The academy has an obligation to extend itself in a way that doesn’t just advance its own interests. Being a scholar activist means everything I work on at the University of Minnesota has to have a community component. —Rose Brewer

Rose Brewer at the Sumner Library

March, 2020

Photos by Eric Mueller

The Black Pogrom in my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

From Oklahoma’s inception in 1907, Jim Crow was the structure of the state. The structural violence reached a high point in Tulsa in 1921, when a white mob destroyed the area of the northside Tulsa where I grew up–the vibrant Black commercial district of Greenwood, often referred to as Black Wall Street. I don’t want to paint a picture — sometimes portrayed — that everyone in Greenwood was affluent, but people were building economic capital.

A World War I aircraft bomber dropped a bomb on the area. At least three hundred people were killed in those actions, destroying thousands of homes and businesses. Like so many other times, the violence began with a young Black man accused of assaulting a White woman. It was just after World War I, and the klan was active, recruiting White working-class members in Tulsa who were feeling the sting of a post-war recession. Collusion went up to the sheriff’s Department and local government officials.

In the 1990s, there were still some survivors. They told their stories of the “Black Pogrom” in Greenwood, and revived calls for reparations for lives lost, personal and community wealth destroyed.

[The HBO series Watchmen, rekindled interest in 2019. ]

Growing up in Tulsa in the 1950s and 60s.

My people had been in Oklahoma for several generations. My maternal grandparents moved from the small town of Holdenville to Tulsa during the 1920s, after the atrocity. Even with the history of racial terrorism, they believed there were opportunities for them in Tulsa. My mother was born there, and so was I. My child was not born there. My brother and sister, however, both still live in Oklahoma.

Tulsa is in the Northeastern corner of Oklahoma. People think of it as part of the south and west, but in many ways, it orients toward the Midwest. Growing up there, we used to travel to Kansas and even as far north as Iowa, though never as far as Minnesota.

We had the literal tracks in Tulsa. South of the tracks lived the whites. On the Northside, where we lived, the city did not pave the streets. I don’t even know if we were part of the town proper. We certainly didn’t get the resources a city is supposed to provide.

My childhood was built around community–family, church, and school. I grew up with my parents and grandparents–who played an outside role in supporting the family. My community valued education. I guess it took for me: I certainly have a lot of it. My elders, in school and out, understood education as the way out. I was primed to go to college.

I went to an all-Black middle school and high school. Tulsa was slow to desegregate— just beginning in the late 1960s when I went off to college. Our neighborhoods were so segregated that busing was necessary, and they dragged their feet on that.

My teachers were Black. I had a quality education and some great teachers. Tulsa is the birthplace of the African American historian John Hope Franklin. My history teacher was his nephew. Still, I don’t want to paint too rosy a picture. People who didn’t get the attention they needed, floundered. Students were segmented and ranked according to “ability.” Some got shuffled into Special Ed and some of us into the top-tier.

The struggle continues in Tulsa, as it does in Minneapolis. My sister was an art teacher in the Tulsa Public Schools. The neighborhoods and the schools were never really integrated, or if they were, they were still segregated by economic class. Ironically, the high school I went to is now a magnet school. You have to be competitive to get in. A large percentage of the students are white. It upsets me every time I think about it.

The College Generation that Founded Black Studies

I was part of that generation, entering college in 1969, who demanded Black Studies. At Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, I was one of the co-founders of the Black Student Union. Once we had a BSU, we were able to make a list of demands: Black Studies courses, African American faculty, a curriculum that reflected our experience, and a college that made space for us.

We won official recognition of our BSU. There were a few White faculty who were amenable to some curriculum changes. Did we get a Black faculty member? I don’t think we did. Now there are a handful.

The University administration did not treat us well. They were pretty abrasive toward us, spreading wild rumors about militants coming to campus–ugly propaganda that we were there to harm the school.

It wasn’t any easier here at the University of Minnesota. Some people got expelled. Some got arrested. They did have some support in the Black Community in Minneapolis: Spike Moss and Mahmoud El Kati helped organize community support. It’s funny to hear the U of M administration talk about this struggle in a celebratory way, marking the 50th anniversary in 2019. That is the utmost hypocrisy. In 1969 they did not want to budge. They were forced by vigilant activists. Anna Stanley, Rosemary Freeman. Horace Huntley, (University of Alabama, emeritus ) and others paid a price. John Wright was deeply involved and wrote the student demands. He now teaches with me in the African American and African Studies Department at the U of M. [Retired in 2019].

Horace Huntley has a story about being in an American History class in which there was one day spent on slavery. He argued to the professor that he thought there was more to the story. The professor replied. “If there were, I would have taught it.” Is it any wonder Huntley became radicalized?

The struggle for Black Studies has continued for those 50 years — not just to create the departments and programs– but to maintain them.

In college, I engaged with a cell of folk who wanted fundamental change. I was moving more and more toward a radical understanding of how society worked.

I thrived in the social sciences, double-majoring in History and Sociology. For graduate school, I had to choose. I picked Sociology, a decision I have sometimes questioned. Sociology at Indiana University was a mixed bag. I had a good theory teacher who introduced me to Marxism. We had a Marxist Study group. But there were also statistics and methodology courses with professors who were old school. I saw a disconnect between my experience with social stratification and what they were teaching. I remember one guy saying, “The University no longer attracts the best and the brightest.” I was sitting right there.

I did a postdoc at the University of Chicago. I considered going to CUNY in upstate New York, which was doing more feminist work. Working at the intersections of race, class, and gender was still not a choice at that time. Those intersections were already central to my work.

Chicago looms large in sociological study. By the time I arrived, I had read seminal studies of Black life in Chicago. It was there that I began orienting myself toward community organizing for Black political power and activist scholarship.

In 1986 I got a job offer at Minnesota. Minneapolis was sooo cold. I was sick most of that first winter. The flu, I guess. Chicago’s weather was no cake walk, but…

I found people standoffish. Gayle Plummer, John Wright and August Nimtz became my support on campus. One way I was able to break through, was connecting with people outside of the University, like Mahmoud El Kati. I got involved in a community group meeting out of Oak Park Community Center every Saturday. I think we called ourselves Asili.

I soon discovered there was a certain kind of brokerage system, with hand-picked leaders, that kept anti-racist work stagnant in Minneapolis. I began working with people outside of academia and the nonprofit structures; activists like Mel Reeves and Cris Nissan. We worked on issues of police brutality. I focused on how the University department could play a role in the community.

In about 2005, we sponsored Freedom Winter in the Twin Cities, to address police violence. Brock Satter in Boston was involved in organizing that campaign nationally. We door knocked and talked to people. That was important organizing. Satter returned to Minneapolis for the Take A Knee Conference during the 2018 Super Bowl.

I also began making connections to national groups like Project South: the Institute to Eliminate Poverty & Genocide. Project South built on the philosophy that scholars and people on the ground should be closer to one another. That resonated with me. I worked with Jerome Scott creating toolkits for building movements.

Locally, Lisa Albrecht and I started the Freire Center in 2001, based on the Pedagogy of the Oppressed principles of Paulo Freire. We tried to teach the Freireian method from the bottom up — not pouring stuff into people’s brains, but proactive learning. We rented a place on Franklin Ave. Sam Grant played a role in that. Juliana Pegues was one of the first people who got pulled into our education workshops. (She was recently hired as an Assistant Professor in American Indian Studies at the U of M.) Local folk came, and some people outside of the Twin Cities.

The activist-scholar must be deeply rooted in community struggle. The academy is obligated to extend itself in a way that doesn’t just advance its own interests. Being a scholar-activist means everything I work on at the U has to have a community component. When we bring people to campus, we make sure they also speak in a public forum outside of the University. For example, we brought a Brazilian activist Benedita Da Silva, the first Black woman elected to parliament in Bahai. We used our University connections to bring her into the community.

University/Community Campaigns

Within the University, we have also had campaigns of community import concerning access and worker justice, like the struggle to save General College and University union fights.

The first campaign to save General College was decades before I came to the U of M. The second time I was on campus, involved in the fight to save the program. There were voices within the Board of Regents who voted with us. The third time, in 2005, they were successful in closing it. The University learned its lesson, making sure there were enough people on the Regents that would vote against keeping it open.

The same thing happened with AFSCME fights. The struggle of clerical workers in the early 2000s, was a beautiful time to teach–a moment when community came to campus. The next time AFSCME went on strike, the University was ready with its divide and conquer strategies. One of my students went on a hunger strike and ended up in the hospital—a brilliant student.

Since I came to the U and joined the African American & African Studies Department, we have endured a constant struggle for resources. Around the time they hired me, they were talking about closing the Department. There have been many schemes since, to consolidate and change us. I spent many years as chair of the Department. That took a big plug out of my life. It has been an ongoing instructive story, dealing with people who consider themselves liberals but aren’t–people who don’t see Black Studies as legitimate.

More East African Students are becoming African American & African Studies majors or minors. Second or third generation Somali women I have taught have been very fierce. The U of M female to male ratio skews toward women, and we are feeling that. Which doesn’t mean the University embraces women of color. In 2017 Black women students called for their own space on campus and won it: Charlotte’ s Home for Black Women. Black women needed a space where they could be something other than “my brother’s keeper.” They needed space that recognizes their interconnected realities of race and gender.

A few years ago, the art in cultural centers was removed. Students asserted that taking down the art, was not valuing students’ need for historical memory.

Since African American students took over Morrill Hall in 1969, faculty numbers have gone up slightly, but it is a revolving door: they arrive and don’t stay. When it comes to recruiting and retaining African American students at the U, we have hardly moved. The University holds the numbers close to their chest. They put African immigrants and African Americans who are descendants of enslaved Africans, in one category. We still struggle to make sure students see themselves in the curriculum. Black students are still not recognized as “best and brightest.”

Thinking and Acting Locally and Globally: World Social Forums

One of my organizing activities during the last two decades has been with the World and U.S. Social Forums. I went to the World Conference on Racism 2001, in Durban, South Africa, just before 9/11. There were activists and revolutionaries from all over the world. We put pressure on the United Nations to recognize slavery as genocide and demand reparation for Indigenous and African people. It was so powerful. We had resolutions supporting Palestinians (some delegates walked out over the Palestinian question), and Dalits from India (they used to be called the untouchables), Africans, and African Americans. The Global South was there–an amazing gathering of folk. We created a radical document. Mary Robinson was High Commissioner at that point. There was such a global feeling of solidarity.

That conference was the kick-off for the World Social Forums, which started in Brazil in 2001. In 2003 I was a delegate to the Forum, in Porto Alegre. I went to the one in Venezuela in 2006 when Hugo Chavez was still alive, to Nairobi, Kenya, in 2007, and Dakar Senegal in 2011. The last one was in March of 2018 in Bahia, Brazil.

In these world forums, people from the bottom up imagine a different kind of world and learn that it is possible.

I was in Tunisia, at the time of the Arab Spring. I met young Tunisian women–fierce feminists committed to building a just and fair society. That was 2013. That was the high point. You know what has happened since.

I’ve participated in U.S. Social Forums as well. The last one I helped organize was in 2015. We had multiple sights that year. I was with the Cooperation Jackson group.

When UN Rapporteurs came to Chicago in 2016 to investigate the status of African Americans in the United States, I testified. They found deeply rooted structural racism in this country and called for reparations.

It is interesting how movement energy waxes and wanes, connects globally or stays local. Black Lives Matter has been significant. It hasn’t connected with the Social Forums in a deep, systemic way.

The Struggle Today

You go as far you can go. Our struggle today is huge. We aren’t a democracy to begin with. I am thinking today about how Black women’s mortality rate and infant mortality is atrocious. Class matters, but doesn’t fully explain these health disparities. Horrible conditions continue to exist in the workplace for people who cook and clean — working-class women of all ethnicities–and they experience high levels of sexual harassment in these working-class jobs. We need to tackle the oppression in the rental housing, especially the problem of landlords preying on female renters. The death of Erica Garner, daughter of Eric Garner, is on my mind. It was not just an individual tragedy, but a case of state violence.

I am somewhat hopeful about the insurgency that began with Black Lives Matter. I don’t think it has run its course. We will see an additional upsurge. We need to think through how we can win in a sustainable way.

I went to Vietnam in 2017, part of an international delegation of women sponsored by the Vietnamese Women’s Union— which is a government organization. We traveled north and south, rural areas, and the big cities — Ho Chi Minh City, (used to be Saigon) and Da Nang. The north is still more socialistic. They have some power as a nationalized entity —unlike in this country. They were engaged in microlending. One of the saddest components was meeting with GLBTQ young people. There is a lot of stigma. Their families do not embrace them. Officially, there is no discrimination. In fact, it is prevalent. We recommended that they work with the Women’s Union to create a caucus that can represent their issues.

At least they are trying to build some kind of accountability to their citizens in Vietnam. Though Ho Chi Minh City is very capitalistic — full of private corporations— theoretically, the government redistributes some of the profits into the collective good. I was not sure if that was happening. But they at least imagine a socialist order, with universal health, universal education. The praxis of building socialism is happening. That was what Chavez was doing in Venezuela. Socialism is the economics of the 21st century.

As I think about the future of the World Social Forum, and work on a global level. Chavez passed, and Brazil now has a right-wing government. This fascist turn we see in the United States is everywhere. It is a scary time.

I believe the old dialectic that in the worst of times, something has to give. We are going to have to build a different kind of society. We need reproductive justice, environmental justice. It is all interconnected.

The work needs to be local and global.

I strongly believe in my heart that people can come together. I am hopeful about this younger generation. Below the surface of things, they are strategically sharp. They need to learn that it is not just about mobilization. You also have to build community, consciousness, and strategy.

Minneapolis Interview Project