There was a moment when the history of American Civil Rights and the history of SMU collided: when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke to a standing-room only crowd on March 17, 1966. At the time, our university had barely waded into the waters of desegregation. So… how did we get there? It’s complicated. In the first episode of Maladjusted, let’s walk through the racist founding of our university, the early years of race and racism at SMU, and Dr. King’s visit. Click here for additional resources about today's episode.
We've talked about SMU's past and present through a racial justice lens. Today, we focus on a liberated, antiracist future. What are we organizing towards? When we imagine Dr. King's Good Society, is SMU even there? Reform versus abolition. In the system change, out of the system change, we're always in the system, make it so there's no system at all. Maladjusted has always served as a forum to discuss different social change theories. As abolition is a conversation largely taking place in the criminal legal system, Shara talks to Jim Walters, the Chief of SMU Police Department. She conducts a parallel interview with R. Gerald Turner, President of SMU. As we compare and contrast, Shara asks listeners to consider the applicability of abolition to Predominantly White Institutions of higher education. Hear additional comments from Angela Davis, a founding mother of the modern abolition movement. Follow the link for an episode transcript and shownotes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rS_BlMWw6N_8ZsvdmmOL-hrtSRJXIfe2pMJT70Ymc8Q/edit?usp=sharing
Today's episode is just family-- a conversation between three generations of Black SMU students, that is. Rev. Stewart, an early graduate of color of Perkins School of Theology, talks about being Black at SMU in the late 1950s. Rev. Stewart talks about deliberately raising his daughter, Janet Stewart Caldwell, so that she would thrive in an environment like SMU, and she discusses the extent to which her parents' strategy reaped desired results. Then, hear Janet in dialogue with her daughters, Sparrow and Grace, about contemporary manifestations of racism at SMU. Ultimately, Shara asks the Stewarts and the Caldwells: what does hope look like in this intergenerational context? How does it move from father to daughter, daughter to granddaughters? Follow the link for an episode transcript and shownotes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xqdIaAmuk2tYHKjtdSL4OuWJNL90eaeHHTIdiRYAt9I/edit
2020 was indescribable. And though it was only two years ago, we are running from our recent history. That fateful Spring, a quick succession of police murders and white supremacist violence captured the nation's attention. In this episode of Maladjusted Podcast, hear testimonies from Black folks experiencing the reverberations of past movements-- and receiving an influx of labor from non-Black folks seeking to displace their guilt. Black squares and brutality. Unity forums and demands lists. Together, let's remember what it felt like to navigate the confusion of Spring and Summer 2020. Then, let's examine the cycles of movement, labor, and bureaucracy that emerge when we compare Black student activism in 2020 to the BLAACS 1969 sit-in and #BlackAtSMU in 2015. Follow the link for shownotes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10JGKfPBoo2W4ec79qwo8yayhSppsyatOW0MFlnauASM/edit
Two Black student-led movements. Two lists presented to administrators with multiple overlapping demands. 46 years apart. Anga Sanders talks about the Black League of Afro American and African College Students (BLAACS) and their ambitious sit-in in President Willis Tate’s office. Meanwhile, Layla Gulley and D’Marquis Allen talk about the #BlackAtSMU Movement that swept Twitter and campus in 2015. Each movement was so emblematic of their time. What changed in the decades between movements? What didn’t? Follow the link for a transcript and shownotes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14RpIRS4-RtPDQdUy1QGhF_sIeZMG94rlzbXadMtwhf0/edit