As head griot at America’s Black Holocaust Museum (401 W. North Ave.), Reggie Jackson has been explaining why “Black lives matter” since long before the protests that erupted across Milwaukee and the U.S. in 2020. Next month, Jackson will bring his talk “Do Black Lives Matter?” online in a series sponsored by the Shorewood Public Library and Shorewood Senior Resource Center.
“The series asks the question, ‘Do Black lives matter in America?’” Jackson explains. “I want to show people that for most of American history, they haven’t. I’m looking at how Black lives were treated for 246 years while enslaved and 100 years of Jim Crow. I’ll also look at other spaces where our lives haven’t mattered, including the criminal justice and health care systems.”
In traditional West African societies, griots were the keepers of memory, telling stories about the past and its meaning. Jackson has kept that role alive in the context of contemporary Milwaukee. “I’ve studied history all my life,” Jackson explains. “I look back at American history and how it relates to the present day. People, even Black people, don’t know this history well enough. I like to use the historical context to help us understand things going on today.”
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Jackson’s series will run for four consecutive Tuesdays, January 19 and 26 and February 2 and 9, starting at 6 p.m. The first session examines the devaluation of Black lives and is followed by examinations of how racism played out in law and politics, science and medicine and, finally, criminal justice. “There is the assumption that all lives matter, but history doesn’t always show that to be true,” Jackson says.
