Welcoming doctor treva lindsay. [applause] and welcome to my conversant for the evening im so thrilled, you literally gave me one line with this bogus, im going to honor that. What is the biography . . Authors and writers of columbus. Lu[laughter] nothing about carnegie, none of that. I dont have to flex in front of family. Imgoing to flex for you in front of family because thats what family does to. Im just so honored to be in conversation with you. Im so deeply admire and art of this book for me was also trying to grow as a writer. Grow out of simply and academically trained writer into a writer whose reading her own story. Bringing in history and bringing in theory and melding that into some kind of form that was legible and accountable to the community that its still accountable to. So your writing was so helpful in the process thinking about what that could be. Im going to start with a little bit of reading and will jump into a conversation and then move into q a and i hope you all have some Great Questions for us. Questions. Emphasizing that, all right. So i wanted to start here because theres a part of me that is to the point about what to read tonight. I was tempted to read in here the epilogue of the book as a love letter from mattia bryant. The book wasfinished. And in production so you can imagine when your book is already in production being like hey, i want to add Something Else to the book. You have to have an editor who really supports your vision and what it meant so i have 48 hours. Wato write something for her i read this and i not sure im ready to read that yet. Ready to write it but not necessarily read it but tonight i want to give you a little bit of why america, how this is titled. Obviously its a rift on the nina simone mississippi i goddamn but theres a reason i thought about this title and thought about why this was the perfect and only title for a book about the wearing down of black girls and women. In the nina simones autobiography a spell on you should talk to bobby fascination of civil rights activists medgar evers in mississippi on june 12, 1963 as an inspiration for her first test song. Before writing mississippi goddamn she pondered how can you take the memory of a man like mentor evers and reduce all that he was to 3 and a half minutes and assembled to . Evers was an activist and what most violently racist areas in the country. He survived notable attempts on his life. Shot in the heart in his own driveway after returning home from a meeting with naacp lawyers 37yearold evers perished 50 minutes after being admitted to an allwhite hospital and eventually refused and care. His wife had been one of the first to find him after he was gunned down to his assassination sparked National Outrage and protest. Deadly white supremacist left a note and three children Darrell Kenyatta freemans niece and James Van Dyck without love ones. He was a prominent figure in the movement but he was also a beloved father. Husband and member of community. How does one put all that into 3 and a half minute song. The other catalyst was simone pending and performing her first protest song was a 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in birmingham alabama. On sunday, september 15, 1963 for members of the local group of plan planted dynamite on the east side of the church. Five black girls were changing into their choir robes in the bathroom in the church on what should have been anuneventful sunday morning at their home. At approximately 10 23 am, the dynamite exploded and brutally killed 11yearold carol denise mcnair, 14yearold carol budget robinson, 14yearold adding a collins and 14yearold cynthia a wesley. Those killed became known as the four little girls. Additionally more than a dozen black people were injured including the younger sister of adeline collins, Sarah Collins was the fifth girl in that bathroom. The explosion blinded her in of eye and several pieces glass embedded in her face. The 16th Street Baptist Church bombing was a gutwrenching act of terror that shook civil rights activist, allies of freedom struggles in everyday life. Therefore. History too often remembers addie, denise, carol and cynthia as the four little girls killed by white supremacists. When we talk about the bombing we dont often say their names. We rarely talk about who they were before that faith faithful morning of unrepentant white supremacist violence. Denise loved baseball and was a brownie. She also loved to perform and use her gifts to raise money for Muscular Dystrophy Research carol wanted to be a singer sso the choir was one of her beloved training grounds. She loved reading and dancing and playing the clarinet although allegedly poorly. Addie may was also artistic and delighted in going door to door in white and black neighborhoods to sell kitchen items made by her mother to help her large family make ends meet. Cynthia was an academic standout and thrived in math and reading. She was in her school band as well. Among these young girls denise, addie, carol and cynthia was an abundance of talent, laughter and aspiration. Their lives were so much more than the seconds in which they were killed. A mere glimpse into the violent history violence is constant and ravenous. This song was her resistance. A forthright truth telling. The lyrics of mississippi got them are also about collective resistance to Racial Injustice and violence and a history of black protests here on march 24, 1965 simone perform the song tom thousands you the end of the selma to montgomery march forek voting rights. Notably a couple of weeks before her performance protesters and activists such as indomitable amelia boynton, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee member john lewis and many others were brutally beaten by state troopers and county posse meant as a attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus bridge from selma to the Alabama State capital. Luddy sunday as he cames to be known expose both a national and a global audience to the gravity of the brutality nonviolent protesters endured. Her participation at the historic final march was the feeding and more firmly cemented her as a powerful voice of resistance and as an artist whom we continue to return when we cant find our own words to capture the abundance of violence against us. Simone followed up her pro first protest anthem with two more politically charged and theme songs,n for women, and to be young, gifted and black. Mississippi stands out among her answer because it depicts both antiblack violence and the struggle against it. She didnt tell the story in terms of what happens to us. She sang about our fight against brutalization, calling out those blocking the way to progress in those demanding that black people be more gradual in their approach. Simone rejected any efforts that didnt trumpet for the quality or they kept the door open for murders ofs like the midco, addie, carol, denise and cynthia. It matters deeply the deaths of four black girls at the hands of racist violence propelled simone to write the song so scathing and critique of violence against black t people in the u. S. Frequently have talked about Pivotal Moment in both black freedom struggles and americas history more broadly ignores or limited acknowledges violence against black women and girls as powerful catalyst. Its worth parsing to buy violence against us time and again doesnt incite the kind of collective and sustained outrage expressed in this protest anthem. The nonnaming of the four little girls in the erasure by some of their murders as catalysts for the release of mississippi got damn struck me asri i reflected on how we talk about historical and contemporary antiblack violence in black freedom struggles. I always tried to say their names were referencing what happened on that fateful sunday. Addie, carol, denise, cynthia. [applause] [applause] im glad youoi read the per because i screwed ask about nina specifically later but im going to i i watched, there so my videos and as a career progresses and as the amount of time she had formed the song, you can kind to see the song perhaps whiter the sea has shifted and, therefore, the song means has shifted. Earlier it was never playful song but it seemed like there was exuberant interplay of it. Re and you catch later in a career its almost like a fury. Actually before this, and interest in now you are feeling because as we know a book, you live with the book for a long time. You immerse yourself for a long time and one of my mentors said this thing about people having hard time exiting the book because it still lives with in you. And have this kind of book live within your wondering at what stage if we are to map this along the nina simone trajectory, right . How are you feeling . What stage are you at interims of being able to celebrate this massive achievement also detangle yourself from what it took to create the art itself. Thats a wonderful question. So i launched on monday, had this event and im surrounded by part of my village there and theres this excited because this thing youve been working on an sitting with his out in the world. As the creator doo something beautiful about that moment. Also these stories were going to be with other people that with the stories perhaps someone would be inspired or inside tot think about how they are thinking about these questions into Something Different and chooseer to hope differently. Even in the midst of that its the actor and the book signing and people are like im a survivor, too. I know this all too well. Xy enzi happened to me. And it doesnt because i wrote a book about it and they know this because the method i talk about writing the book was about witness so i witnessed thesein things and i can document these things and put them into this book but they are with me. They are my experiences. Their experiences of people i love. Experiences happening right now. And last but the name i invoke in the space literally an example of the violence i write about in this book of it black women being killed in her home, and it hit close to home and its like im writing this book and the singers ongoing and, in fact, since i started writing this book it is only intensified. In the book a talk about a black woman being killed every 17 hours. At this point with the most recent data is an average of four black women, right . So what does that mean to mean that i would remain with that . And also to choose hope at the end and say im hopeful, i believe in us, i bet on us, it is her duty to fight and within committed in that antiblack girls playing and making tiktok videos and being their best black girls cells and blackjack expansive new cells. That matters deeply and that is a book that tells them whats your experience, youre not alone, that those of those of us who are right there with you also are trying to make the world in which you can do that without fearing whats next. Without the world wearing you down. Without being ableat to predict the kind of premature death you may have, right . Im feeling all of the feelings at once. It is exciting to have a book when i am thoroughly committed to fighting for black girls in k women. I know as we are speaking girls and women are being harmed. This book has made me more aware of that than ever and the never wanted to be desensitized to it because i was writing about it. Theres a way that reading story after story after story that you might feel like you start to distance yourself as a practice. I found the way i had to get was actually not to pull away but to pull closer because so many of these girls and women were not held warmly by this world. My job to someone document and this is hold them warmly and to hold that and all the processes of feeling that im going through as a way to come see this as an evolving and still evolving response to ongoing violence and trauma. Its also fitting we got our dear ancestor inre the vacuum on the wall because theres a quote i always think about from for colored girls, the speaker says being black and a woman is a a metaphysical dilemma i havent figured out yet. When reading this book i was drawn back to the code a lot because we are to believe what the speaker is saying in that moment is like i can only tangle with so much of this at once or else it will actually drain the life out of me. I think your book i guess to cut to the quick of the question is the requirement to thehe tank wh all that at once feels much more perhaps ever present and it did when that boo was released and im not saying thats the speaker of the book but when setting out to not even write this book would actually research it, was there an urgency that came through that desire to wrestle with all those things at once, to be black, to be a woman and to be alive . Let me be perfectly honest, right, i was running from this book. Wa was going to write was about the 90s. Black girl culture, different world. S i was really about this and be going to lie down because of covid. The first thing i wrote during covid any public space was about covid disparate impact on black women and girls which more or less came to be right initially, right, we saw certain impacts but the numbers we know now are more start. Both as an ellis entrance f death, in terms of economic exploitation in terms of deprivation and being forced out. So there was that. And then of course the murder of george floyd and the subsequent uprising that emerged out of that and then find out about the murder of Breonna Taylor. Its only in light of george floyd being murdered that we get a certain kind of shes murdered on march 13, 2020 and he is murdered on may 25, 2020, right . This brings this to the bear of the world a out. You are seeing rihannana and rihanna action unlike many of the women and girls here becomes kind of a figure within the movement in the ways that very few black women and girls ever have been in recent history, the no exceptional probably be sandra bland, senator blunt is probably the notable exception. But in doing so we know four of the black women were killed in Police Custody the same month sandra bland was. It is illustrated versus exceptional, but i am charged by this Breonna Taylor moment, okay, used to doing ancestors. Breonna taylor happens and am wondering and curious as to what is propelling the interest in her but also the secondary interest ino certain ways to ths larger moment. Im also thinking about 17 joe o black girl who films the murder of george floyd, darnella frazier, at the eightyearold who was with her as well at the time the witnesses this almost ten minutes nothing at of this black mans life. They are witnessing and witnessing and im like i still want to write this book though, right . I don want to write it. Im alone in my house and its just me and theres no selfcare outlet to writed this book because i would need that. The reason ive been doing research for years, ive been able to go out with friends or call someone andry at this momet there was no one to hug, cry with, go out with, laugh with. There was no touch so this seems like an ethical choice. This was for myself. Then i go home visit my mom tried straight from columbus to the d. C. Area to see her for the first time in quite some time, sort of the anniversary of my fathers passing any witness in the middle of these uprisings this young black man assaulting this young black woman and throwing her out of the car. And i tell this story in the book, i wont go into full detail. Wete stopped. He drives off. We intervene. He comes back. He comes back to the scene and she is in distress, very clear distress, and the cops arrive on the scene pics of the paramedics take her and im so figures at this young man for assaulting her, but im also so worried that these cops were going to shoot him. Te im stuck because i stopped to intervene to help this young y black woman who is being assaulted by this young black man and now i am bearing witness and making sure he is not harmed by police, or that any of us who are witnessing in this moment are further harmed by police. I was like i got to find a way to explain this complexity of what it means to feel accountable to everybody, every black person in that scenariot while Still Holding at the core of this is both patriarchy and antiblackness. And that matter deeply to me and it was at that moment i literally went home and said i think after write this book which she had just been sitting and waiting like okay. This is the book you need toep write and you also need to write it because you keep having his personal encounters with violence in your own story that you fume already to tell than you ever were before. Think about that as a way in to write this project and to tell these stories. So i committed to writing it and i wrote it probably the quickest ive ever written a thing. I started writing a chapter then, wrote a chapter in august and finish the book in december of 2020. I had all the stuff and thats not advice to anybody or like [laughing] dont be impressed. Grad students, no. My grad students here, no, absolutely not. Its the fact i just had it, like thats how i know it was supposed to be the book i was writing. It was just there. The words were there. The feeling was there. The emotion was a bear. The conviction was there. The urgency was a and i leaned into it and just breathe through it. Did wake up writing about it. Didnt go to sleep writing aboul it. I help space for it any particular moment and then i step away from it and go watch whatever i was watching. Something very unrelated to the work that i do. And filled that space in that way. And so it came to me, the book and i met each other. Yeah. Can i i say this is a brief detour, but my ears perked up when you talked about writing and we dont have to get into this, but i was working, i was working on a piece with a young black woman like six but to go and was like oral history. It just didnt come to fruition. Couldnt get enough, we couldnt get enough of the folks involved to talk but i put a pin and mentally like somebody has got o to take that or take that oral history or retelling of that. We dont have to get into that now but later. I have a lot of questions about the Research Process but maybe to distill it there was a single event recently that reminded me of the reality that people, particularly white people, think about violence only through interpersonal conflict and not structurally, right . Its only like because when it interpersonally rendered like violence is bad and it is good to be nonviolent. What i loved about your book was there was sond much used report into an understanding of structural violence. Which i went back and reread last week because i was so frustrated. I was going to talk about that public abrazo thrusted by peoples lack of understanding of how far violence has reached actually is. Yes. And by people who clearly didnt go to public school. I guess the question im asking is how do you continually run up against the walls, the limited imagination, the limited american imagination and propose Something Different, propose a different understanding of what violence actually is . Part of this was to get out what meant by violence in writing this book. There were different forms for o each chapter takes on a different form of violence, like the first what is Police Violence that of course resonate with people and i thought one folks could connect with in this moment, this is a way we are responding to ways violence shows up. Thought about targeted mass incarceration and what that looks like specifically for black women and girls. Thinking about deaths in Police Custody for instance, so that you have a Standard Land or a joyce cornell, so many come like we go on and on and on with names here, and also black women who are criminalized for surviving violence. So Marissa Alexander who very soon after the Trayvon Martin case the same prosecutor who ultimately in the case prosecuted George Zimmerman for the murder an essay that not killing, the murder of Trayvon Martin, you know, fails to get a conviction or whatever and then goes so hard at this black woman who fires a warning shot at and on record abusive acts, right . Shes like thats the dendrogram. So what else could have been injured. And if facing at best 60 years because of this. Actually convicted of this and eventually has a lesser sentence but it is mostly time served. Thats what an subtopic. So in that context the same prosecutor feels what George Timmerman did and this womens experience with violence and abuse was illegible. To her, or some of the names more common here in quite a few in ohio. Sophia has a lot to reckon with specifically in this text. What ig, realized as i was writing, medical violence and what it meant to write this and think about maternal mortality, maternal more busy, lupus, hair loss, asthma. There was so many ways black women girls and folks were just disparately impacted by a careless care system. And deprivation and unlivable living like poverty. How capitalism wears black people down, the distinct ways in which that happens. And then words. The words we used to talk about people and the words we internalize. One example of that for me that i been thinking a lot about recently is opioid patient. I thought about opioid patient a lot as i was reading articles and things about the Opioid Crisis and the devastation its taking on homes and families and communities and this healthcare response to addiction, which is exactly what we should have had, right, to addiction. Theres more to say there, but i remember being crack hoes and crack babies and junkies and particularly the kind of feminization of the ways that is racialized and even hearing it in pop culture, your mom is on crack rock, right . So what that internalization of particular narrative that criminalize the power and just evacuate personhood from black people. Understanding that as violence and the ways that these jokes, these phrases, these words have all kinds of power because crack or makes it a lot easier to criminalized d personhood, arrest, keogh and say no human involved which is an actual term that has been used in relationship in particular drug addicts and sex workers, right . Its important to think about expanding that imagination as you say of to encompass all of the ways violence is precipitated and manifests in our lives and in our world and in our inability to do that save for a hit you means that we are always going to be talking about the singular exceptional incidents as opposed to very, very historically rooted ravenous structures that are literally built on the exploitation and murder of black people, the indigenous genocide of this world, right, the subordination of the genders outside of cis women and men, the structuring into particular notion of the building. We are going continuously see this kind of violence manifest. And its in our loss, and our policies, in the ways we talk to one another, its in the jokes that are unacceptable orof the jokes that we should laugh at or laugh off. Its all embedded and they tell us you dont matter, your disposable. Your pain is illegible. We init is so illegible that we sit in medicine that black people i believe to you paint the same way that white people do. Thats still part of our medical trainingan because our medical training is based on extreme exn and exploitation of the slaves. How can a care system rooted in that ever be a system that cares for the homeless of the communities and of those people, right . Way to think about whats in your textbook. Thats why the battle about what we say in classroom and all that is violence, right . Its not just [applause] its poor education. It is intentionally violent and its the ways we can think about rhetoric and policy and laws and name it as a work so we are able to do Something Different in and imagine a world that is more different and more caring and more loving and more just. I really [applause]e i really appreciated when the book open is about to hope which is interesting because im a bit cynical probably, or at least ii would be considered cynical by most people. When the book opened itself to hope i was really interested in how you build that bridge seamlessly. And because a book didnt necessarily close with hope. It was kind of an the like third act if when you think about the psychic four act project. Just from a class said what ime interested in the placement. Yeah. So the book came in because the first it was a book that had no hope and actually i know thats not me, right . This book is something that is intentionally reflecting who i am and my perception of the world. I dont do that without hope. I say that like hope is not open change. No shade. All shades. But i moved through it with what miriam carver called hope as the discipline. And that can also relates back to our duty to fight for freedom. The belief that it is the belief in going back several times that guides Harriet Tubman and other conductors along the underground railroad, because of the collective who takes their name from Harriet Tubman in liberating over 700 enslaved people in South Carolina that they believeve Something Else ws possible. They a believed of the worlds were possible. So hope for me is saying against all of this, and only at a lot of what this is and is still not exhaustive, that my belief in us is stronger than the lies the systems tell us. [applause] and for me i think of myself already doing ancestor work. So the things i do now or what other folks who come along if we dont kill this planet before then, that inherit, whatever we build and then get to imagine new things. So for me the discipline is not temporarily bound, right, so its not about being my ancestors wildest dreams as much as understanding that they had dreams and that the ability to do that means we push forward in particular ways, and that my belief and love of black people, of marginalized folks, of folks on the margins of the margins supersedes all of the hate and the harm in the violence that in cases these worlds that we currently reside in. But these worlds can bei different. I have to believe that for me. I have to believe otherwise is possible, right . The fourth act with the epilogue which is the love letters was about like this is what were up against, right . I didnt want to make it liket hope, do it, right . But more so like this is what we have to hope alongside, the realities and what puts in that hope is that a hope that i can create a world in which future are still not here. Theres no justice forus her. Theres no justice for any of these people that im talking about whose lives have been snuffed out. We have to build a more just world in honor of the lives that they had. Thats what is lifeaffirming about that. When a hand in the epilogue of saying i promise to keep fighting for the world you deserved, right, thats the hope that it actually can create the world that she deserved. And that so many of the black women and girls and gender expensive people in my book deserved. This is a good runway, i write about the picture Trayvon Martin at space camp, and when we lost michalak, there are beautiful beaches of her on tiktok doing hair and makeup. These things that seem to exist insi opposition to the narrativs that exist when black folks die, take a young black folks, particularly young black women. But the flipside of that its like, that isnt to say i dont get pleasure out of seeing these folks alive. But the flipside of that is maybe two weeks ago i read about or watched a video about this center, this kind of safe housing space where black folks and black trans folks who are old, who are elders just kind of like a live, kind of like live in peace, you know what i mean . It made me once again consider and reconsider that some of the worst work that happens is this embedding of an understanding that all we do is die and no one lived a full life beyond a certain point. Even though we all, many of us in this room know elders come have elders, love elders, care for elders, its really insidious, something really insidious about how even honoring folks who at the margins like black folks who are at the margins of the margins reinforces understanding that life has a clear limit. Yeah. And i think about that. I remember there was a statistic a few years ago floating around and the speaks to this, that the average lifespan for black trans woman was 35 years i kept looking for the citation for this, the source of this, like back it up. I need to back this up because im using it at a hearing get an it is the shoddy is study, right . I understood the impulse because black trans women are dying and is so important to talk about. So many of the things were talking about, say its like america has aeo cold come like people got pneumonia, black trans womende are on a deathbed. Like that is narrative people trying to drive home. However, what does it mean to continuously hear that as a black trans woman and is untrue . What does that mean that then you imbibe this idea of eldership in your 20s as a way of moving through the world and thinking through black eight as always and ever connected to death and murder and the rapacious notice of antiblackness and misogyny noir noir. I had to take a step back from that and think about what is the way in this book to still hold that and not say like a for thinking of races in the way premature death operates, theres a cleard connection abot predisposition towards premature death and getll black people defied that all the time. We create worlds in our communities to care for one another to ensure that we make it to our 90s, that we make it and have that kind of sucks sort and sees lifeaffirming examples that we see elder hood and what that means. Finding thesese moments for each of these people i as you know in the reading i did a saying about these girls thaty told you who they were in life so they also are not just objects of the study and not people who were killed about were people whoho were living and are snuffed out by these forces. But these communities around them are still living. The young girl i talk about who is hit in the glass, with the anniversary comes up its like hey, still here. What does it mean, right . Always reminding us you still here. Every year, she has to remind his shia still here. Thats so important to think about that thosese who are still here are charged with that and she also sits with a very particular vicious memory of four girls that she was with and shes the one that survived, right . I think theres both life confirming anyways i talk about and also acknowledging that like black life creates an love and engages and imagines and does and does and does and does and does, right . Thats why wanted to write a 90s 90s but to talk about all the things we have been doing and all the stuff we do any Amazing Things we do in spite of, right . I know where any of against time for audience questions which is sad because of so much more but i want ask a boring craft question because i was really in all of how writing history, your historian which shows up inyo your work in ways that i appreciate, someone who is like a complete or a historian of nonimports almost. I am a historian of things that are important to really other people. There are points 100 and this book where i was like this is a lot of history but its not dense. Its that overwhelming. I dont think i feel like im waiting through the deep end of the pool. Its because i just really love how gently you inserted yourself in your own stories and allowed for the kind of even though its on the page, the current oral tradition, like a relationship with the oral tradition or know someone who is passed in oral tradition, and understand which makes none of our history bland i think. But it is to hard to transmitto actual difficult histories onto a page while still saying, and also here is me. The stakes are what they are because i am not detached from this and here is the story of my life. What was the decisionmaking process on when to insert herself and went to pull back and go for kind of like deep in history . So i wanted you to feel like youre in a conversation with me, and if youre in a conversation with me youre going to get ayt little bit of everything here i amom going to draw some history. Im going to, ive got a concept and am probably going to make it personal and have this relate ability to it. I have wanted to feel like im sitting here talking to you and then there are moments where i pull away kind of just talk about it and then i come back to you again. So for me the ability to move through it in that way meant finding this balance between heres the archives, heres how i process in the archives come here some tools to process the archives, and heres me figuring this out and processing through this and talking about some of my anxieties as im writing the book. I talk about worrying about this being weaponized against black men and boys in particular ways when a talk w about intercommunl violence. What about the criminalization of black people broadly. I say that in the book. I dont hold the back because how a going to write this . Maybe i should write i feel this way, to let you know the anxiety i feel writing this is part of what makes this work, do what it does. Its part of i have anxiety because i understand the stakes of what it means to add any kind of criminalizing narrative that you would becomed mythologizing narrative and narratives and used to justify, justification by based on all logic and fantasy. See what you did there . That means you are exactly what we said you were. And so my concerns about that, the rhythm of that chapter im a dancer by training, so finding particular kind of rhythms and obviously you can see by my movements here that the rhythm ofth that, the way it reads with that tension, push and pull to really process through what it means, to call in a certain kind of violence that feel so close to home. And knowing aot lot of nonblack people will be reading this. And so what is a way i talk about our business in front of strangers who are often already apt to read us in particular ways. And so i hate to say that i was preoccupied with whiteness or white people. I like to think im someone who is not what it was preoccupied with black people and the way that gets taken up because im talking about our family and our communities. Before we go to the audience i really truly want to say its not lost on me that this is a monumental book that was a heavy emotional this and is not lostle on me that he talked a bit about it backstage but coming out of the book and completing it in feeling good and having to revisit it afterin it takes a minute for this to come out. Like it is out next month. Like albums, but i want to express just immenseud gratitude because i think any book that is his heavy of an Emotional Depth and the required this much work like actual labor, to be seen to it as much care, as much thoughtfulness and this much rigor is a real gift to our people, and im really thankful for that. Im thankful for your work. Thank you. [applause]. Congratulations. If people have questions, we had a mic. We have a mic stand appear if it would like to ask a question, please trysl to keep the middle aisle clear for the cameras. Walk around. You cant up and get it easily we do have a couple of mics we can regret so please raise your hand or walk m up to the mic. My bad, i didnt know were supposed to keep the middle clear. I walked all up and down the middle earlier. Okay. Hi, dr. Lindsey. Thank you so much for your work, this moment. Its an honor to be in this room. My question, im really interested in how you handled and engaged and read this archive with this idea of witness that you been talking about an witness and all these black women and girls with care, with gentleness. I i would love tolk hear you tak more about how you put that forth in practice and practice and in the writing of this work and in your work in general. Thank you. Thank you. So there are a couple of things that were really essential for me. Someone if you notice is the part that i read, i referred everyone by the first game, and some of that is a subtle thing of the way that you create intimacy with a person, with the subjectso but also often when we are using last end with black people we are using it to criminalize or to identify a perpetrator or to do that so i notice, for instance, we talk about a case like will say the Trayvon Martin case and the George Zimmerman trial. Theres a way we do that. Its the rodney king trial. I took anyone to tell you the four officer who arei charged with his killing. I mean, right . So for me that intimacy of that, like what were their names, what did they do . Who were they before this spectacularec moment . Ie, only know them because of ts spectacular moment. There arelk people in book becae of talked about personal experiences that you know before the moment of encounter but most of the people in the book i dont. Then it was on me as both a historian and a someone investing in this in hid other things about them to tell a little bit about who they were, who were the people who loved them, who cared about them, who feel this differently than i do even a someone who deeply cares about what happens to them but they are still not my kids, right, in that intimate way that we think about kinship. So what does it mean to build a robust kinship with the figures of myoo book . And that fores me was the proces of witnessing and thinking about it and why i brought my own story active and pointser to it like what with the emotional registers i went to after Sexual Violence encounter in my life . What did it mean to lose a friend to domestic violence, the homicide . What did he mean to encounter classmates were in the same d. C. Shelter where lisa red disappeared from in washington, d. C. Andhe think about the unhoused children who in my school and the ways they were talked about and treated in the spaces because they were an house, right . So that witnessing came from my own experiences with certain encounters and my attempt to hold the kinds of intimacies and emotional connectivity to each subject in a particular way that honored their lives and also honored the fullness of the communities in which they existed. Thank you for your work. And i love you, and treva. [applause] i love you, too, here with the best picture here in the museum of art. I love you. Fighting for worlds and make it better for you, too. Thank you. Hi, treva. So i have a question about what comes to your research what kind of didnt make it . Like what was your bar of this is the i violence and talking about and this is what im not . I say that because theres a few ways in which we criminalize without criminal activity happening, like you said the rodney king trial, hes not on trial if the george floyd trial, hes not on trial. And also this idea of violence through erasure did you said this before around when people write about nobody cares about black women. There are black women who care about black women and we are not nobody. Im wondering, like what didnt make it, what were those things that you could see it as violence but its not necessarily, maybe not everybody is think about expansive imagination may be probably wouldnt think of it that way so i want to hear your thoughts on this. There with things, there was almost everything could have gone in. At a certain point it was like editorial decisions. There wasnt for me like this needs some criteria and this didnt. Its bandwidth on some level. Thinking of the bandwidth of the reader as well. For instance, one of the sites where incredible violence is happening is our schools, right . I have written extensively about assaults and disciplining and disparate violence against blac girls, women and gender expansive use in school. Also some of my people like Monique Morris and others really i mean have really written books that are here at the end of the book i point to all of these organizations and places where people are doing the work to do this. I know in the beginning like this is not a fight that heres what it looks like, give an overview. I thought about this intently because i wanted tosa start one chapter with the assault in Spring Valley highway 15yearold black girls from the classroom by of resource officer. A black girl standss up. Other is also vested so the only person in the room is like stop, as another black girl which goel to the point of like no one cares about black girls. Black girls care about black girls. Like all the time. Like all the time. The fact that we say no one or even that weon invest in saying that no one cares about us begins to erase, we have internalized our nobody knows. Schooling didnt make it in the way that i could have done the like heres some resources and this is why but its not because i dont believe the gravity of whats happening in schools is important. For me i was like let me introduce some childhood about like this if youre black girls and let me introduce the problem of the unique impact it has been black girls, for example, as a way we often dont think about homelessness and children, gendered homelessness. The idea of homelessnessal are often male adults and we think about what is need needed t black girl and young black girl at the center of this and the connection it has two trafficking to other forms of violence that are often part of systems that lead to one being unhoused. I invite people to think about. As im think about violence in Detention Centers was another space. I briefly mention in your and header image appear, the whistleblower in the Detention Center in georgia that was forcibly sterilizing detained women. I look at statistics of the women who were sterilized and most of them from east africa and haiti. So thinking about how antiblackness was operating, that couldve couldve been its own chapter ofch thinking about the ways they kind of policing and violence and this longer history ofow sterilization. Theres just things left on the cutting room floor not because they are unimportant but because bandwidth and theres just so much. And im hopeful of the folks and other folks are writing the same dayth i shared a birthday withrn Dorothy Roberts who has a a nw book called toward part about the devastation of the Child Welfare system has done a black families in black communities and black girls. So how she takes up the issue for example, is really rich and interesting andmp compelling, bh of us thinking about her, me through one lens and her through that lens. People like patrice douglas, andrea ritchie, there such sarah haley, there are really incredible people and thats why i did a lot of citations in the book and hope people look to the citations and see who im in conversation with. This is collaborative. This book is only possible that hundreds of organizers and thinkers, creators, everyday folk commenting on this that this book exists and those stories exist. Im hopeful this is part of a conversation and not the conversation about black girls in women. Can i just real quick also applaud, i want to applaud your citations because i think not enough riders press think of citation as a work of generosity, and as a work of like lineage, do you know what you mean . Yes. For those of us who grew uphe in the 90s, and grew up reading on records, we understand the citation expands the lineage in a way that is really great so thank you for your citations. Yes. Youll see it is a lot of citations, or otherwise the book but it is meant to say i do this in commute, citation are also who i feel accountable to in addition to the black girls and women and gender specific field goal im writing about and engage with. Its expanding this tremendous legacy of documenting and chronicling and trying to make sense of the worlds that weve inherited and that we inhabit. So that demands a particular kind of robust citation and citation as an effort in exercise in collaboration and accountability as opposed to demand that you like site somebody because its going to get you in trouble if you dont. But thinking more about what it means to be in collaboration with that person and what it means to beun accountable to the work they offered to the world. If there isnt any other questions last chance. I have a question. Hopefully i can work it in a way that makes sense. So much to think about. First of all thank you to our poets that set the stage. Im really grateful and just so happy to be here, which is everything. You all talked about the importance of language a lot and was making the reflect on a phrase i heard somebody recently instead of referring for black and brown people as minorities come as a global majority, and how language can be a vehicle for systemic violence. Are there any language pivots that really you think that we should be more mindful of or your favorite kind of language pivot that is easy to internalize if theyre not being super reflective of the word you are using . Thats a great question. I have to think about that,haab about what im using. I often say my nor ties and think about that as an ongoing process of what it means which doesnt mean its a condition or an identity as much as it is thinking about particular sets of experiences in material reality. With regards to that because the global majority, my concern for instance, with that fran is that because of the way, and we talk about this in limited capacity sometimes, that language to me somehow gives a semblance of like power. Im not talking about people power but like because we are the global majority we should have ask what nc. Its like we know that a global minority, right, is ravenous in its commitment to deathdealing. We have to name how that predominates in so many places and in so many sites and that creates the context for minorities to happen and marginalization to happen. I am wary of women of color and people of color for various reasons,be mainly because often people are not citing the history out of which those terms, which is very much a political history of about a political commitment to certain kinds of solidarity and Coalition Politics and not an identity per se. And so that evacuation of the political commitment that comes with that come like you dont just need to be a woman of color. There is a political commitment that comes with that particular kind of figuration, that that is a reproductive justice that is indebted to these different spaces that we are thinking transnational he and antiimperialistic late and anticolonial league. So if were not being intentional about that it becomes this marker of identity that doesnt tell us anything about dynamics of power. Beyond the relationship to l wht people come like we are not whitee which still vilifies whiteness as default and center. Im always leery of that. When im talking about black women im talking about black women and im very specific about that. When i want to talk about otherh communities, other identities, other power relations i try and be very specific about that. And so specificity and history matter deeply to me and the roots of words, how they then travel and how theyre used and misused and misappropriated andy often rely the vilest undergird the very conditions that made those words necessary as descriptive, as analytics. One more question. So you spoke a little bit earlier august about the title of the book but also no music is very important to you. You had some openings. Given trying to get as situated so i was wondering what was like your audio accompanying it maybe when you writing this book or in your citation of practice for this book . And thank you for being here and for having us here. Thank you. Its funny, while i was writing i actually reallyof didnt listn to a lot of music. I would listen to before and after because that was my like free space and like im shutting down some goingtu to turn on, megan thee stallion. Interestingly enough in 2020 is also the incident with toy lane, right . So, but but i was listeningr not because of that. Its like savagery makes you drop, right . Were at home, im trying to do all the challenges and not with them on tiktok. [laughing] theres a way music was, you know, almost where the book ends. When were discussing this event and you thought about a playlist that we areil here, actually the songs i couldnt listen to when i was writing the book because they were songs that were so deeply connected to the narrative and to the stories of these women and girls that i was writing about, and which was hard to get some of my favorite artists were on there. Like no names on there, mary j. Blige is on there, brandy, jazmine sullivan, rhapsody. I couldnt listen to the songs. Tracy chapman. So when i got to make the playlist a little while back it was like i got to reintroduce the songs into my life because i was finally at a a place wheri could listen to them and not be in the depths of this in the way that i was almost two years ago. I would post videos of me dancing as i was writing through this. Might go too is always donny hathaway, and that part of that was my own like my relationship with my father and that huge burden, gifted and black he has a version of that. But also like my from pg and dancing like fallen, just finding different modes, im writing about this because of what different worlds to exist and so sometimes i have to practice freedom. I have to practice the world i want to exist, which means dancing, a meat eating good food, that means getting on a resume happy hour during the pandemic four times a day. [laughing] because theres happy hour somewhere. [laughing] and with various strings, not all spirit. It meant being very intentional about the communities i was building here. E also writing this book was longest time id ever spent in columbus consecutively. I never spent more than three weeks in columbus at a time prior to covid. And then i was here, and i was here and i was here, i was here. And i were still grieving but at that point was only a few months after my father passed and i was alone and grieving here and here. Thankful so much for my village that is your debate and right now with my students and my colleagues who are so present in that moment, but that, there were so many ways that figuring out how to be joyous and practice of joy became part of my making for myself a part of how i thought about the freedom making eye one possible for the people i was writing about. [applause] [applause] all right. That concludes ourud conversatin but the night is not entirely over yet. The museum is open until nine. Treva will be signing books over here and a book is available downstairs in the museum store so if you havent bought a copy yet go get one. Thank you so much. Giving you a front row seatto democracy. The Us Supreme Court returns this week for a new turn continuing with live streamed oral ordinance. The term continues with new Justice Brown jackson and following decisions that have policy implications. Follow the court at cspan. Org Supreme Court and for a look back at some of the courts most high profile rulings download cspans landmark cases podcast which explores the issues, peace pieces and places in our nations history. The landmark cases podcast is available on the free cspan now at. As democrats continue to lie to deceive and mislead people