Rev Left Radio - Black Bolshevik: The Life of Harry Haywood

Episode Date: September 10, 2019

Historian Dr. Rebecca Hall joins Breht to discuss the life of her father, the famous communist theorist and black liberationist Harry Haywood, as well as her own work on women led slave revolts. Find her work here:  https://rebhallphd.org/ Follow her on Twitter @WakeRevolt Our Red Menace episode on Harry Haywood's political theory can be found here: Youtube: https://youtu.be/ePM8XO4Jtmg Podcast Version: http://directory.libsyn.com/episode/index/id/11212034 Outro Music: Meditation by EARTHGANG  Check out and support their music here: http://www.earthgang.net/  -------- LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/ SUPPORT REV LEFT RADIO: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Our logo was made by BARB, a communist graphic design collective! You can find them on twitter or insta @Barbaradical Intro music by Captain Planet. Find and support his music here:  https://djcaptainplanet.bandcamp.com --------------- This podcast is affiliated with: The Nebraska Left Coalition, Omaha Tenants United, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center.

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. I'm your host and Comrade Brett O'Shea, and today we have a very special episode. I'm super excited about this conversation. I'm super excited to release it. We have Dr. Rebecca Hall on the show today, and Dr. Rebecca Hall is the daughter of Harry Haywood. Harry Haywood, as many of you might know, was the author of Black Bolshevik. a leading member in the Communist Party USA back in its heyday. He visited both Soviet Union and Mao's China. Towards the end of his life, he was an anti-revisionist ML, sort of, you know, learning

from the experience of the Chinese Revolution specifically. Harry Haywood fought in both World Wars and was actually a part of the International Brigades, the Abe Blinken Brigades that went to fight Franco and the fascist in the Spanish Civil War. He was also born in South Omaha. I, too, was born and raised in South Omaha, and in fact, Harry Haywood's childhood home is only a few miles from my childhood home, which adds an extra layer of, like, sort of personal interest for me. Malcolm X, as many of you know, was also born here in Omaha, so those connections are interesting, and we talk about Harry Haywood meeting and working with Malcolm X in Harlem in this episode as well. He did a lot of great theoretical work, and in fact, on our sister

podcast, Red Menace, we are dropping on the same day that this comes out, our episode covering his crucial text toward a revolutionary position on the Negro question. So my comrade and co-host, Alison Escalante, and I are working on his theory over at Red Menace, and on this episode, you're going to get behind the scenes peek at his life, and more than that, you're going to get a peek at his life from the perspective of his own daughter, his own flesh and blood. I think it's absolutely fascinating. I didn't really know what to expect coming into this conversation, but by the end of it,

I just adore Dr. Rebecca Hall. I absolutely loved talking to her, learning from her. She does raise some interesting objections to Marxism, right? Her experience with the Communist Party, her experience with a Marxist-Leninist father, you know, that's shaped the way that she interacts and understands Marxism. And so she has some interesting critiques of it from her perspective. And I would urge people not to, you know, if you are a Marxist listening, not to take a defensive posture when you hear those criticisms,

but to critically engage with them. I address some of them in the course of our conversation. In any case, I think it's important that, you know, we give her the space to speak and, you know, make her criticisms of Marxism. And then our job is to think through those criticisms and learn from the mistakes of the past because they were absolutely huge mistakes in the history of communist parties and of Marxism broadly. And so, you know, having the perspective of, you know, a black feminist who is also a lesbian, who is also Jewish. um there's so much in this conversation and i also want to be very clear that you know dr rebecca hall has her own career she's a historian she writes her own book she's writing a book um that's coming out in a year or so on women-led slave revolt she's doing amazing work on that you know frontier in the in the

history of of slavery and sort of the the machismo and the in the anti-feminist bias that is often anti-black bias even that's often crept into the studies of slavery over over the centuries of academic study. So, you know, we talk about Harry Haywood. We get her perspective as his, as his daughter. And we also explore her fascinating work. Harry Haywood's parents, which would be Rebecca Hall's grandparents, they were born into slavery. Harry Haywood was born in 1898. He had Rebecca Hall when he was 65 years old. So she's literally two generations away from her family being enslaved. And she talks about that with great passion and depth. And it's just a profound. conversation. I was just so happy to have it and I'm really excited to share it. But again,

you know, this is the biography, the life and legacy episode. And if you want to understand his theory, Harry Haywood's theory, definitely go check out Red Menace that the both shows are dropping at the same time on our different platforms. So I think it's thought it'd be a really cool, well-rounded way to approach the figure of Harry Haywood. So having said all of that, yeah, just enjoyed this conversation. I loved it and I hope my listeners love it as much as I loved recording it. So, yeah, here is our episode with Dr. Rebecca Hall on the Life and Legacy of Harry Haywood,

as well as her own work as a historian. Enjoy. I mean, identify as a scholar activist. I'm a JD PhD. It was funny, when I decided to go to law school, my dad was like, what are you going to, you know, why don't you going to mingle with the masses? and, oh, you can become a Philadelphia lawyer.

And I didn't even know if I had to look it up. But apparently it's a traitor to the working class. And I was like, no, that's not my intent. So eight years I worked with homeless families and did tenants rights. And then I kind of, I never really thought that there could be any kind of serious change that could happen within the legal system. But it's an important set of skills to have and to offer people. And it can be very empowering and certain.

movements and I really wanted to do that. But I found that it really is just so intrinsically corrupt that there's just not really a way to, for me, that I felt comfortable to continue operating in that system. So I went back to school, got a PhD, and wanting to study the history of race and gender. And I've taught, and I've gotten fired quite a bit for being too radical. So I've been an activist my whole life. I've been involved in a lot of different movements from anti-nuclear movements, anti-war movements, anti-partite movements. And now I'm really heavily involved in working with in-migrant rights and rapid response and community self-defense.

And I am working on a book project right now that's turning research IDO, wow, it's been almost 15 years ago now on uncovering the hidden history of women-led slave revolts, turning that into a graphic novel that is going to be published by Simon and Schuster. So, yeah, that's a little bit about me. That's wonderful. When that book on Women-led Slave Revoltz come out, we'd love to have you back on just to talk about that work alone, because that looks really interesting, yeah. It's really cool to hear about all your activism and you're organizing and very much caring

on the legacy. of your father. And I know you were born when he was in his 60s and he passed in his 80s, so you didn't have, you know, decades and decades with him. But insofar as you did have childhood memories with Harry Haywood, what was your childhood like? And how was he as a father and a human being sort of behind the scenes? So, I was born in 63, uh, in Mexico City. And, uh, we are living in Mexico because my father was blacklisted. I think both my parents were blacklisted and couldn't live in the United States.

When my mother left with me and my older brother when I was two, so my parents basically broke up pretty soon after I was born, but they continued to have, you know, some kind of relationship. I don't understand. But my experience of it is that, you know, he would show up maybe like every six months or a year and be there for a couple months, and then not be there. You know, the way my mom had explained it to me was that, you know,

he had never wanted to have children, which is interesting because it's, like, I get it. You know, I have a child myself. He's 21, and I can understand making a decision not to have children and focus on other things, but he participated in it anyway, so I don't think he gets a free ride on that one. But I think I have actually quite a lot of Fonz's memories of him. He was pretty funny, and he would tell some pretty hysterical jokes. And, you know, from being very young, being really young, he always sort of was giving me things to read.

You know, he never sort of questioned whether, you know, are you too young to read, you know, Angela Herndon's autobiography? Like, he gave that to me when I was 10, and I loved it. And he was, I think, he was very good at sort of teaching critical thinking skills in general, you know, the times that I did see him. you know, he died when he was, when I was 21. It was actually on my 21st birthday. And I had seen him just the day before. But after he died, I feel like I learned even more about his life.

And all the things that he's done, he went through. And I feel like he had a lot of trauma that he just did not deal with. You know, I mean, I remember him having, you know, nightmares and screaming. And, you know, as a teenager, I was like, well, he fought in three wars, you know, so that. But I think it's later, as my. I realized that he was constantly fighting a war. And he also drank a lot, which was definitely a drag. I don't know if he always did or if that was sort of a later in life thing.

But he also, you know, just he had these really funny stories and expressions that some of them were funny to be just because they were old. I mean, they were like literally like a century old. You know, and some of them it was just because they were just great expressions that I still use. And people look at me like, what is that? You know, like, one of my favorite expressions of his is, like, I would be telling, I'd be telling him about a friend of mine, you know, and I'll say something, and he'd be like,

well, where does she tend to bar? And that was just an expression that was generally like, tell me, like, about it, what's your politics? What does she care about? What does she do for a living? It's like a general, like, well, where does she tend to bar, you know? And it's like, I still use, I use that expression because we don't have a good one for that. I think it's perfect.

Yeah, that's awesome. I'm going to start using that. Yeah. You mentioned that he would. you know, often wake up, screaming from nightmares, and he was in three wars, the Spanish Civil War and both world wars. Do you think that it's fair to say that he probably had some untreated PTSD? Oh, I'm sure.

Yeah. I'm absolutely sure. Damn. Yeah. But I think also, I mean, I mean, he was fighting a war constantly against violent white supremacists, you know, in very scary situations. So even without the wars themselves, you know, him having PTSD would not be surprising. Was your family ever hounded by white supremacists that you can remember?

Oh, God, yeah. I think, well, I mean, first of all, I mean, one of the first things I've learned, I remember being taught this by both my father and my brother. You do not have to talk to the FBI. I mean, that's a weird first lesson, right? Right. So we and they were constantly prevailing our house, even at like eight years old, I could tell you, you know, I'd go out and like the only white people in a 10-mile radius, I'd like these two white men sitting on a bench across from my house, you know, wearing suits, you know, and they'd wait until, you know, my mother would go and then they would knock on the door and be like, where's your father? Tell us where your father is. And I'm like, I don't have to talk to you, you know. You know, it's like, I've been informed

I don't have to tattoo I was a coach kid You know And it would like slam the door on them But you know And they would like Tap our phone Like you could hear it

Them tapping our phone It was ridiculous Like I know The technology in the 70s It was like You know just the constant clicking You can hear them talking In the background

There were times when They were making phone calls Like My mom was making a call To arrange Our family risk going to China In 1978 We were invited by the Chinese

government and she was trying to arrange a visa through Canada because there we didn't there wasn't relations yet with the United States and the operator interrupted that was back in the day from the operators interrupted and said I've been informed I'm not allowed to let you continue this phone call and then the phone went dead for like two days wow there was that constant harassment and in terms of you know dealing with white racists and white supremacists I mean I mean that's part of being black in America but we were also actively involved in movements fighting that so we had you know quite a lot of exposure to the clan and clan threats and things like that i see uh you talked about how your father died on your

21st birthday and you know isn't that rude that's that is rude for sure um but you know i'm wondering like how you wrestled with his legacy as his daughter you know even especially as you're coming blossoming into your own career and political consciousness over time. When did you go back and really study your father, or did you ever? First of all, I think it's important just as a setup. You know, the thing about being raised by communist is, you know, they're very good at teaching you to think critically. You know, so I was constantly, I got, we'd get in trouble in the second grade

for not pledging allegiance to the flag. You know, I was just a constant little troublemaker. You know, I don't feel like I came to a political consciousness as an adult. Like, I feel like I just grew up in it. But one thing that they're not good at is teaching you to think critically about communism. And one of the things that I found incredibly annoying about my father was how incredibly dogmatic he was. And it didn't, and that didn't come to a head until I was more like around 16-ish, you know. like earlier he was like join the communist youth organization for the communist party Marxist

said he was part of and I was like sure I'll do that just you know my dad asked me to and you know it was interesting and I you know I did it for a couple years like from like 12 to 14 or whatever and then I'm like what is it with these people like why are they fighting with each other all the time and why are two people showing up at a demonstration and I mean already at 15 and 16 I was like this is really weird and I also felt like coming in you know growing up as a young woman, very conscious of issues of gender and, you know, being a feminist. And I remember talking to my dad about that and, you know, his rigidity about, you know, how this is not the primary contradiction and issues of sexism will wither away after the revolution.

And so I think I became really allergic to, I became allergic to Marxism or really any kind of dogmatic sort of top-down political theory and I think it wasn't until later I mean really later like probably I don't know maybe 20 years ago or so that I felt like I was able to get more of an understanding like you know and people would approach me and be like oh my god your your father was Harry Haywood and that's really annoying too like I suddenly don't exist you know so that so I think the combination of that sort of put me off of sort of of him and his world and his history. I mean, there are parts of it that always fascinated me, you know, his parents and grandparents

and that kind of thing. I mean, I'm a historian. But I think maybe more about 20 years ago or so, I was starting to really come to appreciate, I mean, I knew he was a great man and had done amazing things, but I feel like I got a clear sense of exactly how amazing the things were that he did. and incredible amount of bravery that it took and just his uncompromising and this I think is from you know

from reading what anyone else can read about it you know reading his autobiography and just you know coming to appreciate him and his legacy and I think that there's also been in the last maybe 10, 15 years or so the historiography sort of changing and there's more it more focus on black Communism or a communist in the United States.

So I think he's getting sort of more name recognition as well. Yeah. I mean, I'm not a 20th century person. I mean, I studied the 1700s. I mean, I'm really sure. Well, so that's incredibly interesting. And certainly, like, the dogmatism, the sectarianism, that is alive and well on the left and is a sad sort of long left-wing tradition.

But you mentioned that, you know, that sort of puts you off of Marxist, communist, politics. So I have like a twofold question. What are your politics today and how, if at all, did his Marxism and communism influence you? Like, I know you're not a Marxist, but did you take anything from the Marxist tradition because of your father? I almost don't have to answer that question. You know, I don't, I don't, I feel like I'm an anti-capitalist, very radical. I think that Marxist theory has been very good at diagnosing some of the central issues. that we need to face, that are problematic. But I think its implementation has been horrific.

And so there's something, you know, I mean, not entirely horrific, but not great, not something that we'd want to necessarily aspire to. And I think that some of the premises, like the idea that, for example, that the state will wither away, like states don't wither away. That's not how power works. You know, I feel like Marxists, and I don't. mean to insult you or your listeners. I feel like Marxists have a very, can have a simplistic understanding of the way of power operates. And I'm saying this not as a liberal

because I'm not a liberal. I'm a radical. I mean, I probably have some more anarchist tendencies than my father would have appreciated. Definitely more radical feminist tendencies than he would have appreciated. So that's my concern is I feel like I feel like Marxism has this sort of blocky instrumental way of analyzing the way power operates and without an appreciation for how it evolves over time and how it changes and shift. And so therefore, I think it becomes limited in its usefulness in terms of applying it like wholesale as a political strategy, if that makes sense. Yeah, I mean, it makes total sense.

And obviously, you know, I may be a Marxist. We have plenty of Marxist listeners, but we also have a huge content. of anarchist listeners as well and we've you know really had many episodes going over the differences we've had debates friendly discourses etc so that's just super fascinating and interesting to hear how that how you've been on that trajectory and how confronting your dad's politics has helped shape your own in that way i mean it's it's fascinating and i like hearing about it um you mentioned his you mentioned his parents and his grandparents and how you really focus on 17th century history etc you want to talk a little bit about his parents and where they came from

because if I'm not mistaken, they were ex-slaves. Is that correct? Exactly. So this is the thing that I think has had a huge impact on me, on me as a person and me in my work, my political and my scholarly work. My grandparents were born human property. They were born slaves.

I'm 56. I've asked around, I don't know anyone as young as me who can say that, But the fact that it's physically possible is really indicative of the fact that that just happened a second ago historically. You know, my grandmother died in 1927. Of course, I never met her. And did me either of my grandparents. They were born 102 years before me. And so, I mean, their story, you know, my grandmother's story in particular,

She actually takes up half a chapter in my upcoming graphic novel, which I wasn't expecting. She makes an appearance. You know, just her incredible resilience and her radicalism. And, you know, she didn't learn to read until my dad's older brother taught her. You know, she was a domestic for her whole life. But, you know, she was clearly brilliant, you know. And, you know, my father as well, I mean, he never finished eighth grade

because he couldn't deal with the racism in the school. But he was like an autodicact. He just, you know, he was reading Darwin as a teenager with a dictionary. And my grandfather, Hayward Hall, it seems like there was a lot of tension in the family around him being kind of a Booker T. Washington guy, which wasn't real popular with either of his sons or apparently my grandmother. And, you know, but he had had this very formative experience where when he was 15, which was that, so his father, this would be my great-grandfather, you know, house was attacked by the clan, and my great-grandfather took a shotgun and blew

this Klansman's head off. Wow. Beautiful. But his, I bet that was pretty cool. But, you know, but his mother, like, was injured and she ended up miscarrying, and they had to flee, and that's how they ended up in Omaha, you know. And then when my father was 15, my grandfather was attacked by racist, and then they had to flee Omaha to Chicago. So it's just this constant racist terrorism.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But, oh, but before I, I mean, and I do want to talk about, there's a story that's hysterical that I want to tell you about my father. So I'm a lesbian. And that's another thing is that Marxist in the 70s, but, you know, I came out, I was 17. I was like 1980 were incredibly homophobic like it was their party line right and so like my own internalized homophobia came from my background of Marxism not from like some kind of religious thing or whatever which is messed up yeah but when I was 19 I decided I need to come out to my dad

because he's not going to live a lot longer and I want him to know who I was so I wrote him this three-page letter where I told them a lot about what I was and what I cared about and when I was studying and whatever and I also put in also I'm a lesbian in there and I sent it and I didn't hear anything back then I got a call from my mom saying that my dad had called her and said what are we going to do about the Rebecca question

which is just typical I mean that's literally how my dad would talk So then I Then Like literally I think it was like Four months later I got a letter from him Sent overnight express mail

And it started out Like We used to believe That homosexuality was a symptom Of the decaying of the capitalist state But over time Many of the people at the forefront Of our movement

Like brother Langston And others We've seen that that gay and lesbian people have been I mean he just went on this whole thing and then like that was it it was just like a political analysis

of it was okay to be a lesbian because our position our position has changed I actually thought it was hysterical I mean in a way it's kind of it warped in my heart it was just funny

it was kind of how how he used his, the rhetoric and the worldview of Marxism and communism and political analysis to understand his daughter's own, you know, homosexuality. Exactly. We no longer believe it that you're a sign of the decaying of the capitalist state. I'm like, well, I'm glad we no longer believe that. Well, yeah, that's, you know, that's a fascinating, hilarious story. It says a lot about your father.

And it's also a sad truth about, you know, the history of many communes. movements and just many movements all across the political spectrum when it comes to that question. So it's really good to see at least, you know, in the 21st century, all the Marxists and anarchists and leftists that I personally know, you know, we do not put up with any anti-LGBQ bullshit at all. So I'm glad to see that there's been a lot of progress on that front. It's sad that it was ever a problem, but... Yeah, yeah. My understanding is that it got theorized from the top down somehow. to make it for the, you know, to get rid of the homophobia.

I'd like to know what that is. It would probably make me laugh. But I'm glad it's not there, too. For sure. I do have a question about your mother. We're kind of going way off script, but that's totally fine because this is more interesting to me anyway. You talked about your grandparents and whatnot.

He talked about your mother. What was your mother's relationship to Harry? How did she think about him and how did, yeah, how did that all work out? Were they on good terms, etc.? Well, yeah, I mean, from the perspective of them as my parents, you know, she did a lot. I mean, they co-wrote a lot of things that she didn't get credit for. And I think there was actually some things that he was trying to get her credit for. And I don't really know all the details.

My memory of them would be, they would be co-writing stuff. She would be typing. They would be arguing. That was like really my only. experience of the two of them in relation to each other. You know, she, she met him in the party in the 50s. She was a white southern Jew and she was quite radical in her politics and joined the party. So, you know, that's how they met. And they were together until he died? Well, I mean, they weren't together together. They never got divorced. I see. But I think, you know, they were

friends. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. I was curious about this because I was just thinking, of like timelines and like you know famous black liberationists your father was about 25 27 years older than malcolm x and about 30 years older than martin luther king i couldn't find this in my research but did did you ever hear of them either meeting your father or engaging with his work what was the relationship between your father and those big figures in the in the civil rights and black liberation movement struggles my understanding is that my dad did do some work with Malcolm X in Harlem. He was involved also in, like, Harlem fight back and a lot of tenants' right stuff.

So I'm pretty sure he and Malcolm X met and had done some kind of work together. But that's all I know. I've never heard of about my father meeting Martin Luther King. Yeah, I mean, it's certainly possible. And it's got me thinking about how he would have responded to Malcolm X. He had a complex relationship with any kind of black nationalism, as you might know. Ambivalent is a good word in the true definition of that work. Like, he understood the good points, but also saw the problems with it.

And I think, you know, and this isn't exactly what you asked me, but I've been thinking about this for the past couple of days in his position of this conversation. And I want to think about, like, my father's legacy in terms of believe, he had and that he worked to implement and how they are useful today in our current shit show the situation. Oh, can we curse? Absolutely. Okay. All right. Um, you know, he can, like, he can, he consistently fought for the belief that there could only be working class unity across race from a foundation of black power. And not some abstract concept of black power. I mean, real economic and political black power, whereas the kind of the force that he was always fighting against,

again, it's this idea that no class was the primary contradiction, and that, similar to, you know, arguments I had with him about gender, which, you know, which is probably why I didn't quite get why he was stuck on this, but, and that racism is a moral failure that will be dealt with during the dictatorship of the proletariat. His response to that is like, no, no, it's not. The working class community that's needed for the revolution that we all agree needs to happen can only happen for black people from a position of black power and it's not about you know unlearning racism and and so I really appreciate this sort of systemic understanding of race combined with its anti-capitalist approach so when people see things like j-Z buying a football team I don't even know what

did. I just seen something on Twitter, whatever. And I're like, why isn't he liberatory for us black people? You know, it's like, these are rich capitalists. You know, they're not here for us. Exactly.

You know, which was his objection to the Garvey movement. And I wonder if he would also certainly would have had objections to the nation of his law because of, you know, a lack of understanding of a class analysis. Right.

I think black liberation and black power being central to any kind of advancement, I think that's a crucial, crucial contribution that's just as relevant today as it was when he was writing and working. Yeah, would you say that it's kind of, it's fair to say that the sort of flexibility and depth of thought when it came to the question of black people combining with, you know, a Marxist understanding, wasn't, was not really present when it came to the LGBTQ. community or the feminist movement, right? It seems like he was more rigid and less flexible on those grounds than he was on the

on the black liberation front. Is that fair? Yeah, no, I think it is absolutely fair. And again, look, I'm not a Marxist scholar. So, you know, somebody could probably explain to me why it was internally consistent somehow. But I don't see it. And that goes to my own, you know, understanding of the way that race, class, and gender work together to shape and reshape

structures of power. Like, I don't believe there's a primary contradiction, period. And, you know, that's why I would make a terrible Marxist. But, yeah, I think that's fair to, I think that's fair to say. And nor is it that surprising, considering his

background and his age. Yeah, he was born in 1898. People don't realize that. Yeah, no, exactly. No, he was. From reading his own writings, And, you know, he seems very respectful of women and women's power and ability as comrades, more so than maybe other people of his generation would be. You know, I don't know exactly where this particular homophobic line came from about homosexuality being a symptom of the king of a capitalist state.

I'd love it if somebody would tell me where that came from. But there was a lot of homophobia coming from a lot of different sections, you know. My point being, I don't think he was backward because he was a Marxist. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's incredibly interesting as well because those same debates around feminism, around LGBTQ liberation and heteronormativity, black nationalism versus Marxism, all those things played out in the Black Panther Party, right?

The Black Panther Party obviously came after Malcolm X. There's a huge division between black nationalists and black Marxists in that party. And then some of that party's biggest failings were its lack of feminism, its heteronormitivity, et cetera. A lot of that was pushed back against within the organization itself, especially on the feminist question. But it's funny, those contradictions have always been around in the black community and the black liberation struggles in the U.S., you know. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, no, absolutely.

Absolutely. And that's one of the things, if I could just do a tangent, this is one of the things that I, um, I explain. floor in my work. Part of it is I think being a historian, I'm always sort of like, wait, but what was before that? But what was before that? So I didn't go into this PhD program thinking I was going to be a specialist in the 18th century. But it became pretty clear to me to understand race and gender and how they related to each other. I really needed to understand more about the origins and maintenance of slavery, and, you know, I had the law degree already, so my understanding of the way law works and codifies statuses of people, had me looking at these issues.

And one of the things that I became really fascinated with was, you know, what we, in graduate school we call historiography, which when I teach, even when I teach high school, I teach historiography. Usually people don't learn that until they get to graduate school, which is like such a few number of people, but it's so important, and it's the study of how history is written in different time periods and why, you know, like what the different investments are. So I've always been interested in slave resistance and slave revolts, and I think part of that was because of both my dad and my mom, you know, there weren't just books laying around, and I've always been a book person.

My mom, pretty early on, I mean, I must have been maybe, again, five, six, seven at the most, you know my mom you know basically sat me down and said look I want to make it clear about who you are you know you're black you're not half black you're black that's how the world will see you you're black and

you should be proud of the fact that you're black because no other people in the history of humankind have suffered what your people have suffered and still thrive so that was my white mom being kind of a black supremacist but in any case resistance and fighting back, of course, was, like, a crucial part of understanding and having some sense of self-worth or, you know, like, when I think about, you know, Jewish kids learn about the Holocaust for the first time, like, if they could hear, learn about how Jewish people fought back, it's crucial. It's just crucial to the sense of identity and it. So, anyway, slave resistance and slavery revolts, I mean, have always been interested in it.

And when I was studying it at the graduate level, you know, everything written kept saying there were no women involved in slaverables, that this was a man's type of resistance. This connects back to the sexes on the Black Panther Party. And I'm like, why does every book have to say that? Like, it got to the point where I picked up a book on a slaverbal, and it'll be somewhere in the first 15 pages. There were no women involved. Like, it was like, they were yelling.

this almost, you know, like, and I'm like, what is, what is this about? What is this investment in this? And I remember talking to my dissertation advisor, it's like, I want to see if there were women involved in flavorables. And she's like, well, even if there were, you're not going to find any sources. And so that's all you have to do is say, I'm not going to be able to do something. And so then I started looking and finding women everywhere in the primary resources. So then it became very interesting to me why this investment in saying that women didn't exist in slaverable. And to trace the whole history, actually, I mean, of course, the mainstream was there was no slave resistance at all because slavery was good for black

people and it was a civilizing force and people and slaveholders were so benign here in the United States. I mean, that's what people were taught until the 1950s, basically. You know, and then, you know, after World War II and the information about concentration, what came out, there was this whole, you know, it's called the Elkin thesis, this whole school of like, no, slavery was actually really horrible, but it was so horrible that it was this totalizing institution that no one could possibly resist. And that's how it was taught for, you know, another couple decades. And then you start to get some black people, men, really, in the academy, saying, wait a minute, no, there were slave revolts and they're writing about

these slave revolts. At the same time, on the national consciousness, you've got somebody like Stokely Carmichael saying being asked what is the position of black women in the black liberation struggle and he says prone and why is he saying that it's like there's this whole discourse that's been going had been going around for decades at this point about how the black family was dysfunctional because its gender roles were skewed and its men were emasculated and a female-headed household holds and that's what's wrong with black people and that's what they're poor and we should there shouldn't be any government supportive or financial whatever it's because of these deformed gender roles and so in response to this was this very masculinous our gender roles were deformed see and and that's the context in which the recovery of slave revolts in in what's now the united states was written and then in the 80s you start to get women's you know feminist historians and they're writing, and they're saying, well, if women weren't prominently involved in

flavor rolls, but women were involved in other kinds of resistance, which was more individualistic, maybe less violent, but perhaps more, perhaps more effective, you know, and that's fine to reclaim those, that type of resistance, but they didn't question the underlying premise that women weren't involved in the flavorable. And so that's what my work has been for the last 15 years is recovering, recovering that and explaining the investments and the connections today to how slavery shapes our daily existence, you know, how black people are seen as always already dangerous, where, you know, these cats like shoot and kill black people and they, you know, feel threatened by nothing.

Yeah. You know, or how black women are seen is experienced pain, you last, or there's this whole system of slavery that was designed where you get white women who give birth to heirs of property and black women who give birth to property, that's like a subhuman positioning, you know. It's how you create race through gender. So black women are subhuman in this way. Of course, they're less than she.

And because our society has never come to terms, not even like a truth in reconciliation, not even a basic education about this country's past, these things, you know, infect our entire country and its consciousness. Yeah. So you really are, your work really, is on the cutting edge of this long historical trajectory going from pretty much the outright denial of slave revolts to the over-masculinity of slave revolts to now the feminization and

real uncovering of what really happened in those slave revolts. So I think that's beautiful and fascinating and absolutely essential and important work. You know, it's grotesque to hear how that argument about the dysfunction inherent in black families was so old because you still hear that bullshit today by quote-unquote mainstream conservatives, you know? Exactly, exactly. Well, you hear from President Obama, you know. Yeah, yeah, he did. He did.

He did play into that. Yeah. You know, black men have to just step up, you know. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, it's just, it's a mess. You know, Andrew Davis had wrote, I don't call the article seminal. I call it ovarian because a woman wrote it.

Nice. I love that. The ovarian article on black women in the community. of slaves that she wrote while she was in prison in whatever it was 71 or 72 where she she really tries that does a great job of like address what what what is this with a black matriarch in slavery like how is it that black women have all the power in slavery like what is this crap and there's a great book by robin kelly do you know him uh no i don't he does his first book was hammer and ho about black communists in the south oh yeah i did hear that about the book

yeah he's the author yeah he has another book that's called yo mama's dysfunctional It's just a great book, like, of essays that also address this issue of, you know, what I call racialized gender. Yeah. I was thinking of a question as you were talking towards the end there. You mentioned Angela Davis. Who are some of your big heroes or big influences when it comes to, you know, black liberationists broadly way beyond just the confines of your father? Like, who are some people that have been big influences on you?

Well, I mean, of course, Angela Davis, who also was, was about, my teacher in graduate school. Oh, wow. I mean, she's also just a great person and great teacher. It's hard for me to answer that question, because maybe it's this background in social and cultural history, but I just, I think more in terms of sort of like trends in movements, like what I find really inspiring is that we're here at all, and I feel like we're here at all because of our ancestors.

So the idea that black resistance is this river, and it's gotten us here, and we're adding to it all the time. In terms of people who've inspired me sort of intellectually, I mean, there's a whole range of people whose works I really admire. Yeah, something that's really kind of beautiful about the way you answer that question is like it's not an individual necessarily that jumps to your mind, It's like the countless and nameless, brave people that have fought in the long and storied black liberation movement. You know, it's those masses pretty much that give you that inspiration. I think is beautiful and a really historical way to look at it. Yeah. Well, thank you.

Yeah. If you had to take one trait from both your father and your mother, one each, that you really love and respect or maybe that sticks out to you about who they were as a human being, that you've tried to internalize in your own life, what is like one trait from both your parents, that jumps to mind when I ask that question. From my father, an understanding from early childhood that freedom in the constant struggle. Sorry, I'm using Angela Davis' latest book title. That's okay. In other words, you fight over the course of your whole life. You know, it's not like there's like these moments and you're successful and then you give up or you stop if you're not successful or whatever.

I think I inherited that from him. I wish I hadn't had his optimism, well. He was optimistic? Yeah, he always believed there was a revolution right around the corner, which just made me laugh. I'm not saying I'm a pessimistic. I'm definitely not an optimist, all like that. I think from my mother, more of an intellectual tradition, she's a historian as well. But I don't know about it.

It's hard for me to just separate that out, because I feel like the more I learn about my father and my grandparents, It's the more I realized how brilliantly, how, what brilliant intellectuals they were as well. Like, I just think, like, my father's mother, you know, she hadn't been born a slave. You know, if she had been, you know, been taught to read in a timely manner and been able to go to school. I mean, you know, my dad would tell stories about how she would, she basically had a photographic memory. So I don't, I don't think of a, got all of this sort of intellectual from my mother's side because it's clearly my father and my grandmother. as well. Yeah.

How do you relate to your Jewish ancestry on your mother's side? Is that a big part of your identity? It's complicated. You know, I get it that legally and culturally, I'm a Jew. You know, my mother's Jewish. That makes a Jewish and Jewish law. I think that it's complicated because my mother was basically disowned from her family. I mean, she married a black communist in the 50s, who was,

older than her parents. Damn. You know, he was 33 years older than her. And so I didn't meet anybody and not said of my family until I was a teenager and had the unfortunate experience with me and my grandmother who was

just a flaming racist. So that's always been hard. On the other hand, you know, I have a lot of friends who are Jewish. It's a culture I feel very comfortable in. Like when I go to New York, the first thing I do is get to a Jewish

deli. Like, you know, my sole food is going to be mattobal soup. You know, it's like, and I think that, you know, being black and a Jew were mutually exclusive positions until pretty recently. And I don't know if it's social media or what, but I'm just

not seeing more black Jews around, you know, secular black Jews. And I also feel like I have enough going on. You know, I'm a black lesbian, mom. You know, almost feel like I'm fatigued if I take on this additional identity. Right.

It's kind of a weird thing to say. But at the same time, like, for example, now, I mean, I'm following it, you know, never again is now moving and seeing all these Jewish people taking to the streets and fighting ice. Like, it just makes me happy in a way I can't. I obviously feel connected to it because it's my culture. Yeah. You know, I mean, I wasn't raised religious. My parents were atheists because they were communists. and religion is the opiate of the people, which I actually agree with.

But, you know, Judaism is a culture. It's a very strong culture, and it's been very formative. And, you know, when I was a teenager, I finally was able to meet my aunt, my mother's sister, who was wonderful, and we had a close relationship, and she was very much like, you're a Jew, you know, like you're in my house, you're going to temple, you know, everything. It was just like, you're a Jew. That's all she cared about. You know, I remember when I came out to, you know, came out to her.

She's like, just marry a nice Jewish girl then. Yeah, and, you know, when I went to college, I went to an incredibly white college. I went to Lawthmore College. And, you know, I found, like, like, so many of my friends were Jewish, you know. That's fascinating. Yeah. So it's complicated. That's for short answer.

Sure, yeah. Well, I did not know what to expect when I was going into this conversation, but this has been an absolute pleasure. I've learned so much by talking to you. Oh, thank you. And I'm absolutely, like, serious about having you back on when your book comes out because that could and should be an episode in its own right. So, yeah, it's been a pleasure to have you on for sure. I'd be happy to do that. Well, we have each other's emails, and I'll definitely be in touch, and I follow you on Twitter now, so when that book gets released, you know, I'll be aware of it, and we can touch base. then.

Excellent. Before I let you go, though, can you just let people know where they can find you and your work online and where they can find your book when it comes out? Sure. Okay. So my website is braphall Ph.D.org. If you go to that, the landing page talks about the book. On Twitter, I'm at Wake Revolt, where I tweet about the book and anything else I feel

I'm tweeting about. Cool. In a given moment, which is usually fighting fascism and cute pictures of animals. Hell yeah. And the book, graphic novel, this is a new experience for me. It's a whole other world. And so the script is written, but now the art. And so it's going to be, I think it's going to come out.

Simon and Schuster picked it out. It'll be out early 2021. And that's as fast as they can do it. But my academic articles that are published on the topic, there are links to them on my website. So if you want to read like a history article about women in slave revolts, the one that's published is called Not Killing Me Softly. historical constructions of racialized gender. There's a link to that on my website,

webhall, phd.org. That's a great title, by the way. Is that a reference to the Fugis, Lauren Hill? It was a reference to revert a flat. That's awesome. Yeah, absolutely. And Sister Soldier, she has a great rap where she was like talking about killer police

and just like back up off me and you're not killing me soft. Nice. That's awesome. All right, well, I'll link to all of that in the show notes so people can go find you on Twitter and find your work. And I'll definitely stay up on when that book gets released. And in the meantime, definitely go check out those articles because there's so much fascinating history there, I'm sure.

But yeah, thank you again so much, Dr. Hall for coming in. It's been an absolute pleasure. That's been a pleasure for me too. Thank you. Okay, everybody want to be a nigger, but nobody want to be a nigger. If you think you're saying we can see a nigger, please be clear. I do not mind read I write the beat and have your girl write the seat train to me So write the D and get me brain and you can see the stains I place upon the sheet

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Latin's like that's my nigga White folks like that's my nigga Till it's time to die bye bye nigga And I don't get offended That what you're giving you hard time Come to your block and you hard line Why did I come at the wrong time But see I sent comments to the earth

Me I was humming at your birth I put colors on the spectrum I let you assign them worth Looking for peace in America Looking for peace when I stare at you Looking for peace in the map Looking for peace when I stare at you I'd be looking for peace in America

Looking for peace when I stare at you Oh Looking for peace when I stare at you You know I'm here for the nigga shit Whole life man, nigger is And my mama let a project nigga hit Set it up so when I meet the Reaper Hold and my son read the benefits

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One monkey, don't start no show. My niggas got goals and responsibility. So you know about any means, really mean, any and everything to the team. Nothing off limits, nigger. Ain't going to keep shit clean. Me and my niggas, them niggas, them niggas should have never let go free. Niggas got me talking to my teeth like I'm 50-sin and all three. Ain't no Kunta Kinti nika told beat

But they told me What it's gonna be Looking for peace in America Looking for peace when I stare at you Looking for peace in America Looking for peace when I stare at you I'd be looking for peace in America Looking for peace when I stare at you

Oh Looking for peace when I stare at you Looking for peace in America Looking for peace when I stare at you Looking for peace in the America Looking for peace when I stare at you I'd be looking for peace in America Looking for peace when I stared at you

Oh Looking for peace when I stared at you I'm going to be.