- I could have easily said, well, I won't publish it now in this political climate, except I do think it's important to publish these kinds of books because we need this information.

You can't actually fight for human rights if you don't believe it's possible to attain them.

- Welcome to "One on One," I'm Ian Donnis.

Brown University Professor Keisha Blain's new book explores how black women have shaped the fight for human rights throughout American history.

Her work comes as President Trump supports a backlash against diversity programs and attempts to race past instances of racial injustice.

So what can Blain's book teach us about this current moment, and in an era of breakneck technological change, are democracy and human rights harder to protect?

(soft music) Keisha Blain, Brown University professor of Africana studies and history and author of "Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights," welcome to "One on One."

- Thank you so much for having me.

- Let's start with your book and how would you describe the relevance of it for us today?

- Well, this is a sweeping history of human rights told through the ideas and experiences of black women in the United States.

I do think it's relevant because it grapples with a topic that, in so many ways, is timeless.

I think human rights continues to shape our society.

Certainly, we are still fighting for human rights, even as we have obtained some human rights.

And I think that the topic is one that really, I think, connects so powerfully with our current moment, both the local level, certainly at a national level, and even at the international level.

- You're right about how black women were able to make an impact in the colonial era when slavery was at its height, even though they were the most subordinate group in America.

How were they able to do that while facing threat to life and limb?

- Well, we see so many examples of black women resisting, black women pushing back against multiple forms of oppression.

In the case of Mum Bett, who's Elizabeth Freeman, I talk about her in the book as someone who, in the state of Massachusetts, decided to actually file a lawsuit.

And this is very early in the history, so we're talking about 1780s at a moment, as you point out, where black women did not have citizenship rights and were not even recognized widely as humans, right?

Within a context of slavery.

And Elizabeth Freeman decided that she was going to challenge the system, and she was successful in winning a lawsuit.

It's a small win, but it was a powerful win, and I think it was symbolic on the one hand, and it really helped to set the stage for black women's activism in the decades to follow.

So we see multiple examples of black women at the grassroots level pushing back against a number of oppressions and making a strong case that they should be treated with dignity and respect.

- When people think of slavery, I think they generally think of the South, but the North was very involved as well.

Brown University did a detailed report in 2006 describing how some of its founders and benefactors were closely linked to the slave trade.

So what role did black women in the North play in pushing back against the institution of slavery at that time?

- Well, we see so many black women as early abolitionists in the North.

You think about someone like Sojourner Truth, for example, who spent some time in the state of New Jersey, as just an example of how black women were not always situated in southern states, but we're still very much resisting slavery as an institution.

In the case of Sojourner Truth, certainly speaking across the country, using her voice as a powerful tool to talk about the importance of freedom and equality.

And so an array of examples of black women individuals, but also collective black women being part of groups, abolitionist groups, and certainly movements that were attempting to overturn the system of slavery.

- One of the subjects in your book is a black woman who is an investigative journalist and a crusader against lynching in the late 19th century.

One of her expressions was "truth is mighty."

As a reporter, I love that expression.

We hear an echo, I think, of John Adams' famous statement that "facts are stubborn things."

In crusading against lynching, how did she leverage the power of truth against the prevailing views of the day?

- Yeah, you're talking about Ida B. Wells, who was truly a remarkable journalist, as you point out to anti-lynching crusader.

One of the things that she did was she wrote about lynchings.

She investigated lynchings.

So it wasn't simply about pointing out that this is wrong, but she would go to various sites across the country to speak to families, to actually get to the root of the problem, to figure out why are black men in particular being lynched.

And she was able to disprove, I think, a lot of what many people thought, many people assumed, and certainly criminalized black men in particular, and said, well, you know, lynching was happening because they were involved in a number of criminal activities.

That was something that many people believed, and Ida B. Wells was able to show that that wasn't actually accurate.

And so to this point of truth, she demonstrated through research that, in fact, black people were being lynched simply because they were challenging the status quo.

They were attempting to build lives for themselves and their families, and lynching became a way to try to keep them in their place, right?

And so Ida B. Wells was certainly a powerful figure for emphasizing the importance of truth, getting to the bottom, getting to the root of the matter.

- Keisha, why did you write this particular book?

- Well, I wrote this book because I felt like when we talk about the history of human rights, generally, it's one that tends to be male-dominated.

We tend to focus on European thinkers and philosophers, and I'm not suggesting that we don't pay attention to those narratives, but I was struck by the fact that much of what we know about human rights in the historical context leaves out black women.

We certainly know that someone like Ida B. Wells certainly traveled across the globe to talk about lynching, and I thought it was important to situate her as a human rights activist, which she certainly was.

And so this is the story that brings to the forefront individuals who have been overlooked in the history, and also to push back against what I think can best be described as high politics, which means that the way we think about human rights tends to be from the top down.

So big organizations like the United Nations, for example, or Amnesty International, all very important, but what this book does is shows us that the struggle for human rights actually often happened from the ground up, and it was people working within their communities, people devising a range of strategies and tactics, and all of that was happening.

And all of that is important in understanding how human rights ultimately, I think, move forward both in the national context and also in the global context.

- To follow up on what you're saying, the Declaration of Independence famously said that all people are created equal.

Of course, many of the founders were slave holders, and there's this contradiction at the heart of the founding of the American Republic.

Some people see the Declaration of Independence as the beginning of the end of slavery.

How do you see it?

- Well, I see it as a very important moment, certainly in the larger history of human rights, largely because what I show in the book is that black women understood that they were not often included in this vision.

Certainly, they were aware of the contradictions.

And part of what's powerful is that they pointed out the contradictions, and they decided that they weren't going to be confined to what other people thought of them.

So even as we talk about this notion of all men being created equal, right?

Black women knew that most Americans certainly did not think about them, did not include them in this vision.

So, part of what they had to do was they had to make the case.

And so the book is about how they made that case.

It is about certainly the political organizing, the strategizing, but it's also the thinking.

You know, I think what's powerful about the book is that it's an intellectual history.

I spend a lot of time thinking through and explaining how these women crafted their arguments, and one of the things that they did was ultimately say, "Actually, we are humans too, and because of our humanity, we deserve respect and dignity.

And even if you don't necessarily include us in this vision, we need to be included in this vision, and we're not going to accept anything less."

- You write about some of the lesser-known women who played key roles in the fight for human rights over the course of American history.

Can you highlight one of those people for us?

- Well, in the book, I talk about Marguerite Cartwright.

She's a professor who, in the 1950s, becomes, I think, one of the most important writers who's grappling with human rights as a concept.

She's a correspondent for the United Nations.

She's traveling across the globe.

And what's interesting, too, is that she finds herself in places where black women are largely excluded, excluded from the conversation.

So, for example, she's at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955.

She's in Accra, Ghana, in 1958 at the All-African Peoples' Conference.

She's at places that are male-dominated, places where black women don't necessarily have a seat at the table, and she's there to take notes, she's there to observe, she's interviewing people and as I talk about in the book, what's powerful is she gathers all of this information, goes back and writes a series of columns for the black press in which she is sharing her vision of human rights, in which she's drawing on what she has heard, what she has seen, and making a case for black people, right?

Being at the center of this discussion.

And it's an example of how a black woman such as Marguerite Cartwright, who's not well known, still play this crucial role in the history.

For many of the readers of the Pittsburgh Courier, for example, they learn about much of what Marguerite Cartwright is writing about, right?

Through her columns for the first time.

And so it becomes this powerful tool to shape public opinion.

- On a related note, when people think about black leaders of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the two icons are Martin Luther King Jr.

and Malcolm X, maybe to a lesser extent, Stokely Carmichael and Huey Lewis.

Does that framing overlook the role played by black women in the civil rights movement of the sixties?

- Absolutely.

I think what's so powerful is when you look at the history, you see the way that black women were not only involved as activists, which is absolutely important, but as strategists, as theorists, people who were thinking deeply about how do we move the nation forward.

How do we dismantle Jim Crow?

How do we make this nation and this world better for all people?

And we see that in the case of Fannie Lou Hamer, as an example, a sharecropper from Mississippi.

You know, her story is powerful, and in fact, when you also study the history, you realize how all of these individuals are so deeply connected.

So someone like Malcolm X talks about how much he was inspired by Fannie Lou Hamer.

And so even when black women are not centered in the narrative, they are present, they are oftentimes behind the scene, so to speak, but they're shaping the movement, they're mentoring others, and they're doing very valuable work at the grassroots level that make it possible for someone like, you know, Martin Luther King Jr., to be visible.

We see that in the case of the Montgomery bus boycott, where black women are the ones organizing in Montgomery, Alabama, and they ultimately set the stage for Martin Luther King Jr.

- To bring things into the present, we see how President Trump is very hostile toward diversity, equity, inclusion efforts, and his administration has attempted to erase monuments, plaques, et cetera, reflecting the history of racial injustice in the United States.

How do you put that effort by the current administration into a historical context?

- Well, I do think it's part and parcel of a longer history.

When I think about this current moment, it's hard not to think about Woodrow Wilson for just one example of another president in US history that ultimately did similar kinds of things in terms of trying to limit the kinds of topics that will be covered in classroom.

We certainly see that in the Wilson administration.

We see efforts to limit how teachers integrate the voices and experiences of marginalized groups in the classroom setting, efforts to block people from having access to jobs and opportunities in an equal fashion.

So what's happening now isn't new.

It doesn't make it feel any better, but it's important to see the current developments as connected to a longer history, which reminds us that we've been dealing with these challenges for a long time, and we have to keep resisting these efforts too.

And so that's what's also powerful about the book is you see how women are dealing with similar kinds of challenges in their lifetime and how they don't just put up their hands and say, "We accept this," how they come up with strategies to resist.

That's a powerful lesson.

- I imagine that might speak to you personally as a scholar and writer whose subject matter is very much under siege by the federal government.

What is it like for you teaching this area when the federal government is so hostile toward it?

- Well, it's not easy, but I do feel a sense of urgency.

I recognize more and more the importance of the work that I do.

And even in writing this book, I could have easily said, well, I won't publish it now in this political climate, except I do think it's important to publish these kinds of books because we need this information.

I do think when certain narratives are being pulled out of the classroom setting, it's important to have materials circulating that will give students and their parents the information they need to combat a lot of what is happening in this moment.

So I think that even though it's difficult and it's urgent and I'm committed to doing that work.

- Brown University reached an agreement with the Trump administration that was supposed to end an investigation to antisemitism.

Some people saw that as kind of a fig leaf for the Trump administration's efforts against DEI programs.

What did you think of that agreement?

- Well, it's not easy.

I do think the university had a number of things to consider, especially because university leaders needed to make a decision that would ensure that we could continue doing the work that's important to us, right?

And including having the opportunity to teach the classes that I teach and being able to provide an array of opportunities for students on the campus.

And I think that they were, in some ways, caught between a rock and a hard place.

I think there are pros and cons to the decision they made, but I ultimately do believe that they made the best decision with the information that they had in front of them.

- Has that settlement affected your work at all?

- I don't think so.

You know, I'm certainly aware that there were a number of changes that certainly took place, especially in regards to how we communicate, how we present the material to students.

But I don't think it has been a major change in the sense that Brown has always been a place where we have emphasized the importance of academic freedom, where I've always encouraged my students to consider multiple sides of an argument.

It's not a space where we're simply trying to indoctrinate students, despite what some people think.

And so the agreement, on the one hand, I think we can argue that it did make things more difficult, especially the climate of it all.

On the other hand, we have been, I think, committed as educators to making sure that our classrooms are accessible to all, that our classrooms, our spaces where students can learn, can share their views, and can grow in their understanding.

So I don't think, I don't see it as something that has hindered our work in any way.

- Keisha, some of the more contemporary figures you write about, and forgive me if I don't get the pronunciation correct, Ayo Tometi, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, and Kadi Diallo, the mother of Amadou Diallo, who was killed by New York City police in a case that got a lot of publicity.

Tell us a little bit about them and the impact that they made.

- Yeah, so Kadi Diallo, as you pointed out, is the mother of Amadou Diallo, who was gunned down by New York City police officers in 1999 and I decided to include her in this book because I thought it would be important for people to understand that when we talk about human rights that it absolutely connects to many of the contemporary concerns that we're grappling with, and in particular, state sanctioned violence.

In the case of Ayo Tometi, as you point out, she's a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, and we see how her efforts are actually connected to what Kadi Diallo is doing in the 1990s and early 2000s, that it's a continual story, that it's an ongoing fight.

I wanted to signal to readers that yes, we have accomplished a lot, yes, we can celebrate our wins, but here we have examples of people who are still doing this work because we have not actually accomplished everything that we should have accomplished, especially when it comes to dignity and respect and the rights of black people in this country.

So those two women, I think, remind us of the ongoing fight, and I thought it was important to connect what was happening in the 1990s to what's happening today.

- I'd like to ask you about how some of these issues are reflected in popular culture.

After the death of George Floyd, I think we saw a lot more television commercials that showed mixed-race couples, mixed-race families, and now, in the aftermath of the posture of the Trump administration, we see a lot less of that.

What are your takeaways from that?

- I think, you know, one of the things that's so powerful about writing this book and just having the conversations around the book is that it's a reminder that a lot of these conversations are still taking place.

They may not be happening in the mainstream, so to speak, right?

And so we may not see a lot of representation on our television screens, but it doesn't mean that people aren't still grappling with these issues.

And that's the key part.

I'm seeing people who are organizing within their communities, who have reading groups, who are talking about, right?

All of these concerns, you know, even in this anti-DEI climate, I think we see us, for example, I was struck by how some churches across the country are putting together these opportunities for people to come and read and just talk about these issues.

Certainly, book clubs provide another space.

So my point is that even as things are shifting in the mainstream, it doesn't mean that people at the grassroots level are not grappling with these concerns.

- We live in a time of growing economic inequality and breakneck technological change.

How does that affect, in your view, the quest to strive forward on human rights and for more democracy?

- Well, I think on the one hand, these developments emphasize the importance and the urgency of doing this work.

On the other hand, we see ways that the economic challenges that we're facing in the moment make it difficult to also do this work because so many people are struggling to just figure out, you know, how to put food on the table, and it then becomes harder to necessarily, right?

Pull them into larger conversations about rights and dignity.

It's not that people don't care, but I think the economic challenges make it difficult at times.

But difficult doesn't mean that it's not happening.

I think that's the point that I wanna emphasize.

What I see are people being mindful of the political climate and having to figure out ways to communicate with each other, ways to organize, ways to support each other.

I think we see that, especially around issues of poverty and inequality.

We see how communities are supporting, how, for example, you know, black sororities are coming up with ways to respond to inequality at the grassroots level.

So I'm inspired by the creative responses, even as we see an economic crisis unfolding, as well as difficulties around how people are using technology.

- What do you see as the next frontier in the fight for human rights and small-d democracy?

- I think there's so many concerns.

Certainly, I'm thinking about the broader concept of protection.

I'm thinking about surveillance, right?

As we're even grappling with technology and how technology has seeped into all of our lives, and we're now at a moment where we're talking about AI, we're talking about the pros and cons.

And I think that there's a conversation to be had about how we are protected as individuals.

How do we ensure that, you know, even as law enforcement needs access to a number of avenues to gather information for all the right reasons, that we still have to make sure that individual rights are not being violated and that privacy laws are not being violated?

So, I see conversations around protection, privacy as one particular area that certainly connects to the current climate, especially in this moment where people are using technology for good and for evil.

- In closing, I'd like to ask you about a well-known statement by MLK Jr.

He said, "The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Do you think he's right?

- I do think so, and I think it's important to have and always uphold an optimistic point of view.

Why?

Because I think without optimism, it's hard to do this kind of work.

You can't actually fight for human rights if you don't believe it's possible to attain them.

And so we have to be mindful that even as we encounter challenges, even as we encounter setbacks, that all of that is part of the process of securing rights and freedom.

It's not always going to be a bed of roses.

There are times where you do experience pain and difficulty, and I think we're experiencing that in this moment.

But yes, I firmly believe that we are moving forward in increments, but nonetheless, we are moving forward as a nation.

- Keisha Blain, thank you so much for sitting down with me.

- Thank you for having me.

- Thanks for watching "One on One" with me, Ian Donnis.

You can find all of our past interviews on the YouTube channel for Ocean State Media.

We'll see you next week.

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