This interview with Dr. Nancy Wellington Bookhart (Paine College, Art Professor) and Dr. Sharon Albert Honore (University of the Virgin Islands, Communications Professor) emanates from their essays in my recent collection, “Diversity Matters: The Color, Shape, and Tone of Twenty-first Century Diversity.”
I had the opportunity to sit down with both scholars as part of my continuing examination of the memorialization of the Confederate States of America (Confederacy) with a view toward the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLMM) and its impact on the recent toppling of numerous Confederate monuments. Dr. Bookhart’s essay addresses this impact from the vantage of messaging through art while Dr. Honore’s essay provides a view into the impact of BLM on this issue beyond the contiguous United States of America, specifically, the Caribbean. [For their in-depth discussions, please read their essays: “Black Lives Matter: Dismantling Racism and Rewriting History in the Confederate Monuments” — Nancy Wellington Bookhart (Chapter 1), and “The Black Lives Matter Movement and Anglophone African Caribbean Impact: Transposition of the Caribbean Experience in the Complexities of the African American Context” — Sharon Albert Honore (Chapter 2).]
Both Dr. Bookhart and Dr. Honore are actively engaged in research and writing at the intersections of their disciplines (visual art and communications, respectively) in relationship to contemporary issues of equity, inclusion, and belonging within a diversity footprint.
On January 5, 2022, Dr. Bookhart and Dr. Honore sat down with me to discuss the Black Lives Matter Movement and its impact — present and future.
Emily Allen Williams: Thank you both for talking with me today. I want to begin by saying that I have received many positive comments on your essays which illuminate the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLMM) and its far-reaching impact on both historical and contemporary social justice issues. One of the issues that [has] emerged at the forefront of the movement is/was the still existent public display of Confederate statues and monuments in the United States and Caribbean. While the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, VA caused several statues and monuments to come down rather quickly, the murder of a Black man, Mr. George Floyd, by a white police officer seemed to breathe a different kind of urgency into the toppling of many of the “remains” of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. What do you see as the difference in the impact of the 2017 Charlottesville, VA devastation and that of the 2020 murder of Mr. Floyd?
Nancy Wellington Bookhart: I offer that the difference arises, most likely, from several correlatives. First, it was the right moment. Movements and paradigmatic shifts with such extreme awakenings occur as a result of the perfect socio-political storm. To illustrate, there were others who sat on the bus before Rosa Parks as well as others who marched and chanted peace idioms before King, yet a combination of things happen at once that set the stage for these kinds of drastic [re]actions. The Civil Rights Movement responded in kind to the death of Emmett Till [as noted by theoreticians]. The case of Mr. George Floyd’s lynching in the streets of America was ignited by the audacity of evil and racial indifferences previously precipitated in the murders of Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Eric Gardner, and many others.
Sharon Albert Honore: I do agree with your assertion about the “right moment,” as you phrase it, Dr. Bookhart. In looking at the Charlottesville event in 2017 — Unite the Right Rally — a social climate of racial and ethnic unrest was starkly on display with white nationalists proclaiming, “Jews will not replace us,” as their movement [based on media comments after the rally] appeared to find an ‘ally-in-chief’ in the then President of the United States of America. The leader of the free world fanned fires of mistrust and divisiveness among U.S. citizens during his single four-year term with evasive comments on the devastating impact of the rally.
Allen Williams: The BLMM clearly focuses on Black people and the numerous inequities and atrocities heaped upon a race of people for hundreds of years. I am extremely interested in how both of you discuss how the movement embraces and uplifts a wide spectrum of persons who have been oppressed, traumatized, and murdered.
Albert Honore: Definitely, so…in the ignominious footprints of the Unite the Right Rally, the murder of Mr. George Floyd (among the previous and numerous murders of other Black bodies), ignited pushback from a wide range of under-represented populations. Three years after the Charlottesville incident, massive crowds convened worldwide to protest, collectively, the openly blatant murderous acts by police officers. The murder of Mr. Floyd served as a symbol of disproportionate and discriminatory societal ills manifested in police violence.
Allen Williams: How does the work of the BLMM move across racial and ethnic divides? Or does it? And, why?
Wellington Bookhart: The firestorm of political protest throughout the world was the expressed mourning of a nation that had lost sons and daughters of humanity. Many people(s), still in the throes of grieving, had with [Mr. Floyd’s murder] ash piles heaped upon their head in the thrashing of their soul. And, subsequently, this deluge of weeping spilled over into righteous indignation that could not be contained. What we must begin to understand better is that when we march, when we protest, when we resist, and when we rise up in dissensus we do so for all people who are marginalized in society, for all injustices. Let us be clear; all Black lives are categorized, as far as white society is concerned, as people of color. For white racist societies, the only human value is cloaked in white physiognomy. We must be careful that in our fight for justice that we do not separate ourselves from others who seek the same emancipation.
Allen Williams: What do you foresee as the relevance of the BLMM’s work and messaging in the ongoing historical, turned contemporary, debate over the root causes of the American Civil War?
Albert Honore: Let us remember — clearly — that the BLMM is not in its infancy! It was organized in 2013 by three fearlessly focused persons — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi — in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer, George Zimmerman. Let us also not forget the prominence of the hashtag on social media from 2013 forward — #BlackLivesMatter. The message was there — prevalent — in our faces and in our ears. The BLMM continues to grow and to fight for increased efforts to educate all people about the dangers of hate speech, racism, misinformation, and the deliberate re-writing of American history, which includes the long and bloody history of the American Civil War and its root cause, the perpetuation of enslavement and abuse of Black bodies in the creation of American wealth.
Wellington Bookhart: I want to add to your perspective, Dr. Honore, by briefly addressing the timing and relevance of other significant movements throughout the history of the equity struggle of Black America. There have been organizations, institutions, and movements that perform differently in the quest for political freedom. Each in its own way [has] added to the historical landscape of that fight, that resistance, that insistence for political space and place. All of these contribute towards the greater end of human dignity and Black liberation. The Black Power Movement of the 70s differed from the Black Arts Movement(s) and the Civil Rights Movement. Movements are, expressively, what they evoke in term; they are moments, glimpses, fleeting passages that are not intended to be lasting. They respond to the urgency of time and purpose. But, to state that they are not lasting, as a negative proclamation, does not indicate that they are not effective. The aim and goal of the Black Lives Matter Movement cut to the heart of what the American Civil War was about and that is the price of humanity and body politics. Results Matter — look at how many Confederate Monuments have been removed from view following Mr. Floyd’s murder and the rallying work of the BLMM.
Allen Williams: There is so much for us to discuss here, and I look forward to continuing our discussion at a forthcoming conference. Just a few final words, please, on how you see the continuity of the Black Lives Matter Movement?
Albert Honore: Based on the current work and expansion of BLM there is decreasing evidence to support labels and projections of a faltering movement. [I believe that] the critics of this movement are short-sighted, non-essential, and resistant to progressive change. The constituencies of the BLMM are expressed on their website: “We affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black liberation movements.”
Wellington Bookhart: I would like to respond to this matter of continuity of the BLMM through a focus on their work as reactionary. For the most part, all movements are reactionary. Reactionary is to propose that these agencies crop up in response to something previously evoked — provocational. Reaction[ary] in a true state of its definition cannot be distanced from the political. It is political. There are war plans — strategic and reactionary. But, be not deceived; we are always [already] at war. So, the war is evident in the reactionary movements — Black Lives Matter Movement, Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement, Black Panthers Party Movement, and the hundreds of organizations created for political rights toward Black humanitarian dignity through the inculcation of legislation for educational and voting rights and [what should be] equity, rather named integration. All of these scrimmages on the field of racial equality are attempts at sustaining earlier advances toward the human project of emancipation. None can be disregarded. None should be critiqued as naught. Reaction is one of the strategic armaments of battle cry undertaken when we are made privy to the inequities and oppressions of peoples targeted [for the purposes of our discussion today] by race and ethnicity.
Allen Williams: I want to thank you both — Dr. Honore and Dr. Bookhart — for this important discussion. Much Respect…
