It’s The Economy

February 13, 2025

Thursday: 6:00pm - 7:00pm

Host / DJ: Dave Ashton

In his new book, DANGEROUS LEARNING: The South's Long War on Black Literacy (Yale University Press, January 2025), Derek Black shows that in the American South, between Revolution and Reconstruction, one resource was perhaps more coveted and contested than any other: literacy. For Black citizens, it was a weapon of empowerment and rebellion, while for whites, it was the only tool that could destabilize their grip on power. The ghosts of this fight live on today.

In DANGEROUS LEARNING, Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, details the lengths slave owners and governments went to limit Black access to education. He explores the laws that controlled who could be taught and what they were allowed to learn, and shares the stories of men like Denmark Vesey and David Walker, who used their own literacy to foment rebellion, and women like Susie King and Jane DeVeux, who led secret schools and forged travel documents for slaves. Through the prism of literacy, Black shows how momentum built to war, and simultaneously how the antebellum South increasingly isolated itself. He also shows both the original promise and ultimate disappointment of Reconstruction and highlights education’s historical role as a pathway to change.

DANGEROUS LEARNING is an incisive historical account: a glimpse of a region on the brink of catastrophe, a look at the depravity some resorted to in order to maintain control, and the story of what some endured to secure the right to learn. But it’s also a modern-day clarion call in the fight against those who still seek to cling to power by limiting educational opportunities, banning books, and rewriting history. 

For several weeks the threat of impending raids from federal agents has sent waves of fear through immigrant communities across the nation. The Trump Administration has named its aggressive deportation campaign Operation Aurora, thrusting front range communities into the national spotlight. Trump's Border Czar Tom Homan appeared frustrated on televised interviews that the militarized actions meant to round up large numbers of undocumented people in Colorado have been largely unsuccessful. 

In Denver and Aurora, activists from the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) as well as the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC) were responsible for many people knowing their rights and rebuffing these heavily armed  warrantless dragnets.

On Monday, February 3rd the Denver PSL and the CIRC gave a "know your rights" presentation to a packed hall of over a thousand at the Shorter Community AME Church in Denver. Our guests Nate and JD this evening were the facilitators of the highly engaging and informative training that got people up and out of their seats and ready to hit the streets.