These Are Revolutionary Times

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• These Are Revolutionary Times
• Marcie Cohen Ferris

Click for larger view
View full resolution

"We who believe in freedom cannot rest (Ella Baker)," by Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. Letterpress, Kennedy Prints! 2012. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

[End Page 128]

as we move through these fraught days in America, watching with horror the incomprehensible destruction and death in Israel, Gaza, and Ukraine, I ponder if we are living in more historic, troubling times than generations before us. Certainly not, but the constant bombardment of images and breaking news on social media certainly make it feel that way in the face of rising global nationalism and far-right terrorism; a broken, illegitimate Supreme Court; the reemergence of colonizing "projects"; flooding, fires, and the hottest year on record; the attack on women's reproductive rights; the constant assault on Black voting rights, so powerfully explored in this issue; and soaring acts of Jewish hate.

In December 2023, I watched brilliant Jewish Studies scholar Pamela Nadell, cochair of my doctoral committee, testify before a congressional committee about the history of antisemitism in America and at its universities. In that same hearing, which functioned more as a kangaroo court, the women presidents of Harvard, UPenn, and mit were interrogated and called to "atone" for what Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC) described as the "intellectual and moral rot" at universities. [End Page 129]

Foxx and her colleagues used antisemitism and free speech in a circular attack on America's elite educational institutions as she called out the "race-based ideology of the radical left." New York Times journalist Naomi Klein describes this "doppelgänger politics" of the right who use antisemitism as a "weapon to wage war on the left." Within a month of the hearing, the first Black female president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, and UPenn's president, Elizabeth Magill, resigned from their positions.¹

These are revolutionary times. As Emilye Crosby and Judy Richardson note in their essay on the history of the Voting Rights Act, "We are in the midst of a tremendous battle. Will our democracy hold? Will we be able to obtain voting rights for all?" Benjamin Barber positions the continued Republican attack on southern voting rights—the cuts to early voting, strict photo ID requirements, restrictions on absentee voting, and more—within a campaign to demolish democracy, including the systemic undermining of the legitimacy of the electoral process. Yet, he reminds us that years of local organizing and efforts to counter voter suppression have steadily increased the number of people of color voting in the South.

I am struck by how history rhymes as we consider the early twentieth-century efforts of southern white people to maintain white supremacy in Angela Page Robbins's fascinating piece on North Carolinian Dr. Delia Dixon-Carroll. A sister of Thomas Dixon Jr., whose anti-Black novel The Clansman was adapted into the white hysteria–invoking film The Birth of a Nation in 1915, Dixon-Carroll fought for women's suffrage to preserve white supremacy and "the ideals of democracy." She believed white women were "potential saviors of the New South as new voters," who, by outnumbering Black voters, would secure white rule and "their way of life."

This issue's focus on southern voting rights activists and Civil Rights–era documentarians recalls the unforgettable images captured in my husband Bill Ferris's i am a man: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1960–1970. The book's title pays homage to the iconic image of sanitation workers assembled in front of Clayborn Temple in Memphis, Tennessee, for a solidarity march in 1968. A sea of signs carried by the protestors were chilling in the stark simplicity of their message: "i am a man." That message resonates today, reminding us to strip away the complexity [End Page 130]

Click for larger view
View full resolution

"Stop voter suppression (DeForest Soaries)," by Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. Letterpress, Kennedy Prints! ca. 2014. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

[End Page 131] of these complex times. As Palestinian children continue to die from the devastating bombing and desperate living conditions in Gaza, we must ask: Is not all life precious? Do not all people deserve...