AHA Session 55
Friday, January 7, 2022: 8:30 AM-10:00 AM
Rhythms Ballroom 1 (Sheraton New Orleans, 2nd Floor)
Chair:
Stephen Ward, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Session Abstract
Black radical biography offers a window into how race, class, and gender intersect with notions of freedom and personal autonomy. Life writing on radicalism demands locating what Kimberly Springer calls the “politics in the cracks” in Black activists' inner lives. This panel includes a variety of portraits to better understand Black radical biographies and their role within broader liberation struggles. Each panelist will discuss a different radical organizer of the 1960s. Ashley Farmer examines what she calls “disorderly distribution” of the archive in excavating the life of “Queen Mother” Audley Moore, and how such scattered archival distribution shapes the practice of radical Black women’s life writing. Garrett Felber explores the relationship between political and politicized prisoners as theorized by Black Puerto Rican anarchist and community bookstore owner Martin Ramirez Sostre, and the possibilities for such categories to move us toward a more collective biographical form. In pursuit of Black Panther veteran Ericka Huggins, Mary Phillips analyzes her spiritual life, in prison and beyond. Through biography Phillips illustrates her experiences and treatment in surviving solitary for women in the Black Panther Party to broaden the discourse on black women’s history. Finally, Simon Balto centers the life of Illinois Black Panther Party Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton, considering his life’s work from the perspective of the radical solidarities he imagined and forged across lines of race, gender, and nation, in pursuit of a richer understanding of the Panthers more broadly.
These biographies enrich one another. Their individual lives may not have intersected, but these activists’ political ideas and organizing are interwoven in the 20th-century Black Freedom Movement. Taken together, these Black radical biographies allow readers to gain insights into the methods, approaches, and challenges of excavating radical Black actors and how to use historical biography to engage in such questions as: What new frameworks can be developed for creating biographies for those without a traditional archive? And, how can new frameworks help remake a genre that tends to obscure or marginalize Black radicals? Ultimately, panelists hope to prompt a rethinking of these individual figures and provide other rubrics for how to assess the lives of those who engaged in radical activism.
