tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca-fr/topics/ida-b-wells-51697/articlesIda B. Wells – La Conversation2021-02-23T13:29:06Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1550812021-02-23T13:29:06Z2021-02-23T13:29:06ZHow Black cartographers put racism on the map of America<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385359/original/file-20210219-13-1glotvj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C2%2C1630%2C1101&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">An early 20th-century NAACP map showing lynchings between 1909 and 1918. The maps were sent to politicians and newspapers in an effort to spur legislation protecting Black Americans.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.loc.gov/static/classroom-materials/naacp-a-century-in-the-fight-for-freedom/documents/lynching.pdf">Library of Congress</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>How can maps fight racism and inequality?</p>
<p>The work of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-shootout-between-black-panthers-and-law-enforcement-50-years-ago-matters-today-153632">Black Panther Party</a>, a 1960s- and 1970s-era Black political group featured in a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/feb/01/judas-and-the-black-messiah-review-electric-black-panthers-drama">new movie</a> and a <a href="https://crosscut.com/2020/02/new-documentary-gives-voice-women-seattles-black-panther-party">documentary</a>, helps illustrate how cartography – the practice of making and using maps – can illuminate injustice. </p>
<p>As these films show, the Black Panthers focused on African American empowerment and <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog-post/black-panther-party-challenging-police-and-promoting-social-change#">community survival</a>, running a diverse array of programming that ranged from <a href="https://www.history.com/news/free-school-breakfast-black-panther-party">free school breakfasts</a> to armed self-defense. </p>
<p>Cartography is a less documented aspect of the Panthers’ activism, but the group used maps to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.2006.00501.x">reimagine the cities where African Americans lived and struggled</a>.</p>
<p>In 1971 the Panthers collected 15,000 signatures on a petition to create new <a href="http://www.cielodrive.com/archive/berkeley-to-vote-on-splitting-police-department-radical-groups-support-plan/">police districts in Berkeley, California</a> – districts that would be governed by local citizen commissions and require officers to live in the neighborhoods they served. The proposal made it onto the ballot but was defeated. </p>
<p>In a similar effort to make law enforcement more responsive to communities of color, the Panthers in the late 1960s also created a map proposing to divide up <a href="https://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Black_Panthers">police districts</a> within San Francisco, largely along racial lines. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white drawing of San Francisco with designated districts around certain neighborhoods" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385155/original/file-20210218-20-108v3xf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The Black Panthers’ proposed police districts for the city of San Francisco, created in 1966 or 1967.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.foundsf.org/images/b/bf/Panthpol.jpg">Ccarolson/FoundSF</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>The Black Panthers are just one chapter in a long history of “counter-mapping” by African Americans, which our <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.01.022">research in geography</a> explores. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2018/mar/06/counter-mapping-cartography-that-lets-the-powerless-speak">Counter-mapping</a> refers to how groups normally excluded from political decision-making deploy maps and other geographic data to communicate complex information about inequality in an easy-to-understand visual format. </p>
<h2>The power of maps</h2>
<p>Maps are <a href="https://www.acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/723">not ideologically neutral</a> location guides. Mapmakers choose what to include and exclude, and how to display information to users.</p>
<p>These decisions can have far-reaching consequences. When the Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s set out to map the risk associated for banks loaning money to individuals for homes in different neighborhoods, for example, they rated minority neighborhoods as high risk and color-coded them as red. </p>
<p>The result, known as “<a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/19/498536077/interactive-redlining-map-zooms-in-on-americas-history-of-discrimination">redlining</a>,” contributed to housing discrimination for three decades, until federal law banned such maps in 1968. Redlining’s legacy is still evident in many American cities’ <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/03/28/redlining-was-banned-50-years-ago-its-still-hurting-minorities-today/">patterns of segregation</a>.</p>
<p>Colonial explorers charting their journeys and city planners and developers pursuing urban renewal, too, have used cartography to represent the world in ways that further their own priorities. Often, the resulting maps exclude, misrepresent or <a href="https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1036">harm minority groups</a>. Academics and government officials do this, too. </p>
<p>Counter-maps produce an alternative public understanding of the facts by highlighting the experiences of oppressed people. </p>
<p>Black people aren’t the only marginalized group to do this. <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-amazonian-forest-peoples-are-counter-mapping-their-ancestral-lands-84474">Indigenous communities</a>, <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Women-and-Cartography-in-the-Progressive-Era/Dando/p/book/9780367245306">women</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-story-maps-redraw-the-world-using-peoples-real-life-experiences-98051">refugees and LGBTQ communities</a> have also redrawn maps to account for their existence and rights. </p>
<p>But Black Americans were among the earliest purveyors of counter-mapping, deploying this alternative cartography to serve a variety of needs a century ago.</p>
<h2>Black counter-mapping</h2>
<p>Mapping is part of the <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/demonic-grounds">broader Black creative tradition and political struggle</a>. </p>
<p>Over the centuries, African Americans developed “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37569-0_4">way-finding</a>” aids, including a <a href="https://theconversation.com/green-book-highlights-the-problems-of-driving-while-black-both-then-and-now-111561">Jim Crow-era travel guide</a>, to help them navigate a racially hostile landscape and created visual works that affirmed the value of <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12679">Black life</a>. </p>
<p>The Black sociologist and civil rights leader <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/first-time-together-and-color-book-displays-web-du-bois-visionary-infographics-180970826/">W.E.B. Du Bois</a> produced maps for the 1900 Paris Exposition to inform international society about the gains African Americans had made in income, education and land ownership since slavery and in face of continuing racism. </p>
<p>Similarly, in 1946, Friendship Press cartographer and illustrator Louise Jefferson published a <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-25/the-women-cartographers-who-mapped-art-and-science-in-the-20th-century">pictorial map</a> celebrating the contributions of African Americans – from famous writers and athletes to unnamed Black workers – in building the United States.</p>
<p>In the early 20th century, anti-lynching crusaders at the NAACP and Tuskegee Institute stirred public outcry by producing <a href="https://archive.org/details/thirtyyearsoflyn00nati">statistical reports</a> that informed <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3701e.ct002012/">original hand-drawn maps</a> showing the location and frequency of African Americans murdered by white lynch mobs. </p>
<p>One map, published in 1922 in the NAACP’s magazine “<a href="https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/civil-rights/crisis/0200-crisis-v23n04-w136.pdf">Crisis</a>,” placed dots on a standard map to document 3,456 lynchings over 32 years. The Southeast had the largest concentration. But the “blots of shame,” as mapmaker Madeline Allison called them, spanned the country from east to west and well into the north. </p>
<p>These visualizations, along with the underlying data, <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780742552739/African-Americans-Confront-Lynching-Strategies-of-Resistance-from-the-Civil-War-to-the-Civil-Rights-Era">were sent</a> to allied organizations like the citizen-led <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/commission-interracial-cooperation#">Commission on Interracial Cooperation</a>, to newspapers nationwide and to elected officials of all parties and regions. The activists hoped to spur Congress to pass federal anti-lynching legislation – something that remains to this day <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/politics/rand-paul-anti-lynching-bill-senate.html">unfinished business</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Black-and-white image of Rustin at a desk holding a big map and smiling, with papers all over this desk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385157/original/file-20210218-14-12brl7j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=568&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Civil rights activist Bayard Rustin organizing the 1963 March on Washington, an example of how existing maps can also be used in politically disruptive ways.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/08/15/ap630824099_custom-9bf942d77b3591a797f1676f5279c69cd12f7e27-s1500-c85.jpg">AP Photo</a></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Much anti-lynching cartography was inspired by the famed activist and reporter <a href="https://www.vox.com/2015/7/16/8979771/ida-b-wells-lynching-data">Ida B. Wells</a>, who in the early 1880s made some of the first tabulations of the prevalence and geographic distribution of racial terror. Her work refuted prevailing white claims that lynched Black men had sexually assaulted white women. </p>
<h2>Modern maps</h2>
<p>The precariousness of Black life – and the exclusion of Black stories from American history – remains an unresolved issue today.</p>
<p>Working alone and with white allies, Black activists and scholars continue using cartography to tell a fuller <a href="https://www.blackinappalachia.org/bristol">story about the United States</a>, to <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/chicago-folded-map-project">challenge racial segregation</a> and to <a href="https://www.racialviolencearchive.com/research.html">combat violence</a>. </p>
<p>Today, the maps they create are often digital. </p>
<p>For example, the Equal Justice Initiative, the Alabama-based legal defense group run by Bryan Stevenson, has produced a modern map of <a href="https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/explore">historical lynching</a>. It’s an interactive update of the anti-lynching cartography made 100 years ago – although a full reconstruction of lynching terror remains impossible because of incomplete data and the veil of silence that persists around these murders.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Red-tinged map of the US with a plot point in Illionois highlighted to show that there were 56 murders there between 1877 and 1950" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=291&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385153/original/file-20210218-18-139x4y4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Equal Justice Initiative’s map tells stories of people who were lynched.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/explore">Screenshot, Equal Justice Initiative</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Another modern mapping project, called Mapping Police Violence, was launched by <a href="https://www.orlandoweekly.com/orlando/how-an-orlando-data-scientist-is-helping-the-blacklivesmatter-movement-make-the-case-against-police-violence/Content?oid=2478826">data activists</a> after Michael Brown’s murder in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. <a href="https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/">It tracks</a> police use of force using a time-series animated map. Deaths and injuries flash across the screen and accumulate on the map of the United States, visually communicating the national scale and urgency of this problem.</p>
<p>Counter-mapping operates on the theory that communities and governments cannot fix problems that they do not understand. When Black counter-mapping exposes the how-and-where of racism, in accessible visual form, that information gains new power to spur social change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155081/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek H. Alderman receives funding from National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joshua F.J. Inwood receives funding from the National Science Foundation. </span></em></p>Mapping is one way African Americans fight for equality and help each other navigate a racially hostile landscape.Derek H. Alderman, Professor of Geography, University of TennesseeJoshua F.J. Inwood, Associate Professor of Geography and Senior Research Associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1401052020-06-12T12:14:33Z2020-06-12T12:14:33ZStudents demand removal of ‘mild racist’ from Georgia landscape<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341035/original/file-20200610-114124-76t9hp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C44%2C2811%2C1872&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">People raise their fists outside Atlanta City Hall during a protest over the death of George Floyd on June 6, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/people-raise-their-fists-outside-atlanta-city-hall-during-a-news-photo/1218022947?adppopup=true">Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Following the lead of African American activists, a coalition of young people has taken to the streets to <a href="https://theconversation.com/2020-uprisings-unprecedented-in-scope-join-a-long-river-of-struggle-in-america-139853">protest police brutality and systemic racism</a> across the country. Protesters in the South have demanded the removal of Confederate monuments and other symbols of white supremacy. In some cases, they have <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/7/21283003/protesters-tore-down-confederate-statue-virginia-monuments-alabama-new-orleans">taken matters into their own hands</a>.</p>
<p>In Atlanta, a <a href="https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/atlanta/protests-over-george-floyd-ahmaud-arbery-breanna-taylor-planned-downtown-friday/ZJ5VURBKPFCHPD6NUIX53QM4NA/">large crowd of demonstrators</a> recently gathered at <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/amid-atlanta-unrest-a-volunteer-cleanup-crew-ponders-the-mess-things-have-become/2020/06/01/f0c65efa-a42c-11ea-bb20-ebf0921f3bbd_story.html">a statue of Henry W. Grady</a>, the late 19th-century American journalist and orator who championed white supremacy. They chanted “We can’t breathe!” and stood on the statue’s terraced pedestal with signs reading “Black lynching must go!” and “Black lives matter.”</p>
<p>Some state and city leaders have responded by pledging to remove <a href="https://www.axios.com/confederate-monuments-racism-flashpoint-07bd1074-5635-4939-9a55-e572543483b7.html">Confederate monuments in Virginia and Alabama</a>, despite <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/us/confederate-statues-george-floyd.html">laws that forbid their removal</a>. But the fate of the Grady statue remains unresolved.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.umass.edu/journalism/facultyStaff/bio/forde">journalism historian</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/an-editor-and-his-newspaper-helped-build-white-supremacy-in-georgia-111030">I’ve written about Grady,</a> the former managing editor of the Atlanta Constitution (now the Atlanta Journal-Constitution). Grady was also a celebrated spokesman of the <a href="https://courses.lumenlearning.com/ushistory2ay/chapter/the-new-south-and-the-problem-of-race-2/">New South</a>, which promoted Northern investment in Southern industrialization, and <a href="https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/georgia/articles/2020-02-11/students-remove-white-supremacists-name-from-high-school">leader of the white supremacist ring</a> of Democrats who controlled Georgia after Reconstruction. </p>
<p>Grady is typically depicted as a brilliant editor and a “<a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/local/torpy-large-hey-grady-babies-old-henry-might-not-have-liked-you/pW8IxuKQgCvGB1qF2QC31J/">mild racist</a>” who helped build modern Atlanta. My take is different. Grady used his newspaper as a political tool to help kill off Reconstruction’s biracial experiment in democracy. In its place, he helped create a profoundly anti-democratic, white supremacist social order that lasted in the South until the <a href="https://guides.ll.georgetown.edu/c.php?g=592919&p=4172702">Civil Rights act of 1964</a> and the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/voting-rights-1965">Voting Rights Act of 1965</a>.</p>
<h2>‘Rename Grady’</h2>
<p>Today’s young protesters are forcing a reappraisal of Grady’s legacy.</p>
<p>In December, Georgia State University’s student newspaper <a href="https://georgiastatesignal.com/mayor-bottoms-tear-down-this-statue/">published an open letter</a> to Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, asking her to “<a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/georgia-state-students-demand-atlanta-mayor-move-henry-grady-statue/gaWZYwDGe7bh1r87V8NWlM/">tear down this statue</a>” in reference to the Grady statue in the diverse university’s neighborhood. </p>
<p>In February, students at Henry W. Grady High School in Atlanta <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/local/grady-high-school-students-call-for-school-name-change/fEV4GL25rqnpGrUxNElF9O/">petitioned the school board</a> to give the school a name that doesn’t “honor a segregationist.” </p>
<p>And last week, as protests against police brutality consumed the country, the student newspaper at the University of Georgia <a href="https://www.redandblack.com/opinion/guest-column-its-time-for-uga-to-give-the-journalism-school-a-new-name/article_4762ea4e-a4d2-11ea-9782-f37db0848d88.html">ran an op-ed</a> calling for the school to rename its Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, where the motto is “We are Grady.” <a href="https://www.change.org/p/university-of-georgia-rename-uga-s-grady-college-for-charlayne-hunter-gault?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_22596998_en-US%3Av10&recruiter=442472218&recruited_by_id=1ffd7b50-9c2f-11e5-81fc-e17bd24139d8&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_abi">A petition</a> demands that the Board of Regents “Rename Grady” to honor <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Charlayne-Hunter-Gault">Charlayne Hunter-Gault</a>, a journalist who helped integrate the university in 1961.</p>
<h2>Grady and convict leasing</h2>
<p>These demands are important because the consequences of Grady’s beliefs are still being felt today. </p>
<p>To understand the roots of anti-black bias in modern policing, the history of convict labor in the South is a good place to start. </p>
<p>Throughout the 1880s, Grady used the pages of the Atlanta Constitution to defend Georgia’s brutal <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/convict-lease-system">convict leasing system</a>. Under the policy, the state arrested and convicted black men, women and children for vagrancy, minor offenses and false charges. State leaders then leased prisoners to private industrial enterprises that exploited their labor. </p>
<p>Why did Grady protect such a scheme? Every member of his <a href="https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/henry-w-grady-1850-1889">Atlanta Ring</a> – the cabal of Democratic Party leaders who cycled through the governor’s office and the U.S. Senate – lined their pockets with profits from the convict lease. Some built enormous fortunes.</p>
<p>Their camps were places of horror. Convicts were forced to work from sunup to sundown with inadequate food, clothing and shelter. Women were assaulted, and children were born and raised in captivity. Inhumane punishments included flogging, stringing up by the thumbs, the sweat box and the water torture, akin to water boarding. Death ran rampant, by torture, disease, accident and suicide. </p>
<p>One of Grady’s close friends, Robert Alston, attempted to expose the system and was murdered in a <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/9780881464306/Murder-State-Capitol-Biography-Col-0881464309/plp">suspicious incident in the Georgia State House</a> involving members of the Atlanta Ring. Grady covered the sordid affair in the Constitution, soon became managing editor and part owner, and spent the rest of his life protecting <a href="https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/convict-leasing/">convict leasing</a>. </p>
<h2>Black resistance mounts</h2>
<p>During Grady’s era, black journalists fiercely condemned Grady’s New South doctrine and the systems of white supremacy he helped build. </p>
<p>As William J. White, a prominent black editor and founder of what became Morehouse College, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Schooling_Jim_Crow/qPKyAwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22red%20with%20the%20blood%22">put it</a>: “The fortunes of many a prominent white Georgia family are red with the blood and sweat of Black men justly and unjustly held to labor in Georgia prison camps.” </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14975?msg=welcome_stranger">“Southern Horrors</a>,” the first of her many lynching reports, Ida B. Wells blamed Grady and his New South doctrine for racial terror lynchings in the South. And in <a href="https://www.loc.gov/resource/lcrbmrp.t1612/?st=gallery">“Lynch Law in Georgia</a>,” she laid bare the active role the Atlanta Constitution and other white newspapers played in inciting lynching, including the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/atthehandsofpersonsunknown.htm">brutal lynching of Sam Hose</a>. “The Southern press,” she wrote, “champions burning men alive.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341018/original/file-20200610-34666-1cb8c75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=71%2C49%2C3547%2C2346&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/341018/original/file-20200610-34666-1cb8c75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341018/original/file-20200610-34666-1cb8c75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341018/original/file-20200610-34666-1cb8c75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341018/original/file-20200610-34666-1cb8c75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341018/original/file-20200610-34666-1cb8c75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/341018/original/file-20200610-34666-1cb8c75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A protester faces off with police during rioting and protests in Atlanta on May 29, 2020.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/protester-faces-off-with-police-during-rioting-and-protests-news-photo/1216247525?adppopup=true">JOHN AMIS/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the Constitution, Grady covered lynching with disturbingly lighthearted headlines. A story about a triple lynching was headlined “Triple Trapeze.” Another headline rhymed: “Two Minutes to Pray Before a Rope Dislocates Their Vertebrae.” He oversaw coverage that actively incited lynching and demonized victims as “miscreants,” “brutes” and “fiends.” </p>
<p>Like Wells, <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/fortune-t-thomas-1856-1928/">T. Thomas Fortune</a>, the most influential black journalist of the period, would have none of Grady’s insistence that the South must be left alone by the North to solve the “problem” of the “Negro.”</p>
<p>“Grady appeals to the North to leave the race question to ‘us’ and ‘we’ will settle it,” <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=Xet1AAAAMAAJ&q=fortune+afro-american+agitator&dq=fortune+afro-american+agitator&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwior9mcq7HgAhXCdN8KHbEFCxwQ6AEIKDAA">Fortune wrote</a>. “So ‘we’ will; but the ‘we’ Mr. Grady had ‘in his mind’s eye’ will not be permitted to settle it alone. Not by any means, Mr. Grady. Not only the White ‘we,’ but the Colored ‘we’ as well, will demand a share in that settlement.” </p>
<p>Fortune repeatedly confronted Grady, <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Way_it_was_in_the_South/zpmjRm4cdswC?hl=en&gbpv=1">calling Georgia’s convict system</a> a “cesspool of degradation and crime” that thrived “under the very nostrils of the prophet Grady.”</p>
<p>In the last speech of his life, Grady attacked Fortune as an “Afro-American agitator,” apparently anxious about Fortune’s creation of the Afro-American League, a national civil rights group. </p>
<p>In 1889 in Boston, Grady spoke against the Lodge Bill, federal legislation meant to protect the black vote in the South. Congress defeated the measure and the white South was left to disfranchise black voters by law, fraud and violence for generations.</p>
<p>Black Americans who lived during Grady’s day understood the man and his work for what they were. And they left a record in their journalism. White, Wells, Fortune and others created a black public sphere that has worked ever since toward building a more inclusive, egalitarian America. </p>
<p>Students in Georgia, having learned their history, have joined the struggle. What happens next matters if we are ever to achieve the America we all deserve.</p>
<p><em>University of Massachusetts Amherst journalism graduates Ethan Bakuli and Natalie DiDomenico conducted research for this article. Portions of this article originally appeared in a previous article published on Feb. 15, 2019.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/140105/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathy Roberts Forde's previous article on Henry W. Grady in The Conversation was referenced in the Georgia State student editorial, and she has supported efforts to remove Grady's name from the public landscape in Georgia.</span></em></p>As protests over George Floyd’s death consume the country, students are forcing a reappraisal of a controversial editor and orator who helped build modern Atlanta.Kathy Roberts Forde, Associate Professor, Journalism Department, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1027562018-09-10T10:36:32Z2018-09-10T10:36:32ZViolence against the media isn’t new – history shows why it largely disappeared and has now returned<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235407/original/file-20180907-90571-h4ffen.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Capital Gazette in Annapolis lost five staffers in a shooting</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP/Patrick Semansky</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Another news outlet has been attacked in the United States. </p>
<p>A man <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/05/us/dallas-news-kdfw-truck-crash/index.html">rammed his car repeatedly</a> into Fox affiliate KDFW in Dallas, Texas, on Sept. 5. We can now add this to the growing list of recent attacks on — and violent threats to — the media.</p>
<p>A man recently <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/08/30/california-man-arrested-charges-threatening-shoot-boston-globe-employees/EejiWXLNscUR8AxDB3y7RL/story.html">called The Boston Globe</a> and threatened “to shoot you [expletives] in the head … shoot every [expletive] one of you.” Apparently, the Globe’s defense of quality journalism infuriated him. </p>
<p>At CNN, anchors report <a href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/cnnmoney/2018/08/05/brian-stelter-journalists-receiving-death-threats-vpx.cnn">an uptick in death threats</a>. And, most tragically of all, there was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/us/capital-gazette-annapolis-shooting.html">the shooting of five employees</a> in the office of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, on June 28.</p>
<p>Mental illness, isolation, easy access to weaponry, a renewed white supremacy movement and other variables clearly contribute to the increase in both violent rhetoric and actual violence. </p>
<p>But what these occurrences share, and what they’re illustrating, is a profound hatred towards purveyors of journalism. </p>
<p>This isn’t news. Violent acts against the media are as old as our nation. Perhaps Americans are just not accustomed to seeing the violence because most of them grew up in the second half of the 20th century, an era largely devoid of the partisan rancor that was once a hallmark of American journalism – and which seems to have returned. </p>
<h2>Ugly history</h2>
<p>As media historian <a href="https://media.illinois.edu/john-nerone">John Nerone</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Violence-Against-Press-Policing-History/dp/0195086988">writes</a>, attacks on the media occur regularly throughout our history. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-0100783">James Rivington</a>, an 18th-century loyalist printer in New York City, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1918851?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">barely escaped being tarred and feathered</a> by the Sons of Liberty, who ransacked his home. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=582&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235410/original/file-20180907-90565-wd6y9v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">New York newspaper publisher and loyalist James Rivington was hanged in effigy in 1775.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://earlyamericanists.com/2016/04/20/james-rivington-printer-loyalist-spy/">The Junto</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 19th century, attacks on the press were common. Violence and journalism were intertwined in American culture, largely because of the partisan politics most newspapers propagated. </p>
<p>Abolitionist and newspaper editor <a href="http://www.colby.edu/lovejoyaward/the-story-of-elijah-parish-lovejoy/">Elijah Lovejoy was murdered</a> in Alton, Illinois, in 1837. A pro-slavery mob broke into his jail cell – where he had been placed for his protection – and lynched him. One year earlier, in New York City, The New York Herald’s <a href="https://www.americanheritage.com/content/james-gordon-bennett-%E2%80%94-beneficent-rascal">James Gordon Bennett</a> <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=qHMVCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA15&dq=%22James+Watson+Webb,+caught+up+with+Bennett%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwist__CyafdAhWFmVkKHZd0Ay8Q6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=%22James%20Watson%20Webb%2C%20caught%20up%20with%20Bennett%22&f=false">was savagely beaten by his rival</a>, James Watson Webb. Webb edited New York City’s best-selling newspaper, The Morning Courier and New-York Enquirer, and he’d grown tired of Bennett’s attacks in his popular newspaper column. </p>
<p>When Ida B. Wells-Barnett published anti-lynching reports in Memphis in 1892, a white mob <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/ida-b-wells-barnett">destroyed her press and threatened to kill her</a>. </p>
<p>Lovejoy and Wells-Barnett are remembered because they would later be recognized as civil rights pioneers. But the violent confrontation between two of New York City’s most prominent newspaper editors is less well-known, in part, because it occurred at a time when violence against the press wasn’t uncommon.</p>
<p>In the early days of the Republic, U.S. newspapers were not only observably partisan, they were subsidized by political parties. Because newspapers around the U.S. often represented specific political parties, news reports would be politically framed and competing outlets – often serving the rival political party – would be demeaned. </p>
<p>Countless local editors, like Bennett, were attacked. Some, like Lovejoy, were killed for their work. These attacks on journalists were so common that Mark Twain, who worked as a journalist, lampooned them in his classic short story “<a href="https://americanliterature.com/author/mark-twain/short-story/journalism-in-tennessee">Journalism in Tennessee</a>.”</p>
<p>Twain’s satire about press violence tells the story of a young editor reporting to the office of The Morning Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop for his first day of work. When he turns in a brief roundup of local news reported by other outlets, his boss is surprised. </p>
<p>“Thunder and lightning!” he says. “Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such gruel as that? Give me the pen!” </p>
<p>The chief editor rewrites the piece, insulting and threatening the editors of the rival newspapers. Calling them scoundrels and liars, he excoriates them for “dissemination of falsehood, calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity.” </p>
<p>“Now that is the way to write,” his boss says upon completion of the piece. “Peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk journalism gives me the fan-tods.”</p>
<h2>The ‘News From Nowhere’</h2>
<p>“Mush-and-milk journalism” that outraged Twain’s fictitious newspaper editor is inoffensive, neutral and seemingly objective. </p>
<p>It’s that kind of centrist journalism that developed in the 20th century – what journalist and political scientist Edward Jay Epstein called “<a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/News_from_nowhere_television_and_the_new.html?id=IyDuAAAAMAAJ">News From Nowhere</a>” — that many of us grew up on.</p>
<p>The evolution of technology, commercial imperatives and new modes of distribution combined to create American journalism’s era of objectivity. </p>
<p>Selling newspapers to millions in mass audiences, and transmitting identical reports to newspapers around the U.S. via the telegraph, both required neutering any clearly biased news reporting. </p>
<p>Regulatory mandates like the <a href="http://www.museum.tv/eotv/publicintere.htm">public interest standard</a> and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-fairness-doctrine-in-one-post/2011/08/23/gIQAN8CXZJ_blog.html?utm_term=.7526d6e95140">Fairness Doctrine</a> followed the development of radio and television. They further enshrined a “just-the-facts” sensibility in American journalism. </p>
<p>From our vantage point as historians in 2018, we can now see this era of objectivity lasted from about 1930 to 2000, beginning with the introduction of broadcast journalism via radio to the emergence of the multichannel cable television universe and the web’s development. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235414/original/file-20180907-90571-tgazko.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Walter Cronkite delivering the news on May, 24, 1978.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP/Richard Drew</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In those decades, journalism became less partisan to be more palatable to mass audiences. Every weeknight, CBS broadcast journalist <a href="http://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb-9780198606697-e-1603550;jsessionid=1DDDB49E4C139A4DFC2423D5FBEFECC4?from=..%2F18%2F18-03570.html&from_nm=Sinatra%2C+Frank">Walter Cronkite</a> soberly told Americans what they needed to know about the events of the day. </p>
<p>And, in this original network era, opinion was separated from reporting and clearly labeled – whether it was on-air commentaries delivered by <a href="http://www.museum.tv/eotv/sevareideri.htm">Eric Sevareid</a> or on specially designated “editorial” or “opinion” pages in newspapers.</p>
<p>Such segregation of reporting and opinion was not the norm in American journalism history. It was a new idea that quickly gained traction because it proved so commercially advantageous. </p>
<p>Creating audiences in the millions, and then the tens of millions – on television – <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674695870">generated unimagined sums</a> of advertising revenue. Removing opinions from most reporting produced enormous profits for television networks, radio stations and daily newspapers. It became commonplace. Americans grew accustomed to it.</p>
<h2>Back to the old ways</h2>
<p>It appears the cycle has now turned. </p>
<p>Outlets like Fox News, MSNBC, and even some daily newspapers, are no longer as careful about monitoring the injection of subjectivity into journalism. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=421&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/235415/original/file-20180907-90568-6awxku.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Partisan cable news hosts Rachel Maddow, a progressive and conservative Sean Hannity, right.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But they are not entirely to blame. Today’s audiences feel empowered by their autonomy, because they have an enormous number of available and competing media outlets. They can now watch and consume news that best matches their worldview, rather than an homogenized news product designed to be palatable to the masses. </p>
<p>Noting the higher ratings and subscription numbers that accompany this increasing partisanship, <a href="https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20160812">news outlets react accordingly</a>. Even more, social media technologies allow audiences to engage with news media like never before, often cultivating a climate of uncivil online discourse. This only intensifies the partisan rancor mirroring 19th-century levels. </p>
<p>Does the end of the depoliticized mass audience era of journalism directly correlate to what seems to be a return of violence against the media? </p>
<p>Until the four journalists were killed in Annapolis early this year (the fifth staffer was not a journalist), <a href="https://cpj.org/data/killed/?status=Killed&motiveConfirmed%5B%5D=Confirmed&type%5B%5D=Journalist&cc_fips%5B%5D=US&start_year=1992&end_year=2018&group_by=year">only seven had been killed</a> in the last 26 years. </p>
<p>When consumers of MSNBC are baffled by the apparent ignorance of Fox News viewers, and Fox News viewers are sure MSNBC’s fans are dupes, we’ve returned to the world Twain described.</p>
<p>It might be impossible to return to the more civil, professional and respectful era of journalism that many Americans grew up in. But we can, and should, recognize the historic futility of killing the messenger.</p>
<p>Destroying Ida B. Wells-Barnett’s press did nothing to stop the anti-lynching movement, and the murder of Elijah Lovejoy spread the abolitionist message much further than Lovejoy himself ever could.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102756/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Violence against journalists is on the rise. Many people don’t realize that such acts have a long tradition in the US, where partisan rancor was once a hallmark of American journalism.Jennifer E. Moore, Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, University of Minnesota DuluthMichael J. Socolow, Associate Professor, Communication and Journalism, University of MaineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1008662018-08-07T10:53:05Z2018-08-07T10:53:05ZIda B. Wells: How grassroots support and social media made a monumental difference in honoring her legacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230680/original/file-20180806-41351-101cqdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Michelle Duster holding a portrait of her great-grandmother, Ida B. Wells</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Ida-B-Wells-Monument/4d4afbf1ca2f430baa35b6a67cc65b2a/1/0">AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I learned at an early age that my great-grandmother, Ida B. Wells, was a force to be reckoned with.</p>
<p>Born a slave in Mississippi, she became a <a href="http://teva.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15138coll18/id/176">leading civil rights activist</a> when she sued the Chesapeake, Ohio & Southwestern Railroad for discrimination in the mid-1880s.</p>
<p>At the end of the 19th century, as an investigative journalism pioneer, she uncovered and documented in meticulous detail the <a href="https://lynchinginamerica.eji.org/report/">violence of lynching</a>. She also explained in hundreds of speeches how lynching served as a tool to terrorize the African-American community, rather than a form of punishment against alleged crimes against white women. In the early 20th century, she founded the <a href="https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo3631430.html">Alpha Suffrage Club</a>, the first African-American women’s group that advocated for their right to vote.</p>
<p>Growing up in the Windy City, I met people who had never heard of Wells, only recognized her name from a housing project that bore her name; or confused her with someone they thought invented the <a href="https://madamenoire.com/165665/whats-better-for-your-hair-flat-iron-vs-hot-comb/">hot comb</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230650/original/file-20180803-41331-1t7y7mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230650/original/file-20180803-41331-1t7y7mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230650/original/file-20180803-41331-1t7y7mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230650/original/file-20180803-41331-1t7y7mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230650/original/file-20180803-41331-1t7y7mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=863&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230650/original/file-20180803-41331-1t7y7mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230650/original/file-20180803-41331-1t7y7mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230650/original/file-20180803-41331-1t7y7mh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1084&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ida B. Wells with her children, 1909.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.IBWELLS#idp84886768">Ida B. Wells Papers at the University of Chicago</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A family commitment</h2>
<p>Concerned that her legacy would fade from public memory, I decided to do what I could to make sure more people would remember the life and work of one of the most famous women during her time.</p>
<p>Since 2008 I have published two collections of her original writings – <a href="http://bwpublishing.com/index.php/ida-in-her-own-words.html">“Ida In Her Own Words”</a> and “<a href="http://bwpublishing.com/index.php/ida-from-abroad.html">Ida From Abroad</a>.” I give presentations, speeches and lectures about her work, and so does my brother, <a href="http://www.danduster.net">Dan Duster</a>.</p>
<p>Dan and I belong to a <a href="http://www.idabwellsmonument.org/">committee</a> that is creating an Ida B. Wells monument, and we have been involved with having a <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-rahm-emanual-ida-b-wells-street-20180725-story.html">street renamed</a> in her honor. In addition, we manage the <a href="http://www.ibwfoundation.org">Ida B. Wells Memorial Foundation</a>, which our father, <a href="https://www.pressreader.com/usa/chicago-sun-times/20130411/282192238460193">Donald L. Duster</a>, and his four siblings founded in 1988.</p>
<p>Through all of this work, I’ve come to see many parallels between the grassroots support that my ancestor experienced during her lifetime and the posthumous movements to honor her.</p>
<h2>Grassroots demands</h2>
<p>Four decades after she died, the late 19th-century Romanesque Revival style stone residence that Ida B. Wells and her family lived in was designated a <a href="https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/AssetDetail?assetID=78f3bc18-5602-43ad-b9b4-d59525aee904">national historic landmark</a> in 1974 and a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chicago_Landmarks">Chicago Landmark</a> by the City Council in 1995.</p>
<p>But the general public and our family had no access to the site in the predominantly black Bronzeville neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side because of its private ownership. </p>
<p>Her former residence, with the discreet historic marker in front, was located across the street from a massive public housing community.</p>
<p>As a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Public-Works-Administration">public works project</a>, it was the first of its kind in the city to incorporate a big park with playgrounds and athletic fields. Although the authorities considered other names, pressure from the local community to name the projects after my ancestor prevailed. <a href="http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/253.html">The Ida B. Wells Homes</a>, which opened in 1941, eventually included over 1,600 units.</p>
<p>Dozens of former residents have told me that when the homes first opened they were considered a <a href="https://www.blueprintforbronzeville.com/explore/">dream place to live</a> for African-American working-class families. For several decades the housing served as a beacon of hope and source of pride.</p>
<p>However, as a result of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/07/us/many-face-street-as-chicago-project-nears-end.html">many factors</a>, the area fell into disrepair and despair. As the <a href="http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2008-08-11/news/0808100304_1_mixed-income-public-housing-ida-b-wells">Chicago Housing Authority</a> demolished the buildings between 2002 and 2011 to make way for mixed-income housing, former residents of the Ida B. Wells Homes joined with other local leaders and activists to seek new ways to sustain Wells’ legacy in the community.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230661/original/file-20180805-41351-l2sfgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230661/original/file-20180805-41351-l2sfgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230661/original/file-20180805-41351-l2sfgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230661/original/file-20180805-41351-l2sfgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230661/original/file-20180805-41351-l2sfgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230661/original/file-20180805-41351-l2sfgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230661/original/file-20180805-41351-l2sfgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230661/original/file-20180805-41351-l2sfgo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The future site of the Ida B. Wells monument is also where the Ida B. Wells housing project once stood.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michelle Duster</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Going viral</h2>
<p>Between 2011 and the end of 2017, the <a href="http://idabwellsmonument.org">monument committee</a> raised money in traditional ways like mailings and fundraising events, as well as waging a crowdfunding campaign. Despite widespread interest in and support for a monument, by early 2018 we had raised less than a third of the money required. </p>
<p>I decided to approach other organizations that were in alignment with the work my great-grandmother did about partnering with us. I also awakened my sleepy <a href="https://twitter.com/MichelleDuster/status/982976987273859074">Twitter account</a> and began to
make appeals for support from the public.</p>
<p>My tweets caught the attention of several people with large followings, including organizer <a href="http://mariamekaba.com/">Mariame Kaba</a> and award-winning journalist <a href="http://nikolehannahjones.com/">Nikole Hannah-Jones</a>. They retweeted my messages raising awareness about this project, and added #IdaPledge to urge people to get involved in making history. In addition, Kaba hosted a New York-based fundraiser that included Hannah-Jones as a panelist, and I made appeals to people at various events across the country.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1019222465774604289"}"></div></p>
<p>Donors from all over the nation and some from Canada and England supported the project, proving the international interest in my ancestor. A deluge of donations from over 1,100 people totaling more than US$40,000 coincided with her 156th birthday on July 16. Within six months, Kaba, Hannah-Jones and I had raised close to $200,000 – mostly through online donations that ranged between $10 and $100. </p>
<h2>Street renaming initiated by local groups</h2>
<p>At the same time, dozens of local organizations, led by the <a href="https://my.lwv.org/illinois/chicago/how-league-involved">League of Women Voters of Chicago</a>, pushed to have a major Chicago downtown street renamed after Ida B. Wells. There is already a <a href="http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2005/Street-Creed/">Wells Street</a>, but it’s named for a soldier who was stationed in the area before it became a city.</p>
<p>Two local officials, Aldermen <a href="https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/about/wards/04.html">Sophia King</a> and <a href="https://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/about/wards/42.html">Brendan Reilly</a>, led the initiative as grassroots organizations worked to increase public support. </p>
<p>The aldermen <a href="https://chicago.curbed.com/2018/5/23/17385630/balbo-drive-rename-ida-b-wells">originally proposed renaming Balbo</a> Drive, which honors a controversial Italian aviator and fascist leader. Their idea stirred opposition that diverted attention from the goal of honoring Ida B. Wells. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1024073143151931400"}"></div></p>
<p>King and Reilly agreed that the nearby bigger and busier Congress Parkway, which feeds into interstate highways, was a more fitting honor for the longtime Chicago resident who fought for justice and equality. And on July 25, 2018, the Chicago City Council voted to rename the major thoroughfare <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-met-rahm-emanual-ida-b-wells-street-20180725-story.html">Ida B. Wells Drive</a>, the first downtown street in the city’s history to be named after a woman or person of color. </p>
<p>During her lifetime, Ida B. Wells got most of her work done with grassroots support from the African-American community. In keeping with her legacy,
almost every public honor that Chicago has bestowed on her grew out of the interest, tenacity and work of ordinary citizens who pushed for her recognition.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100866/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Duster is a leader of efforts to honor the legacy of Ida B. Wells, her great-grandmother.</span></em></p>My great-grandmother, an early civil rights champion, path-breaking journalist and suffrage leader, was among the most influential women of her time.Michelle Duster, Lecturer of Business Writing, Business and Entrepreneurship Department, Columbia College ChicagoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/935432018-03-28T22:56:08Z2018-03-28T22:56:08Z‘Black Panther’ villain can teach us about revolutionary history<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212259/original/file-20180327-109204-1po0wbi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Killmonger, the evil villain of 'Black Panther,' has plans of global insurgencies to liberate Black people. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Marvel/Disney)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Black Panther’s</em> Erik Killmonger is the quintessential super-villain. His character fulfils the requirements of the typical superhero movie with good guys versus bad ones and his demise at the end is inevitable.</p>
<p>How could we possibly find anything positive about him? Actually, there is much more to his character than just evil. In fact, I think his character has a lot to teach us.</p>
<p>Many critics have highlighted <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/03/01/forget-the-abusive-killmonger-wakandas-women-are-black-panthers-true-black-liberators/?utm_term=.e892661f71dc">his killings</a>, <a href="https://lasentinel.net/wishing-for-wakanda-marooned-in-america-movies-and-matters-of-reflection-and-resistance.html">his CIA connection</a> and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/02/black-panther-erik-killmonger/553805/">his imperialist power lust</a>. They focus on his bloody trail of slaughter and his destruction of the magical flowers that energize the spirit of Wakanda. </p>
<p>But consider his hate both for the oppressors of Black people and for the pretentious isolationism of Wakanda that cared nothing about Blacks elsewhere, and his plans of global insurgencies to liberate Black people.</p>
<p>While condemnation of Killmonger is to be expected, it’s unfortunate if it occludes his historical significance. Killmonger is larger, more complex, and deserving of more nuanced appraisal. His character reflects the anger, frustrations, hopes, yearnings and aspirations of young and old African-Americans today. </p>
<p>Killmonger’s character represents the dialectical struggles - the complex history of debates and raucous disagreements among African American leaders - over their conflicting strategies and methods to win freedom from slavery, colonialism, racism and oppression. </p>
<h2>Black liberation struggles</h2>
<p>Killmonger shares a central and enduring goal with many previous Black leaders; the dream of freedom for his people and of righting injustices against them. </p>
<p>Consider abolitionist <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2931.html">David Walker</a>, who in 1830, against the prevailing gradualism of the abolitionist movement, <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/nc/walker/walker.html">circulated an appeal</a> for Blacks to resist their oppressors with violence. He argued that kidnappers and murderers of Black people were enemies of God whose death when being resisted was justified. </p>
<p>In an argument similar to Walker’s, abolitionist and minister Henry Highland Garnet in 1843 informed his fellow Blacks how sinful it was for them to submit to degradation and oppression, to “<a href="https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=etas">a state of slavery where you cannot obey the commandments of the Sovereign of the universe</a>.” Calling for a violent rebellion, he contended it was the Blacks’ “solemn and imperative duty to use every means both, moral, intellectual, and physical, that promises success.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=378&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212246/original/file-20180327-109196-1oh8wo4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=475&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ida B. Wells was a journalist who lead the first anti-lynching campaign in the United States. In 1892, she advocated that Black families own rifles to defend themselves.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://photoarchive.lib.uchicago.edu/db.xqy?one=apf1-08637.xml">(University of Chicago Photographic Archive, (apf1-08637), Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Frederick Douglass opposed this view and at the <a href="http://coloredconventions.org/files/original/73369fab9bb261275b57276ccbdbded2.pdf">1843 National Convention of Colored Citizens narrowly won the majority vote against it</a>. Soon though, Douglass shifted his position to favour the use of direct action against slavery while maintaining his belief in the unity of the United States.</p>
<p>Frustrated by government abdication of its duty to protect Blacks from the Jim Crow lynchings, the famous Ida B. Wells urged that “…<a href="http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=3614">a rifle should have a place of honour in every Black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give</a>.” </p>
<h2>Killmonger reflects his environment</h2>
<p>As a special op in the U.S. army, Killmonger, née N'Jadaka (but also known as Erik Stevens), mastered the use of the rifle. There is a significant revolutionary symbolism to all this. <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/ida-b-wells-9527635">Ida B. Wells</a> applauded Black men who avoided being lynched because they armed themselves with the Winchester rifle. </p>
<p>Killmonger’s adoption of the violent revolutionary method also parallels revolutionary philosopher and Pan-Africanist <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=BdVRpzeA47YC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">Frantz Fanon.</a> Both of their experiences <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/fanon/#H1">participating as soldiers in violent national liberation struggles</a> shaped their dispositions to consider violence instrumental to physical and psychological liberation. </p>
<p>Erik Stevens grew up an orphan, experienced tough inner-city teen life and suffered racism and oppression. He was also roiled by what he felt was the needlessness of Blacks’ sufferings as he was aware of the technologically advanced Black Wakanda and their isolationist policy of not intervening to liberate other Blacks. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212262/original/file-20180327-109190-13jwx8o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Killmonger’s ideas reflect historical debates around Black liberation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Marvel/Disney)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Killmonger responds to a history which tyrannized him and left him with no hope of remedy. His choice of method reflects his environment and his association with working class and unemployed Black people.</p>
<p>Like Marcus Garvey, the radical Black nationalist and pan-Africanist leader of UNIA, a back-to-Africa movement, Killmonger envisions an African empire led by technologically advanced Wakanda that straddles the Atlantic and that sends out liberation squads to turn the table of hegemony on the powers that oppress the Blacks. </p>
<p>Garvey, who pioneered this inverted hegemony idea, <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=QmMIAzoVt80C&pg=PA129&lpg=PA129&dq=marcus+garvey+is,+without+doubt,+the+most+dangerous+enemy+of+the+Negro&source=bl&ots=sbQ5j-cHvA&sig=brp76N3OCz6D6_XQGp4VkN1rFPo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwik2Znb7IzaAhXH6oMKHUtkAGIQ6AEIMjAC#v=onepage&q=marcus%20garvey%20is%2C%20without%20doubt%2C%20the%20most%20dangerous%20enemy%20of%20the%20Negro&f=false">was vilified as a lunatic and dangerous by the popular Black leader, W.E.B. Du Bois</a>. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, Garvey was ahead of other Black leaders of his time in rousing the popular masses, gaining their allegiance and devising cross-continental structures and ventures to help in his audacious plans to create an economically self-sufficient and militarily powerful Black empire to liberate all Blacks.</p>
<p>We should also note that Killmonger operated only within a delimited historical moment. He is not absolute. His choice of method cannot be the absolute solution either. </p>
<h2>Remember Malcolm X and MLK</h2>
<p>Neither Malcolm X nor Martin Luther King Jr. and their choices of method for liberation achieved that status either. Indeed, both contradictorily held aspects of the other’s strategy. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/01/14/martin-luther-king-jr-met-malcolm-x-just-once-the-photo-still-haunts-us-with-what-was-lost/?utm_term=.27873cb6c134">Malcolm X came around to modify his strategy. He eventually accepted the unity of all oppressed across colour lines. Before his death, he manifested the possibility that hate and love could follow each other serially as underpinnings for liberation</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/212254/original/file-20180327-109193-s1iub9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=614&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">During months of anti-segregation campaigns in Albany, Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr. is arrested by Albany’s chief of police, Laurie Pritchett, after praying at City Hall in July 1962.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(AP Photo)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rev. King, while maintaining his faith in “militant, powerful, massive, non-violence,” said that he would not condemn civil right riots. King said <a href="http://www.gphistorical.org/mlk/mlkspeech/mlk-gp-speech.pdf">“a riot is the language of the unheard” and that “America …has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met.</a>” Even Mohandas K. Gandhi was emphatic that those unable to protect themselves by facing death with non-violence “<a href="https://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil8.htm">may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor.</a>” </p>
<p>Douglass before them also changed his position from advocating moral suasion to a more robust political activism and violent resistance to preserve freedom won by fugitive enslaved.</p>
<p>Thus, Killmonger’s character addresses the problem of Black liberation. His presence challenges the power of popular media and the hegemonic ruling opinion to dictate the acceptable methods to obtain Black freedom. The idea of Killmonger highlights the power of a global ethos to legitimate or delegitimate these choices.</p>
<p>The shallow development of Killmonger’s character in the movie subverts the universal scope of his liberation plans as well as his character’s ability to bring conversations of historical Black liberation figures together.</p>
<p>Black leaders and their revolutionary strategies like those of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, South Africa’s ANC and PAC, Mandela’s <em>Mkhonto we Sizwe</em>, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. all accomplished transformations in their societies. Their methods, conflicting and sometimes contradictory, provided answers over a stretch of time to different aspects of the big problem of liberation. </p>
<p>Each method fulfilled its role at auspicious moments that supported its popularity among significant sections of the oppressed Blacks. The simultaneous relevance and application of these conflicting methods in those struggles is evidence that no single method was sufficient for the purpose. </p>
<p>There has always been a Killmonger in the history of Black liberation struggles, and while history may not repeat itself, history often rhymes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93543/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>History Department
University of Guelph, Guelph, On. Canada.
I have in the past received research funding from Canada's Social Science and Humanities Research Council</span></em></p>The lead villain of Black Panther is a complex character who represents years of conflicting debates among African American leaders about how to achieve Black liberation.Femi Kolapo, Associate Professor, African History, University of GuelphLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.