The Majority Report with Sam Seder – Best of 2025: "We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance" with Kellie Carter Jackson

Date: December 31, 2025
Host: Sam Seder (with Emma Vigeland)
Guest: Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson – Associate Professor, Africana Studies, Wellesley College

Episode Overview

For the final episode of 2025, The Majority Report revisits a standout interview from February: Sam Seder and Emma Vigeland’s in-depth conversation with historian Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson about her 2025 book, We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance. The discussion explores the broad toolkit of Black resistance throughout history, pushing beyond sanitized or binary understandings and reclaiming the often-elided histories of resilience, force, creativity, and joy.

The episode also features a second segment of Majority Report's irreverent commentary on recent right-wing media controversies, but the following summary focuses on the primary interview with Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson.

Main Theme:

A wide-ranging, forceful reexamination of Black resistance in U.S. history—examining revolutions, self-defense, joy, and the creative, collective refusal to acquiesce to white supremacy. Dr. Carter Jackson’s work urges readers to rethink binaries of violence/nonviolence and the shallow symbolism that often replaces real change.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Write "We Refuse"?

[11:23]

• Jackson: Began writing during the 2020 uprising, “because I was mad, I was angry, and I was frustrated at the way the protests of 2020... had not really led to, like, structural or systemic change.”
• Critique of “hashtag activism” and the nonviolence/violence binary:

  “We have more than two tools, just... a hashtag or a protest or a Molotov cocktail.”

• Intention: Expand our conception of resistance, showcasing the full spectrum, from the Haitian Revolution to the present.

2. The Limits of 2020’s Uprisings & ‘Backlash” Cycle

[12:44-16:22]

• Why didn’t the scale of protest produce structural change?
• Pandemic played a role: “you have way more eyeballs on this event than you probably would have...”
• Systemic change is threatened when it means “relinquish[ing] power or control.”
• America’s “deep allegiance to white supremacy” makes real redistribution of power difficult.

  “We got more symbols. We got more trinkets because it’s cheaper.”

• Every real Black advancement in U.S. history is met with “widespread backlash—political, economic, social,” e.g., after Reconstruction, the 1920s, civil rights, post-2020 “DEI backlash.”
• Nonviolence and hashtags are often “ineffective. And we need new tools, we need new ideas.”

3. The Sanitizing of Black Radicalism & Historical Amnesia

[17:19-18:48]

• Emma raises ‘sanitizing’ of Black history—e.g., even Mandela was on U.S. terror lists until 2008.
• MLK “was hated... You’ve got civil rights on the cheap. You need to pay up.”
• Malcolm X’s more radical stances and early Mandela’s readiness to use force have been whitewashed.
• History is “the greatest tool I have in correcting the record.”

4. Family Histories of Force and Self-Defense

• Personal Narratives: Grandma’s revolver and family’s ritual of jail for safety.

  “I just could not fathom prison being a safe space for Black men.” [19:31]

• “Black women in particular... have used their Second Amendment rights to defend themselves, particularly from the Ku Klux Klan.”
• Even MLK: “He might have believed in nonviolence, but he also believed in self-defense.”
• On resisting binary framing:

  “He did not see them [nonviolence and self-defense] as in opposition.” [21:44]

5. Revolution: Haiti’s Overdue Recognition

[25:10]

• Haiti’s revolution is “a feature” of the era, not a footnote: only revolution to abolish slavery.
• The hypocrisy of U.S./European narratives:

  “Black people are actually serving Thomas Jefferson while he’s drafting the Declaration of Independence... the hypocrisy knows no bounds.”

• Enduring price Haiti paid for freedom: forced to pay reparations to slaveholders; U.S. and French embargoes and invasions.
• Revolutionary moments are easier to ignite than to sustain.

6. Protection: Margaret Garner & The Underground Railroad

[27:49, 31:04]

• The harrowing story of Margaret Garner:

  “She decides to kill her children, that she would rather have them die than have them go back into slavery... protection is such a radical act.” [27:49]

• Underground Railroad as “pragmatic, practical protection”—facing immense personal risk in defiance of brutal laws.

7. Armed Black Resistance: Carrie Johnson & the Power of Self-Defense

[33:09-38:08]

• 1919 Red Summer: 17-year-old Carrie Johnson defends her home during a white mob attack, kills a white police officer, later acquitted.

  “This sent a message that Black people would defend themselves, that they would be armed...”

• History buried out of “shame” and desire to avoid “revealing a vulnerability in the white community.”

8. The Black Panthers, Self-Defense & Community Care

[38:22-41:01]

• Panthers begin as an armed self-defense group but shift focus: “Within the first year... they put down the weapons.”
• Their free breakfast, clinics, and other services “more terrifying to the American populace... fed, literate, healthy Black people.”
• “Protection is not always about a gun. Protection is about food. Protection is about literacy. Protection is about good health... a safe community and access to resources.”

9. Joy as Resistance

[41:22-44:00]

• “Joy as a weapon. I see joy as a balm... the pinnacle of the Black experience.”
• Example: The 2023 Alabama dock brawl—social media memes and humor “celebration and mockery of whiteness... poking fun at white supremacy to rob it of its legitimacy.”
• “Black people need joy. We need joy in order to survive. It is what affirms our humanity.”

10. Lessons for Broader Resistance/Coalition-Building

[44:45-52:09]

• The toolkit is for everyone fighting oppression:

  “Refusal is collective and refusal is global... Now more than anything, we need deep and wide coalitions.”

• Beyond 3-point plans and binaries; get creative, use all talents:

  “We need the engineer and the poet, we need the graffiti artist and the medical doctor... it’s an all hands on deck moment.”

• Even a “small group of committed people willing to make sacrifice... can change the world over. The abolitionists did it.”
• Cautions against “aspirational whiteness” and self-preserving proximity to power; emphasizes universal needs: health, safety, decent living.
• “Whiteness and white supremacy is a problem, but so is capitalism... so is patriarchy.”

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On 2020 Protest Fallout:

  “Aunt Jemima got a remix. And I’m like, this is not what we asked for.” — Jackson [13:12]

• On Backlash:

  “Every time you get Black history, even... if that history is somewhat progressive... you get widespread backlash.” — Jackson [15:01]

• Personal Family History:

  “My grandmother may have died in Detroit, but she was a southerner... all the white men would get drunk and they would lynch any Black man in town. So if you were already in jail, that was your alibi.” — Jackson [19:31]

• On Haiti:

  “It defeats Napoleon’s empire. And it basically says, and we will be a free nation. ... They paid heavily for that.” — Jackson [25:10]

• Margaret Garner’s Dilemma:

  “The choices you are given are to live life in bondage or to refuse and limp. Racism and white supremacy handicaps you.” — Jackson [22:09]

• Underground Railroad:

  “When the Fugitive Slave Law passed... the new Mason Dixon line was Canada’s border.” — Jackson [31:28]

• Carrie Johnson:

  “They could not believe that a 17-year-old Black girl has fatally wounded this police officer... The black press... told her story over and over and kept it in the headlines so that she could get justice for defending herself.” — Jackson [33:09-36:00]

• On the Panthers:

  “Hoover realized... what was more terrifying to the American populace was actually not armed Black people. It was fed, literate, healthy Black people.” — Jackson [38:56]

• Joy as Resistance:

  “If we have nothing else, we have each other. And when we have each other, there is always joy and laughter to be found.” — Jackson [43:13]

• Broader Lessons:

  “Refusal is collective and refusal is global... I want people to refuse... it’s an all hands on deck moment.” — Jackson [45:38]

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Book origins & frustration with 2020 protests: [11:06–12:26]
• Limits of protest, systemic inertia, ‘symbolic’ changes instead of structural: [12:26–14:42]
• Backlash, white supremacy’s reluctance to surrender power: [15:01–16:22]
• Sanitization of Black leaders, Mandela, King, Malcolm X: [17:19–18:48]
• Personal/family stories – gun for self-defense, using jail for protection: [19:31–21:44]
• Chapter “Force”: Arming for protection, MLK and guns: [21:44–23:39]
• Haitian Revolution: [25:10–27:25]
• Protection – Margaret Garner’s act: [27:49–31:04]
• Underground Railroad, Fugitive Slave Law: [31:04–32:48]
• Armed Black resistance, Carrie Johnson: [33:09–38:08]
• Black Panthers, community care: [38:22–41:01]
• Joy as resistance: [41:22–44:00]
• Broader lessons, coalitions beyond Black Americans: [44:45–52:09]

Summary & Takeaways

Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson’s interview overlays personal history and rigorous scholarship to challenge stagnant narratives around Black resistance. She demonstrates the multifaceted, adaptive, and creative responses oppressed people have developed—often buried by mainstream discourse. Her call is for historical honesty, broad coalitions, and the will to think beyond empty gestures and false binaries.

Key message: Real resistance is neither monolithic nor locally bounded; it is, at its most powerful, collective, creative, and transformative—a lesson for every justice movement facing backlash and entrenched power.

End of Main Interview.
(Segment after [52:22] returns to hosts’ commentary and right-wing media analysis.)