Enlivening the Present Moment
Assistant Professor of History Say Burgin outside Denny Hall, home of the Department of History.
OFFICE HOURS: Say Burgin, Assistant Professor of History
by Tony Moore
Assistant Professor of History Say Burgin earned her Ph.D. at the University of Leeds. She teaches such courses as Race & Second Wave Feminism in the U.S. and Solidarity. Her article “The Trickbag [of] the Press”: SNCC, Print Media and the Myth of an Antiwhite Black Power Movement," was the 2023 winner of the Ronald T. and Gayla D. Farrar Award in Media & Civil Rights History, and NYU Press recently published her book, Organizing Your Own: The White Fight for Black Power in Detroit.
Sam Cooke told us back in 1960 that he “don’t know much about history,” and he’s probably not alone. While Sam Cooke doesn’t have a Tik Tok account and probably doesn’t get a lot of traction these days, what makes Dickinson’s history department the best place for students who want to know a lot about history?
The breadth of what they can learn! Our history department covers so much of the globe and so many different historical approaches. Dickinson students get to learn about the ecological history of the African continent, migration history across the Americas and empire and colonialism in Europe and the United States
We’ve got passionate faculty who show students that history is not the study of things but an approach to understanding the world better. If students want to understand climate change and how we got here, they can learn from [Associate Professor of History] Emily Pawley. If they are fascinated by the history of medicine and want to reflect on how our knowledge of human bodies has evolved over time, they can take classes with [Assistant Professor of History] Evan Young. And if they want to know why so many people in the U.S. today are pushing to defund the police, they can study histories of policing and incarceration with me.
The media loves a good narrative, and sometimes (usually?) that narrative takes on a life of its own. Your book challenges the media’s idea of a "white purge" from the 1960s Black Power movement, which suggested that Black people didn’t want help from across the racial aisle. How did the 1960s media get it so wrong?
A major reason the media got it wrong is because the news tended to think it was better at covering the civil rights movement than it actually was. Reporters were great at publicizing the violence that police and segregationists perpetuated against activists, but they tended to oversimplify other aspects of the movement.
This was especially true of Black Power, which had a nuanced message for white supporters. Black Power activists asked white people to try a different tactic: Rather than coming into Black communities to support civil rights, they should organize in white communities and build support for Black self-determination. Much of the media and some moderate civil rights leaders distorted this message. They did not hear the innovation and the strategy in it and instead claimed that Black activists were trying to kick white people out of the movement. Even as major groups tried to correct the story and provide evidence that they weren’t “purging” white people, much of the media refused to listen. That had dire consequences for how a lot of white Americans viewed Black Power and the ongoing fight for Black freedom.
When thinking about history, it’s hard not to get lost in the idea that it literally encompasses everything that humans have done or experienced since they first walked the Earth. That’s a lot to think about. What about history broadly drew you in, and how did you land on your focus?
Truly—it’s so much to wrap your head around! But how I think about history is that it offers a really helpful in-road for understanding something that you really care about. It brings complexity and nuance and deep knowledge of context to your passions.
For me, I really care about creating a more feminist and racially just world, and I want to learn from people who have tried to create that world. History helps me to understand how people in the past have analyzed gender, race and imperialism as structures of power—and how they sought to dismantle or contest those structures. Because history helps us to comprehend our present world, I don’t see those fights from the past as gone or over or dead. I see them as enlivening the present moment and the struggles that people continue today.
The Dickinson College Expert Show: Say Burgin on the White Fight for Black Power in Detroit
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Published May 31, 2024