Photo Credit: Zinn Education Project
by President Heidi R. Lewis
August 1, 2024
I write this blog from Colorado Springs, CO. Stolen land—the unceded territory of the Ute Peoples, to be precise—developed with stolen and exploited labor. I do so, because as my colleague Dr. Natanya Ann Pulley points out, acknowledgements are “more than identifying or recognizing someone or something. Acknowledging is also an act of honoring, blessing, celebrating, and thanking.”
“Black August is a time to engage in self-reaffirming action to advance our struggle for self-determination and national liberation and to commemorate actions of resistance, revolution, and rebellion while promoting an understanding and awareness of active and proactive acts of resistance.”
—Mama Ayanna Mashama, Founding Member of the Black August Organizing Committee, in “Black August: The True History, Culture, and Practice”
Next month, I start teaching a Survey of African American Literature course that I'm focusing on 20th century short stories, my favorite Black literary era and genre. Of course, we’ll study well-known Black writers like Richard Wright (“Almos’ a Man”) and Nella Larsen (“Sanctuary”), but we’ll also examine those sometimes relegated to the margins of even literary discourse, such as John Henrik Clarke (“The Boy Who Painted Christ Black”) and Ann Petry (“Solo on the Drums”). I’m so excited to return to my roots in Black fiction. But in preparing the syllabus, I ran into a challenge. My students don't have access to computers. They have to write everything by hand, including their own short stories.
That’s because the course will be taught at the Colorado Department of Corrections Youthful Offender System, a medium security facility that has detained over 250 youth between the ages of 14 and 25 since its founding 30 years ago. My thoughts and feelings about that are complicated, and I’m sure they’ll continue fluctuating. Those youth are in there, and they have a right to an education. So, I’m honored to play a small role in supporting their intellectual curiosities. I’m looking forward to introducing or reintroducing them to many of the Black writers who shaped my always evolving critical lenses and imagination. At the same time, I've learned a lot from Beth E. Ritchie, Gina Dent, Shira Hassan, and other abolitionists who have devoted their lives to carefully and continuously studying and resisting the barbaric, racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic, and classist ways law, order, and punishment are understood and practiced in the U.S. I also respect the ways abolitionists have imagined and worked hard to realize creative, communal, and humane ways of understanding and practicing accountability in Interrupting Criminalization, Critical Resistance, and other organizations and spaces. Our positions on policing and incarceration are aligned. Yet, I’m about to start walking through the doors of a correctional facility every week to teach. Guards will ask if my students have done anything to make me unsafe. They’ll randomly enter the visiting room (which doubles as the classroom) to observe our behavior and check for contraband. I’m sure I'll be frustrated when I accidentally wear hoop earrings as I often do (not allowed), when I accidentally bring my cell phone to the security checkpoint (not allowed), or when I accidentally try to access Wi-Fi (not allowed). Then, I'm sure I’ll feel ridiculous. At least I can leave. I will leave. But my students can’t, at least not yet.
These and other complicated and fluctuating thoughts and feelings are magnified by the fact that today is August 1, the first day of Black August. As has been the case since its founding 45 years ago, many of us will spend the next 31 days commemorating Black revolutionaries who were murdered or who remain incarcerated or in exile due to their commitments to Black freedom struggles. As a brief (and incomplete) introduction or reminder, August is relevant to Black resistance for a number of reasons. The Haitian Revolution began in August 1791; the Southampton Insurrection led by Nat Turner took place in August 1831; Caribbean Emancipation Day is August 1, the anniversary of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833; the Watts Uprising took place in August 1965; on August 7, 1970, Jonathan P. Jackson was killed by San Quentin State Prison guards at the Marin County Civic Center during an attempt to free the Soledad Brothers; and Soledad Brother George Jackson, Jonathan’s older brother, was murdered by San Quentin State Prison guards on August 21, 1971. In addition to observance and commemoration, fasting, exercise, and physical training (to the extent one’s body is able) have always been central to Black August. So has participation in the fight to free all political prisoners, prisoners of war, and political exiles. First and foremost, though, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and other Black August warriors advise us to study.
As members of the National Women’s Studies Association, which centers analyses of the ways “categories of identity and structures of inequality are mutually constituted,” we share in the responsibility of commemorating Black liberation struggles. And we must, of course, courageously and unapologetically ensure Black women freedom fighters are necessarily seen, heard, and studied.
I’m obviously thinking about Assata Shakur, who has been in political asylum in Cuba since being convicted of killing State Trooper Werner Foerster during a shootout, despite being shot with her hands raised in compliance, and who was also the first woman listed on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list during Barack Obama’s presidency.
“The first thing the enemy tries to do is isolate revolutionaries from the masses of people, making us horrible and hideous monsters so that our people will hate us.”
—Assata Shakur, Assata: An Autobiography (1987)
I’m obviously thinking about Angela Y. Davis, who was charged with and later acquitted of aggravated kidnapping and the first degree murder of Judge Harold Haley at the Marin County Civic Center, because she supported the Soledad Brothers, and the guns Jonathan P. Jackson possessed were registered in her name.
“This is the ideological work that the prison performs—it relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism.”
—Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003)
I’m also thinking about Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, who was forced into a psychiatric institution for being a transgender sex worker and who was later brutally beaten by police during the Stonewall Rebellion.
“I didn’t get to 80 years old being sweet and gentle. I’m no flower. Fuck that. I’m a cactus—get over it.”
—Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary (2023)
I’m thinking about former Black Panther Party leader Ericka Huggins, who was charged with and later acquitted of murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy charges related to the murder of Alex Rackley.
“If we call ourselves feminists, we must address [generational trauma] directly. Who are we waiting on? I know we are not waiting on the government to do it. Or leftist political officials?”
—Ericka Huggins in “Radical Commitments: The Revolutionary Vow of Ericka Huggins“ (2019)
I’m thinking about Joan Little, the first woman in the U.S. to be acquitted of resisting sexual assault with deadly force after being assaulted by Clarence Alligood, a white prison guard at the Beaufort County Jail.
“But in the end I will have freedom/ and peace of mind. I will do anything/ to help prove my innocence. Because/ of one important fact above all…/ ‘I am somebody!’”
—Joan Little, “I Am Somebody!” (1975)
I’m thinking about CeCe McDonald, who was charged with second degree manslaughter and egregiously incarcerated in not one but two men’s prisons after stabbing a man who perpetuated a racist and transphobic attack on her and her friends.
“I feel like we tend to box ourselves and fight for things that affect us directly, and with intersections of oppression I have learned that I’m connected to every fucked up thing that happens in the world regardless of if I want to see it that way or not.”
—CeCe McDonald in “CeCe McDonald Reflects on Life and Activism since Her Release from Prison“ (2015)
I’m thinking about Joy Powell, who became a police violence activist after authorities refused to investigate her sexual assault complaint against a correctional facility officer and who remains incarcerated on charges of felony assault and burglary despite members of her congregation testifying that she was leading a Bible study class at that time.
“I’ve done the work and there’s proof of it, but my question is do Black women political prisoners matter, too?”
—Joy Powell in “America is Still Locking People Up for Their Activism, Including Black Women“ (2021)
To that point, we must learn, say, and remember their names. We must study their writing and speeches. We must learn about them from their living loved ones and comrades. We must study critical takes on their lives, as well as the moments and worlds they collectively made and remade. We must teach what we learn. And we must do it again and again and again—for the next 31 days, during every Black August in the future, and throughout every single year. We owe that to all political prisoners, prisoners of war, and political exiles. We owe it to each other. We owe it to ourselves.
Per my strategic plan, “Reconnect, Repair, Restore: A More Thoughtful, Transparent, and Trustworthy NWSA,” my President’s blogs are meant, in part, to give members a chance to get to me. This one is exactly and only that. Hope to see you freedom fighters in Detroit.