In February 2015, America finds itself in the midst of Black History Month, nationwide racial violence controversies and its first black presidency.
Marc Lamont Hill, a social justice activist and professor of African-American Studies at Morehouse College, addressed the intersection of these events Thursday in the second of the spring Wisconsin Union Directorate Distinguished Lecture Series and Black History Month Keynote Speech.
After opening performances by the Hues and First Wave Scholar Sean Medlin, Hill addressed the audience as “family,” and began by remarking at the Symphony Meeting Room with standing room only in Gordon Dining and Event Center.
“I’m shocked to see all these amazing people here in the room, here for Black History Month,” Hill said. “Apparently all the black people in Madison are here.”
Hill said history of the Civil Rights Movement should be used to negotiate contemporary issues under the Obama administration.
“I think black history and the black freedom tradition has something to teach us about the age of Obama: How to make sense of it, how to analyze it, how to negotiate it and ultimately how to transcend it,” Hill said.
Although America has come a long way, which is illustrated by the election of a black president, Hill said looking back over history can also blind people to progress that has yet to be made.
“I come from a tradition that demands more ... This tradition might call us to think about the age of Obama and to reimagine it, to push it and to demand more from it,” Hill said. “The age of Obama is an age where you have a black president and black misery, black success and black poverty, mass expansion of the middle class and extraordinary gaps between the have-nots and the have-gots.”
One specific thing Hill suggested contemporary activists should learn from black freedom history is the importance of organizing and working together for a common cause, rather than racializing issues and segregating activism.
“If you want something public to be dismissed and discarded by the public, you make it black. We mark things as black even when they’re not,” Hill said. “If you understand that in the context of history it becomes part of a long, consistent streak.”
Hill ended his keynote with a call to action.
“We have to act bravely. This is a tradition of brave action, family,” Hill said. “But before we act bravely, we have to discern wisely. We have to ask some different questions.”
