Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Sullivan Sommer
Guest: Dr. Shatema Threadcraft, Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies, Vanderbilt University
Episode: Shatema Threadcraft, Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy (Oxford UP, 2025)
Date: November 22, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode centers on Dr. Shatema Threadcraft’s new book, Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy. The conversation explores how black women have labored—often in the shadows of history and politics—to resist, record, and respond to the ongoing crisis of black femicide, and how their activism interrogates the boundaries of democracy, violence, and memory. Sullivan Sommer delves deep into Threadcraft’s arguments, focusing on definitions of black femicide, the challenges of representation and recognition, and the book’s unique blend of social science, political theory, activism, and literary criticism, particularly via the work of Toni Morrison.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Defining the Scope: Labor, Femicide & Political Science

• Continued Focus on Labor and Political Science
  • Threadcraft’s work examines the overlap of sexual, reproductive violence with labor issues in black women’s lives—how violence is both a result of and compounded by forced labor, economic disenfranchisement, and political neglect.
    • “Both of my books are concerned with sexual and reproductive violence against black women…that's really often bound up with labor…this is a book about black femicide.” (03:09)
• Black Femicide: Active vs. Passive
  • Active femicide: The intentional murder of black women because they are women, exacerbated by structures of racism.
  • Passive femicide: Deaths from neglect (e.g., black maternal mortality, botched abortions)—the result of systemic failures, not direct violence.
    • “The Black maternal mortality crisis would be a textbook case of passive femicide… Pregnancy is an important point for the murder of women, both active and passive for black women.” (06:48)

Structural Violence, Policing, and Safety

• Role of Police and Public Institutions
  • The criminal justice system often fails to aid black women, sometimes escalating violence against them rather than preventing it.
    • “Police are not the immediate cause of death for most black women, but they are very much implicated in black women’s disproportionate exposure to premature death.” (09:02)
  • Crenshaw’s #SayHerName, abolition feminism and community-based solutions are highlighted as necessary correctives.
    • “Criminalizing violence against black women tends to restrain black women's actions in their own defense…tends to harm black women and survivors of violence more than it protects them.” (22:39)

Activism and Strategies

• Activist Organizations Profiled
  • Black and Missing Foundation: Fights for attention to missing black women and girls, exposing media and institutional neglect.
    • “I categorize [it] as a black police and media reform organization…media attention is key to driving police attention.” (11:19)
  • Data as Activism: Community-driven efforts to correct underreporting of black women’s disappearances and deaths; building “counterdata”.
    • “Wells’s activism was very much data activism…many people are doing activism around data…to counter official data.” (14:14)
• Media & Representation
  • The battle against “missing white women syndrome”—media fascination with white victims at the expense of people of color.
    • “We shouldn’t sweep their stories under the rug and move on to the next topic.” (13:38)
• Self-Defense and Community Organizing
  • Some activists provide self-defense training for black women, especially IPV survivors, framing this as a pragmatic response in the absence of institutional support.
    • “If no one else is going to help you, you have yourself left and you have a self to defend.” (20:13)
• Say Her Name & Abolition Feminism
  • #SayHerName centers black women’s deaths from state violence, and abolition feminists call for survivor-centered, non-punitive approaches to harm and justice.

Entering the Record: Data, Humanization, and the Archive

• Challenges of Being Remembered and Counted
  • The failure of official records to count black women’s deaths accurately; activists work to “enter the record in the right ways.”
    • “A lot of this is about the work of humanization and not just entering them into the record as a number, but also to include a story with that number.” (16:39)
• Violence of the Archive
  • Referencing Saidiya Hartman—entering history often compounds violence when black women are misrepresented or erased.

Public vs. Private Violence & Democratic Memory

• W.E.B. Du Bois and Lynching as Spectacle (for Men)
  • Du Bois wrote about lynching as crucifixion, tying public violence to black political consciousness—but this privileged (primarily male) victims.
    • “Relatively few women are lynched…if this form of violence is associated with the black people, it's a form of violence to which men are most often subject.” (25:06)
• Keeping the Dead Present: Black Feminist Necromancy
  • In contrast, black women’s mourning, activism, and storytelling “keep the dead with them,” refusing to let private, hidden deaths slip into oblivion.
    • “The black women I profile and Toni Morrison most clearly, don’t leave the dead dead…democratic practices that keep the dead with them.” (27:07)
• Emmett Till’s Continuous Resurrection
  • Emmett Till’s murder, and especially his mother Mamie Till Bradley’s decisions (e.g., the open casket), provide paradigmatic examples of political uses of black grief, making private loss public.
    • “She made the decision to let the world see what they had done to her boy…this is really important in that these pictures are probably one of the greatest cultural products of the twentieth century.” (31:29, 33:55)

Stories of Activism: Beyond Mamie Till

• Clementine Barfield and Save Our Sons and Daughters (SOSAD)
  • Founded after losing her own son, Barfield organized mothers to address youth violence, trauma, and loss—developing practices of “restorative kinship” (e.g., birthday parties for deceased children, planting trees as memorials).
    • “They organized in prisons, schools, churches…they pioneered versions of healing justice.” (34:24)
• Margaret Prescott & the Black Coalition Fighting Back Serial Killers
  • A leader in sex worker rights and advocacy against state neglect of murdered black women, especially in LA.
    • “She developed an analysis between race-conscious, street-focused police work and violence against all black women on the street…labeling a woman as a sex worker…made [her] available for murder.” (38:43)

Literary Criticism & Morrisonian Democracy

• Pivoting to Toni Morrison’s Work
  • The book’s latter part analyzes Morrison’s novels and plays as interventions in how violence, memory, and community are conceptualized. Morrison’s fiction provides “feminist correctives” to patriarchal or masculinized politics of black grief and resurrection.
    • “Morrison in private murder, Du Bois in spectacle, public murder…Du Bois and lynching, Morrison in intimate stuff.” (46:50)
    • “Many people…turn to fiction to tell a true story. And I think Morrison is not only doing that…she is, you know, a leading light in American literature.” (49:53)
• Paradise, Home, and Dreaming Emmett
  • Morrison’s works foreground women’s experiences of violence (mass femicide, infanticide) and alternate paths to repair beyond retributive justice.
    • “There is a mass femicide that opens the book, therefore treating the very subject that's important to me…if you set that up, I think you're making an important point.” (52:44)

Theoretical & Methodological Reflections

• On Book Structure and Scholarly Method
  • Threadcraft shares her process: she initially tried to group all the activists in one chapter, but later, inspired by peer feedback, gave each her own chapter—individuating their vital contributions and allowing for a richer, more nuanced argument.
    • “You can't write about Du Bois and lynching if you're not going to put Ida B. Wells on equal footing…that…it made sense to give all these women their due.” (43:59)
  • The book became “a chance to marvel at badass women throughout the 20th and 21st century…this is a political…I'm making arguments about [their] innovative democratic practice…” (47:16)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Violence of Pregnancy:
  “Despite tremendous advances in obstetric care, if pregnancy were a job, it would be one of the 10 most dangerous jobs in America.” (B quoting C, 07:09)
  “For black women for whom it can rank as high as the second most dangerous job.” (07:27)

• On Black Women’s Political Labor:
  “It is unruly women who have best performed the work of resurrection. Loud mouthed unforgivable women, single mothers, welfare mothers, lesbians and sex workers…These are not the women so long trapped in democracy's household, but those marginal to it, expelled from it, yet still constrained by its gendered heterosexual work discipline.” (01:07, B)

• On Black Women’s Ongoing Struggle:
  “It's about the struggle black women face after death to enter the record and…related to…the violence of the archive…” (03:09, C)

• On Activist Data Work:
  “So in the book, I consider the work of Rosa Page…she worked as a nurse in an ER…became convinced that data regarding black women's murder was wrong and began scouring sort of non traditional sources and eventually demonstrated that the FBI was undercounting the murders…” (14:14)

• On the Political Power of Grief:
  “The funeral of Emmett Till stands as the most effective political use of a dead body in the 20th century.” (B quoting C, 33:55)

• On the Book’s Structure:
  “I began the book puzzling over the problem of the private deaths of black women and how to drive activism around murders that were not occurring in public like those that drove activism in the movement for black lives. Like, that's literally where I started…” (43:59)

• On Rebuilding the World:
  “For people…there are many ways to tell a true story. And even if many of the important things I have said may seem troublingly unverifiable, I assure you that most of the above is true. I have chosen to tell a ghost story…But the story of black femicide…could and indeed should one day be told as a story about data and power… I want to close, however, by thinking of the above as a story of engineering with the ghosts, tinkering and helping to reconfigure the machine.” (B quoting C, 54:17)

• On Resisting “Burn It Down” Politics:
  “If you've been unable to imagine what goes in its place, then I'm not sure what you think you're going to rebuild.” (Host’s comment, 56:58)

Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:07 - Introduction of Threadcraft and framing of black women’s labor and democratic work
• 03:09 – Definitions of black femicide and book’s major themes
• 05:26 – Active vs. passive femicide explained
• 09:21 – Policing, public safety, and black women’s exposure to violence
• 11:19 – Black and Missing Foundation and media activism
• 14:14 – Data as activism, alternative archives, and humanization
• 20:13 – Armed self-defense and survivor-led community interventions
• 21:48 – Say Her Name, abolition feminism, and criminalization critique
• 24:17 – Du Bois, lynching, and the formation of political consciousness
• 27:07 – “Being with the dead,” Morrison’s Beloved, and practices of resurrection
• 29:17 – Emmett Till’s continuing presence in black political memory
• 31:29 – Mamie Till Bradley’s decision for an open casket & impact
• 34:24 – Clementine Barfield and Save Our Sons and Daughters
• 38:43 – Margaret Prescott, sex work, and anti-serial killer activism
• 43:59 – Book structure, organizing women’s stories, and Morrison
• 49:12 – Morrison, literary criticism, and feminist correctives
• 54:17 – Book’s conclusion: reconfiguring the machine, building with ghosts
• 56:58 – Reflections on democratic redesign, imagining new futures
• 58:04 – Close and next research directions

Flow & Tone

• The episode is reflective, engaged, and analytical—mixing academic depth with moments of admiration and affect (“Isn’t this woman cool?”).
• Dr. Threadcraft discusses complex theory with candor, humility, and clear commitments to both activism and scholarship.
• The host ensures key terms are defined for listeners and pauses for clarifications, making the discussion accessible.

For Further Reading/Listening

• Labors of Resurrection: Black Women, Necromancy, and Morrisonian Democracy (Oxford UP, 2025) by Shatema Threadcraft
• Works and interviews with Clementine Barfield, Margaret Prescott, Toni Morrison
• References to Saidiya Hartman, Kimberle Crenshaw, Beth Richie, Ida B. Wells, and scholarship on black maternal mortality

This episode will be valuable to listeners interested in black feminist thought, political theory, activism, race and gender studies, and the intersection of literature and social justice. It underscores the stakes of both “recording” and “resurrecting” black women’s lives and deaths—both in data and in story—as movements toward a more inclusive, responsive democracy.