Professor Watchlist

Kellie Cherie Carter Jackson is an Assistant Professor of Humanities and Africana Studies at Wellesley College. According to her university biography, her role is focused on “slavery and abolitionists, violence as a political discourse, historical film, and black women’s history.”

Professor Jackson has defended and supported the nationwide rioting that followed George Floyd’s death in two separate instances for Slate and The Atlantic. 

“A riot may be temporary violence, quick and dirty, but it could become a revolution. And though slow and long-lasting, when it is fully mature, a revolution is irrefutable change.” – The Atlantic  

“I talk about how violence is a political language and it works really well as a metaphor. When we think about riots, revolutions, wars, particularly, you know, sort of bottom up uprisings, violence becomes the main way that people can communicate their political, social or economic grievances. “ – Slate

“The philosophy of force and violence to obtain freedom has long been employed by white people and explicitly denied to black Americans…” she wrote in the Atlantic. “Freedom through violence is a privilege possessed only by whites. Seminal moments in U.S. history that historians have defined as patriotic were also moments that denied patriotism to black people. If violence is a political language, white Americans are native speakers.”