Dr. Carol Anderson recently contributed to an ABC News piece about Donald Trump’s description of the House impeachment inquiry as a lynching. Anderson, who the article quotes as “shocked and appalled” by Trump’s tweet, responded on Twitter:

You weren’t castrated & forced to eat your genitalia like Claude Neal. You weren’t dragged behind a car, doused w/gasoline & set on fire like Cleo Wright. You weren’t blow torched until your eyes popped out of your head like John Jones. That’s lynching. You get due process.

— Carol Anderson (@ProfCAnderson) October 22, 2019

Anderson provided additional historical context for ABC News article, “Trump’s reference to lynching resurrects painful chapter in US history: Experts.” Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies, Chair of African American Studies, and Associated Faculty in the History Department. Read an excerpt from the article below along with the full piece.

“Anderson noted that the majority of lynchings happened during Reconstruction — just after slaves were freed — through the rise of the Jim Crow era laws which codified racial segregation. The acts, which even continued through the civil rights era into the modern age have been used as a way to terrorize black people “back into their place” now that they were no longer enslaved, Anderson said.

“‘How do you put them back into a neo-slavery place? The Jim Crow laws were one mechanism, outright massive domestic terror was the other mechanism,’ Anderson said.”

 

Jason Morgan Ward, Professor of History, recently wrote an opinion piece for CNN.com, titled “The horrendous message behind Trump’s ‘lynching’ tweet.” The article offers critical perspective on a recent Trump tweet that compared the House’s impeachment inquiry to lynching. Ward discusses actual historical lynchings along with politicians before Trump who have appropriated the rhetoric of lynching for their own (most often demagogic) ends. Ward is, most recently, the author of Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights Century (Oxford University Press, 2016). Read an excerpt from the CNN.com piece along with the full article: “The horrendous message behind Trump’s ‘lynching’ tweet.”

“By co-opting the word “lynching” to mean anything unpleasant or objectionable, and deploying the term for political expediency or more dangerous ends, the speaker, writer, or, in this case, the tweeter, diminishes lynching’s power in American history.

Worse still, claiming the identity of a lynching victim is an outrageous distraction from and diminishment of the suffering of the many thousands who died at the hands of bloodthirsty mobs—spurred, in many cases, by the racial demagogues of that day. We honor their memory by saying their names; we debase their brutal, shameful treatment by claiming to be them to glibly score rhetorical points.”

Assistant Professor of History Dr. Carl Suddler recently appeared on the Princeton University Podcast Politics and Polls. Julian Zelizer interviewed Suddler in a conversation that centered on the racialized nature of the criminal justice system. Suddler’s first book, Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York, was published by NYU Press earlier this year. Listen to the full episode here: “Politics & Polls #156: Black Youth and the Criminal Justice System Ft. Carl Suddler.”

Dr. Carol Anderson recently authored an op-ed for The Washington Post, titled “Impeachment is the latest chapter in the battle between democracy and white supremacy.” Anderson, an expert in race, justice, and equality in the U.S., surveys key episodes from U.S. history that contextualize Donald Trump’s reaction to the recently-initiated impeachment investigation. She concludes that “When it comes to a nation held hostage to racism, we have been here before.” Professor Anderson is Associated Faculty in the History Department, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies, and Chair of African American Studies. She is also the author, most recently, of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2018). Read an excerpt of the article below along with the full piece here.

“Since the nation’s founding, the refusal to believe in democracy and follow through on the nation’s ideals — equality and freedom — has been the nation’s consistent enemy. Time and time again, white supremacists have sacrificed these principles to advance their own interests and that of their white supporters. Trump has followed suit, adding the disregard for the rule of law to the list. When challenged, he has also invoked the strategy white supremacist leaders have also mastered: threats of violence and extortion.”  – Carol Anderson

Dr. Deborah Dinner, Associate Professor at Emory Law and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently contributed to an article in The Washington Post. Dinner, a specialist in the legal history of gender and work, discusses gender discrimination in the workplace in advance of a Supreme Court case that will revisit LGBTQ rights at work. Marisa Iati wrote the piece, titled “Supreme Court, set to rule on LGBTQ rights at work, addressed gender discrimination 30 years ago.” Read an excerpt below along with the full piece.

“The stereotype is that a male should dress in a certain way or perform his gender identity in a particular way or should have romantic relationships with women and not men,” Dinner said. “And so by discriminating on the basis of somebody’s gender identity or on the basis of their sexual orientation, what an employer in fact is doing is discriminating on the basis of a gender stereotype.” – Deborah Dinner

Emory University’s Office of the Provost regularly hosts faculty impact forums to stimulate interdisciplinary connection, collaboration, and community. Provost Dwight A. McBride will host the next forum in mid-November, which will focus on how to understand, conceptualize, and study the sociality of the dead. Two History Department faculty members will participate in the conversation, titled “The Work of Death”: Associate Professor Daniel LaChance and Mary L. Dudziak, associated faculty in the History Department and Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law. Read more about the event on the flyer below and register here.

 

Dr. Mary L. Dudziak recently wrote a piece for The Hill arguing for access to secret documents authored by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that govern the scope of U.S. executive power. Dudziak joined other parties in a issuing a formal challenge for the release of this legal corpus, which has been built over decades without substantial oversight (public or otherwise). Dudziak, who is Asa Candler Griggs Professor of Law and associated faculty in the History Department, is the author (most recently) of War Time: An Idea, Its History, Its Consequences (Oxford University Press, 2012). Read the full piece in The Hill: “Shedding light on secret laws governing presidential power.”

Dr. Carol Anderson, Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently contributed to a CNN.com article comparing contemporary acts of violence to anti-black lynchings in the twentieth century and before. John Blake authored the piece, “Why El Paso and other recent attacks in the US are modern-day lynchings,” which quotes Anderson extensively. The historian, who is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Chair of African American Studies, draws from her work on lynchings in White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and notes that her uncle was “almost lynched in the early 20th century for standing up to a white man in an Oklahoma store.” Read an excerpt that features Anderson below along with the full article.

“But Anderson and others warn that many of the same elements that spawned the lynching era are stirring once again in America. One commentator even described the El Paso shooter as ‘a lynch mob of one.’

“The result, Anderson says, is that more Americans — Latinos, blacks, Muslims, Jews, anyone not seen as white enough — are now experiencing the same fear of being murdered at random in public that their relatives faced during the lynching era.”

Assistant Professor of History Chris Suh contributed to a recent article published as a part of NPR’s Code Switch series. Josh Axelrod wrote the piece, entitled “A Century Later: The Treaty Of Versailles And Its Rejection Of Racial Equality,” which discusses Japan’s ultimately-rejected proposal for an anti-racist clause in the 1919 accord that ended World War I. Read part of Suh’s contribution below along with the full article.

“‘At the bottom of all of this is the idea that certain people of color cannot be trusted and people of color do not deserve a place, not only on the world stage but also in our own communities,’ says professor Chris Suh who studies Asian American history.

“The rejection of the proposal would play a role in shaping the U.S.-Japan relationship, World War II and Japanese American immigration. It sheds light on the treatment of nonwhite immigrant groups by the U.S. and its legacy of white supremacy.

“‘Basically … there continues to be this sense of racial superiority among the Americans’ toward Japan, Suh argues.”