HIS 270 -- Black Protest in 20th Century US Culture

Throughout our class discussions, we have touched on the place of Black feminism in the larger scope of the Freedom Struggle. Book after book, I feel that the common narrative is centered around the male, until we have reached How We Get Free  and Making All Black Lives Matter . These two books incorporate the females place in the movement, showing the interlocking oppression women face due to their many layers of oppression through class, race, gender, and identity. Taking a look back at the big pushes from BLMM into media, the cases have been predominantly male victims. Ransby comments on this, acknowledging that the BLMM campaigns "have wrestled with an obvious dilemma: the most highly publicized victims of police violence during this time, and in terms of dominant narrative, have been male. That is not because Black women have somehow been sheltered or exempted form such violence"(Ransby 108). Women's struggles being left out of the main picture is not something new,...

Throughout this whole class we've been talking about pretty much how sucky America is to people who don't fit the mold of whiteness, and how that the only way to change the system is to rebuild the system. I was wandering the internet one day and found this pitch video for this grassroots movement called RepresentUs where they laid out what the problem with today's government system corruption. on the represent us webpage it gives statistics that public opinion has a near-zero impact on U.S. law and that the bottom 90% of income earners in America opinions have a statistically non-significant impact government policy. When I look at those statistics and then at the problems we talk about in class its hard to imagine how to improve the quality of life of black Americans if most Americans cant influence law, except for the richest AKA the whitest. This same group gives ideas to fix this, they propose an anti-corruption act to stop political bribery, end secret money, and fix ...

The second half of Making All Black Lives Matter begins with the murder of Freddie Gray. The aftermath was an explosion from the Black community. Brittney Cooper, an African American college professor, had this to say: “No, I don’t support looting. But I question a society that always sees the product of the provocation and never the provocation itself. I question a society that values property over black life. But I know that our particular system of law was conceived on the founding premise that black lives are white property.” What she said about provocation struck a chord with me because, every time there is a disaster concerning an African American, society sees the repercussions but refuses to get to the source of the problem. The latter half of the book discusses the challenges surrounding the BMM movement, a shift away from the individual tragedies. What I thought was interesting was what was discussed regarding state violence against transgender/non-gender conforming African A...

The second half of Making All Black Lives Matter is as hard-hitting and relevant as the first. The case of Freddie Gray and the reaction it evoked from the black community further highlighted that individual acts of white racism are not the defining culprit of black oppression; the largest problem is that of “structural racism, which include[s] profiling and harassment of a certain type of poor or working-class Black youth, an aggressive policing style in poor Black communities.” The fourth chapter notes that half of the officers responsible for Freddie Gray’s death were black, but that the “notorious blue code of silence among cops...often trumps any kind of racial solidarity that Black officers might otherwise feel toward the Black community.” This observation is reminiscent of the one made in Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me ; Prince Jones was killed by a black cop whose prioritization of an inherently racist policing structure led him to racially profile an innocent man a...

In Emily Jacko’s blog post she gives a description of the starting point of the Black Lives Matter movement. She describes in depth the murder of Trayvon martin and the trail of George Zimmerman. While I agree that Trayvon Martin’s death was a major factor in I don’t believe it was the only cause for the Black Lives Matter movement. Earlier in the book Ransby describes the impact of hurricane Katrina in the African American community. Ransby states” Those suffering and dying in Katrina’s wake were disproportionately Black and poor. Americans watched as the US government’s blatant disregard for Black pain and death was on full display.”(13) This quote shows that the disregard for black lives had went far back as Hurricane Katrina. While Trayvon’s death was the most recent occurrence there were also other factors that went into creating the movement.

  In Making All Black Lives Matter , by Barbra Ransby, there are plenty of examples where racial acts are demonstrated by racist police officers, the FBI, etc. After reading the second half of the book there is one example that stands out the most. The Fred Hampton case really struck me differently and forced me to take a step backwards to really be able to take this in. On page 130, it mentions that the black community is still "bitter" about the whole situation and I can understand why. "Hampton was a youth leader in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and later joined the Illinois Black Panther Party, rising in the ranks to become its chair" (pg 130). He was a great leader and an even better man. He "built bridges between the party" and brought various groups of people together within the city if Chicago. On December 4th, 1969, there was an early morning police raid where he was shot and killed. Hampton's comrade, Mark Cla...

In Barbara Ransby’s Making All Black Lives Matter, the emerging Black Lives Matter movement is discussed in depth and analyzed from the roots of the movement. The murder of Trayvon Martin is what started this movement when three black activists started the hashtag on social media “#BlackLivesMatter” following the shooting. Trayvon’s murder is discussed in chapter two of the book, “An overly zealous community patrol volunteer, Zimmerman saw a young Black man wearing a hoodie sweatshirt and assumed the worst.” (29) Zimmerman shooting Martin, and claiming self defense during the trial was able to get off with no charges pressed against him. When the chapter states that Zimmerman assumed the worst, this points out the fact that race is the only thing that was focused on when the two came into contact. Following the shooting, multiple protests broke out including the “Million Hoodies Movement” where people came together to focus on the obvious flaws of our world. These activists wanted ju...