Langston Hughes, the great African American poet, said decades ago, “Fascism is a new name for that kind of terror the Negro has always faced in America.” Fascism can and has led to genocide. Progressive African American intellectuals, writers, poets, and musicians have had a long tradition and history of solidarity and resisting fascism and genocide, from Frederick Douglass to Gil Scott-Heron, from Sojourner Truth to Angela Davis, from W.E.B. Du Bois to John Lewis, from Paul Robeson to Amiri Baraka, from Ida B. Wells to Malcolm X, from Ella Baker to Dr. King, from Harry Belafonte to Sonny Rollins, from James Baldwin to Cornel West and up to the present moment where Robin D. G. Kelley warns “We’re witnessing the consolidation of a fascist police state.”

Recorded at the University of Massachusetts.

Speaker: Robin D. G. Kelley

Robin D. G. Kelley, a professor of history at UCLA, is a distinguished scholar and award-winning author. Among his many books are Race Rebels, Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times and Freedom Dreams.

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