More Than a Snapshot: Will Brown's Lynching and the Violence of History

U.S. Law and Race Initiative Author

02/13/2025 Added

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Join our Rights & Wrongs in American Legal History class for a discussion with guest speaker Professor Ashley Howard on racial violence in the Midwest, moderated by Dr. Katrina Jagodinsky.

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[00:00:03.760]Great. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for the
[00:00:06.960]first U.S. Law and Race Initiative webinar in our spring 2025 series.
[00:00:11.520]My name is Emily Binder and I'm a first year graduate student
[00:00:14.040]in history at the University of Nebraska studying American
[00:00:16.960]transnational and digital history.
[00:00:19.220]Launched with support in January of 2023, the
[00:00:21.920]U.S. Law and Race Initiative explores new approaches to
[00:00:24.700]research teaching and public engagement with the history
[00:00:27.520]of law, race, and racialization in the United States.
[00:00:30.660]Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the initiative brings
[00:00:33.560]together large university teaching programs, immersive new forms
[00:00:36.920]of digital media content and community partnership storytelling
[00:00:40.560]to connect Americans to their history in ways that
[00:00:43.260]repair the fractions in our national understanding of
[00:00:46.520]race and racialization.
[00:00:47.880]Dr. Will Thomas, Dr. Jeannette Eileen Jones and Dr. Katrina Jagodinsky
[00:00:52.320]and Dr. Donna Anderson are the faculty leads on the U.S. Law
[00:00:56.380]and Race Initiative, along with an array of expert partners in the
[00:00:59.740]College of Arts and Sciences in the College of Law at UNL.
[00:01:03.020]We are hosting a series of webinars deepening
[00:01:05.019]the national conversation on the legal history of race.
[00:01:08.160]Today we are excited to host a discussion about Will Brown's lynching
[00:01:12.020]in racial violence and history.
[00:01:13.840]We are honored to have with us today Dr. Ashley Howard. She earned
[00:01:18.040]her PhD from the University of Illinois and is
[00:01:20.700]an assistant professor of African American Studies and History
[00:01:24.380]at the University of Iowa.
[00:01:26.420]Her research interests include the Black Midwest, comparative histories
[00:01:30.060]of racial violence, and Black freedom dreams and movements.
[00:01:33.300]Her forthcoming book, Midwest Unrest: 1960s
[00:01:37.100]Urban Rebellions and the Black Freedom Movement,
[00:01:39.300]analyzes the revolts in three mid-sized Midwestern
[00:01:42.500]cities: Cincinnati, Ohio; Omaha, Nebraska; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
[00:01:47.420]With particular attention to the ways that race, that region, race, class, and
[00:01:51.780]gender all play overlapping roles in shaping Black people's
[00:01:55.040]resistance to racialized oppression.
[00:01:56.960]Dr. Howard's scholarship has appeared in the Journal of African American
[00:02:00.760]History, American Historian, Labor Studies Journal, and the Middle West Review.
[00:02:05.860]Her "Then the Burnings Began" article is the winner of
[00:02:08.759]the 2018 James L. Sellers Memorial Prize. Howard's work has also
[00:02:13.440]appeared in numerous media outlets, including the Financial
[00:02:16.420]Times, Washington Post, BBC World News Hour, National
[00:02:20.160]Public Radio, and Al Jazeera English.
[00:02:22.140]In 2021, she was recognized for her public facing scholarship in the wake
[00:02:26.820]of the 2020 George Floyd Uprisings with the university-wide
[00:02:30.700]Faculty Communicating Ideas Award.
[00:02:33.320]In 2023, she and her co-investigator Colin Gordon were awarded
[00:02:37.220]a Mellon Foundation grant to examine race-based property
[00:02:40.460]restrictions in Iowa.
[00:02:42.100]As an educator, Howard encourages her students to
[00:02:45.120]be effective writers, critical thinkers, and engage global citizens.
[00:02:49.260]In documenting incarcerated people's experience with solitary
[00:02:52.340]confinement or identifying the connection between history and
[00:02:55.640]memory through a two-week civil rights tour,
[00:02:58.220]her students develop their skills through experiential learning.
[00:03:01.640]Howard also greatly values teaching opportunities where she can
[00:03:04.660]provide quality university-level education to those with limited access.
[00:03:08.540]Howard sits on several administrative boards, including the Black Midwest
[00:03:12.120]Initiative, Jesuit Social Research Institute,
[00:03:14.920]and the Midwest History Association.
[00:03:17.740]She has served as a book review editor for the Black
[00:03:20.420]Scholar since 2013 and is a consulting producer
[00:03:23.540]for the documentary The African American Midwest, a
[00:03:26.720]400-year fight for freedom.
[00:03:28.240]Our host, Dr. Katrina Jagodinsky, is an associate
[00:03:32.320]professor of history at the University of Nebraska.
[00:03:35.440]She is a legal historian examining marginalized
[00:03:37.580]people's engagement with 19th-century legal regimes in competing
[00:03:41.060]jurisdictions through the North American West.
[00:03:43.120]Her current project with the Digital Legal Research Lab,
[00:03:47.500]entitled Petitioning for Freedom: Habeas Corpus in the American West,
[00:03:51.220]examines more than 8,000 habeas corpus petitions from Black, Indigenous,
[00:03:55.240]immigrant, institutionalized, and dependent petitioners
[00:03:58.200]over the long 19th century.
[00:04:01.220]Professors Howard and Jagodinsky are going to
[00:04:03.480]be in conversation for about 30 minutes before
[00:04:07.300]we turn to questions, and you can submit your questions anytime
[00:04:10.680]using the Zoom chat.
[00:04:12.940]So thank you.
[00:04:16.019]Thank you, Emily, for that introduction. Before we join
[00:04:19.680]this conversation with Dr. Howard, I do want to
[00:04:22.440]take a minute to thank Emily, as well as Anne Gregory, both of
[00:04:27.220]whom are our Mellon GRAs.
[00:04:29.860]I also want to thank Kaci Nash, who is the project manager responsible for
[00:04:33.620]recording and producing our webinars.
[00:04:36.900]And I also want to thank my co-faculties, some of whom
[00:04:39.720]are on this webinar.
[00:04:41.160]We also have a few guests today joining us in the audience
[00:04:44.660]who are on the advisory council for the U.S. Law and Race Initiative.
[00:04:47.880]So welcome, everybody, this morning.
[00:04:50.380]In addition to hearing from Dr. Howard, you're joining
[00:04:52.940]our class, Rights and Wrongs in American Legal History,
[00:04:56.220]which is a 300, 800 level class co-convened undergrad
[00:04:59.800]and grand that is cross-listed between history and ethnic studies.
[00:05:03.160]We spend 16 weeks looking at local disputes over rights and
[00:05:09.760]injustices and put those local regional concerns in a broader national scope.
[00:05:15.880]And I can't think of a better guest to help us think
[00:05:18.480]about that than Dr. Howard.
[00:05:20.480]So again, thank you for joining us this morning.
[00:05:23.500]Thank you so much for having me.
[00:05:25.320]It's a delight. And, you know, you did such a great job with my intro, Emily.
[00:05:29.480]But one part that you missed, but perhaps people are
[00:05:33.860]getting from the bio is I am actually a Nebraskan.
[00:05:36.660]I did a master's degree at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
[00:05:41.040]My folks still live there.
[00:05:42.120]So even though Herkey signs my paychecks, I am still Cornhusker in my heart.
[00:05:46.580]So welcome home virtually.
[00:05:50.380]Thank you.
[00:05:51.460]Well, I want us to have plenty of time to talk about the range of
[00:05:54.960]work that you've been doing.
[00:05:57.140]And I know most recently you've been turning to or
[00:06:00.300]perhaps returning to an interest in Will Brown, whose life
[00:06:04.300]story is a little earlier than your current book, which
[00:06:06.560]will also get to by the end of our conversation.
[00:06:08.720]So could you please start us off by introducing our audience
[00:06:12.580]to Will Brown and explain your interest in
[00:06:16.080]making his life story as you call it more than a snapshot?
[00:06:20.560]Absolutely. So I actually came to this Will Brown project as
[00:06:25.160]my very first seminar paper in my PhD program and was thinking
[00:06:31.200]about what is the life of Will Brown.
[00:06:34.800]And so most people come to know Brown, not from any stories
[00:06:39.500]of his life, but actually the rather gruesome photograph of his murder.
[00:06:45.480]So in 1919, Agnes Loebeck, who is an Omaha woman and her
[00:06:50.740]companion who later become her husband, Milton Hoffman,
[00:06:54.140]accused Will Brown of holding them up and
[00:06:57.480]sexually assaulting Agnes, Miss Loebeck.
[00:07:00.880]And so this was September 25th of 1919.
[00:07:05.780]So Brown was arrested. He was taken to the courthouse. And, you
[00:07:09.560]know, there's kind of some fervor being whipped up and a group
[00:07:12.780]of young people left South Omaha from the Bancroft School and proceeded
[00:07:18.680]down to the Douglas County Courthouse, which is right downtown in Omaha.
[00:07:23.860]And the crowd continues to grow. And so by the time we get to about four or
[00:07:29.420]five p.m. in the afternoon, there's between 10 and
[00:07:32.400]15,000 people who have gathered in the streets there.
[00:07:35.960]And it just kind of escalates from that point with people setting
[00:07:40.780]fire to the courthouse, scaling the walls, cutting firefighters'
[00:07:46.800]hoses when they begin to try and put out some of these fires.
[00:07:50.700]And it culminates in a lynching. And while most
[00:07:55.420]of the kind of discourse, historical discourse about this is
[00:08:00.080]talking about it as Omaha's darkest day, which, you
[00:08:03.600]know, it certainly is a blot on the city's history.
[00:08:06.900]It needs to be put into the broader context of what's going
[00:08:10.480]on, which is the Red Summer of 1919, where you see other moments
[00:08:15.220]of racial violence, where you see the emergence of the New Negro
[00:08:19.000]Movement, where you see the Treaty of Versailles, so this
[00:08:21.640]idea of self-determination.
[00:08:23.700]There's labor antagonism, there's yellow journalism, you
[00:08:26.700]know, there's widespread xenophobia happening into the state.
[00:08:31.080]And so all of this is going on. And, you know, after Brown, his his
[00:08:37.419]fellow incarcerees give him up to protect their
[00:08:40.679]own lives. He is taken to the street.
[00:08:43.059]He is hung from a pole at 18th and Farnam, a telegraph pole. His
[00:08:49.000]body is shot. He is then drugged to the streets and then set on fire.
[00:08:53.980]And it's that picture, which is the sum total
[00:08:57.800]of what most people know about Will Brown. And
[00:09:02.460]that image, because it is so gruesome and evocative
[00:09:07.320]and powerful, has continued to carry on this afterlife.
[00:09:11.940]So it's one of the prominent images in the Without
[00:09:14.980]Sanctuary. It has spurned two plays about this historical event.
[00:09:22.520]It's in Ulysses. It was used in a Cuban propaganda film. So all of
[00:09:27.560]these images are using Will Brown as a prop to tell these other narratives.
[00:09:34.060]And I really wanted to get at the story of who Will Brown and his
[00:09:39.340]community is. And so this is why I kind of have this subpart of the More
[00:09:44.920]Than a Snapshot and the Violence of History is, how are
[00:09:48.460]these moments remembered in our kind of collective
[00:09:51.500]historical memory and how are they used for any variety of agendas.
[00:10:00.020]Thank you for that introduction. I think it's really
[00:10:04.500]helpful to hear you describe also the way that
[00:10:08.360]other societies and other organizations have
[00:10:14.080]recirculated Will Brown's story and image to further
[00:10:19.280]their own means and interests.
[00:10:20.900]In addition to Omaha residents and other Nebraskans reckoning with this
[00:10:26.940]legacy of racialized violence.
[00:10:30.780]I'd also like to hear more about your broader interest
[00:10:34.280]in the Black Midwest.
[00:10:36.360]You've mentioned the context of the Red Summer of 1919 and I'm
[00:10:43.400]familiar with the Without Sanctuary project
[00:10:45.700]but I also have the sense that not many people who have
[00:10:51.380]seen that project and perhaps many Nebraskans associate Nebraska
[00:10:57.500]history with part of that national
[00:10:59.580]anti-Black lynching legacy.
[00:11:01.560]So could you speak to us a little bit from your area of broad
[00:11:05.760]expertise in Black Midwest history and other
[00:11:08.520]events or chapters that we should know about?
[00:11:11.760]Yeah, so the Without Sanctuary exhibit is not
[00:11:14.840]without controversy. So two men who are both partners
[00:11:19.980]and antique dealers, so they're business partners and romantic
[00:11:23.060]partners, began collecting this kind of ephemera from lynching.
[00:11:27.160]So postcards and other ways in which these gruesome events
[00:11:31.800]were broadly disseminated because they wanted to preserve this history.
[00:11:36.300]And so then they created an exhibit of that and
[00:11:38.520]I've seen this exhibit staged maybe two or three times.
[00:11:42.300]And so what I always appreciate it when they do it and wherever they do it
[00:11:46.680]locally, they tie in other instances of anti-Black
[00:11:51.300]violence or some other kind of violence associated.
[00:11:54.240]So when I saw it staged at the Chicago History Museum, they had
[00:11:57.760]a whole second exhibit about Emmett Till's murder and
[00:12:01.640]before Till's casket went to the African American Smithsonian, it
[00:12:07.160]was sitting there on display.
[00:12:09.040]And so really making these links between past and present.
[00:12:13.160]And I think this is part of, you know, the fallacy. We all want to
[00:12:17.100]believe about the Midwest or perhaps the North even more
[00:12:20.360]broadly, is that anti-Black or other types of racial violence
[00:12:24.640]is just a southern phenomenon.
[00:12:27.020]We're kind of off the hook. We don't have to worry
[00:12:29.380]about it. And in some ways, that is true in that
[00:12:33.160]when we look at the sheer numbers of lynchings and other
[00:12:37.000]forms of posse violence, anti-Black violence
[00:12:39.220]that took place in the South.
[00:12:40.660]In the aggregate, it is much, much larger. But when you start playing
[00:12:44.680]with the numbers, you actually see that, you know, the impact per capita, right?
[00:12:50.440]When we think of how many Black people are actually
[00:12:52.300]living in the Midwest at this time versus how many
[00:12:55.480]instances of anti-Black violence you see, this is actually having
[00:12:59.560]just as large, if not a larger impact on these communities.
[00:13:03.100]And Brent Campney actually just published a
[00:13:05.440]really great article in Nebraska History about
[00:13:08.000]some of these instances of racial violence in the state that
[00:13:11.980]have these outside effects.
[00:13:13.980]And this is to say nothing of the ways that
[00:13:16.620]Black people were intimidated in non-fatal violence, right? So the ways
[00:13:21.580]that are often hidden because there's no body.
[00:13:24.500]So if we think again of, you know, sexual assault, if
[00:13:28.280]we think of beatings, if we think about the Black codes,
[00:13:31.000]right? This kind of racially exclusive system was codified and created
[00:13:36.520]in the Midwest prior to the Civil War, not in the South.
[00:13:41.540]So I think these are all really important ways to
[00:13:44.200]think about this relationship between exclusion and violence in the Midwest.
[00:13:50.900]And it's not just a Black story. And that's something that
[00:13:54.660]I am trying to pay more attention to in my own
[00:13:57.140]work is to get out of this Black-white binary, to really
[00:14:00.880]think about this intersection between the two and complicating it, right?
[00:14:05.240]So what does it mean that Black people are seeking freedom
[00:14:07.620]on the prairies at the expense of displacing
[00:14:11.380]Indigenous nations, right?
[00:14:12.760]What does it mean that in Omaha, there was an anti-Greek
[00:14:16.960]riot in 1909 before the riot around Will Brown's lynching, right?
[00:14:22.200]So there's this long memory of violence in which Midwesterners are using
[00:14:28.780]to keep certain people in and keep certain people out and really
[00:14:34.160]reify those racial hierarchies we're seeing in the Midwest.
[00:14:38.300]Yeah, I think it's so important to note as you do that
[00:14:42.720]these are events in sequence with one another. And one of the interests
[00:14:48.640]of the U.S. Law and Race Initiative is to really work to
[00:14:54.220]bring unpublished and otherwise uncirculated legal
[00:14:58.960]records to a broader public, including scholars,
[00:15:02.900]so that we can develop a more holistic and also
[00:15:08.080]more accurate sense of the sort of legal community and
[00:15:13.620]legal networks that are being built, not just among judges
[00:15:16.080]and lawyers, as you might expect, but also
[00:15:17.900]among marginalized people.
[00:15:19.720]So that when these acts of violence occur, that may be less
[00:15:25.440]widely known and certainly less sensational than Will
[00:15:29.020]Brown's lynching, they still are showing up in
[00:15:32.380]those local legal records.
[00:15:34.340]And so, you know, you bring up other issues
[00:15:37.200]in Nebraska and Omaha history with the anti-Greek riot.
[00:15:42.780]I'm also thinking about in the late 19th century,
[00:15:46.860]you have the Standing Bear trial as well as the
[00:15:49.020]John Elk trial, and Elk v. Wilkins is being
[00:15:52.380]revisited right now in national media and our federal administration.
[00:15:56.200]Those are cases coming out of Omaha. And so it's the same sort of legal
[00:16:01.080]community that is responding to these diverse
[00:16:04.160]rights claims among Indigenous, Black, and immigrant actors.
[00:16:09.720]And I think through your work and other of your colleagues and hopefully our
[00:16:15.240]projects as well, we're able to present a really multidimensional
[00:16:22.140]history of the Midwest.
[00:16:25.320]Obviously, we're focused today on Nebraska, but as
[00:16:28.400]you mentioned, in terms of sort of increased
[00:16:31.980]anti-Black policing in the early 20th century, our
[00:16:36.260]students in Rights and Wrongs in American Legal History
[00:16:39.060]are also reading about those histories in Seattle,
[00:16:42.720]in New Orleans, and then also in Omaha. So good to keep an eye on the
[00:16:48.060]local and the national at the same time.
[00:16:50.880]I mentioned our interest in underutilized or unpublished
[00:16:54.740]sources. Could you talk to us a little
[00:16:56.600]bit about the material that you use to bridge historical events,
[00:17:01.980]the memory of those events, and also the value of community
[00:17:05.859]engagement in this kind of work?
[00:17:08.040]Yeah. And so, you know, this, in some ways, I'm chasing a ghost. As
[00:17:15.060]you know, we often are as grad students, we're like,
[00:17:17.700]oh, everybody's just lazy.
[00:17:19.880]They've never tried to tell the true story.
[00:17:22.540]You try to tell a fuller account, you're like,
[00:17:25.339]oh, it is far more challenging, right? Because Brown
[00:17:28.800]was an itinerant worker, right? He was a laborer.
[00:17:31.420]So the kind of ways that we think to tell his stories, the
[00:17:35.280]documents that are often at our hands, are difficult. And so, you know,
[00:17:39.600]I think a lot about, like, Saidiya Hartman and,
[00:17:42.340]you know, thinking about, like, critical fabulations of, like, what
[00:17:45.180]would the average worker's life look like?
[00:17:57.580]And so, you know, I think a lot of people think
[00:17:58.060]that we can do what Marisa Fuentes asks us to do, and
[00:18:01.200]that is to read along the bias grain. And so there
[00:18:04.480]have been so many great sources of late that I've come across.
[00:18:08.860]And so I'll just mention just two that are really kind of fun
[00:18:13.300]and interesting to think about. The first is kind of a standard archival source.
[00:18:18.240]And, you know, this is the boon when you talk about
[00:18:21.280]your research, you make connections with people who can point you
[00:18:24.720]in the directions of things you never considered.
[00:18:27.180]So at the Huntington Library in California,
[00:18:29.720]there are the William McKean papers. And as
[00:18:33.420]I'm discovering about this time period in Omaha
[00:18:36.140]history, people are messy. Very, very, very messy.
[00:18:40.400]So William McKean's wife is a divorcee, and she is trying to get
[00:18:46.400]her alimony. Her husband, a man by the name, her first husband, a
[00:18:50.100]man by the name of Mr. Hall, says, no way, you're married to
[00:18:52.920]this rich guy who works for Union Pacific, no way, I'm paying this out.
[00:18:56.520]Plus, you were, you know, a bad wife, you were stepping out.
[00:19:01.200]Mrs. McKean takes great offense to this because it was, in fact,
[00:19:04.560]Mr. Hall, who's the one who's stepping out.
[00:19:06.340]So they sent H. J. Pinkett, who is kind of this
[00:19:10.480]Black lawyer, newspaper editor in Omaha in the time, out
[00:19:14.480]as an investigator. And so he is going through all
[00:19:17.820]of the South Omaha brothels, right, and interviewing sex workers.
[00:19:23.840]And they are spilling all of the tea. And so it is both a
[00:19:28.440]fascinating read because you're seeing a slice
[00:19:30.880]of Omaha life that you don't often do.
[00:19:33.040]But in terms of my project, what we actually see is
[00:19:37.180]this concern about white womanhood and the fear of the
[00:19:40.820]"Black brute" and, you know, this time period in Omaha history
[00:19:44.160]are all of these sensationalized accounts of Black men attacking white women.
[00:19:48.740]It's oftentimes white men in blackface attacking white women.
[00:19:53.520]And then you see all of these names who are on buildings in Omaha, to this day, of
[00:19:59.580]white men treating mostly Black sex workers, very, very poorly.
[00:20:05.060]And so kind of thinking about these two things in parallel actually
[00:20:10.020]gives more context and complexity to the story.
[00:20:15.200]So that's really one great source, traditional archival
[00:20:19.160]source that I've gone to.
[00:20:21.140]Another one is memoirs. So many people are using Will Brown's story
[00:20:25.960]as a touchpoint to signify something about themselves in
[00:20:30.280]their own life histories.
[00:20:31.480]So I've been reading Tillie Olsen's book, I've been reading Michael Rip's book, The
[00:20:36.320]Face of the Naked Lady, Henry Fonda's memoir, and he actually
[00:20:41.200]witnessed Will Brown's lynching.
[00:20:44.380]And so the way he's using his account is much different
[00:20:48.640]than Michael Rip, who is maybe three generations
[00:20:52.060]removed from that story, and Tillie Olsen, whose
[00:20:55.860]is a complete fabrication.
[00:20:57.460]She was never there, but is using it as their own story.
[00:21:00.040]So again, we see this coming. And I think community engagement is important
[00:21:05.180]because there's always when doing Black history, there's always
[00:21:08.020]this gap between what is in the official record and
[00:21:11.960]how communities are remembering this.
[00:21:14.260]And so this is why, you know, this kind of community
[00:21:16.740]engagement is so important, and thinking about how people are telling
[00:21:21.180]these stories, how people are remembering these stories.
[00:21:24.860]So the centenary commemoration of Will Brown's murder, which
[00:21:31.700]culminated in a soil collection, that started as a community
[00:21:35.460]affair, and then kind of gotten taken up by the
[00:21:39.880]city as kind of this, you know, cause to get behind.
[00:21:42.580]And so oral history interviews are quite enlightening to kind of think
[00:21:47.480]about the uses and misuses of history in that sense, and to
[00:21:53.800]really think about very carefully how we represent these histories in a
[00:21:59.000]way that affirms the Black experience in these cities and Black agency
[00:22:04.120]and Black resistance, as opposed to, again,
[00:22:08.800]thinking of Black people only as pieces of the story so as to advance
[00:22:14.380]kind of these triumphant narratives of racial reconciliation.
[00:22:21.520]I think that's a perfect place to transition into our next
[00:22:25.880]question because I imagine that with the 100-year commemoration in 2019 of
[00:22:35.180]Will Brown's lynching, and I imagine that being the Red Summer
[00:22:38.840]of 1919, that must have been also a national moment of reflection.
[00:22:43.980]Just as we were entering ourselves into a pretty tumultuous
[00:22:49.200]and challenging period in 2020 to today, some would argue. So
[00:22:57.480]I wonder if you could talk a little bit about
[00:23:00.100]the importance or responsibility of historians in responding to the present.
[00:23:07.260]And if you find yourself compelled, for whatever reason, to respond
[00:23:14.580]to particular events and bringing in your historical
[00:23:19.000]expertise to provide some context and understanding for
[00:23:21.900]what we're seeing today.
[00:23:23.260]Yes, absolutely. You know, historians, they
[00:23:26.720]do have a responsibility to the present, right? We are making sure, and
[00:23:30.560]John Hope Franklin has a great quote, but this idea that how historians
[00:23:36.520]write about Reconstruction tells us more about
[00:23:39.780]the era that the historian is writing about than
[00:23:42.380]it does about Reconstruction.
[00:23:43.380]And so I think about that. And I think, you know, to
[00:23:46.960]speak most pointedly to this point, is I think about my own
[00:23:51.880]book. So, you know, my monograph coming out in June, Midwest Unrest,
[00:23:57.380]looks at the urban rebellions, the riots that took place in the 1960s.
[00:24:02.620]And so this was my Master's thesis at UNO in 2005.
[00:24:08.960]And I remember just like feverishly trying to get it done. And
[00:24:11.660]Jerold Simmons, who was my advisor, was like, "Ashley, chill out.
[00:24:16.380]No one's written about this in 40 years. It's fine. Don't worry."
[00:24:21.600]And so to, you know, and in the 20 years sense, it has become
[00:24:27.260]ever-important. So in the conclusion of my book, I
[00:24:29.520]write, "What does it mean to write history while living
[00:24:32.640]it?" And it seems that kind of every path of this book, there has
[00:24:39.580]been a major event, whether it be Ferguson or Baltimore
[00:24:43.460]or, you know, the summer of 2020 or the Capitol
[00:24:46.360]siege, you know, all of these kind of moments have
[00:24:50.420]occurred while at a major milestone in the book's process. And I think the good
[00:24:56.140]news is, and something I encourage you all to think about is, good histories hold
[00:25:01.280]up, right? Even in the midst of these changes, I would go back and read
[00:25:06.200]and I say, yes, that still makes sense in the wake of Mike Brown's murder.
[00:25:10.120]I go and read and say, yes, this still makes sense
[00:25:13.440]in the wake of George Floyd's murder. I go back and
[00:25:16.220]read and say, yes, this still makes sense in the wake
[00:25:19.120]of January 6th, right? And so that good history is important.
[00:25:25.720]I have had to be more conscientious, right, about
[00:25:29.960]how we're writing about these histories and
[00:25:32.000]thinking about histories because the stakes are so much higher, right?
[00:25:35.700]And so I have to think about what does it mean to put
[00:25:39.140]these words forth, to put these names forth, and to put these ideas forth.
[00:25:44.140]So I think in some ways, I am a bit more conservative in naming
[00:25:47.880]names and naming actors out of consideration
[00:25:52.040]to those people who are still living.
[00:25:55.360]But it is this kind of drawing connections between past
[00:25:59.480]and present that is at the core of civic education, right?
[00:26:04.300]And so when we think about the ideas of the Constitution, when we think about
[00:26:09.680]the ideas of the Bill of Rights, if we think about the meanings of
[00:26:13.940]the 13th and 14th and 15th Amendments, right?
[00:26:16.380]These things are always being contested. And the
[00:26:20.200]ways that certain people are living these documents
[00:26:23.700]and interpreting these documents isn't flat, right? They
[00:26:27.540]are constantly working on this. And I think
[00:26:30.540]that is the power of these histories from below or from the cotton patch or all
[00:26:36.080]the ways that we talk about doing history that doesn't kind of
[00:26:39.860]replicate the dominant frameworks.
[00:26:42.620]The Declaration of Independence meant something very,
[00:26:46.540]very different to Black enslaved people, right? The
[00:26:51.020]idea of whether the Emancipation Proclamation, right? This
[00:26:56.540]is always touted as this wonderful revolutionary document.
[00:26:59.740]But as I tell my students, the Emancipation
[00:27:02.140]Proclamation only emancipated people in Confederate-held
[00:27:06.400]territories. That means if you were enslaved
[00:27:09.060]in Washington, D.C., you were still enslaved, right? And
[00:27:13.160]so by bringing this truth to bear, it helps
[00:27:16.560]students think more critically about the moments that we're
[00:27:20.400]in, the media that we're consuming, and how this
[00:27:23.860]either, you know, locks in step with things we
[00:27:27.000]have seen previously in history,
[00:27:28.420]or is a new trend, or playing a different tune altogether. And
[00:27:34.160]so for me, I think that is what is so, so powerful about
[00:27:39.160]being a historian, and frankly, about being a history student, right? You all
[00:27:44.260]are learning in your classroom skills that many of your peers aren't getting.
[00:27:48.340]You're learning to take lots of information, lots of different
[00:27:51.900]viewpoints, and synthesizing these and analyzing them to come up
[00:27:56.520]with your own argument. That is a priceless skill that
[00:28:00.880]is going to be even more valuable in the future.
[00:28:03.860]So historians always talk to the moment. It is not only
[00:28:08.360]something we can do, it is our duty and our responsibility.
[00:28:13.800]I couldn't agree with you more. And in a lot of ways, you're describing
[00:28:17.580]the work that we've been doing so far this semester. We started out in
[00:28:23.080]January with looking at some of the founding documents and
[00:28:27.100]reading them in some instances line by line to really uncover
[00:28:31.680]the Founding Era concept of a citizen, right?
[00:28:36.660]Which, as you know, and our students are coming to
[00:28:39.500]learn was a really underdeveloped concept that had a lot of
[00:28:43.560]synonyms, right? Persons, people, and subjects sometimes, but around the
[00:28:52.320]aspirational but largely undefined concept of citizen... forward in our class.
[00:28:59.460]Since those founding documents, as I said, we're considering
[00:29:03.600]the historical legal resistance of Black people in the Jim Crow
[00:29:09.880]Era, but we'll be transitioning to Federal Indian Law as well as, again,
[00:29:16.160]keeping that local perspective and looking at
[00:29:18.140]Native claims in local and regional courts in the 19th and early 20th century.
[00:29:23.280]Which, when I wrote the syllabus, did not expect to be revisited in modern law. So
[00:29:30.700]for better or worse, our historical trajectory is
[00:29:38.140]very much in step with contemporary debate and concern.
[00:29:42.740]And so, like you, I hope that our students are
[00:29:46.600]feeling well-equipped to, you know, not only find but
[00:29:52.720]also interpret these historical and legal documents that are being
[00:29:57.820]really poorly presented, I think, in modern and popular discourse.
[00:30:06.840]With that, I think this would be a good time to open it
[00:30:10.360]up to some Q&A from our audience. We have just about 30 people with
[00:30:16.240]us this morning, half of whom are from our class and half of
[00:30:19.940]whom are joining us through other affiliations
[00:30:23.160]with the U.S. Law and Race Initiative.
[00:30:24.620]So you're all welcome. At this point, we can turn
[00:30:28.380]to the chat if you would like to put your questions there, but you're also
[00:30:32.900]welcome to ask your question yourself by just turning on
[00:30:36.720]your video and unmuting yourself.
[00:30:39.340]We would appreciate an introduction so that Dr. Howard has some sense of
[00:30:45.500]who we're talking to. The students did read your
[00:30:51.760]essay before this discussion.
[00:30:56.440]So, and on that point, our GRA, who's also in the class,
[00:31:03.800]Anne Gregory has this question.
[00:31:06.320]In "Then the Burnings Began," you speak on structural change
[00:31:09.940]versus palliative measures. Where would you like to see profound structural
[00:31:15.380]change enacted toward racial justice in the Midwest?
[00:31:19.580]That is such a wonderful, wonderful question.
[00:31:26.280]You know, something that I find so alluring about
[00:31:30.000]the Midwest is this wonderful idea that you can remake
[00:31:34.600]yourself, and that it has this expansive idea of
[00:31:38.960]freedom and, you know, leaning full into citizenry and citizenship.
[00:31:43.860]And so, you know, I personally write what Ashley Howard would
[00:31:47.560]love to see. And, you know, speaking as myself as an individual,
[00:31:51.680]is I would love to see this, you know, in measures
[00:31:55.180]around education, right, because I think education can be the great equalizer.
[00:32:01.020]And so I would love to see K through 12
[00:32:04.400]education reflect the students who are there, right, and expect their
[00:32:09.100]experiences and their identities and their lives.
[00:32:13.380]I would love that college is affordable for
[00:32:17.060]everybody who wants to go, right, and having
[00:32:20.340]tuition be accessible and not having people have
[00:32:23.200]to make decisions based on job skills and employability.
[00:32:27.680]And, you know, if a major that doesn't seem to
[00:32:31.500]be a quote "employable major" is what calls to their hearts,
[00:32:35.780]that they can major in that and not feel the
[00:32:38.960]burden of, you know, tens of thousands of dollars of debt.
[00:32:44.540]And so I think there are so many ways that are little ways that we can we
[00:32:49.980]can do that as communities. Right. And, you
[00:32:54.100]know, freedom schools are an excellent model of that.
[00:32:57.560]I'm on the organization the Association for the Study of African American
[00:33:01.200]Life and History, and part of what ASALH did in the
[00:33:06.940]1930s and this is under Carter G. Woodson kind of the founder
[00:33:10.300]of Black History Month is when Black people did not see the things
[00:33:24.440]that were called quote "third spaces," not work, not
[00:33:27.820]school, but at their lodges at their sororities at
[00:33:30.840]the barbershops in their churches right. And so they
[00:33:34.100]created the world that they wanted to see there.
[00:33:37.740]So I think about that there are both these kind
[00:33:41.300]of, you know, city and state and federal ways that
[00:33:45.840]we can can see of this kind of making good on the promise of the
[00:33:50.720]Midwest on the promise of America.
[00:33:53.320]And in the interim, there are ways that we can do these
[00:33:55.340]things in our own community to also bring forth the kind of change
[00:34:00.060]in the structural difference that we want to see.
[00:34:03.540]It's a great question. Thank you.
[00:34:06.950]I appreciate your reference to those community efforts that
[00:34:14.250]we all can contribute to in one way or another.
[00:34:16.989]In addition to freedom schools, like you described, we had a student who
[00:34:22.590]wanted to know more about UNL's history of student activism and in the
[00:34:29.090]special collections here on campus found abundant source material
[00:34:33.550]regarding teach-ins that were student and faculty and staff responses
[00:34:38.290]to really pivotal moments in U.S. history.
[00:34:42.429]And so in addition to that being a national movement, it's
[00:34:47.610]also something that we've seen here on our campus as well.
[00:34:51.570]We have another question from one of our audience members.
[00:34:56.389]Hello, Dr. Howard, how have white, Black, and other racial communities in
[00:35:00.590]Omaha reacted to Brown's lynching being brought back to the public eye?
[00:35:05.250]Have people been open to learning and talking about
[00:35:07.710]this history or have different groups been more closed off?
[00:35:10.970]This is clearly from a fan/friend, miss you.
[00:35:14.550]Yes, I was like, I've never met this person
[00:35:16.210]in my life. No, just kidding. This is Sydney O'Hara, my brilliant,
[00:35:20.190]capable, and fabulous graduate student.
[00:35:24.190]So hello, who's now working a very important job as well.
[00:35:30.250]So this is a great question, and it depends on the people you're asking. For
[00:35:35.030]a lot of Black folk, this is just bringing up an ugly part of history.
[00:35:40.330]One that they would prefer not to be revisited and one that
[00:35:44.970]is also like, "It's in the past. Let's talk
[00:35:48.230]about all the other moments of anti-Black and
[00:35:52.290]anti, you know, other violence."
[00:35:54.210]I'll get to the anti-other violence in a second that have occurred in the
[00:35:58.290]city in recent years. So like, that's in the past. Let's talk about this now.
[00:36:03.630]And I think in particular, Bear Heels is his last name. I
[00:36:09.550]can't remember his first name. And it was an Indigenous man who was
[00:36:14.090]traveling by bus through Omaha, he was in a mental health crisis, the
[00:36:19.210]mental health police, you know, staff was deployed and in the thing that ensued he was tased and died.
[00:36:33.650]And so like a lot of Black folks in that moment were like, "this is still happening" and pointing
[00:36:37.510]to these examples. For a lot of white people that I've spoken with,
[00:36:43.330]they have just complete shock that this happened in their community that they had
[00:36:48.470]never heard about it before, that they can't believe it would
[00:36:51.970]happen in their Omaha.
[00:36:53.070]In fact, during the 100 year kind of commemoration
[00:36:56.950]the mayor Jean Stothert,
[00:36:59.430]that was her opening line in her comments was, "it's hard
[00:37:01.910]to believe something like this happened in Omaha," even when they're
[00:37:05.910]in the midst of a potential consent decree.
[00:37:09.210]So like that kind of cognitive dissonance. And as for the
[00:37:13.490]other, you know, communities in Omaha, that unfortunately is not a
[00:37:17.310]place I have my pulse on yet, right?
[00:37:20.330]But I think it's one that is worth seeing, particularly to
[00:37:25.950]kind of trouble our way of how we think about Black
[00:37:29.570]people, right? So many of the Black folks that I've spoken
[00:37:32.150]with are generationally Black Omahans, whereas there is a growing population
[00:37:37.350]of Black Omahans who are first and second generation Americans, right, and
[00:37:43.210]they are living in South Omaha, which is where this all went
[00:37:48.150]down, where Will Brown lived as opposed to North Omaha, where many
[00:37:53.210]Black Omahans live today, so that kind of
[00:37:58.870]cognitive dissonance, like, identity disconnect.
[00:38:04.410]What complicates this even more, and I have not
[00:38:06.730]yet done these interviews, is that Will Brown's
[00:38:09.590]story is now part of Omaha Public School curriculum.
[00:38:13.130]So it... his story is part... and so I'm really interested to
[00:38:17.530]see how teachers, and these are the interviews I'm hoping to do this
[00:38:20.810]summer, so if you know any teachers, feel free to email me, is
[00:38:24.730]how that this is playing out in the classroom, how are they developing
[00:38:29.010]their lessons, and whose perspective in the stories, are they
[00:38:34.150]sharing and like, how, how is this framed in history? So...
[00:38:39.950]Yeah, great, great question. Thank you so much.
[00:38:45.790]I think we're probably going to need to follow up with
[00:38:49.330]you post-webinar because one of the goals of the U.S.
[00:38:53.170]Law and Race Initiative is to develop teaching modules for our
[00:38:57.690]Open Educational Resource which will be a really dynamic, Omeka source
[00:39:05.450]that includes curated discussions of legal and other records to
[00:39:10.870]tell these important stories of U.S. law and race and gender.
[00:39:16.190]But our hope is that they will then be adopted for those
[00:39:19.110]teachers and instructors who are grappling with these
[00:39:22.610]really complex histories and may feel less confident
[00:39:28.630]if they hadn't have,
[00:39:29.670]they don't have deep training in this time period or in kind
[00:39:34.430]of putting these records into context and I think it would be ideal
[00:39:39.010]for us to include this topic in the OER.
[00:39:43.870]And as my colleague Dr. Jones has noted, we do have quite a
[00:39:48.210]few connections. In addition to the ones I'm sure
[00:39:51.250]you already have, Dr. Howard, so we'd be happy
[00:39:53.130]to facilitate that as well.
[00:39:54.570]And if I may just kind of on creating these you know
[00:39:58.950]lesson plans like this is what I keep thinking about. And this is
[00:40:02.610]very much what animates this project is that you know, so much
[00:40:06.610]of the discourse about having more inclusive education is
[00:40:10.410]that it makes certain
[00:40:11.370]kids feel bad or certain kids feel alienated or
[00:40:14.370]certain kids are ashamed.
[00:40:16.750]And when I say certain kids I'm actually not speaking about
[00:40:19.670]white children exclusively right like learning about a lynching in your
[00:40:22.930]home community can be just as damaging for a Black child
[00:40:26.530]as it is a white child and perhaps even more so.
[00:40:30.470]But thinking beyond that moment of violence to think about,
[00:40:33.410]well, how did Black people respond, how did white people respond.
[00:40:37.050]It's significant that Edward Smith who was the white mayor also
[00:40:41.830]was attempted to be lynched right, like that in... so like...
[00:40:45.370]and really broadening this, this story and thinking about how Black
[00:40:50.510]people organized in the wake of this to prevent an East St.
[00:40:54.730]Louis from happening, from preventing a Chicago from happening. Black people
[00:40:59.210]armed themselves and their community. And that was enough of a deterrent
[00:41:03.050]for the white mob to not come from downtown Omaha into
[00:41:07.330]the North Omaha so that changes this narrative of victimization to one
[00:41:12.790]to agency. So, I think I'd love to talk with you more about this later.
[00:41:17.630]Yeah, and I think it's really important to take the opportunity
[00:41:22.010]when you can to present historical actors as protagonists in their story.
[00:41:29.650]So, the project I'm working on, Petitioning for Freedom, only
[00:41:33.550]goes to 1924. But what we saw emerging in our
[00:41:38.530]index of habeas petitions in Omaha right between 1917 and
[00:41:44.030]1924, the midst of Will Brown's lynching was a really
[00:41:51.990]heated debate between Omaha police and the Omaha mayor
[00:41:56.470]about what is appropriate policing, because there were dozens
[00:42:03.830]of women who were using habeas to challenge their
[00:42:08.050]wrongful arrest for vagrancy and prostitution. They were then
[00:42:13.570]hospitalized coercively in the Omaha Women's
[00:42:16.170]Detention Hospital, subjected by force to gynecological
[00:42:19.830]exams and really brutal medical procedures.
[00:42:24.070]And throughout the course of their petitions.
[00:42:27.190]There's, they're bringing in this debate, this political debate in Omaha around
[00:42:32.930]what is the appropriate exertion of authority, right, so I think it
[00:42:37.370]is worth noting that our assumption might be that this is a
[00:42:42.550]"white versus Black problem" quote unquote, but that, in fact, among white
[00:42:48.830]politicians and attorneys, many of them are advocating
[00:42:52.110]for collaboration and alliance across the racial line.
[00:42:55.910]In order to advocate for what to them was a
[00:43:00.290]more appropriate form of justice. I want to make sure to
[00:43:03.290]get into some of these questions that we're getting in the
[00:43:05.150]chat, you can tell I'm excited I want more time with you.
[00:43:07.830]So from one of our students in Rights and Wrongs, you
[00:43:12.190]get a question about something that's often ignored in Nebraska, is the
[00:43:17.570]presence of race and racial hierarchies in our state. Can you
[00:43:21.410]talk about the prevalence and importance of recognizing Black history in Nebraska.
[00:43:26.930]It's huge, it's huge, I cannot, I cannot say this enough. In
[00:43:31.570]part, because, you know, I'll talk about Nebraska first.
[00:43:35.690]Nebraska has such a rich Black history, right,
[00:43:37.930]that expands its existence, right?
[00:43:42.070]And so to let it out or to only include stories that makes sense in
[00:43:46.630]the grand narrative, you know, really does a disservice. So one
[00:43:50.550]of my favorite pieces that I've ever written is for
[00:43:54.890]a online magazine called Literary Landscape.
[00:43:57.590]And I talk about Malcolm X's birth site, right. And
[00:44:01.110]so, unlike homesteaders or, you know, trying to think of
[00:44:05.550]someone else Gale Sayers, right, these kind of you know
[00:44:08.350]Black Nebraskans that have this kind of triumphal, happy inclusion story.
[00:44:15.030]Malcolm X is complicated and I think that's evidenced by
[00:44:18.410]the fact that there were 300 people who got, you know,
[00:44:22.430]state markers before he got one and he was only
[00:44:25.310]admitted to the Nebraska Hall of Fame I think last summer.
[00:44:28.990]And so in this piece I write about like, by going to
[00:44:32.070]Malcolm X's birth site, which isn't Omaha, you actually
[00:44:35.270]have to seek it out, right, you're not just
[00:44:37.670]going to happen upon it.
[00:44:39.430]And that causes us to seek out better answers to more difficult
[00:44:44.950]questions, right. Why is it just an empty field? Where did all the
[00:44:49.310]other houses go? What does it mean that one of the most
[00:44:52.290]active chapters of the United Negro Improvement Association run
[00:44:56.650]by Malcolm X's parents,
[00:44:58.010]and this is Marcus Garvey's organization was in Omaha,
[00:45:02.090]at the time, right? What does it mean that Rowena
[00:45:04.230]Moore who started this process, led female Black meat
[00:45:08.310]packers to go on strike for better labor conditions, right?
[00:45:12.030]So just by asking, just by centering one Black
[00:45:15.870]Nebraskan story, it opens up so many more questions.
[00:45:19.370]I think more broadly when we think about the Midwest, race and region are
[00:45:24.890]always divorced, right? Black people are synonymous
[00:45:27.930]with the South or perhaps urban centers.
[00:45:30.970]And that is just a fallacy. Some of the most important moments in American
[00:45:35.530]history and Black American history, particularly when we talk
[00:45:39.150]about the 20th century, are in the Midwest, right. Brown
[00:45:42.770]versus the Board of Education.
[00:45:44.150]Topeka, Kansas, 1954, right.
[00:45:47.750]When we think about Black culture, right, as
[00:45:50.210]I write elsewhere, it was born in the Midwest, and adopted by the United
[00:45:57.410]States, right. So if we think about Motown.
[00:46:00.190]That's Detroit. If we think about funk. That's Dayton, Ohio. If we think about
[00:46:04.550]Toni Morrison, right, if we think about Langston Hughes, if we
[00:46:07.690]think about Aaron Douglas.
[00:46:08.910]These are... Prince, right. These are all people with deep, deep,
[00:46:13.690]Midwestern ties, and the art that they are producing is at
[00:46:17.570]the intersection of that race and region, but it makes no
[00:46:20.690]sense in the National imaginary to have Black people from the Midwest.
[00:46:25.110]So their regional identity is just scrubbed. So to
[00:46:28.110]answer your question in a sentence. We are the essence.
[00:46:34.880]I love that historical and cultural span too.
[00:46:39.300]I hope that that is a syllabus for you.
[00:46:42.040]We have more questions coming up in the chat that I
[00:46:45.840]think build off of this conversation about multiple
[00:46:49.880]forms of identity.
[00:46:53.000]So, Dr. Murillo your colleague at University of Iowa, as well as a
[00:46:56.980]member of our advisory council is asking if you can talk a little bit
[00:47:00.980]more about the idea that race is not a category that's generated in
[00:47:06.880]a vacuum, right, that racialization happens in
[00:47:11.520]relation to other groups. And she's referencing
[00:47:15.360]Natalia Molina's work and Omi and Winant, and there for
[00:47:18.420]some of the scholars in the room but if you can...
[00:47:21.340]You've kind of hinted at that a little bit already
[00:47:23.000]so it'd be great to hear a little more about that.
[00:47:26.260]Yeah, and I think, in addition to being, you know,
[00:47:29.480]in conversation with other ethnicities, it's also a class conversation.
[00:47:34.560]So very much around in the anteceding months
[00:47:38.760]before Brown's lynching, right, there's all this yellow journalism.
[00:47:41.680]And a lot of the Black conservative newspapers, of which there
[00:47:46.040]were two Black Omaha newspapers in this era, right, are saying, "Well, we
[00:47:51.940]need to get, you know, the low class Black folk under control, right. If we can get
[00:47:56.740]them under control, then we won't have this problem.
[00:47:59.780]It's them, not us," right. And so I think so much of, you know, these
[00:48:05.060]racial identities are in dialogue and how people
[00:48:09.580]are thinking about them and how they're responding.
[00:48:13.180]And you know a lot of scholars have used this idea of Blackness
[00:48:16.820]as the fulcrum. And so this idea that that
[00:48:20.560]people don't want to be Black and so they have
[00:48:22.880]these shifting identities therein.
[00:48:25.420]But I think that often has limitations to how
[00:48:29.540]we think about, you know, organizing and collaboration, right.
[00:48:34.360]And so, at this time, there are ethnic minorities. There aren't like
[00:48:40.420]a substantial number of kind of racial minorities that
[00:48:44.060]we are thinking about
[00:48:45.560]in this realm. But we see Lithuanian, we see
[00:48:50.920]Czechoslovakian, we see Slovakian, they're all working in the
[00:48:55.340]packing houses together, and they are kind of
[00:48:57.860]forming along that lower tier.
[00:49:00.640]But as you know, those Eastern European folks
[00:49:03.980]also have kind of white privilege to lean on.
[00:49:08.700]As we come to the 20th century, we actually see this arising
[00:49:12.580]in an interesting way. So we see a lot of collaboration between like the
[00:49:16.300]Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement in Omaha, with LULAC in
[00:49:21.820]the World War II era, you see Black vets and LULAC working together.
[00:49:26.260]And then today, you know I talked about South O. South
[00:49:30.020]High School, which is where many of the people who lynched Brown
[00:49:33.340]would have marched on is now majority students of color, namely
[00:49:37.520]Latinx students and Sudanese students, right.
[00:49:43.420]And so that is a whole
[00:49:44.960]other kind of way of thinking of creating racialized identity that
[00:49:50.320]is in a very specific context that is
[00:49:53.720]different from, you know, any other period and
[00:49:57.340]elsewhere in the city.
[00:49:58.880]But I'm going to have to think a bit more on what that looks
[00:50:02.200]like racially at this turn of the century period. Thank
[00:50:06.100]you for that question.
[00:50:07.760]I see a couple about Malcolm X. Why does he receive less attention?
[00:50:16.920]And yes, we got that one, and oh, good. So Dr. McDuffie who's great.
[00:50:23.240]He was at Illinois when I was at Illinois. I'm actually speaking on
[00:50:27.660]his or like on a panel with his book coming up in the fall.
[00:50:33.120]And he's great so go see that if you can. And then "more subtle
[00:50:37.780]and insidious." Okay, we'll take those two. Malcolm X flies
[00:50:44.400]in the face of what I think many people want
[00:50:48.460]to think of as America.
[00:50:51.160]Right. And, you know, Jeanne Theoharis has an excellent book. It's one of my favorite
[00:50:56.320]history books to teach. And it's called A More
[00:51:01.700]Terrible and Beautiful History.
[00:51:03.840]And she really kind of leans into this myth
[00:51:06.260]of MLK. And so the way that MLK is taught about in our
[00:51:10.200]classrooms is very different than the way he actually was
[00:51:13.420]living in his life, right.
[00:51:14.940]He was against militarism. He was against poverty, and he was against
[00:51:19.620]racism, but it seems that those first two people often lose sight of.
[00:51:25.720]And towards the end of their lives, Malcolm
[00:51:27.460]X and Martin Luther King were coming closer
[00:51:32.160]together in interest than before. I think
[00:51:35.180]Malcolm X is complicated for a lot of reasons.
[00:51:38.860]He was a separatist. He was Muslim, right, he was
[00:51:44.300]in favor of armed self defense, he did not mince
[00:51:47.640]words, like, he was a dynamic kind of go for the throat type of
[00:51:52.640]speaker. And so that all,
[00:51:56.280]you know, rubs rubs people the wrong way, I think, because
[00:52:00.900]I think Malcolm X can be understood as imagining a future
[00:52:06.020]for Black people where inclusion into white institutions is not their
[00:52:10.520]salvation, that they can create institutions for themselves that are just
[00:52:17.260]as accomplished, and that are just as worthy. And I think that is
[00:52:22.080]a kind of a huge chasm in in our understanding
[00:52:27.480]of these two individuals.
[00:52:31.980]So racism as "more subtle and insidious."
[00:52:35.300]How do I analyze historical narratives to distinguish the
[00:52:40.140]performative from the substantive.
[00:52:42.980]That is difficult.
[00:52:45.600]I use a lot of oral histories to talk about it,
[00:52:49.560]and to talk about people's experiences and so, you know, they'll
[00:52:54.340]say things like, "Well, you know, my mom could talk white,
[00:52:58.840]and so she would call to see if an apartment was open.
[00:53:02.780]And they're like, 'Yes, yes, come on by,' and then she'd show up. And then it would
[00:53:07.440]be, you know, 'Oh, I'm sorry, we just rented
[00:53:10.860]it, we would have loved to have given it.
[00:53:13.100]It's not there.'" So that type of racism, right, is
[00:53:17.520]different than the kind of no N words allowed at
[00:53:21.580]a door, or, you know, the kind of violence that
[00:53:25.660]we saw when school kids were trying to integrate Little Rock.
[00:53:28.760]Right. So, that's kind of how I see that. And a lot of
[00:53:34.020]the oral history interviews I did were of people who they
[00:53:40.440]themselves either moved from the South to the North, or who were born in
[00:53:45.800]the South as children and then, you know, came of age in the North.
[00:53:50.000]And they often said, and this is across many places and many people, that what was
[00:53:55.680]so difficult about living in the Midwest was
[00:53:58.420]you knew where you stood in the South.
[00:54:00.920]But in the Midwest, oftentimes people would smile and say something
[00:54:04.900]nice to your face, but then kind of do something underhanded.
[00:54:08.560]So it's very, very difficult to quantify. And
[00:54:13.720]so I use these kind of qualitative measures
[00:54:16.260]to get at that. I mean, I'm kind of of the opinion
[00:54:20.440]racism is racism is racism.
[00:54:22.660]It's all bad, but some have, there are different degrees of
[00:54:27.820]the badness. Great question.
[00:54:36.130]Yeah, I think this is one of our students from
[00:54:40.770]Rights and Wrongs in American Legal History, Ruth, is asking about,
[00:54:45.810]you know, since you talked in writing your book manuscript that
[00:54:48.950]you were writing history while living through the making of history,
[00:54:52.930]how you're feeling now in regard to, you know, conflicting messages
[00:55:00.490]from the federal administration, I think is what Ruth is getting into.
[00:55:03.890]We talked about this in class at the beginning of February
[00:55:06.310]with sort of traditional start to Black History
[00:55:09.830]Month from an executive memo that was coupled with a departure and
[00:55:17.290]even erasure of not just Black History Month,
[00:55:20.210]but some of the other national commemorations
[00:55:24.090]of marginalized people. So that's kind of, I
[00:55:27.170]think, what Ruth's asking about.
[00:55:29.070]That's a great question. And, you know, the land, as I regularly have
[00:55:35.250]been getting emails from our my own university lately, the
[00:55:38.510]landscape is rapidly changing.
[00:55:40.790]Right. So, you know, at any given day, how things are going are things. I mean, I
[00:55:47.870]think there have been clear indications that there is
[00:55:50.230]a move back from these types of educational experiences.
[00:55:54.410]You know, when we think about removal of information about the WACs
[00:55:59.170]and the Tuskegee Airmen, but then that put that back in, you
[00:56:03.230]know, some of these DEI or anti-DEI initiatives.
[00:56:06.670]So it is hard to determine how things will go on from
[00:56:11.870]an institutional perspective. But this is what I know. Right. People of color,
[00:56:18.770]marginalized people have always told their stories and unapologetically.
[00:56:24.370]Right. They have not waited for the sanction of
[00:56:27.630]institutions to tell and write and live these histories.
[00:56:32.710]And so, you know, they're a very famous book about Carter G.
[00:56:37.390]Woodson is called Fugitive Pedagogy. Right. So this
[00:56:41.050]idea of doing something that is not seen
[00:56:44.150]as appropriate or even legal.
[00:56:48.670]And so I think about that. And there have been these
[00:56:51.910]long histories of people archiving their own
[00:56:54.890]stories. And again, when we talk about the
[00:56:57.250]importance of the Midwest,
[00:56:58.930]the first four independently-funded Black history
[00:57:03.330]museums, were in the Midwest. Right. We have a very, very powerful history of
[00:57:11.090]maintaining, preserving and disseminating our own histories.
[00:57:15.390]And I think that is really important. Right.
[00:57:18.950]And all communities have done this and the storytelling
[00:57:22.270]aspect. Right. It is done in in private to build up the
[00:57:29.910]the courage and the confidence and the fortitude of the
[00:57:36.490]communities whose stories will keep getting
[00:57:40.490]whatever this is squashed. And the shame is we are all richer for knowing
[00:57:45.790]these histories. I am a better person because I studied Native
[00:57:49.450]American history at UNO.
[00:57:51.570]I am a better person because I had a foreign language requirement
[00:57:55.310]at my university at DePaul. I'm also a better person because I
[00:57:59.450]had to take a music appreciation course, right.
[00:58:01.690]When we are often just limited in what we're able to learn, we become
[00:58:07.630]less human. And I think our only goal in living in this life is
[00:58:12.510]to become more fully human. And that is in taking on the complexity of
[00:58:17.570]our world and asking hard questions of where we live and
[00:58:21.670]most importantly, of ourselves.
[00:58:23.530]So the struggle will always continue. These histories will always be there.
[00:58:27.890]Those are really powerful words, I think, to help wrap
[00:58:32.690]up our conversation. I want to thank you for reminding
[00:58:35.970]all of us that we should feel empowered to continue
[00:58:40.770]to pursue the histories that call us, that reflect us.
[00:58:45.010]And also, as you said, that make us more human, that make
[00:58:47.590]us better people. And hopefully, you know, the classes that we're teaching
[00:58:53.170]are helping students to be able to do that. But it doesn't
[00:58:56.490]have to be, as you've pointed out, limited to the classroom either.
[00:58:59.610]This can be work that's carried out in communities and there
[00:59:03.110]are strong legacies of doing that. So I just want to thank
[00:59:08.090]you so much, Dr. Howard, for joining us.
[00:59:10.130]We're really pleased to include you among the webinar alums and
[00:59:14.230]the U.S. Law and Race Initiative. I want to thank my co-faculty
[00:59:18.330]again, our GRAs, our project manager, our students, and some of our
[00:59:23.310]advisory council members for joining us this morning. Thank you so much.
[00:59:27.830]Thank you, everybody. Have a great day.

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More Than a Snapshot: Will Brown's Lynching and the Violence of History

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