In this online panel on “State Violence: Prisons, Police, Politics,” five scholars dive into the histories behind the contemporary abolitionist movement. Orisanmi Burton, author of Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt, challenges the dominant historiography of the Attica Rebellion, situating it instead within a longer history of revolt within and beyond New York State’s prisons and jails. Donna Murch will discuss Assata Taught Me: State Violence, Racial Capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives diving deeply into the Black left politics of the 1980s and 1990s and the emergence of an abolitionist feminist movement. Mary Frances Phillips, author of Black Panther Woman: The Political and Spiritual Life of Ericka Huggins, will share about the grounded praxis developed by Black Panther Party political prisoner Ericka Huggins to resist state violence inside the belly of the beast. Charles W. McKinney will discuss the long Black freedom movement and the edited collection he published alongside co-editor Françoise N. Hamlin, From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of the Black Freedom Struggle.

This event is online only. Please still register for the online event to note your interest in attending: Click here to view the program online at YouTube.com/@TheSchomburgCenter.