On Tuesday, October 14th, the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis welcomed Professor Kellie Carter Jackson to campus to deliver a guest lecture for the 2024-2026 seminar on “Black Power and White Supremacy: The Cyclical Dialectics of Power.” Co-directed by History Professors Leslie Alexander and Kim Butler, the seminar brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars whose work interrogates the dialectical relationship between Black power and white supremacy over time and across the globe. Last year, the seminar hosted visiting scholars, including Carol Anderson and Quito Swan, who came to campus to speak with Rutgers students, faculty, and postdoctoral researchers. Kellie Carter Jackson’s lecture is the first in an exciting lineup of programming for the seminar’s final year which will culminate in a campus-wide symposium in the spring.
Jackson, the Michael and Denise Kellen ’68 Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Wellesley College, presented a lecture on “A History of Refusal: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence.” Inspired by Jackson’s award-winning book, We Refuse, the talk explored how the concept of “refusal” unsettles traditional narratives about Black resistance in the United States. Scholarly and public discourse tends to view Black people’s responses to white supremacy in either violent or nonviolent terms. Jackson’s lecture highlighted how the juxtaposition of iconic civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in academic writing and popular culture produces a binary that reduces the complexity and vision of Black resistance movements.
In her lecture, Jackson discussed how her concept of “refusal” offers an alternative way of understanding the long history of Black activism. “Refusal is a forceful no,” Jackson explained, “it is about rejection.” While resistance tactics like boycotts and marches seek to combat the effects of racism, refusal marks a fundamental rejection of the terms of humanity set forth by white supremacy. “Resistance is how,” Jackson clarified, “but refusal is why.” Jackson traced this concept of refusal through a range of examples from Nat Turner’s 1831 slave rebellion in Virginia to the viral riverfront brawl in Montgomery, Alabama in 2023. Whether taking up arms to defeat slavery or swimming across a river to defend a lone Black man under attack, Black people throughout history have refused the violence and inhumanity of white supremacy in more than just nonviolent or violent terms.
Attendees engage in a lively Q&A with Professor Jackson (center)
In a lively Q&A with RCHA fellows, faculty, and Rutgers community members, Jackson touched on the importance of politically-engaged historical writing as well as the transnational possibilities of refusal. For many attendees, however, the highlight of Jackson’s talk was how her notion of refusal complicates the traditional binary of resistance strategies. Kiamsha Bynes, History PhD ’25 and current RCHA Post-Doctoral Fellow, called the lecture “truly engaging from start to finish” and praised Jackson’s work for “offering a reconceptualization of nonviolent and violent resistance.” First-year History PhD student Morgan Goode similarly highlighted how Jackson’s analysis of Black refusal “provides a much-needed framework for Black resistance outside of these reductive binaries.”
Jackson’s scholarship exemplifies the intellectual rigor and publicly-engaged practice that are at the heart of the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis. Since its founding in 1988, the RCHA has functioned as a hub for interdisciplinary research and teaching within the History Department and the larger New Jersey community. The seminars, which operate on two consecutive year cycles, provide visiting scholars, postdoctoral fellows, Rutgers faculty and graduate students with an opportunity to explore issues of contemporary relevance through a historical perspective.
The current theme “Black Power and White Supremacy” provides a timely opportunity to think critically and collaboratively about the roots of racial capitalism, political violence, and ecological destruction while also attending to global liberation struggles and cultures of resistance. The thoughtful leadership of co-directors Leslie Alexander and Kim Butler has transformed the weekly seminar into a dynamic community that spans discipline, departmental affiliation, and research methodologies. Under their direction, seminar participants have interrogated patterns of white supremacy and Black insurgency through the lens of cyclicality while simultaneously nurturing networks of solidarity and support during a time of uncertainty in higher education and global politics more broadly. The scholar-activism modeled by Professor Kellie Carter Jackson and this year’s RCHA seminar exemplify the power and necessity of bridging historical research with contemporary political struggles.
Professor Jackson (center) with RCHA 2024-26 Project Co-Directors, Professor Leslie Alexander (left) and Professor Kim Butler (right)