Brooklynn: Hi Dr. Williams, how are you doing today?

Dr. Williams: Doing fine, thanks for having me.

Brooklynn: Yeah, thanks for being here. Alright, so we're just going to dive in with the podcast! My first question is, when did you decide that you wanted to study the Black Power movement and make that your life's work, and why?

Dr. Williams: That’s a bit of a long story but the cliff notes version is; it happened in graduate school. I was writing my master's thesis on the Nat Turner insurrection and exploring a 20th-century approach to try to find a group of people, or, see how he was being remembered 100 years after the insurrection. The group that evoked his spirit, his memory the most happened to be the Black Panther Party. I was also working at one of the archives, the Ralph J. Bunch archive, at UCLA at the time, as a graduate student, and David Hillard, who was Chief of Staff of the Black Panther Party nationalization Oakland was shopping the Black Panther Party archive of the Huey P. Newton papers.

I was hired and tasked to evaluate whether or not he had a definitive collection on the party, so I got to travel the country to see if I can find numerous, if it all, duplicates of what he had and I did not. And then also sift through those records. Born and raised in Chicago, two of the greatest martyrs for us growing up that was instilled in us as children was first Emmett Till, who was lynched in the south of Mississippi, and the second was Fred Hampton, another 21-year-old kid who was murdered by the state, both during the civil rights Black Power era. And looking through those files, there was very little on Fred Hampton, and so I changed my mind about writing about 19th-century slave revolts, much to the regret of my dissertation advisor, she was not happy about it.

And then I changed to the 20th century to focus on the black power movement, particularly the Black Panther Party, more narrowly focused on Chicago my hometown, and Fred Hampton, and I set out to write this narrative and evolved from there and here I am today.

Veronica: How did the actions, and the messages of people like Fred Hampton and other members of the Black Panther Party in Chicago directly influence later political figures like Barack Obama?

Dr. Williams: So Fred Hampton has a very unique gift of being an orator, someone who can unite the masses, who can spark people to the cause that transcends racial differences. And, so he is one of the chief organizers of the original Rainbow Coalition that consisted of this group called the Young Patriots, who wore the Confederate flag, the Southern White Appalachia migrants, Puerto Ricans called the Young Lords, and the Panthers themselves with original organizations, but they also incorporated the Student Left likes Students for a Democratic Society, another group of young middle-class whites called the Rise of Angry, and all these various forces: Native Americans, Asian Americans, all these various forces eventually will join forces in the coalition with them. But those three groups, the Young Patriots, the Young Lords, and the Panthers were the original Rainbow Coalition, and they saw themselves as a continuing Martin Luther King Jr.’s work. People forget that when King was assassinated, he was leading the poor people's campaign, this anti-capitalist march on Washington on behalf of all poor people that transcended race, so the Rainbow Coalition was very much in that spirit.

And, so as it continued to transcend and it grew and evolved, eventually folks like Herald Washington, who became the first African American mayor Chicago organized to work with the original Rainbow Coalition, especially after Hampton was assassinated. And they began to run candidates for office.

First Bobby Rush, the original Panther in Chicago, then Jose Tasha Jimenez of the Young Lords. He was actually the first Latino to run for office in the history of Chicago under this Rainbow Coalition banner. Then Herald Washington was elected the first black mayor and he created what he called his Rainbow Cabinet. He put many of those people that were in the organization in his cabinet. So for the first time in Chicago history, he added women, Latinos, people with disabilities, of course, African Americans, and others, poor whites, the Rainbow Coalition, who have real political power in the city.

And, so Jesse Jackson, who at the time had operation push was inspired by this, so he appropriated the name Rainbow Coalition, so if you think of the Rainbow Coalition you may think of the Rainbow Push Coalition. So, Jesse Jackson appropriated the title, a trademark that didn't belong to him, and then he ran for president in ‘84, and that's the same year Barack Obama moved to Chicago to become a political organizer. So, he was also inspired by many of these political actions on the ground, you know, tried to get his feet wet in those circles, but he was an outsider, nobody knew him.

So, he, I would say, failed miserably, but he had a terrible time getting people to trust him. So, he goes off to college, gets his law degree, and falls in love with this woman named Michelle, who happens to be from Chicago and actually knows all these people. So, she introduces him to those political circles. And so, Michelle doesn't get enough credit for her role in Barack Obama's evolution.

By the time Barack Obama begins to run for office in the state, he's very much in tune with some of the political figures and powerhouses in the black community in that way, until around 2000, when he runs for Congress against then, Bobby Rush, who was an original Black Panther creator and original Rainbow Coalition person. Barack Obama lost, he got creamed, because he ran as a black nationalist, whereas Rush ran as a Rainbow Coalition person who transcended racial boundaries.

And, so you see the trajectory of Racial Coalition politics, you can draw a direct line from Fred Hampton, all the way to Barack Obama, demonstrating the continuation of that particular ideology, but it's a continuation of appropriation. So the only politician that was actually married to politics was Harold Washington.

Both Jesse Jackson, even political strategists like David Axelrod, and then later Barack Obama, all appropriated ideology and the methods, the slogans, etc. for political gains. But it's not by accident, the first black president comes out of Chicago using Rainbow Coalition politics as his platform, it’s not a new phenomenon.

So, when he was elected senator and then later President, folks called it the Obama phenomenon. It’s more like the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton phenomenon and we can actually trace that backward and connect it. So, in fairness to Barack Obama and in fairness to Jesse Jackson and others, they will all say that they were influenced by Harold Washington. They are disciples of Harold Washington, and that's fine because you never get elected in this country claiming that you flew by the Black Panther Party, right, this is almost like committing political suicide, and that's fine.

But, Harold Washington, if he was alive, would tell you “I'm very much influenced by the Black Panther Party in this Rainbow Coalition that's why I created my Rainbow Cabinet,” and, so, indirectly, have a link to the Panthers via Harold Washington.

Veronica: So, kind of going along with the idea of the Black Panther Party’s messages being appropriated or translated by later generations, a lot of the Black Panther’s original goals were, you know, defending themselves against police and mass incarceration, getting reparations to black people, are some of the goals that are now a big part of the Black Lives Matter movement. So how would you say those original goals of the Black Panther Party are being translated now, would you consider that to be appropriation as well?

Dr. Williams: No, we call it ‘the struggle continues.’ So, as the party in the 1960s was fighting for those issues, there were people who came before them, who were also fighting for those issues. And here we are today as African Americans, and various circles, still fighting for many of those same critical issues. So we call it a ‘continuation of the long protracted black liberation struggle’. That's the best way to understand it, and if I'm teaching this particular topic and courses, that's the way I frame it.

It matters as a civil rights struggle not a black power struggle, but the long protracted black liberation movement, and ebbs and flows, and many of the issues that are important are similar today.

So, we live, for example, in more segregated units today than we did back in the 1960s, and a lot of that has to do with housing and schools and education, in that regard. And police brutality, right, the Panthers, the whole reason for their being is, what do you do when the force that is supposed to protect you is what actually brutalizes? What do you do? So they learned a lot from the constitution down to a local municipal code, when they began to police the police, in an effort to thwart police brutality, and here we are, 55 years later still talking about Black Lives Matter, still dealing with issues of police brutality.

So again, these aren’t new issues, these are continuing trends. Yet many of those issues that you articulated are being exacerbated by mass incarceration, crack cocaine, HIV/AIDS, the new covid-19 pandemic. So many of those health issues, housing issues, education issues, police brutality, other various forms of institutional racism are now being even more exposed with those new advents that were not present in the 1960s. We didn't have HIV, crack cocaine, the pandemic back then. We do now, and we get to see the long history of those kinds of institutional racism come into play and more salient more immediate means in our current context.

So yes, I will argue that it's not an appropriation on behalf of groups today Black Lives Matter, it is a continuation of the long projected struggle. So, every movement has been led by young people and this movement today is no different. The only critical difference is, it's led primarily by women but not just women but black, queer women. LGBTQ+ women are out in front, not just men. So, when we look in the past, you can name the Panthers, right? They’re mostly men. You can name some of the civil rights leaders, King and others, and it’s mostly men. Black Power folks right, Malcolm X, nation Islam, whomever, all mostly men.

But today, the leaders are still young folks, but women, and so you have that new phenomenon, and a new very critical approach has taken place. Now women were leaders then too, but they were mostly relegated to the shadows. They will always be the backbone of our movement, especially black women from those periods to today. And today is no different; they just get credit as leaders upfront.

Brooklynn: Following that, I think this topic is perfect for this podcast theme of Resilience, because resilience is a huge motivation for both the Black Power movement and the movement for Back Lives, do you think that there's a burden that comes with the expectation for black communities to be resilient, as seen throughout history, or do you think this is a very empowering thing for the youth, as they're leading in this activism?

Dr. Williams: Well, I'm a historian, so for me, it's important for you to learn the past. So, we are, as a people, speaking of African Americans in a general sense because we're not a monolith, but in a general sense, we have survival skills. We survived some of the most egregious episodes in history, from slavery to Jim Crow, mass incarceration, we can keep going on, just even this pandemic. We are survivors; we are resilient.

So, I would tell young people to learn from the past. Typically what happens is young people get fired up. They want to change their conditions and they get out, organize, and move forward without looking to the past so they can demonstrate that what you are trying to do is not new. So, look to the past so that you can see what worked and what didn't work so you don't make the same mistakes. So, you can anticipate pitfalls, you can anticipate how the state is going to respond to fight and your movement.

The young people I've seen, many of them have looked to the past, and they are inspired. They don't look to King and others for romanticism, right. No, they look to King for strategies, for methods that work, for the ways of applying his nonviolent, direct action to political campaigns and social justice movements today.

So, you do have folks doing that kind of work, and they don’t look to romanticize the Panthers, right, they find those particular strategies and methods, programs, community service programs, legislation, the ways in which institutions can be changed, policies can be attacked and changed as well, and adopt them to our current context.

So, I would look very, I’m very inspired by many of the youth, but I'm also very cynical towards the youth as well. Folks think clicking that like button on Facebook is activism and it's not. Thanks for your support, but it means nothing if you don’t put foot to the ground, come up with a program, and create those kinds of efforts that have made change. So, you do have some youth leading the charge in that way but most of them are mobilized. So, that's a catch-22 for me, very inspired, but also cynical and critical as well. I can do that as a historian, but the youth, because this is their movement too, they get to make the mistakes that they get to make, just like those in the past have done as well.

But, nevertheless, they are resilient; they are moving forward. They are looking to the past as a way of trying to solve the critical issues that matter to them, and the critical issue that matters the most right now is voting, in my opinion.

Veronica: Kind of going along with how movements reinvent themselves; one of the things that we were interested in talking to you about is generational trauma, and how that carries on through communities and how that plays a role in repeating some of the same issues, as you said, about the never-ending struggle for black liberation. Do you want to talk about that a little bit and how it plays a role in the current oppression of black communities?

Dr. Williams: Yeah, so that's a real thing. And, some of us experience it from home life, the ways in which our parents can leave the home to go off to work and have various traumatic experiences and come home at the dinner table to explain those things to us. Then, we internalize that ourselves, so that becomes some of our experiences and our social location affects how we view the world.

We get out in the real world and we have various defense mechanisms because we've had those kinds of traumas projected upon us, then we create our experiences as well.

As a historian it is very difficult for me. For example, I hate teaching slavery. I hate teaching that subject, that first half of the US survey, or the African American history survey because you have to talk about slavery. As a historian, one is supposed to be objective, and it's very difficult for me to teach slavery and be objective because all those traumatic experiences come back, and I could see, in my own personal life, experiences that I had that relate to those issues. As a historian, knowing what comes next, I relate those traumatic experiences back to those in slave trauma.

So, it's very difficult for me to teach that class without being very angry about what took place and the kind of atrocities the folks were faced with, at least with the enslaved. So, I try to avoid teaching that class at all costs.

So, my baby is teaching Black Power, civil rights, like the Black Panther Party and others. There’s an equal amount of tragedies, monstrosities, and trauma taking place in that period and in a more recent context because it’s just 55 years ago, it's not that that long ago, maybe some of your parents or grandparents experienced it not that long ago. You can see some of those remnants taking place in that current context with activists and the youth today; It’s like wow, these methods have not gone away, so that generational trauma is something that's real.

There's also ways in which folks use it to empower the community, so you take those atrocities, and get inspired. Look at George Floyd—that atrocity, that traumatic experience. That 14-year-old girl, who filmed that on her cell phone, broadcasted it, went viral, not just nationally but internationally—it was a child.

Without her video there would be no George Floyd acknowledgment, we wouldn't even know what took place. And, as this started the movement here, it started an international movement—around the world that everyone is affected by—that people hit the streets and so forth.

So, the world experienced that traumatic experience and it can have these kinds of reactions that lead some momentum, some movements, and legislation, fights for new candidates, and things of that nature. And so, trauma is very nuanced in that way it can have a negative effect. Most often it does, but it can be used in a positive way to mobilize, to bring people who otherwise would not get involved, who like to just click the little like button on their computers or just share things, but actually get them in the streets and protesting and doing something about it: run for office, which we have a whole host of people across the country, local and national, doing because of the George Floyd traumatic event. So, trauma can have an empowering effect as well... but it is unfortunate.

Brooklynn: So you just talked about how trauma can compound in your mentality. We also can see that it's compounded in our physical country, United States of America, throughout all of our systems. Do you think that the movement for Black Lives can be successful within the constraints of the systems that we have now, with these compounded issues over time; or do you think that has to be moved outside of the system somehow? How do you maneuver that?

Dr. Williams: So we look into the past, as a pessimist, I will say no; because of the constraints of capitalism. That's the only thing that matters in this country. That greenback, it trump's your religion, your God, your political ideas, your sexuality, none can come for that dollar, period, your morality, nothing comes for the dollar.

So, if I look to the past, all those who attempted to change the system within the system have had some gains. I mean, so we can say we have come a long way, but a whole lot still remains the same, unfortunately.

So, we go back to King, people forget that King was advocating for a revolution. Right? We need a revolution to change the whole system. The Panthers advocated for revolution, now everyone's advocating for a revolution. It was a revolutionary spirit at that time, just putting it into historical context, that revolution was taking place all over the world: in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and winning! So, it was very much in the revolutionary spirit.

To go back to King: King was saying, not only do we need a revolution, we need a revolution of values, that our values need to be changed, so that we can put the human spirit over the capital one. And so, will this change? Who knows. We have various legislations that were supposed to solve some of these issues but still did not include everyone.

The New Deal is an example of that—for example, welfare and the way in which affirmative action is operating. Affirmative action has been under attack for the last 40 years, but there's only one group that benefits overwhelmingly from affirmative action: white women! People don't see white women as a minority, they are. We tend to look at these issues in black and white, and binaries.

And so yes, as African Americans were fought for but they didn't only include themselves, folks with disabilities, women, all of these particular minorities are supposed to be protected by this legislation, and then at the same time today, who's leading the charge against affirmative action? White women, advocating against your own interest.

And so, I'm not quite sure how to answer that. That's a Nobel Peace Prize response, whoever can answer that particular question.

So can the system be changed from within? As a pessimist, one who supports a revolutionary change, I say no. Look at politicians today. Look at our congress today, our senate today. They’re more polarized today than it was even in the segregation period, like you can't make this stuff up.

I mean we can't even convince people to do something as simple as just putting on a mask so you don’t die. That's a fight and a political issue? So, how do we change issues to deal with race, and those on the Right now, are hawking on critical race theory, they don't even what it is. The ways in which we can even look to the past, places like Texas, that are changing the laws in education, that remove words like slavery from the textbook and call those folks “workers." These are the kinds of fights that are ongoing.

So, for me, no. I do not see the change in the system in that particular way because our states are too divided, our politics are too divided, and we as one can't come to a conclusion to talk about truth, where the truth actually lies, and then debate the merits of it. That's traditionally how academia works, that's how history works, right? There's a who, what, when, and a where, and that's never up for debate. Now, the how and why is what we debate in history, right? The how and the why can’t even be debated if you let those in power have their way now, those small little local state legislators have their way. So it's hard for me to see a change in that regard.

So, I, again, I am very much encouraged by the activist spirit of the youth, and the ways in which they do believe that they can create change, and I don't stand in the way of that. I never thought a black man named Barack Hussein Obama, right after 9/11, stood a chance to ever be President in my lifetime, but it happened, so who knows!