Category / Public Scholarship

by emoryhistorydept

Anderson Analyzes Historical Significance of Trump Indictment

Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American History, recently appeared on the news program Democracy Now! to discuss the indictment of ex-president Donald J. Trump on charges that he interfered in the 2020 election. Anderson analyzes the indictment’s citation of the KKK Act, the Reconstruction-era law that protects citizens’ voting rights. An associated faculty member in the Department of History, Anderson is the author of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2018), White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (Bloomsbury, 2016), and, most recently, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). Watch the full interview here: “Trump & the KKK Act: Carol Anderson on Reconstruction-Era Voting Rights Law Cited in Trump Indictment.”

by emoryhistorydept

WaPo Features Research from Southern Spaces on Gravestone in Black Georgetown Cemetery

Emory’s Southern Spaces, a digital journal about the U.S. South and its global connections, recently featured an investigation by Mark Auslander (Mount Holyoke College) and Lisa Fager (Black Georgetown Foundation) titled “Nannie’s Stone: Commemoration and Resistance.” In the article the authors discuss the likely identity of a girl named Nannie, whose gravestone in a historic Black cemetery in Georgetown, D.C., has been shrouded in mystery. The Washington Post recently featured Auslander and Fager’s research in an article about the grave, which was unfortunately set on fire earlier this summer. Dr. Allen Tullos, Professor of History, is also Senior Director of ECDS. Read the Washington Post article here: “A girl’s gravestone mystified strangers. We may now know her identity.”

by emoryhistorydept

Anderson Analyzes Possible Implications of 14th Amendment for Trump Candidacy

Dr. Carol Anderson recently co-authored an opinion article for ‘The Grio’ about the push to disqualify former president Donald Trump from holding elected office under the 14th amendment to the constitution. Known as the disqualification clause, section 3 of that amendment prohibits “any government officer who takes an oath to defend the Constitution and who then engages in an insurrection or aids one against the United States, from ever holding office again.” Drawing on parallel cases from the distant and recent past, Anderson and co-author Donald K. Sherman argue that this clause should apply to Trump in light of his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Read an excerpt of the piece below along with the full article here: “A conviction won’t stop Trump from holding office. The 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause could.” Dr. Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department.

“The Reconstruction era includes numerous examples of the disqualification clause’s application. More recently, last year, three New Mexico residents, represented by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, won the first case in more than 150 years that removed an elected official from office for participating in an insurrection. That court ruled that New Mexico County Commissioner Couy Griffin violated section 3 of the 14th Amendment by recruiting rioters to attend Trump’s “wild” effort to overturn the election, normalizing violence and breaching police barriers as part of a weaponized mob that allowed other insurrectionists to overwhelm law enforcement and storm the Capitol. Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection was even more significant and well-documented than Griffin’s, and CREW has announced plans to pursue his disqualification in court.“

by emoryhistorydept

Lipstadt Front and Center amid Biden Administration’s Effort to Combat Antisemitism

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and the US Ambassador to monitor and combat antisemitism, was front and center at the recent release of the Biden Administration’s plan to combat rising hate, bias, and violence against Jews. The first-of-its-kind policy, dubbed the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, outlines more than 100 steps that the US government and other stakeholders can take to combat antisemitism. Lipstadt participated in the unveiling of the strategy at the White House alongside Doug Emhoff, spouse of Vice President Kamala Harris, White House domestic policy advisor Susan Rice, and homeland security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall. Lipstadt described the strategy as a “historic moment in the modern fight against what’s known as the world’s oldest hatred.” Read more about the plan and the event via the AP News article “Biden releases new strategy to tackle rise in antisemitism, says ‘hate will not prevail’.”

by emoryhistorydept

Allitt Offers Historical Context on Charles’s Coronation Ceremony

Dr. Patrick N. Allitt, Cahoon Professor of American History, was quoted early last month in a HuffPost article in the lead up to the coronation of King Charles of England. A native of England and specialist in American intellectual, environmental, and religious history as well as Victorian Britain, Allitt offered historical context for one of the key aspects of the ceremony: the king’s anointing. This part of the ceremony is both the most sacred and the most shrouded in secrecy. Read an excerpt of Allitt’s comments below along with the full article here: “We Won’t Even Get To See The Most Sacred Part Of King Charles’ Coronation.”

Patrick Allitt, a professor of American history at Atlanta’s Emory University, elaborated further on the anointing, telling HuffPost by email Thursday that “the idea is that the monarch is appointed not by the people but by God.” It’s a notion that he said “was held with special force in the 1600s.”

“I don’t suppose that anyone still believes that God chooses the king, but the British monarch is still the head of the Church of England,” Allitt said. “The secrecy surrounding the anointing is a way of emphasizing that it is the symbol of a contract between king and God rather than king and people.”

by abritt

New Center for Native and Indigenous Studies to Launch in Fall 2023 with Lowery as Director

In the fall of 2023 the Emory College of Arts and Sciences will launch the new Center for Native and Indigenous Studies. Cahoon Professor of American History Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery will serve as the director of the new center, which will also receive support from Emory’s James Weldon Johnson Center for the Study of Race and Difference. The center emerges from – and aims to deepen – a unique collaborative partnership between Emory and the College of the Muscogee Nation (CMN) in Oklahoma centered on the advancement of Native and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) and the preservation of the Mvskoke language. Lowery, who is a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, is the author, most recently, of The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle (UNC Press, 2018). Read a quote from Dr. Lowery about the new center below, and learn more via the Emory News Center article “New Center for Native and Indigenous Studies set to launch in fall 2023.”

“The launch of the Center for Native and Indigenous Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences will further our partnership with the College of the Muscogee Nation,” says Lowery. “Emory has an incredible opportunity to learn from CMN’s degree program in Native American studies as we develop a new approach for scholarship, teaching and collaboration that centers Indigenous knowledge and values. This approach will advance cutting-edge scholarship and pedagogy in ways that will also promote an education that heals the trauma of dispossession and forced assimilation.”   

by abritt

Anderson Discusses the Significance of the Past in Our Present with President Fenves

Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African-American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently the featured guest on ‘One Big Question,’ a podcast hosted by Emory University President Gregory L. Fenves. Anderson and Fenves discuss the production of history, including in the context of Anderson’s multiple award-winning books, along with contemporary developments relating to issues of racial inequity and education. Listen to their full conversation, “An Acclaimed Scholar and Author Defines ‘History,'” and browse previous episodes at the following link: ‘One Big Question.’

Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory. With scholarly precision as well as an undeniable urgency, she has authored acclaimed and best-selling books that have transformed perceptions by focusing boldly on systemic racism and its influence on voter suppression, gun rights, and much more.

As a historian, she has shed light on episodes of injustice that have been hidden in darkness, amplified voices that had long been silenced, and rewritten chapters on discrimination, disenfranchisement, and destruction that had been torn out of the historical record.

In this episode, Emory University President Gregory L. Fenves talks with Anderson about history—who writes it, how we understand it, and the ways in which it shapes our society today.

by abritt

Goldstein Quoted in CNN Article `What does it mean to be Jewish in the US?`

Dr. Eric L. Goldstein, Associate Professor in the History Department and Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, was recently quoted in a CNN article “What does it mean to be Jewish in the US?” Drawing on his 2006 book The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton UP), Goldstein offers extensive context on the histories of migration, assimilation, and racial identity among Jews in the U.S. The author of the article, Harmeet Kaur, connects those histories to the present, including the rising tide of public expressions of antisemitism globally. Read an excerpt from the article below, along with the full piece here: “What does it mean to be Jewish in the US?“

Despite greater acceptance, Goldstein said Jews in the US didn’t just “become White.” Jewish inclusion into the White mainstream was conditional – accessing the benefits that come with being part of the dominant population often came at the expense of maintaining a distinct ethnic identity. And though society was beginning to see them as White, Jews didn’t necessarily see themselves as that way given their long history of marginalization. So, as they achieved a more secure position in American society, some asserted their differences.

“There was a clash between experiencing this exceptional level of integration and then thinking of yourself as part of an oppressed minority group,” Goldstein added. “There’s always been that contradiction in Jewish identity.”

by abritt

Anderson Quoted in NPR Article on “Tennessee Three”

George Walker IV/AP

Dr. Carol Anderson was recently quoted in a NPR article about the expulsion of two Black legislators, Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) and Rep. Justin Jones (D-Nashville), from the Tennessee State House of Representatives. Pearson and Jones joined an act of nonviolent civil disobedience on the House floor calling for gun safety legislation in the wake of the April 2023 shooting at Nashville’s the Covenant School. Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville), a white legislator who also participated in the protest, was spared expulsion by a single vote. Anderson provides illuminating context about the racial and racist dimension of this episode. Read an excerpt from the NPR article below along with the full piece here: “Power, race, and fragile democracy in Tennessee.”

Racism was also coursing through the words spoken and the tone taken towards the two young Black legislators, says Carol Anderson. She says the formal rules of the expulsion hearings barely concealed a simmering rage on the part of white legislators.

“White rage is all about putting you back in your place,” Anderson says.

“White rage demands that people of color, and women, stay in their place in the racial structure and the patriarchal structure,” she says.

by abritt

Anderson Publishes Article on Florida’s “Long, Sordid” Past in ‘The Washington Post’

Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies, recently published an article in The Washington Post’s “Made by History” series. Titled “Florida’s past paints Ron DeSantis’s war on ‘wokeism’ in a dark light,” Anderson’s article discusses the endemic anti-Black violence and political disenfranchisement that characterized Florida society in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Anderson links this history to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s contemporary political campaign against on “wokeism,” which Anderson argues is, in fact, “a war on the marginalized” and the denial of the “existence of systemic injustice.” Read an excerpt from the article below along with the full piece: “Florida’s past paints Ron DeSantis’s war on ‘wokeism’ in a dark light.”

“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s war on ‘wokeism,’ often minimized as a culture war or taking on the establishment to build his conservative brand, is actually a war on the marginalized. Sensing that they don’t have the power to fight back, he tramples the Constitution, state law or whatever gets in his way. The targeting is clear. DeSantis’s own attorney defined ‘woke’ as ‘the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them’

“By denying the existence of systemic injustice, DeSantis is placing himself in a long, sordid Florida history that has targeted the civil rights of African Americans in the Sunshine State. It is a history scarred by lynching, rigged trials, massive disfranchisement, instilling fear and showcasing the systemic assault on the rule of law.“