← New Books Network
New Books Network
Gloria Browne-Marshall, "A Protest History of the United States" (Beacon Press, 2026)
01:06:22
Loading summary
Transcript97 lines
- [00:01]
A
Coca Cola for the big, for the small, the short and the tall.
- [00:07]
B
Peacemakers, risk takers for the optimists, pessimists.
- [00:13]
A
For long distance love, for introverts and extroverts, the thinkers and the doers for old friends and new Coca Cola for everyone.
- [00:27]
B
Pick up some Coca Cola at a store near you.
- [00:33]
A
Kids, they grow up so fast. One day they're taking their first steps and the next they don't fit into the tiny sneakers they took them in. You blink your eyes and their princess dress is two sizes too small. And their dinosaur backpack isn't cool anymore. But don't cry because they're growing up. Smile because you can profit off of it for real. There are a bunch of parents on Depop looking for the stuff your kid just grew out of. Download Depop to start selling Limu game. And Doug, here we have the Limu.
- [01:07]
C
Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [01:20]
A
Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us?
- [01:23]
C
Cut the camera. They see us.
- [01:24]
A
Only pay for what you need@liberty mutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings Ferry Unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance company and affiliates Excludes Massachusetts.
- [01:33]
C
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:38]
B
When Emma Lazarus poem the New Colossus beckoned immigrants to enter our nation's golden door and breathe free. We were in a time of post Civil war racial terrorism, Western expansion, confiscating indigenous land, Chinese exclusion under law, female oppression and the brutal suppression of workers rights. This poem of freedom placed deep within the Statue of Liberty inextricably connected this nation to that mighty woman with a torch whose flame is the imprisoned lightning and her name mother of exiles. But it sheds no light on all that would be needed and by whom for this conflicted country to keep such bold promises. This book speaks to the protests and protesters who made this nation the country it is today. This book is a protest history of the United States by Emmy award winning writer, civil rights attorney, playwright, speaker and professor of Constitutional law at City University of New York, John Jay College of Criminal Justice Professor Gloria J. Brown Marshall. Gloria, welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:55]
A
Thank you so much. I so appreciate this opportunity.
- [03:00]
B
So Gloria, tell me what led you to writing this book, A protest History of the United States.
- [03:07]
A
I didn't realize when I took this on that it was more than an intellectual exercise, that it was something that was near and dear to me. And as I descended into myself in order to write it, I did different things than I would do with my ordinary research and writing.
- [03:31]
I was drawn by the death of an activist in Brooklyn. I never knew and found out later that she died penniless and didn't have enough money for a casket. And I thought she had spent her adult life working on behalf of her community in Brooklyn, where they benefited from her hard work. And yet I'm hearing another generation say, protest doesn't matter. It doesn't work. It's so 20th century. That was a civil rights movement. It's not now. And then I said, I'm going to put my law hat on and make an argument for protest. And so I thought I was going to write and research a book on the topic of protest. And I saw that there were books out there on particular protests. But as I thought more about Fannie Lou Hamer, as I thought about Frederick Douglass, and I thought about these different people, and I realized I couldn't just write a book on this topic and keep it within the boundaries of history and research. I had to cross that line somewhat or get really close to it. And that's when the personal entered into the writing of it. And I started thinking about when I first started protesting and what benefits protest had given to me personally. And it then became a different book, and it became one that was beyond the scope of just looking at protests, but trying to explain it to others and actually empower other people, which is not what your history book, your run of the mill history book is not supposed to do. It's just supposed to inform. And I wanted my book to inform, inspire, and empower. So to do all those things, I had to write a different kind of book. And so all of that I tried to do and make this book something that was an argument on behalf of protest. So that's what it's like. I wanted to write a book that was a legal argument, but I think it came from the social justice legal arguments that used to be made in early 20th century where you would add the social justice information into a legal argument. So if you look at it that way, that's kind of like the structure of this book. Well, you.
- [05:49]
B
The book takes what you describe as an interdisciplinary approach, which I thought was interesting as well. I mean, you just talked about your personal experience, but it's. It's your personal experience and more than that as well.
- [06:03]
A
Yeah, because I didn't want it to be a memoir itself, but it has family history in it. Only because that family history is intertwined in the history of this country. And so I wanted that to also be an educational tool in understanding more about protest. And so when we subscribe protests to those people marching the streets or one person with a sign on the street, and it makes me think, well, protest has been more than that for over 500 years. And so we need to look at the stories behind protests, but also look at the different ways, in diverse ways in which people have protested. And so, yes, I decided that I wanted to include my family history, but only to enlighten people, the reader, on the topic.
- [06:57]
B
So it's so interesting that you say the reader. I, I should say for listeners, we are going to get into the substance of this book to give, and it's just going to be a teeny, tiny taste of the substance of this book. But before we get to that, you just mentioned the reader. And I oftentimes will ask authors at what point the reader enters into their consciousness, if at all. But what I thought was so fascinating about this book is the book very clearly contemplates a reader, like the reader is called out while you are reading the book. So talk about not only the decision to contemplate a reader right there on the page, but also who is the reader that you envision?
- [07:39]
A
I envision the reader who is skeptical.
- [07:45]
The person who has seen protests, but they may not know how protests have actually affected their individual lives or the lives of their family members. So here's somebody who is one of the people who might have said to me, I don't believe protest matters anymore. And so to actually make the argument on behalf of protest using different methods of argument. So, yes, using history, using primary data, but also using interviews from activists talking about their lives as protesters and what they were able to accomplish, what they wish they had accomplished, what it meant to them to protest, and the pain of protesting. So that way, I'm using these different arguments in making the case to that reader who's on the fence as to whether or not protest itself is effective at all, or whether or not is an antiquated device that no longer works in the 21st century in the social media age.
- [08:51]
B
Mm. You mentioned before that there, there is certainly legal history in the book. Of course, you are a professor of constitutional law. I want to read a very brief quote that comes from your author's note. And I want you, I want to get you to talk a little bit about it, because I think it sets the stage, particularly for listeners who are not legal scholars or constitutional law experts, which will be the majority. And so in the author's note, you write, progress comes from public Pressure creating equality under law. Because for most of this nation's history, the rule of law was a grand idea whereby every person was equal under the law. However, historically, the rule of law is too often to control the labor, people of color, women, the poor, immigrants, the marginalized, queer people, disabled people and their allies, until a critical, critical mass of people rise up and commit stakeholders, influencers, attorneys and politicians to join their fray. We hear the term a lot right now. Rule of law. You turn on the news, go on social media, you will hear and see rule of law. Can you talk about the rule of law versus the role of law?
- [10:13]
A
Thank you so much. Because I say this very often. There's the rule of law and there's the role of law. The rule of law, R U L E was supposed to be that everyone is equal under the law, that everyone has rights under the Constitution that are to be respected. But historically, as I've pointed out, the role of law has not been that. So it's been this idea and ideal to have a rule of law. And even when I was sitting among lawyers in very grand spaces, be it the US Supreme Court or the American Bar association or state bar associations, whether New York or Pennsylvania, wherever it may be, and people would throw out this rule of law and they would feel so proud about it. And it became a point of, of consternation in a way, because I thought, this is annoying that you use the rule of law. And I, a person of color and a woman, and I didn't grow up in a wealthy family financially. And you use this as though I had the same rights as a person who was not a person of color, who was male, who grew up with money at high levels. And so it really bothered me how easily people threw that phrase around without explaining it. And the other part, it bothered me when history shows us at every turn that was not the case. So we know the role of law has been something people have had to protest against for hundreds of years. And that's why we're able to even be on this program right now, to do the work we're doing with the amount of freedom we have to do. It is because protest, protest took, and I like to say, the rule of law and the role of law and made them actually a reality of constitutional protections for the regular person. So their role was to oppress. The rule of law was meant for the upper classes, that they would be protected by law and the rest of us would be harmed with impunity. So in order for us to actually enjoy the constitutional protections we have and have some semblance that the law was made for us. We had to protest our way into the Constitution. And so that's what we've done. And that's why I said it troubles me when we so Cavalieri. Throw around the rule of law as if that is the reality when we're seeing right now people who are getting away with breaking the law and then have the nerve to call themselves enforcers of law. And so we threw out it. And that's why, you know, we'll talk about people who are assaulted or even killed by law enforcement. And yet law enforcement doesn't have to stand for the crimes the same way a civilian would. And so when we start thinking about the rule of law, it's just been used and abused in such and then tossed to the side as though everybody is actually receiving the same treatment, and we're not.
- [13:32]
B
So let's get into the substance of the book a bit. And this book is not structured chronologically. And in fact, when I was reading it and preparing for this interview, I was trying to think about, okay, well, how do I describe for listeners the structure of the book? And then I was like, you know what? I'm just going to ask you to do it.
- [13:53]
So talk about the structure of the book and also your decision. And, you know, why structure it this way? Why not structure it as a straight, you know, chronology?
- [14:03]
A
I wrestled with the structure of this book for years. As a matter of fact, probably two and a half years was in writing and rewriting based on different structures. And I would talk with my editor, and we first looked at working on this through a chronology. And then we thought, and what would be the through line? Is it. Because then it becomes an encyclopedia, and it's just, oh, this happened and that happened. And then the next thing happened, and this person rose up, this person came down. And so that didn't interest me enough to make that argument convincingly for people, because it would be a timeline. It really wouldn't be the story of protest and the story of protest in this country. And so I decided to go an interdisciplinary route, knowing that it would be difficult to place because we have historians who will say, oh, that's not the way you should do it. You're not following the rules of writing in traditional ways in which historians are supposed to write. And then we would have those people act from academic areas who would say, you're not supposed to cross that line of adding memoir into the story, and memoir being family history. And so I decided I was going to create this interdisciplinary type of form. Okay, so. And this form was one in which I am telling the story of protest using the different ways in which protest can be convincingly described so that the reader understands what protest is about, what sacrifices have been made. And when I look at it and just say it's an interdisciplinary approach, that to me, allows a level of freedom that doesn't come with one individual type of form or genre. I think the part that is most cumbersome is when people begin reading it. And I try to set it out, you know, in the author's note as well as in the introduction, but especially in the author's note, that I'm going to use this interdisciplinary approach. So my contract with the writer, I mean, with the reader as a writer in the very beginning, is to show them this is the interdisciplinary approach I'm going to use throughout the book. And so hopefully, once you saw this is what we were doing, and then you were in it for the journey to. To continue. And I also wanted people to. To realize that protesters are people. And therefore, if we kept it to the point where we can't introduce individual people and go into the. The. The idea of what it takes for somebody to be that person among many to stand up, then I think it's it. It becomes, yes, an academic exercise, but it doesn't get the point across the way I want. The last thing is I had the freedom to do it. I had a publisher who supported me in writing this book in an interdisciplinary manner. And I'm a full professor with tenure. So I don't write books in order to be promoted. I don't write books in order to get tenure to please some committee. I'm writing a book in hopes that the reader is going to gain something from it and be empowered by it. So that freedom then allows me to experience, experiment with other forms that I think would be best for the topic area, as opposed to pleasing somebody somewhere that says, this is the narrow confine in which we can write a book. And I think in the 21st century, we should be able to be more expansive when it comes to getting these books into the hands of people. And I write not just for the historian, because I think historians will get something from this book. I've had people who have been studying these topic areas for many years who come back and say, oh, I thought I knew this, but I didn't. But it's also for the general reader. It's for someone who cares about history, someone who cares about protests, social justice issues. It's for people who care about other people and people who have an interest and just want to know, and they shouldn't be bludgeoned. And I say this, they shouldn't be bludgeoned, you know, with. With a book that's so difficult to read that they can't get through it just because they have an interest and want to know. We should help them along the way as writers, meet them, many of them where they are, but also meet people halfway in some instances to let them get into a topic that is history without having to be an historian in order to gain from it. So I want the regular person to read it. I don't dumb down anything, but I do, as David Carruthers said, make history interesting.
- [19:09]
B
It is a very, I can attest, a very interesting reading, a compelling read and a page turner. I mean, it's a fast. It's a. It's a fast read. And I mean that in a complimentary sort of way. Like you sort of get in and you. It's a. It's a page turner going all the way through. And I found myself in too many places to count where you would introduce a topic and I might know, you know, a person or the incident that you're talking about, because, oh, okay, I know that I've done research on that, or that's someone familiar to me. And sure enough, a paragraph later, I come to someone else. Who's that? I didn't know. I've never heard of that person before, or that's not a name I recognize, or I never heard of that incident before. And then, of course, I asked myself, how come I didn't know this?
- [20:01]
And I. It was that way for me throughout.
- [20:04]
A
I'm so glad you said that because that's one of the things that my editor and I have actually talked about that I wanted, and she did as well, to have people who were well known in their time, who've been forgotten about in history brought back. And so I wanted to do that. But I also wanted people to feel comfortable and seeing some of those familiar names, but then having something added to that familiar name that they might not be familiar with. So they may think they know all these things, but here's one little fact I'm going to add in there to make that person go, I didn't know that about this person. I thought I knew everything about this person. They've been someone just like Martin Luther King is somebody we know. We think we know Martin Luther King. But here's like, something else that might be added just to Add to people's interest. Because once again, respecting the reader and respecting the interests of the reader, the intrigue of the reader. The reader picked up my book and. And wants to know something different. Sometimes people want to know what they already know, but even with that, they want to know what they already know. Well, here's nothing else you didn't know that makes it worth the read. So I actually did take a lot of those things into consideration when I was writing the book.
- [21:25]
B
I think the other thing that really expanded for me and then I want to talk about specific chapters is the meaning of the word protest. Right. I know. Even when I opened up the book and sort of understanding or thinking I'm understanding the book, I'm going to read, you know, thinking about people marching in the streets, and there are many people marching in the streets in this book and there's a whole lot of people that are doing a whole lot of other stuff as well as protests that isn't that.
- [21:56]
A
Yeah. I just wanted people to understand the diversity that falls under the heading of protest. The diversity of ways in which people have given us what we have as rights and protections we wake up with every day and take for granted. So I wanted to make sure that I took certain things that everybody should know and then just said, okay, you think that this came by way of law. That's why I said this whole idea of the rule of law, you'd think this came by way of law. Well, it was written down in the law. But not everybody had the opportunity to be protected by it or have the rights to do it. And so we had to protest our way into actually making it a reality. And so I'm so glad that you said that.
- [22:42]
C
The holidays have a way of sneaking up on you. And I can tell you they snuck up on me. This year I have people coming and I need to buy those people gifts. As I say, I just didn't have everything I need. So what I did is I went to work Wayfair. From bedding to linens to decor, for every room in the house, Wayfair is your one stop shop. Last minute guest prep. Wayfair has you covered. You can refresh bedding and throw pillows and accent chairs for way less. That's what I did. Pretty much all the bedding in my house is threadbare. So I decided to replace it. I went to Wayfair and I ordered some new sheets and pillowcases and I got a comforter, which was really cool. I ordered it, the price was great, the shipping was free. It arrived and now I am ready for the hoards to descend upon me. And it's not just bedding, of course you can get linens and towels and things for the kids room, kitchen essentials, things for your living room. And of course they have holiday gifts. So get your last minute hosting essentials, gifts for all your loved ones and decor to celebrate the holidays. For way less head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W A Y-F A I R.com Wayfair Every style, every Home Starting a.
- [23:53]
A
Business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into Sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com specialoffer Deck your home with blinds.com.
- [24:28]
Diy or let us install.
- [24:34]
Free design consultation.
- [24:38]
Plus free samples and free shipping.
- [24:42]
Head to blinds.com now for up to.
- [24:44]
C
50% off site wide plus a free professional measure.
- [24:49]
Rules and restrictions may apply.
- [24:51]
B
Well, so you start the book and again this is a protest history of the United States specifically. So you start in a place where feels like the logical place to start for a protest history of the United States, which is with indigenous defense of land, life and culture. And so I what I want to do is just talk. I just want to go through chapter by chapter. And as I said before, there are way too many people and way too many events to talk about even a small, a fraction of them throughout this discussion. But I would love for you to talk about the chapter starting with chapter one and whether whether there's a specific person or incident that you want to talk about or whether it was your approach to the chapter. Just, just I would like I will sort of hand it to you in terms of where you want to go to talk about it.
- [25:39]
A
When I when I thought about protests and initially I really wanted to.
- [25:46]
Focus on protests within the beginning of the United States. So but I realized that that wouldn't make sense you just if we just began with the Declaration of Independence and went forward it since we were and remained at that point in English colony even at the time period of Declaration of Independence, then we needed to go back to the very beginning of the country. And then I thought so many people believe that this country began in Massachusetts.
- [26:17]
They began with the Pilgrims. And I get this. And I've traveled around the country since January. I've been to over 20 states. I mean, so we're talking about. I don't know. I've been to Washington D.C. five times. So if you think about. I've been in 20 states and Washington, D.C. and so many more cities, of course, within those states. And I would say half of them, people thought the country began with the Pilgrims.
- [26:45]
B
Well, you know, I, I, so I, I was born in New Hampshire and I grew up in New Hampshire. And I can tell you what we were taught in school was that the country began with the Pilgrims.
- [26:58]
A
And that's. I'm so. If nothing else, I've done something else with this book.
- [27:03]
B
Oh, my God.
- [27:05]
A
People of this notion. No, our country begins in 1607 with England landing its corporate enterprise. And see, this is what's, that's why this country is so conflicted. And that's, and that is so important with chapter one to understand that we began as a charter, a corporate enterprise. But on those ships that arrived into Virginia to begin the Virginia colony are people who want freedom and liberty from the life that they would have had to have if they stayed in Europe. So you have these two concepts in one ship. Landing in what is now Jamestown, that was called for King James, who was king at the time, you know, the, the Jamestown settlement on the land of the Powhatan Native Americans. And so who's now referred to as Chief Powhatan is somebody we should know because this is Pocahontas father. And so Chief Powhatan has, has the, the original protest burden, unfortunately, because when they arrive, initially they arrive into the hunting ground. If people have been to Virginia, they can go. The hunting ground is not a very attractive place as far as landing because it's a swamp land for the most part. And so they landed there. The Powhatan are very sophisticated government system. They have their homes laid out. I mean, it was really quite civilized, quite, I guess, structured governmental village that was expanded into many other areas. So there were other tribes and other indigenous people who were under the power of Powhatan. So they had the structures like representatives. They had government councils. They had all of these things. That's why I like to say the Europeans did not bring civilization to Native Americans or to Africans. We had that already. You know, they brought a different type of structure, but there was structured government was already there. And so I like the idea of here we have these Europeans invading the land with no Intention of leaving because under the government contract, the contract for the corporation, they were supposed to create a settlement that would be self sustaining. They were supposed to find some type of crop, some type of product that would allow them to be self sustaining. They were not to come back. That needs to be understood. So now we have chief Powhatan who's saying, I'm graciously going to give you supplies so that you can repair whatever you need to repair, eat, and then leave. So we start off with this conflict, and then we start off within the conflict, within those people at the elite status who are there as part of the corporate enterprise and those within the ship who are indentured servants or some people have called white slaves who are there for a sense of freedom because once their indentured servitude ends, they are free to go about their business. So all of this is happening at the same time. And then by 1619, Africans arrive into that same settlement. So we have Africans from Angola who arrive in 1619. And Secretary John Ross Journal talks about 20 and odd Africans arriving in August of 1619, 1620, the Mayflower land. So that's why we need to understand that the Mayflower is not the beginning of this nation. So if I could clarify, that was a people I have done.
- [30:54]
B
Well, I agree.
- [30:58]
I would agree with that.
- [31:00]
A
And so here's Palatine having to negotiate on behalf of thousands and also as a diplomat begins, you know, diplomatic negotiations with these intruders, these invaders, they began to disrespect him. And there, there is a form of protest which deprived them of access to the hunting ground, which is, we see today, selective buying or selective selling or use your economic clout like all those things you see him doing there. If you're not going to treat us with respect, if you're not going to leave, then we are going to make things very uncomfortable for you. And so that's why I think that the indigenous are the original protesters.
- [31:48]
B
And in this chapter, you take us all the way up through. Through contemporary indigenous protest as well, with, you know, pipelines and.
- [31:59]
A
And Standing Rock.
- [32:00]
B
And Standing Rock.
- [32:03]
Chapter two. Then we move to chapter two is entitled what to the slave is the fourth of July, which of course, are the famous question posed by Frederick Douglass.
- [32:17]
A
And I want to just say for one quick thing, Richard Oaks is someone, you were saying before, that people don't know and remember. But Richard Oaks, a native American who was somebody and others with him, a young person who took over the Alcatraz former prison colony. Yes. And see, that's why I Was saying to be able to add him to the story, to see that, you know, he was actually doing this reverse design, saying, I'm just rediscovering Alcatraz. So as discoverer of the rock, Alcatraz, and then to take over that the same way the invaders of the English took over and, you know, the land in Virginia. And so that's why I was saying he was somebody who I thought was, was, was a bookend in, in addition to Standing Rock, to help us to better understand the ongoing struggles of indigenous people, of Native American people in this country, and the ways in which there are still similar mechanisms for, for social justice, for change. And that even though people don't win everything they go for, they find that there is progress made. It's two steps forward, one step back. So when we start talking about Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass, now, what to the slaves, the fourth of July, we can look at that and say, will we go to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year? What to the African American is that 250th anniversary? You know, given all the anti diversity, equity, inclusion that's going on, the undermining of affirmative action and the ways in which HBCUs and Black history is being disrespected and erased, you begin to see the ways in which Frederick Douglass argued through escape his petition. His petition is slavery is wrong. I mean, if you just look at it, I'm protesting against this bondage that's been forced upon me through fugitive, becoming a fugitive and running away through once he gains his freedom, speaking out through petitions that are being made, written petitions as well as petitioning, asking the government to make changes, joining other organizations, forming his own organization, creating a newspaper. I mean, these are the ways in which we are still protesting today. So if you think about it, this is the foundation. And that's why I wanted to make sure in a protest history of the United States, we see that just because it happens in an earlier era doesn't mean it cannot be effective today. We just have to use it in ways in which we're using. Just like he decided to have a newspaper. And so they didn't have the newspaper in the early, very, very early days of Powhatan, but they used other ways in which they would petition or ask or put their grievances before whatever the opposition is and make these changes or try to make these changes through protest. But Frederick Douglass, just amazing. Some people say that at certain times he was in newspapers more often than Abraham Lincoln. He was so well recognized.
- [35:36]
B
He was the most photographed person.
- [35:39]
A
Yes.
- [35:40]
B
In the 19th century. Not. Not black person or African American person.
- [35:46]
A
Person. And his wife Anna, that's the other. Anna was the one who came up with the ways in which he could be a fugitive. So we need to recognize, you know, those people who are part of this. And too often that's the other thing I wanted people to understand was that you. One person, this one face, and realize that that person represents thousands of others and people who have to support that one person. That's why Anna said, or it was thought that she said that she always wanted to make sure he was handsome and well groomed every time he was photographed. So he's the most photographed person. And you can't find a bad photograph of French in Douglas.
- [36:28]
B
That's true.
- [36:29]
A
And he had something else that we have to carry forward. He had a clear message. And that's something that, even when I talk about protesting today. Do you have clarity of message? It has to be a clear message that people understand, whether or not it's Palatan, get out.
- [36:47]
Or Frederick Douglass, your bondage is wrong. You know.
- [36:53]
It has to be a clear message. So there's so much that can be learned from each person's experience.
- [36:59]
B
Well, so that second chapter, again, Frederick Douglass, who was at one time in his life enslaved. And so much of that chapter we're talking about enslaved Americans, brings us to chapter three, which is labor rights and union strikes.
- [37:14]
A
Yes. And at the end of that chapter, once again, is John Brown. So I wanted people to also get someone that's like, oh, I wouldn't have thought of John Brown as a protester. But you're also.
- [37:28]
Touching on a sensitive subject, whether or not violence in protests is something that I actually wanted to do. And so when we get to the labor chapter, there's a lot of violence in the labor movement. There was violence in slave uprisings and John Brown. There was violence with Powhatan. So actually, violence was more the accepted part of protests than it is today. And so when we get to the labor rights and strikes, we have, you know, Mother Jones, who, someone who was very well known in her time has been forgotten about, except for a magazine named Mother Jones and the work that she did with the coal miners and everything that she went through and then rose from the, you know, disasters of losing her husband and her children to yellow fever, to deciding that she's going to be an activist and rally behind the coal workers. She didn't go into the coal mines. That was the other thing. You don't have to be that person. This is an example of somebody who did. Was not the worker, but someone who was there to give voice to and for the workers to go in other places, keep them in great spirits and help them to understand what they were dealing with and how they could and champion their cause and go forward, but also to go in other rooms and help other people in other rooms and use her voice on their behalf. Where a Philip Randolph was someone who was, you know, a Pullman worker, you know, with George Pullman's trains and this, this issue of whether or not they could be unionized as black men. And here you have the unions facing discrimination because they're the working class. And then those white unions members not wanting black people to be part of their unions. So you have protests within protests. So it becomes very complicated when, you know, finally a Philip Randolph is able to not just use his power as the leader of the Pullman Porters union, when it becomes recognized as a brotherhood of Pullman porters, but to also use that constituency to start making changes outside of the union context when it comes to civil rights, you know, to work against racial discrimination in the plants, the federal plants during the war. So you began to see that the oversized range now that he gets to use, but he started off as a worker within the system and then worked his way up and having that vision.
- [40:06]
B
I'm reflecting on you talking about how you thought about violence in, in these different movements and mentioning there was a lot of violence as it relates to securing labor rights. Because structurally then the next chapter after labor rights and union strikes is anti war marches and conscientious objectors.
- [40:26]
A
And I really thought about the order of the chapters because even though it doesn't appear to be in chronological order, it actually is, because when you look at the arc of it, you began to see that there is a chronology to it. And so I thought, I looked at the overarching story, the stories within the stories, how the chapters would be laid out and within each chapter, how it would be structured with the storytelling. And so when I discussed with my editor, when I thought about it myself, what does it mean to be anti war? What does it mean to actually.
- [41:10]
Be against the war? But then you had this other side in which you had indigenous people of African descent be looked at as people. We don't want you to fight in the war. You know, so almost fighting in the war becomes a protest of, you know, being seen as lesser than that. You don't, you don't have the qualities to actually fight in a war or we don't want to arm you, you. Because then if we arm you, then we now are recognizing you as a human being, but also recognizing the fact you could use those arms against us. So that becomes this very complicated type story. But then one of the things I love doing is taking complex concepts and figuring out how to deliver them in a way in which the average person can understand and the more scholarly person can also gain something. That's how this book is. Every chapter, every story is something whereby a protest is thought through enough to give someone some new information, but told in a way that allows the average reader to read it without being knocked out cold sleep, you know, which happens to so many history books. That's why I said it's just really quite, you know, disturbing to me sometimes because history is so riveting. And having drained bloodless, you know, for the sake of a tenure committee sometimes is, you know, very upsetting. But violence has always been a part of protest. And that's why the non violent movement was such, you know, a difference. Because it's not that violence didn't happen. The protesters have been from the very beginning, always treated roughly by law enforcement and by the general public that thought differently. It was the response of the protester to that treatment that changed with Mahatma Gandhi and Bayard, Rustin and of course Martin Luther King and all those who followed nonviolent philosophy. So when you look at the anti war movement, you could have the Quakers who did not believe in violence at all, in fighting in any war. And then you also had black people who said, I'm going to fight in your war to show you I have courage. To show you that I'm going to fight for my own freedom. So I decided it's kind of tricky to put people fighting in a war in an anti war chapter. But I hope I've explained it well enough that people get why I did that.
- [43:50]
B
Yeah. Toast the holidays in a new way and raise a glass of Rumchata, A delicious creamy blend of horchata with rum. Enjoy it over ice or in your coffee. Rumchata, your holiday cocktails just got sweeter. Tap or click the banner for more. Drink responsibly. Caribbean rum with real dairy cream, natural and artificial flavors. Alcohol 13.75% by volume 27.5 proof. Copyright 2025 Agave Logo Brand Poke, Wisconsin. All rights reserved.
- [44:20]
Well, in listeners of course can't see this, but you can see this. Over my left shoulder I have two figures standing on my bookshelf. One is Frederick Douglass and one is his son, Lewis Douglas, in his, in his union uniform. And one of the fighters that you talked about, he, he fought as a sense of protest when people didn't necessarily want to arm black people in the Civil War. And so I have them up there because they watch my apartment. They keep an eye on things over my shoulder all the time.
- [44:53]
A
So I want.
- [44:54]
B
The next chapter in the book is called rebellions in the 20th century. And what struck me about this chapter is it was, it felt like the only one that was actually time bound, which is the other chapters, as you said. Well, there was this chronological through line. But what I thought was so interesting about the other chapters is no matter when they started, you could very clearly see this contemporary, like sort of right up until today type thing. But this rebellions in the 20th century, we are talking about the 20th century. So talk about that. You know, that chapter and the decision to time bind it that way.
- [45:37]
A
Because there were so many protests that people can recognize today. And so the lessons of how they protested was so important to me so that they could, one could read this and see the different types of protests the people protested. And this was also a nudge to those people, once again, who said, protest doesn't have anything to do with me. It's not effective anymore that they could in their lineage see someone from their family who was touched by protest or was part of a protest or gain something through protest in the 20th century. And it's close enough that we had so much social change that took place that I believed it needed its own chapter because we have the social change with immigrants and farm workers and African Americans and women and anti war protests. But protests were in ways in which we have the Chinese American as well as the change in the country itself, because this is the focus on in the United States. So it's a protest history. But we have to look at in the United States and in the 20th century, the arc of protest is so deep and the social change is so relevant to what we have today that it's. It. To me, it was necessary for us to take a breath and say, wait a minute, what have we done up to this point? Let's review. Okay, let's take a moment and see all that we had to do in the 20th century to be where we are right now in the 21st century. I mean, for some people who wake up and actually believe either they've been born into the rights they have, they've immigrated into the rights they have, but some reason they believe Santa Claus gave Them, these rights, Santa Claus gave them these protections. A tooth fairy must have done this. Or some benevolent group of white people decided we're just going to give black, brown and other people of color these equal rights. No, that's not how it happened. And so that's why I wanted to make sure that if there was any question your rights were. I mean the, the basic rights were even think about like the, the rights not to have police break into your home and just ransack things and take evidence. I mean so much happened between Brown vs Board of Education and going up to the assassination of Martin Luther King that it had to have its, its own chapter.
- [48:16]
B
I'm going to try to formulate a follow up question and so hopefully you'll bear with me as I, as I'm formulating this. I'm curious about how much of this, this, this view and feeling that you have about like, hey, this was such an important 20th century, was so important. It needs to have his own chapter with the fact that, you know, you're a professor, you're a law professor. And to. For students that come sort of straight through undergrad into law school now, today's law students were not alive in the 20th century. For those that come straight through for the first time, just age wise. Right. For the first time ever. And I'm thinking about that, although I'm also thinking about the fact that, look, when I went, I graduated from law school 25 years ago and I wasn't alive for Brown v. Board of Education or Martin Luther King's assassination either. I had a lot of years in the 20th century, but I wasn't alive for those things either. How much do you think, just talk about like your, as your vantage point as someone who is interacting day in and day out now with students that were not alive in the 20th century. Like how.
- [49:25]
A
That's why the, that's why a chapter on the 20th century was needed. Because to them is history. Yeah.
- [49:32]
B
So in a way that's different from. I'll just use myself like I, you know, I am, I'm a, I'm a 2004 law graduation.
- [49:41]
And so in a way do you think it's, do you think like MLK's assassination is different to a contemporary law student as history differently than it was to say me? I mean he died before I was born as well.
- [49:57]
A
Yeah, I would say it's not so much that it's different, but I wanted to capture that it is American history and we need to understand. And I wrote it in many ways. I mean I've had students when I talked about the Vietnam War, and there was like, what's Vietnam? And they were thinking, what's where is it? And I've had older people, older than I am, say, how dare they not know where Vietnam is? It's like, why would they know where Vietnam is? You know? So if you're looking at the 20th century as history, then it needs to be written as history. And so those, once again, those people who are familiar with it can look at it and say, oh, I'm familiar with that. And then I added something for them. But for those people who are not familiar with it, law played an amazing role in the 20th century. That's when you start to see the average person say, wait a minute. This rule of law, that's just for the elite. This rule of law is supposed to apply to me too. So you protest now is pushing back using law. So once we start pushing back using law, I wanted to make sure in that chapter that we started looking at the different law cases that were so important in the creation of the rule of law to more apply to regular people than it did before. So that was another reason why a focus on the 20th century was so necessary. Because we take for granted in the 21st century the role of law that we can use as a tool for protest. That was something that was developed in the 20th century, in particular the latter half of the 20th century. So when we start getting to Brown versus Board of Education, it was very unique to use law as a protest tool. Now we use law as a protest tool on a regular basis in the 21st century. People need to know where that comes from. So the protest in the 20th century has a lot more law in it than any other chapter.
- [52:04]
B
Okay, okay.
- [52:06]
A
So you're the first person to actually hear that part of it. I don't want people to be scared by that chapter by saying, oh, my goodness, that's the law chapter, but that it is a chapter that I said, okay, we're going to have to drill down on some of these legal cases that lay the foundation for the rights we had in the last two decades of the 20th century and then going into the 21st century, because then you don't know what you're protesting to keep if you don't know how you gained it in the first place. And so those protests in the 21st century have to be delineated in a way for people to understand. Santa Claus did not give you these rights. And you start to see the.
- [52:45]
Litigation, legislation, and protest that went into achieving what was achieved in the 20th century that people are so stunned over losing now because they didn't realize where it came from, they woke up with it in the 21st century. So that law student you're talking about who then loses those rights and say, wait a minute, I thought we always had this. No, we didn't. No, we didn't. And we need to go back and see where they came from so that people can better understand what they're going to need to do to keep more rights from being lost and at least to recognize that this was not something given. And people talk about Thomas Jefferson saying that the price of freedom is vigilance. And I always like to say, if Thomas Jefferson felt this way, what did the rest of the people feel? What did the working class people feel if he felt he had to have vigilance?
- [53:41]
B
Well, and of course, we're not speaking in hypotheticals here, because your next chapter is her body, her ballot, her protest.
- [53:50]
A
Yes. And so, and once again, the chronology now shows less time in the earlier periods and more focus on the latter period because it's already been covered in many ways in the other chapters. So when we get to this chapter, I wanted to remind women that the fight over their wounds has been there from the very beginning. So when they actually shipped women in, remember we talked about 1620, the Plymouth Rock and all of that, and the Mayflower. So 1619, July of 1619, was the house of Burgesses formed in Jamestown Settlement. And August of 1619, the arrival of 20 and odd Africans, those planters, the elite who had the land, needed the indentured servants. But after the indentured servants did their work, they're lonely, they're looking for mates, they're looking for female companionship. So what does England do? It ships over women into the colony. So when you start thinking about the role women were to play, they were to be the companions to these men, workers as well, and breeding the next or the first generation and the next colony that would be under England's flag. And so that womb has been a battleground from the very beginning of this country. And so that's why the focus of that chapter is on a woman's autonomy. And not just the beginning, her physical freedom, but then going into her intellectual freedom, her emotional freedom, and then of course, the freedom of her womb. But the physical freedom, the fact that we as women had to protest in order to be able to go outside at night and if something happened to us, not have police officers, prosecutors decide not to take the case and others because they were like, well, what were you doing outside at night as a woman? And so to have young women have to be reminded of this because you, you see women walking alone, going out by themselves and they think, well, do you think this just fell out of the sky? Do you think all of a sudden police officers just woke up one day and decided to respect and protect you? No. Protests had to happen to take back the night. Protests had to happen around domestic violence. And protests had to happen in so many different ways and especially around a woman's womb and in her physical autonomy. So, so I think it was necessary for that chapter for us to look at the Grimke sisters, for one, going back to.
- [56:36]
Women in the 1800s who decided that they would live their lives the way they wanted to and also take on causes like anti slavery causes, but also Ida B. Wells Barnett and how she decided to stand up and fight and, you know, the need for Margaret Sanger and for others to see that having 20 babies put a woman's life in jeopardy. So what can we do? So when we use the phrase planned parenthood, we say it so quickly, we don't even think about the impact of the words to plan someone's parenthood. Planned parenthood. So if we even just stop for a moment to think about what that entails and who's doing the planning and what we have now with men actually in the planning process as well, that's huge. Once again, that's something of 21st century, that came from the 20th century that men learned that, yes, you have a role in this planning, you're not just one and done. So that's. So I really, I thought that, you know, having that, that chapter focused on women's autonomy, it could be focused on so many different things, but to focus on women's autonomy, you know, and their political power, it was important to me.
- [58:03]
B
And you, you know, to your point before, about how these later chapters get us sort of closer and closer, you know, contemporary time. The next chapter is protesting violent policing.
- [58:14]
A
Yes, but I, but I begin it in the 1600s, in 1669, going forward, even the bounty hunters who were the slave catchers and then become the modern day, well, the first colonial police, you could say, and then become in the 1800s or police departments and then become the modern day police departments. And you see at the core of it, once again, the rule of law. And the role of law. And the rule of law is actually one in which it's understood that the elite control law. The role of law is to oppress the Rest of the regular people, and especially women, and then the police department is then used to enforce the role of law, which is making sure that those marginalized people stay marginalized and stay in their place. And so the push against that has been from the very beginning, prosecutors were not prosecuting. We have some people say, over 6,000 lynchings in this country where people were burned to death, their eyes put out. These aren't the assaults. These are the actual murders. And where are the prosecutors they're able not to prosecute? Where are the politicians? Where are the judges? Where are the people who are supposed to protect those, if the rule of law was real? And that's why I said the fight against violent policing and the violence is allowed too often because the violence is against those who are seen as marginalized in the first place.
- [59:55]
B
And so it brings us to the last substantive chapter, which is contesting climate denial and environmental racism.
- [60:04]
A
And I want to, if I can, just very quickly, go back to Daniel Ellsberg. So what I do, I like to connect these things in ways that, you know, maybe I'm too subtle. That's why I have to speak up and say something.
- [60:20]
But Daniel Ellsberg is known for leaking the Pentagon papers, but he was also, in the latter part of his life, very much an activist against nuclear war. And so when we start talking about climate change, and we also need to connect climate change with the anti nuke movement and see how they work together. So Daniel Ellsberg is in the anti war chapter, but his philosophies can also be philosophies that would be connected with the climate change movement, because we don't have a climate if we don't have a world. And so trying to get people from different activist constituencies and groups to see the common interests is something very important as well. So that women in the women's movement, if you're thinking about your children and you've decided you planned your parenthood, you're raising your family, you want them to have clean water, you want them to have fresh air, you want them not to be a part of a nuclear explosion. All these things have to come together when we start looking at the world. And too often we've put ourselves in silos of activism. And I'm hoping, as people who have certain interests read through the book, they can expand their interest to see the commonality of causes here. And so the other part is, you know, and I know people may not think of regentrification as part of this, but regentrification, when it puts a highway through A community of color and you have exhaust fumes and tire dust and noise pollution and all of this, when you have like these cancer alleys that have been, you know, these bus terminals where high cancer and asthma rates, we have to think about other people who are paying the price for regentrification. So someone may be full on when it comes to climate change without realizing that there are people paying the price in other ways that should be thought of when it comes to climate change should be thought of as thought of the environment. Their environments are being ruined. And not in my backyard. Maybe the phrase used by people of privilege, whether or not they feel they're privileged or not being used by people of privilege, then whose backyard is it going to be in? And when it's allowed to be in backyards of people of color or of low income communities, then we have to think twice about our stance and realize that we are affecting other people's lives and that the change can take place in very small ways. And in the speaking up, not just for yourself, but you're in rooms that I cannot be in, or there are other people in rooms that others who are not able to take off work that day, you know, so you're in that room, represent more than yourselves, think about other people as well. And that's how we've made social change. Not just being in our own silos, thinking only about ourselves. But when you go through the book, you see that these are regular people who, from Chief Powhatan all the way up to, you know, the Grimke sisters, to Ida B. Wells to A. Philip Randolph to Muhammad Ali and others, that something is placed at your footstep and you have to decide, what am I going to do? So Chris Smalls is at Amazon and they want to form a union because he sees the conditions are harsh for the employees. And he's somebody who's rising up the leadership ladder. He makes these suggestions and all of a sudden now something's wrong. How dare he get out of his place. And this is what happens. Too often. The status quo means that's where it should stop. Right where people are. And then you have other people who say, wait a minute, well, I want something a little different. That's why protesters are so often abused. How dare you say the world I've created or the world I support is not good enough for you. You get what we give you, the next generation of immigrants, even though these people are immigrants as well. And as we go into the holidays and you have people sitting around the table talking about how Great Uncle Joe came to this country with nothing and he made something. And it's like, well, why is it that Great Uncle Joe could come to this country from Ireland or India, wherever and have nothing? But now people who come to this country must have money. Great Uncle Joe didn't have any money. He was able to give, to be given opportunity to make something out of nothing. But now we want to pull up a ladder for everyone else. So I think the idea of protesting expanded beyond the people in the street to understand that we have to have empathy for others. And once we have the empathy for others, we begin to see our, our connectedness. And I think that gives us the courage, the spiritual courage that I see in all of these people that connected them to say, I'm going to do something even though it doesn't exist and I gonna, I'm going to create it. I'm going to help create something that doesn't exist. And it might not work out for me, but it's going to work out for someone because it's worth it to me to put myself at risk as a protester and protesting in all these different forms.
- [66:04]
B
The book is A Protest History of the United States by Gloria J. Brown Marshall. You can find Professor Brown Marshall online at brownmarshall23.com and on Instagram. Brown Marshall. And I am your host, Sullivan Sommer. You can find me online at SullivanSummer.com on Instagram at the SullivanSummer and over on substackullivansummer, where Gloria and I are headed right now to continue our conversation. Thank you for listening to the new books network.
- [66:41]
Foreign.
- [66:48]
A
Vanguard.
- [66:48]
B
For a moment of meditation.
- [66:51]
A
Take a deep breath.
- [66:52]
B
Picture yourself reaching your financial goals. Feel that freedom.
- [66:57]
A
Visit vanguard.com investinginyou to learn more.
- [67:00]
B
All investing is subject to risk.