Despite the abundance of recent scholarship detailing ubiquitous black resistance to white supremacy, collective and individual narratives of the myriad experiences of black Americans during the last century often portray black people as cowering in the face of white oppression. The dominant narratives, especially those perpetuated in mainstream media and cultural production, continue to focus upon 20^th century black suffering and disfunction, despite the clear articulations of resistance produced by black artists and individuals. This panel delves into black expressions of 20^th century black resistance to white supremacy and grapples with the tension between these narratives and the still pervasive narratives, theories, and images of black life as shaped exclusively by the relationship of black people to whiteness, white supremacy, and white oppression. We consider the genesis of the dominant narratives, the ways in which black artists, individuals, and activists have challenged them, as well as the sociopolitical and cultural responses to those challenges, including silencing, destructive public policy, and the massive dissemination of modern stereotypes, as false and detrimental as “Jim Crow” himself.

Members of this panel explore the excavation of the written word as a means of setting the record straight in the autobiography of civil and human rights activist Vera Mae Pigee; the role of communism and feminism in Lorraine Hansberry’s resistance to Black matriarchy theory and the misuse of the pivotal character of Lena Younger in A Raisin in the Sun; the strategic manipulation of the trope of the downtrodden and complacent Negro by civil rights and Black Power activists; and the emergence of the professionally trained Black librarian who ushered in a new "epoch" of Black intellectual agency.