Just call 2020 the year of Barbara.
Barbara Ransby, historian, professor of Black studies, history and gender, and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wants to change the world, and now is her moment.
As an advocate and community activist, she’s been walking the walk for years when it comes to social justice and equality inside and outside the lecture hall. She’s co-founder of Scholars for Social Justice and a board member at the Woods Fund of Chicago. (Both groups work with community organizers to fight for equality and justice). Ransby was even at the helm of The Public Square, a nonprofit that encourages citizen participation in public affairs through discussion groups.
Ransby’s goal is: “She wants to make the better future visible,” said one colleague.
The world has taken note of Ransby’s work and actions. This year alone:
She was elected as a fellow of the Society of American Historians — an invitation-only honor;
She became the first endowed John D. MacArthur Chair at UIC;
She was named a Freedom Scholar, a $250,000 honor given to academics at the “forefront of movements for economic and social justice.”
“It’s a lot of things in one year; I appreciate that,” Ransby said. “I’ve had a kind of unconventional career. I’ve always been both a scholar and an activist. I never know whether I will be recognized or whether people notice or whether I’m just marching to my own drum.”
Ransby, who came of age in Detroit in the 1970s, said she was always a curious kid. A product of working-class parents who worked hard but didn’t have much.
“That’s probably where my consciousness came from,” she said. “Maybe somewhere in my thoughts, I asked questions about how fair was a society where people like them (my parents) didn’t really get the kind of life that they deserved, based on how hard they worked. … That’s some early consciousness.”
A professor at UIC since 1996, Ransby also directs the campuswide Social Justice Initiative (SJI), which promotes connections between academics and community organizers working on social justice. In 2019, SJI sponsored discussions between housing advocate Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and political prisoner Albert Woodfox, who spent 43 years in solitary confinement in the Louisiana State Penitentiary.
The Freedom Scholar funds will enable Ransby to support SJI’s Portal Project, a program that will bring scholars and frontline activists together in conversation to discuss how to change the world. The project is tentatively set to start in January.
“We were very inspired by Arundhati Roy’s quote about (how) the pandemic is a portal, as we all navigate these multiple crises,” Ransby said. “How do we understand what’s going to be on the other side of the pandemic, of the protests, of the electoral cycle? She suggests that we should be creative and imaginative about thinking not just about the past but what can be better. That’s kind of the idea — to mobilize scholars to see how our research and our expertise can lend to that conversation.”
We talked with Ransby, touted by colleagues as a “scholar’s scholar,” about politics, pandemic and protests. The interview has been condensed and edited.
Q: Is it exciting to be a historian these days?
A: This is definitely a pivotal moment. As a historian, I don’t say that lightly. I think everyone’s lives have been disrupted, the economy has been disrupted by COVID-19. Then there is the most unusual presidential season that any of us can remember, on so many levels. And then the uprisings around the murder of George Floyd and others around the country, millions of people in the street.
All of those things are pretty unprecedented and to have them all happening within months of each other is a pretty pivotal and powerful moment for our country and our communities to pause and reflect about where we’re going forward.
Q: As an activist/academic, is there a certain issue that needs more focus now?
A: The persistence of racism and the issue of police violence has been the issue that has gripped people this year, and it’s symptomatic of other problems — of the economic inequality in our society. That’s huge. The fact that we have such wealth disparity? That should just not be. We’re smarter than that; we’re better than that. We have to have bigger hearts than that.
Q: What are your feelings about the political landscape?
A: I’m very concerned about voter suppression and voter intimidation at the polls. Barton Gellman wrote an article recently that documented different contingencies and scenarios that could happen if Trump is defeated on election night but there’s still outstanding ballots and he refuses to leave.
Who makes the decision? Does it to go to the Supreme Court? It’s a real question mark, challenge, dilemma, potentially dangerous situation. This is such an intensely polarized moment; I’m hoping that we have a smooth transition.
Q: Your books have won awards too, including “Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision.” What books are you working on now?
A: There are two — one is an analytical piece on racial capitalism. What is it? And how do we understand the challenges of alternatives to capitalism? Many people now are writing about the ways in which capitalism is not working for the majority of people. It has a propensity toward more and more disparity and inequality. We have to think of different economic models.
The other is a biography of Elizabeth Catlett, the black sculptor and activist who lived in Chicago for a brief period but lived most of her life in Mexico. She was both immersed in and influential in the civil rights and Black power movements in this country. Then she chose to go live in Mexico. She got involved in left wing politics there, supported striking workers. She was very much a Black internationalist.
Q: Chicagoans are making history in their own right. Who are the ones moving the needle on social justice?
A: Jawanza Malone, executive director at the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization; Aislinn Pulley, who runs Black Lives Matter Chicago; Anton Seals Jr., of Grow Greater Englewood; and Damon Williams, of the #LetUsBreathe Collective. My daughter Asha Rosa Ransby-Sporn is also an activist with the Black Abolitionist Network; she does a lot of Black queer organizing — very proud of her.
