ASALH 2023 Theme-Black Resistance

The Association for the Study of African American Life and History Annual Theme for 2023 is Black Resistance.

African Americans have resisted historic and ongoing oppression, in all forms, especially the racial terrorism of lynching, racial pogroms, and police killings since our arrival upon these shores. These efforts have been to advocate for a dignified self-determined life in a just democratic society in the United States and beyond the United States' political jurisdiction. The 1950s and 1970s in the United States were defined by actions such as sit-ins, boycotts, walkouts, and strikes by Black people, and white allies in the fight for justice against discrimination in all sectors of society from employment to education to housing.

Black people have had to consistently push the United States to live up to its ideals of freedom, liberty, and justice for all. Systematic oppression has sought to negate much of the dreams of our griots, like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and our freedom fighters, like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Septima Clark, and Fannie Lou Hamer fought to realize. Black people have sought ways to nurture and protect Black lives, and for the autonomy of their physical and intellectual bodies through armed resistance, voluntary emigration, nonviolence, education, literature, sports, media, and legislation/politics. Black-led institutions and affiliations have lobbied, litigated, legislated, protested, and achieved success. Read more about Black Resistance. 

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Reference: Association for the Study of African American Life and History Website