recently covered the DA’s decision in the article, “Prosecutor might seek sharecropper’s posthumous exoneration.” Read an excerpt from the AJC article below, along with the full piece here: “Georgia DA revisits decades-old murder case against sharecropper.”

“Hank Klibanoff, an Emory University professor and director of the school’s Civil Rights Cold Cases Project, said addressing injustices from decades past is important, even when the victims and perpetrators are dead.

“‘There is a very important judgment that history can make,’ he said.

“There also is the chance for healing. Klibanoff and his Emory students have delved into several Jim Crow era racial killings and cold cases. In one case, the white descendant of one of the named murderers was so moved by their findings that he sought out the victim’s daughter to apologize.

“‘It went an enormous way to salving their wounds,’ he said.”

by abritt

‘I, Too’: A Documentary Film from the Mind of Carol Anderson

Dr. Carol Anderson’s Documentary Film I, Too

Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies Dr. Carol Anderson provides historical context for contemporary practices of white supremacy and political violence in the U.S. through a new documentary, titled I, Too. The film, which premiered at the Carter Center in Atlanta on September 7, is a co-production of Humanity in Action, Emory University, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and the Donner Foundation. The film presents continuities between the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and earlier events, including the Hamburg Massacre in South Carolina in 1876 and the Wilmington, North Carolina, Coup d’Etat of 1898. Listen to a post-premiere interview between Dr. Anderson and WABE’s Rose Scott here: “‘History is uncomfortable’: Emory professor Carol Anderson live at the Carter Center.”

by abritt

Anderson Discusses Anti-Blackness and Gun Legislation on CNN

The cover of Carol Anderson’s 2021 book, The Second.

Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was quoted in a CNN article on the racialized dimensions of contemporary legislation related to gun possession and gun control. Anderson’s most recent book, The Second: Race and Guns in an Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021), interrogates the links between anti-Blackness and the second amendment throughout U.S. history. Read an excerpt from the article below along with the full piece: “The fight to curb gun violence without inflaming racial biases.”

The issue when it comes to gun control isn’t necessarily the law, according to Carol Anderson, an African American studies professor at Emory University. Sometimes, the issue is the enforcement of the law.

“Let’s go back to the Bruen decision in New York, that horrible decision by the US Supreme Court,” Anderson said, referring to the high court’s ruling in June that struck down a century-old New York gun law and that observers suspect will unleash a wave of lawsuits seeking to loosen restrictions at the state and federal levels. “The amicus curiae brief from public defenders said, The NYPD has used this law to go after Black folks. Look at what this has done.”

Anderson, the author of “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America,” said that, at the core, the problem was policing.

“That’s the component I don’t think is understood well enough,” she said. “We’ve got to clean up policing.
Until we take anti-Blackness seriously, we’re going to keep dancing around the issue.”

Brandon Tensley and Eva McKend, “The fight to curb gun violence without inflaming racial biases,” CNN, July 31, 2022.
by abritt

Emory Launches African-American Studies PhD Program

Flyer for new doctoral program in African American Studies.

Emory has launched a new doctoral program in African American Studies, the first of its kind in the U.S. Southeast. The interdisciplinary program will draw on the expertise of more than 50 scholars across schools at Emory, including from the College’s Department of History. Dr. Walter C. Rucker, Professor of African American Studies and History, will serve as core faculty in the program and as the Director of Graduate Studies. The program will be built around four of the pillars of African American Studies: interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, community engagement, and transnationalism. The first cohort of four doctoral students is expected to begin in the fall of 2023. Read more information about the program on the AAS website, as well as in the following coverage in the press:

by abritt

Anderson Cited in ‘Salon’ Article on Links between Abortion, Racism, and Guns

Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African-American Studies, was cited in a Salon article examining the links between abortion, racism, and guns. The piece, “Abortion, racism and guns: How white supremacy unites the right,” was written by Tamara Kay and Susan L. Ostermann. Kay and Ostermann offer historical context for the Supreme Court’s overturning of the precedent set by Roe v. Wade, particularly how white supremacy shaped early abortion criminalization. They draw a direct parallel to the anti-Black dimensions of the Second Amendment, the topic of Anderson’s most recent book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). Read an excerpt from the Salon piece citing Anderson below along with the full article here.

The Second Amendment also has white supremacist roots. When it was ratified in 1791, many states had laws to prevent enslaved and free Black people from possessing or bearing arms. Prior to the Civil War, Black people were targeted by armed slave patrols, and after the war and the failure of Reconstruction, Black Codes enacted across the Jim Crow South prohibited formerly enslaved people from possessing guns.  Carol Anderson, chair of African American Studies at Emory University and author of “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America,” argues that long after the abolition of slavery, the Second Amendment has been used against Black people: “(P)ervasive anti-Blackness, even after the civil rights movement, turned the Second Amendment’s law for protection — the castle doctrine, stand your ground and open carry — against African Americans.” She concludes that the Second Amendment “is lethal; steeped in anti-Blackness, it is the loaded weapon laying around just waiting for the hand of some authority to put it to use.”