Today, we spend the hour with scholar activist and historian Robin D. G. Kelley to discuss the long and recent histories of racial capitalism, democracy, abolitionist politics, and Black anti-fascism—and how liberal administrations have held back the movement.

Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA. He is the author of many books, including Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class (Free Press, 1994), Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press, 2002), and Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century, co-authored with Dana Frank and Howard Zinn (Beacon Press, 2001).

He is currently working on a book project called Black Bodies Swinging: An American Postmortem (Metropolitan Books), a genealogy of the Black Spring protests of 2020 by way of a deep examination of state-sanctioned racialized violence and a history of resistance.

The Havens Wright Center for Social Justice is hosting a series of online lectures with Robin D. G. Kelley next week.

“The Price of the Ticket: Making a Killing in Cincinnati”

Tuesday, March 2, 12:30pm CT

“Count All Women’s Lives!: Abolition Feminism vs Racial Femicide”

Wednesday, March 3, 12:30pm CT

“Where do We Go From Here?: Abolition or Fascism”

Thursday, March 4, 12:30pm CT

Registration is free and open to all. You can register and learn more about these events here.

Cover photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash