The Late W.E.B. Du Bois and the Practice of Mutual Comradeship

The American Culture and Difference Program is excited to bring Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly to campus for this in-person talk. This talk examines the mutual comradeship between W.E.B. Du Bois and his vast network of comrades during four episodes of political repression. Mutual Comradeship can be understood as radical African descendants\u27 political and ethical practice of collaboration, reciprocal care, and learning in community rooted in political work, organizing, and movement building on behalf of the racialized, colonized, and oppressed. The first episode was Du Bois\u27s ouster from Atlanta University, when he was retired for old age in 1944 not least because of his radical politics. The second was his firing from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1948 primarily because of his support for the Progressive Party presidential candidate, Henry Wallace. The third was his indictment and trial in 1951 for being an agent of a foreign power due to his work in the short-lived Peace Information Center. The fourth was the cancellation of his passport in 1952 by the U.S. government to prevent him from spreading his radical message abroad. In each of these antiradical attacks, Du Bois received overwhelming support nationally and internationally based on contacts he had developed through his extensive organizing on behalf of Pan-Africanism, anti-racism, peace, and economic democracy. About Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University. She is the co-author, with Gerald Horne, of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History (ABC-CLIO, 2019) and the co-editor of Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women\u27s Political Writings with Jodi Dean (Verso, 2022) and Reproducing Domination: On the Caribbean Postcolonial State with Percy C. Hintzen and Aaron Kamugisha (University of Mississippi Press, 2022). In 2021, she guest edited the Claudia Jones: Foremother of World Revolution speical issue of The Journal of Intersectionality. Her peer-reviewed articles can be found in journals including Small Axe, Souls, Du Bois Review, Socialism & Democracy, International Journal of Africana Studies, and CLR James Journal and her public scholarship has appeared in venues such as Essence Magazine, Monthly Review, Boston Review, Black Perspectives, and Black Agenda Report. Dr. Burden-Stelly has also published several edited volume chapters, offered more than fifty invited talks, public lectures, and conference presentations, and has been the recipient of numerous grants, fellowships, and travel awards. This talk is sponsored by the American Culture & Difference program, with support from the Diversity Activities Board and the departments of English, Justice and Peace Studies, Political Science, Art History, History, Theology, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies