Mike Brown’s Body: An Historical and Political Autopsy
Robin D.G. Kelley
Distinguished Professor of History and Black Studies
and the Gary B. Nash Chair of U.S. History
UCLA
Michael Brown, killed by Ferguson police on Aug. 9, 2014, is a casualty of a war originating over 500 years ago — a war to colonize, dispossess, enslave, deny rights of citizenship; a war to decolonize, repossess, emancipate, democratize. The Ferguson protests provide an occasion to meditate on the relationship between war, race, freedom, and democracy, especially in light of several events: the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War; the 100th anniversary of World War I; the 50th anniversary of the Selma march; and the latest “Freedom Summer” of 2014, from the #BlackLivesMatter movement and anti-police-violence protests to the war on Gaza. The lecture performs something of a political/historical autopsy on Mike Brown to reveal both the history of the racial regimes that ultimately left him dead in the streets for four and a half hours, but more importantly, reveal the alternative possibilities for creating democracy rooted in freedom, justice, and decolonization.
Robin D.G. Kelley is the Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor of U.S. History at UCLA. His books include, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press, 2009); Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (Harvard University Press, 2012); Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (Beacon Press, 2002); Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (Beacon Press, 1997); Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (UNC Press, 1990). (A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Hammer and Hoe, with a new preface by the author is due out in 2015.)
Kelley also co-edited (with Stephen Tuck), The Other Special Relationship: Race, Rights and Riots in Britain and the United States (Palgrave, 2015); (with Franklin Rosemont), Black, Brown, and Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the African Diaspora (University of Texas Press, 2009); (with Earl Lewis), To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (Oxford University Press, 2000); and (with Sidney J. Lemelle), Imagining Home: Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the African Diaspora (Verso Books, 1995). He is currently completing a biography of journalist, social critic, adventurer, and activist Grace Halsell (1923-2000), for which he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.
Kelley’s essays have appeared in several anthologies and publications, including The Nation, Monthly Review, Mondoweiss, Electronic Intifada, The Voice Literary Supplement, New York Times (Arts and Leisure), New York Times Magazine, Color Lines, Counterpunch, Lenox Avenue, African Studies Review, Black Music Research Journal, Callaloo, New Politics, Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noir, One World, Social Text, Metropolis, American Visions, Boston Review, Fashion Theory, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, New Labor Forum, Souls, Metropolis, and frieze: contemporary art and culture, to name a few.