When Women Refuse ✊🏿
EPISODE SUMMARY
This week, we’re having a herstory moment! Professor and Chair of the Africana Studies Department at Wellesley College Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson joins the show this week to talk Black abolitionists and resistance. We get to know civil rights leader Mabel Williams, spouse and partner of Robert F. Williams, and how she and her husband mobilized Black folks to take up arms and defend themselves in the face of extreme racism in the sixties.
We start off with a moment for the cover of Professor Carter Jackson’s latest book We Refuse. It features Soldier of Love, not Sade’s chart topper, but the beautiful and poignant painting by Brooklyn-based artist Taha Clayton.
Disclaimer: While we’re happy that gun violence has overall decreased in the United States, it continues to be troubling. We’re conscious of how intense gun debates can get and want to stress that this conversation explores how communities took up arms in self-defense against lethal racism. We are not advocating general gun violence.
Remoy introduces Mabel and Robert Williams via their infamous black and white Bonnie and Clyde photo.Prof Carter Jackson breaks down the Williams’ approach to self-defense. Robert F. Williams slept with a gun under his pillow to be ready to defend himself for the KKK’s night rides: violent runs where Klan members went into Black communities, attacked folks, and raided homes.Our guest stresses that though someone like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached nonviolence and preferred it, he kept an arsenal of weapons in his home to be ready for self-defense against racist assailants. He’d previously been attacked and firebombed and became ready.
The Kissing Case in Monroe, NC was a turning point for the Williamses.
In 1958, James Thompson and David Simpson are respectively 9 and 7 years of age. They are playing in the neighborhood when one of the white girls kisses each of them on this cheek. This instance erupts into these young Black boys being accused of rape and arrested. They are beaten and isolated from their parents. Carter Jackson lends context for how terrifying this situation was for these young boys in a warzone-like environment and especially at that age.Remoy shares a few clips from an Oprah Winfrey Show interview in which James Thompson and David Simpson, now adults, recount the horrifying experience.Mabel and Robert make plans to defend their community by mobilizing their community into a rifle club including 60 members of all genders. They became NRA members.Mabel even protected her home from police officers coming into their home without a warrant.Carter Jackson stressed the importance of people knowing the law and arming themselves with that knowledge.Swimming pools were the sight of a lot of child drownings.Remoy shares a clip of Mabel recounting how she and Robert advocated for Black children to use pools safely.
While Robert still erred on the side of nonviolent resistance, Mabel was adamant that not using guns for defense was akin to suicide. She even let her sons participate in the resistance, which highlights an important point about how violence and protection aren’t as strictly masculine as we sometimes think of them as.
Mabel knew how the presence of guns was enough to deter potential violence. And she was right. Violence severely deescalated.Dr. Carter Jackson stresses the importance of Mabel and Robert’s partnership because Robert tends to get all the credit for these efforts.Remoy shares a clip of Mabel describing how she didn’t necessarily want the credit but just wanted to do the work.Dr. Carter Jackson and Samantha have a moment about the importance of highlighting all the people in the resistance and give credit where it’s due. Black women have always been soldiers in the resistance and that should be common knowledge.Racism is not the only thing folks were fighting. Violent sexism must also be challenged and that calls for women’s leadership.Dr. Carter Jackson brings up Rosa Parks’s home being a fortress of guns. Fannie Lou Hammer was also ready to use violent force to defend herself.Black women in general were aware of how powerful guns were even if they didn’t shout it from the rooftops. The gun was enough to make their position known.
Dr. Carter Jackson emphasizes Black women’s role in community protection. The lack of protection they’ve historically received has made them rise to the occasion of being their own protectors and protectors of the community.
In our Five Questions segment, Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson distills women’s anger and how they can use it as a driving force.
Our guest shares how anger is a big driving force for a lot of her work.She stresses the importance of reparations, not just monetarily, but how do we repair the hurt and destabilization Black communities have endured?Carter Jackson breaks down how she arrived at the title of her forthcoming book, We Refuse.Refusal is the why of resistance.bell hooks has a famous quote about Black men and white women being one stage away from the ultimate social power: white men’s power.Samantha asks how Black men and masculine people can champion partnership and women’s leadership in the resistance. Carter Jackson delivers a textbook-worthy answer. (48:02)We close out with a great note on how to get to liberation. Dr. Carter Jackson stresses how binaries and individualism pigeon-hole us away from collective freedom. She envisions how to move past that.
Thanks for listening!Referenced on this episode:
Audre Lorde's speech about women's anger being usefulbell hooks’s quote about Black men and white women each being one degree away from the highest rank of social power from her book Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a pacifist in the street but a gun owner behind closed doors.
Dr. Carter Jackson’s books, We Refuse and the award-winning Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence cover a wide history of Black resistance and women’s roles
F*** Your Slave Laws - RGP1-produced Not Past It episode featuring Dr. Carter Jackson
COMPANION PIECES:
The Marriage Episode 👰🏿♀️💒💍, with Dr. LaToya Council
OUR GUEST THIS WEEK:
Kellie Carter Jackson
Kellie Carter Jackson, PhD is Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. She has written and spoken extensively on Black history and is the author of the award-winning book, Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence as well as the forthcoming book We Refuse.
