The United States of Protest: Gloria Browne-Marshall on the Engine Room of American Democracy

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. Earlier this week, on Monday, to be exact, we did a show with the cultural commentator, troublemaker, I guess, in a way, Curtis White. His new book is called On Resistance: A Manifesto, and it's a book about how, at least in his view, writers, painters, musicians, other cultural figures should respond to fascism. In his view, that's the contemporary state of the United States. We're going full monty on resistance, a couple of days later with my guest, Gloria Browne-Marshall. She's a professor of law, in New York City and the author of, an important book last year, A Protest History of the United States, which has won all sorts of prizes. It's out this year in paperback. Gloria is joining us from the East Village in New York. Congratulations, Gloria, on the book and all the attention it's getting. How important in your protest history of the United States are intellectuals, writers, painters, poets, filmmakers, or are they just the observers of these protests?

00:01:49 Gloria Browne-Marshall: No. I think they bring the protest to life. And in my book, I actually talk about the songs and the artists and those sculptors, dancers, drummers, anyone who can use their art to make a difference. They can bring the issue to the fore in a way in which those who are protesting in the streets or in other mechanisms of protest, boycotts, et cetera, cannot because it allows the humanity of the issue to be brought to the fore. When we think about the photographs from the Great Depression, they moved people to push the government to do something about the unemployment rate, do something about the, the people who are losing their homes to foreclosure. So I think it's necessary for artists to be a part of protests, and I think it's essential for people who may not want to read the issues on a pamphlet to actually pay attention, like The Grapes of Wrath in a novel can show us, what people are going through from one human to another, and art can do that.

00:02:56 Andrew Keen: It's interesting you bring up Steinbeck. We didn't actually talk, about Steinbeck with White, but lots of other cultural figures who I think he would see as equivalent. In your, Gloria, in your protest history of the United States, are you presenting protest as the essential history of the United States? Is that the core component of the last two hundred and fifty years of the republic and then, of course, perhaps before that of North America as a colonial state, even before the colonialists arrived? Has protest always been central in your mind to the history of North America?

00:03:37 Gloria Browne-Marshall: Oh, I think definitely that protest is at the core. And when you think about the people who arrived here, many of them were protesting in their departure from Europe to arrive in the United States or what was then North America in the first place. I think that protest has been a part of the lifeblood of this nation because it was born of protest, and that's what the, the way if you look at the Declaration of Independence, the way we look at ourselves, we're we're this kind of nation that was the one that decided to break off from England. There are many members, as you know, of the Commonwealth that did not decide to do such a thing. Or if they did break off, they decided to maintain some type of relationship as many of the nations did, that gained independence in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and the early 1980s. But this was a nation that wanted to stand apart, and that, decided this of being apart was a protest in itself. And so when you think about the Native Americans who, upon seeing the English arrival, decided they would protest against the arrival of the English and the decisions by those Europeans to take over their land. And so whether or not they were protesters or the ones the object of another's protest, that's been a part of the American spirit. And even to the point that this country, is divided within itself in that you have, on the one side, this mindset of empire builder, wanting to have more land that and that, you know, of course, rolls over the rights of others and culture of others, and another side saying liberty and justice for all. So it's in it's having a protest with itself in deciding what it is, what are the ideals, what does this country actually mean. And so the protest, type of culture of this country has been one that has given us the rights that we're talking about, that we're famous for as a nation. It didn't happen because people decided to wake up one day and the slaveholder said, oh, I'm just gonna give you your rights as the enslaved. It's not that men said, I'm just going to hand over full citizenship to women. Protests gained those rights and many, many more in labor and different areas of my book. And so the role of protest is so important to this country's culture, to its history, to what it became and what it is now that it's certainly a shame that protest does not receive the attention it deserves when we talk about American history.

00:06:08 Andrew Keen: Well, it does with your book and it does in this conversation. You use, as you've suggested, the p word protest to define the history of the United States. Many more conventional histories use the d word, democracy. Some people might argue, maybe even listening to you now, Gloria, that, well, protest is the same as democracy. You show up at the ballot box if you're lucky enough to have the vote every two, four years, and you articulate what you want. And that's a kind of protest, and that's how you act politically. What's the relationship in your mind between, a protest history of the United States and a democratic history of the United States? Are they the same thing? Are they distant cousins, or are they so entangled that they're hard to separate?

00:06:56 Gloria Browne-Marshall: Well, the democracy came by way of protest. And so I thought when you were saying the d word, I thought that d word would be dissent because it was the working class person who did not own land and therefore could not vote that had to have their voice heard through protest. When I think about 1966 and Vernon Dahmer. And Vernon Dahmer was a, well-to-do farmer in Mississippi who was burned alive in his own home by some have said law enforcement and a mass of others because he wanted to vote in Mississippi. And this was in 1966 in this nation, in this what we consider a democracy. And so when we think about democracy that can be, theoretical, it could be a word on paper, but I believe and put forward in my book and in my discussions that democracy came by way of protest. And even women gaining the right to vote, for example, where if you begin with 1848 in Seneca Falls, it wasn't in until many, many years later, 1920, that they actually changed the Constitution to gain the right to vote. And so it's protests that made this country more inclusive and protests that whether or not it's the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the 1965 Voting Rights Act came by way of violence sometimes, meaning violence, on the people who were protesting, not the protesters themselves more so. So I would say that democracy was created by means of protest of the workers, of the women, of the marginalized, of the non, nonwealthy of this nation, white men I would say middle class, upper class men. So democracy didn't fall out of the sky. It was earned. It was created, and it was made manifest through protest.

00:08:54 Andrew Keen: You mentioned violence. One of the people one of the founding fathers who articulated the importance of violence to freedom was Thomas Jefferson, of course, a central figure, the father in many ways of the nation, the author of the Declaration of Independence. And yet he was also, of course, and you know this better than I do, a slave owner. Many people now visit his home in Monticello, his former home, and see, the experience of what it was like to live under slavery. He even had a woman he sexually used, who he owned as a slave. How do you make sense both in your own mind and in your protest history of the United States of someone like Jefferson who was simultaneously a protester and a theorist of protest, and at the same time, a figure within the establishment and somebody who, in many ways, are certainly slaves, would have protested against?

00:09:59 Gloria Browne-Marshall: It goes to the conflict, the conflicted personality of this nation. And that's why I said this nation has been, in a protest with itself from the very beginning that the same people, like Thomas Jefferson and others who protested against the rule of England, would do so while in the presence of enslaved people and on the land that they have taken from the indigenous. So this sense of who has a right to protest, whose protest has some continents [as spoken] that should be respected. And I think also what really is a true conflict in this country that Thomas Jefferson represents is the fact that they want a nation that is one that's based on freedom and the rights of men and one that is should be respected around the world as a democracy while undermining the rights of others in the nation. And this has been from the very beginning. It is something that has taken place in violent forms, whether or not it was violence against the indigenous for actually wanting to protect their own land that they are caretakers of, or it was, the violence against the enslaved, or were not seen as Sally Hemings, as you pointed out, was the teenager of a very grown, Thomas Jefferson enslaved, there on Monticello. And yet he had children by her, but then did not see her as a full human being. So these conflicts that we have that throughout the nation have been one and bitterly, formed around, violent, suppression of other people's rights in what people want to boast as the shining light on the hill of democracy. So I think that, it's not it's it's unusual, but quite usual when it comes to American history to have this type of conflict and to have people subdued by violence when they ask for what is directly within the US Constitution. And so as we continue to go into this twenty-first century, we continue the same conflicts that were in place during the time of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings.

00:12:16 Andrew Keen: Tell me a little bit, about your own story, Gloria. Many people who write certainly sympathetically about protest in the United States were brought up in the culture of protest of one kind or another. Have you done a lot of protesting in your life? Is that one of the things that defines it? You're a you're an academic now. Academics are more focused on writing papers than protesting. But I'm guessing that you've done your own fair share of protesting.

00:12:47 Gloria Browne-Marshall: Well, my first protest was in the third grade, and we were protesting for the passage of a law that would have given the schools more money. Because during that time period, many of the it was called white flight. And when they started to desegregate the schools, many of the white middle class parents took their children out of the public schools, and they fled to the suburbs. And so the public schools in the city needed money, and so that was a protest. And a tax levy, of course, raising taxes, and now we all know it's a dangerous political thing. But I didn't know in the third grade that this was something people wouldn't want. And so we protested. We had a little song. We had signs in the streets. We did all of that, and it lost miserably.

00:13:34 Andrew Keen: Where did you grow up, by the way, Gloria? What part of the country?

00:13:38 Gloria Browne-Marshall: In the Midwest. I'm a fifth generation Midwesterner. As a matter of fact, my book, A Protest History of the United States, is dedicated to my great great grandmother who was enslaved in Kentucky and born around 1829. And my family's history in this nation goes to and recorded into the 1700s. So we've been here a long time. So in that time, I've had the opportunity to watch, relatives in different eras, having to protest in large and small ways. And so I learned that sitting back and just waiting for something to happen is not what you do in this country to make change. So I had a chance watching on television to see the, Vietnam War protests. I saw the civil rights protests. I watched the women's rights protests, and I was always curious, even with school, how we had to protest our way to get into some of the other schools and the protests on the job. I even think about, right now, there are many people who are 65 and over, but they don't realize there used to be mandatory retirement at age 65 in this country. And the reason why that's not the case anymore is because older people protested. So when we start thinking about the role of protests, thinking about how disabled children got to come to the school I was in, and we saw them because their parents protested the exclusion of their ability to attend mainstream public school. So protest has been around me my entire life. And unlike some others, I actually saw the value in it. And I wrote this book. It was initially a legal treatise on protest, but I led a protest last year, during Presidents' Day and led a protest, from New York with others, to the capital to protest the erasure of black history and the erasure of black progress through these anti diversity, equity, inclusion laws. So I believe protest has been a part of my life, my experience, and I've been a beneficiary of protest. I've benefited from it, and that's why I think it's so important for people to understand that protest has worked, it still works, and can continue to work if people know how to protest effectively.

00:15:56 Andrew Keen: Your politics are fairly self evident. You've you've made yourself quite explicit. But when is a protest a protest, Gloria? Some people might be watching this and thinking, well, this is all very well, and we respect and give Gloria the right to protest whatever she likes. But why isn't January 6, for example, the attack on the Capitol, why isn't that any more or less of a protest than some of the stuff you've been involved in? Are some protests not really protests? Does it depend on your politics? Would you acknowledge that people who don't share your politics or even your narrative of the history of the United States can protest?

00:16:41 Gloria Browne-Marshall: Yes. A protest is something this country has done on all different sides for many different reasons. And it might not be a protest that I wanna be a part of, and people for January 6 consider it a protest. But like any other violence that erupts during a protest, there are arrests and criminal consequences. And so there should have been arrests, criminal consequences for those January 6 protesters as well. But I like to put it like this, and there's a line here that must be drawn at some point because law enforcement is there, first, to protect the constitutional rights of protest protesters, and second, to maintain order if disruption takes place. And so maintaining the order and the criminal consequences that come from that have been, part of protests for civil rights as well as protests for something like January 6. The criminal consequences, though, I think are important to note. If one were to rob a bank and say, I'm robbing the bank because I'm protesting poverty. If they want to stalk their ex wife because they're they're protesting to break up the relationship. I mean, how far do we wanna go and what is a protest? And if they choose to say it's a protest, then and there are criminal consequences, then there must be, those consequences suffered by the person who was protesting. That happens in most protests. I don't stop people because of the First Amendment, their right to protest. I don't say anything about that. Some things I would look at, and that might not be what I would protest, but they choose to do so. But as I said before, the consequences come with those actions as well.

00:18:20 Andrew Keen: What about the right to violence? Of course, Martin Luther King, who I know you write extensively about in this book and you are quite an authority on, of course, is very much committed to non— nonviolent protest. But didn't the rights, for example, of indigenous peoples or slaves, didn't they have a right to violence, to protest? I mean, that was the only way they could protest.

00:18:42 Gloria Browne-Marshall: Well, the— the enslaved people protested in many ways. Fugitive slaves or people who ran away were protesting their bondage by running away. There were many ways in which nonviolence played a role, but the idea of nonviolence— nonviolent protest is a relatively new one. It happened during the civil rights movement is so unique. It was borrowed from Mahatma Gandhi who used nonviolent protest in India during the time period in which India, which was the jewel of the crown, as you might know, of course, of Great Britain, but they used it there in order to break away. Yes. There was violence, but there were also the nonviolent tactics. So Bayard Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, Dr. Martin Luther King, many of them use nonviolent protest, but this is what people don't get about nonviolent protest. That means the people who are there to protest are there with the idea that they are not going to use violence as a means to get their point across, nor are they going to use violence if violence is used against them. This is what's missing. When people say nonviolent protest, they toss this phrase around with the idea that only black people are supposed to use nonviolence. Only people of color are supposed to be nonviolent, but the people who are actually using the violence are usually the ones attacking the protesters. A true nonviolent philosophy is one of Dr. Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, as I pointed out, that says even if they are attacked physically, they will not react physically against those people who are attacking them. That is nonviolent protest. Whether or not people go to a protest and decide they're not going to use violence in the protest, that's a different form of protest. It's not the philosophy of nonviolence. And so once they start confusing this, then they believe that anybody who's protesting is supposed to do so nonviolently. And when you mentioned January 6, you saw violence there. You saw the breaking and entering. You saw the contempt they had for public property, for the, law enforcement officers there, people defecating on desks, destroying property. All of this was taking place, and there was a gallows with the idea that they were going to hang Mike Pence if they saw him. You know, the people who were there knew that if they found, Nancy Pelosi, that she would be injured. So this is a form of protest perhaps to people, but it is by far not a nonviolent protest, and there are criminal consequences that should have been part of the people. And they should have known that there will be criminal consequences, for the actions.

00:21:22 Andrew Keen: And I know you feel quite strongly that we should be celebrating, the 1963 March on Washington. Its anniversary is coming up later this year. This was a particularly effective protest and a particularly nonviolent one. You mentioned Bayard Rustin, and, of course, this took place under the Kennedy administration. Bobby Kennedy was the attorney general who was very much involved in this demonstration too. Tell me about the March on Washington and why in your view it's so important in terms of your protest history of the United States.

00:22:01 Gloria Browne-Marshall: Well, the March on Washington in August 1963 actually was the culmination of many things that had taken place over decades. A. Philip Randolph, who was part of the protests of the Pullman porters, the black porters on the railroad back when railroad was king, those porters had protests and they protested to get to be part of the white labor union. They were restricted from that, and they formed their own labor union. So A. Philip Randolph had learned techniques on how to do community organizing. He was like the father figure, the grand, leader of the 1963 March on Washington. Bayard Rustin was a civil rights activist, a Quaker, black male, gay, openly gay, who was also a genius at community organizing. You had people who were saying, how can we do this? It was put together in just several months, but it was 100 people putting together protests for 250,000 who arrived. Buses were there. Cars were there. People had to come from all over the country for this protest for jobs and freedom. This is the protest where Martin Luther King made his famous "I Have a Dream" speech, but people remember the speech, but they forget that this was a nonviolent protest. There were people just gathered around just to come together, and it was diverse. There were people from all different backgrounds who were there, folks who still remember having stood out in the sun to listen to the different speakers. Martin Luther King wasn't the only speaker. He was one of many speakers there at the Lincoln Memorial. And what culminated in that protest, many people have said and also there was the violence against civil rights workers, later on in that year, but it culminated in the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that not only benefited African Americans, but this was a protection for women, protection of people from different countries who were here in the United States, protection for people of different religions. So the 1965 Voting Rights Act, they didn't give voting rights. It protected the vote because too many black people, as I said, in 1966, Vernon Dahmer in Mississippi burned alive just for registering or attempting to register to vote. So this nation needed to see that mass number of people come together and demand the constitutional rights they were supposed to have been born with in this country. And whether or not, I think it's one of the most unique protests that we've had. We had larger ones during the Vietnam War era. We've had protests since then. Of course, in the last ten or fifteen years, there were also millions of people from around the country. But in that particular protest, you saw not only the genius of organizing, but you saw generations come together, different diverse societies meeting with a demand that this government live up to its constitutional precepts. And I think that's why the, March on Washington is so important and should be remembered. Regular people, regular people came together to ask their government to do what it was supposed to do, live up to what is in the US Constitution, and it was historic at the time and remains a very important part of American history.

00:25:29 Andrew Keen: And, of course, the images of that March on Washington, given what the current American president administration is trying to do to DC and the capital are particularly vivid for people listening. You'll have to go to, to Wikipedia to look up those images of the thousands of people, on the mall on the Washington Mall. You mentioned, Gloria, the Voting Rights Act. There are those people, of course, and you may be one of them, who believe that the current administration is in the business of undermining it. I know you feel quite strongly that people should be protesting a little bit more. You've been involved, as I said, in the No Kings protest. A lot of people have come out on the streets. Obviously, there was the Black Lives Matter movement. But why aren't people perhaps, at least in your mind, why aren't they protesting as much as they have historically in American, in the American past? Why, for example, have we not had a repeat, not of January 6, but of the 1963 March on Washington? Is it because people are spending too much time on their iPhones, they're not interested, or maybe the situation is different?

00:26:46 Gloria Browne-Marshall: The situation the circumstances we need to protest are there. They're visible. I think they're, very clear. But I think the one, coming out of COVID, we were dispersed. We were into our isolation and silos, and so there needed to be a time in which we came back as community. Because protests require not just protesting with one person's injury, but the idea that the community is injured and there's something we can do about it. Secondly, we were given in this administration from the very beginning this shock and awe type of technique, against the regular people that we'd be thrown so many things at the same time that we couldn't find our footing and couldn't get together, enough to back up, you know, back up against this or push our ourselves against this. But, unfortunately, at the same time, this administration has been using violence against regular people with ICE agents that are, you know, without real uniforms, no names, no faces, mask wearing. This is all such a shock to the American conscience that there are people who don't know how to respond, people who are afraid of their own government, people who are looking at an administration that will use any tactic at all against a regular person, arrest being one of them, undermining them with their employment. We have law firms that have capitulated like Paul Weiss and become agents of the government when before they were the ones you looked for to help you bring cases against the government. So all these things have really spread us very thin. And to have people like, Renee Good and others killed by ICE and no investigations really when it comes to the federal government. This has made people fearful, and it also is a call for leadership. And I don't think the leaders we have in place are the ones that may have the fight that's necessary and the strategy that's necessary for this because it requires strategy. I call it STARK. Strategy, tenacity, time, and who are our alliances? We've been in our silos. We need to be more aligned. What are our resources? They've undermined a lot of the resources, but the people, as we saw in 1963, have to rely on their resources and creativity, which is where we started. The creativity of artists, the creativity of people who can look at what we have, use the resources available to bring together the communities, diverse communities who have an idea that we can do things that to make a difference, that we have the power to make a difference. Too many people have outsourced their sense of outrage. They've outsourced a sense of protest, and they think that sending an email is enough. They're putting, you know, something on Instagram is enough when the human being needs to see the and be outraged by what's going on and work with others to try to bring the change to the nation. There's power in protest, and we need leaders who believe in the power of protest and can come together with the strategies and others and the ability to bring people across the country together. And No Kings was an attempt, but I believe No Kings and other protests like that are so sporadic that really aren't communicating to most people. They're not, as far as I can see, letting people know the plan. What is the plan? And whether or not we're going against this, they did in the 1950s and 1960s, the sheriffs with the power and the violence, but those people learned how to maneuver and navigate and stand up against those powerful forces in that time period where there were fewer protections. We need to harness the protections we have, the resources we have, but first and foremost, we need to have leaders who are willing to stand up and be fighters in this moment. And those things brought together and a vision for a future, not just what you're protesting against, but what are we protesting for? And I believe we should be protesting for democracy, for diversity, for health, and for literacy. Those four pillars would be enough for people to come together, and they would that stand up against this government.

00:31:10 Andrew Keen: Gloria, you wrote your book last year. It's out in paperback now. So you mentioned Renee Good. You mentioned it before, the two murders on the streets of Minnesota. If you were rewriting the book now or if you were doing an update in late 2026 or '27, would you end with Minnesota? Is that an example of organization of people protesting against ICE, against the violence of the government?

00:31:40 Gloria Browne-Marshall: I would probably end with Minnesota. Yes. I would end with the protest in Minneapolis and the strategies they used as community to come together. And community can be physically in one place, but it could be community across the country. If we could use social media to build community in a way in which we are actually feeling the pain of people from New York, those people in Minneapolis and those in Los Angeles and the others in Texas. For us to actually understand that we are together in this country, we've been made to feel as though we're powerless and we're we have no unity and we have no platforms. And we have plenty of power. We just have to be able to use that power constructively, and they did so in Minneapolis. So, yes, if I were rewriting this book, it would end in Minneapolis, right now. But my concern is that as long as Minneapolis is the end of the book, then we've lost some ground because Minneapolis should have been a lesson that could be, replicated across the country. And that's my concern. Why isn't it being replicated? And that's because somebody is waiting for somebody else to do something. They're waiting for the pain to hit their in their neighborhood and their family. And we have to see each other in community. As I said, even if we're not physically in the same place, but see each other as community across the country, we need to have those people with money to actually help finance. Buses cost money. Signs cost money. And we need to have those people, whether or not they're the, the artists of the stage, of the film, of films of the of people who are in rock bands or rap music bands, whatever it may be, we need to have those who are ballerinas and those who are, people who are believers in goodwill to come together and show that we have a sense of what values this country should have. And if they want to stand up, we could stand up together. We don't have to march in lockstep. But if we have a vision, then different people, wherever they may be, can stand up. Because right now, they there are protests that are taking place right this minute, different places of the country. The media is not covering many of these protests, but we have social media. So we need people to make sure they are covering these protests so that those in different parts of the country are aware of what's going on. So to have so many different opportunities to communicate, so many different platforms, and have a failure of communication shows that we need to pay attention, and we need to have those who do have the opportunity to spread the word to do so. But fear is something that is always, part of the powers that be, and that fear can undermine people's belief in their own power.

00:34:39 Andrew Keen: Gloria, we have you, of course, to remind us of the protest history of the United States. We haven't talked much about the book. People need to go out and get it. It's out in paperback, but I know it covers I mean, some people are very familiar with some of the characters in the book like John Brown. Everyone's heard of the abolitionist John Brown. But there are other characters in the book like Mother Jones, who, of course, the magazine is now named after, and, Daisy Bates, an American civil rights activist who are less well known. Very briefly, who is your I know it's an unfair question, but I'm still gonna ask it. Gloria, who's your favorite American protester in the book? What who did you most enjoy writing about?

00:35:23 Gloria Browne-Marshall: I really enjoyed Daisy Bates. And Daisy Bates, as a child, realized by accident that the people raising her were not her parents.

00:35:33 Andrew Keen: That— Yeah. Let's just remind ourselves of where Daisy Bates was, born. A little bit of her background.

00:35:39 Gloria Browne-Marshall: Bates was born in Arkansas. And so, this was back in segregated Arkansas. And what really and this was a time period in 1914. She lived a long life. She lived to 1999. And as someone who grew up in segregated Arkansas, she saw that the life that she had as a black woman, as a young child, was very different from the white people in her community and especially in rural parts of Arkansas. And she learned that as a the people who raised her were not her parents, that her mother had been attacked by a white mob and fought them off, and they killed her as they tried to gang rape her. And so she

00:36:28 Andrew Keen: So she saw her mother lynched, essentially?

00:36:32 Gloria Browne-Marshall: She's actually, she heard that her mother had been killed, but when she was, very young, killed. But she heard this when she was about nine years old, and she was raised by people who were not her parents, but they finally told her the truth about who her real mother was. And she thought the woman raising her was her mother. That's how young she was when it happened. And so, she became bitter, and then she decided to take that bitterness about no one being arrested for the murder of her mother. She found that the, pond where she used to swim playfully as a child was the same pond they had thrown her mother's body in. And she didn't realize that this was something that could actually happen to someone. Because even in segregation, you live in a kind of isolated life that's segregated from others. But you thought you know? And this is something I hear my students say to me all the time. Well, if white people won't don't like us, why don't they leave us alone? How is it that they don't want us to have what they have, but they don't want us to have what we have either? And it was very confusing for her, Daisy Bates, as a child. She grew up as a teenager. She married a newspaperman, and through that, she became a figure in Little Rock, in society, black society. But she also became an activist. And when the segregation of the school in Central High, was something that became a part of what was going on in the South, the desegregation of schools that stayed segregated even after Brown v. Board of Education, which is this, of course, very well known case in 1954 that was supposed to desegregate public schools. Well, it's 1957, and the schools still aren't desegregated in Little Rock. And so they had these nine children who whom, Daisy Bates helped to desegregate the white Central High School. If you have a chance to go to Central High School in Little Rock, it's a huge school, and it's still a living monument. Central High School, I had a chance to visit twice. And Central High School is an amazing place that is a symbol, once again, of protests, but also a symbol of what we can do as a nation when we work together. Those nine children were harassed. They— so many things happened to them that they finally— many of them, not all of them, graduated. Daisy Bates, because she was the adult helping them through this process, when the National Guard came where you had hundreds of soldiers in Little Rock during the 1950s, every day, these children had to ride with armed soldiers to school because there were threats of murder, threats that Daisy Bates' house would be blown up. You know, she received death threats constantly. All of this was taking place just to desegregate a public high school that their tax money was paying for in Little Rock, Arkansas. Daisy Bates also was a very charming woman. She went on to, speak before the United Nations. She was someone who traveled internationally as well as nationally, and she just was someone that had such grace under pressure and was able to, live her life in a way to benefit others. And she her husband died. She died without a lot of money. This is very important for people to remember about protest. Protest is not something that there's a, vacation plan for. There's no pension fund. So when people have spent their time, money, and energy protesting, they've usually lost their jobs. In her case, she lost the newspaper because whites refused to advertise in the paper, and black, people who had businesses were afraid to advertise because they didn't want the repercussions. She was secretary of the NAACP in Little Rock, and that's the famous case that went to the US Supreme Court in which they wanted the membership list. The white government wanted the membership list. They wanted to find out who was a member of NAACP so they could go and harass those people, threaten those people, probably have them fired from their jobs. Some of them— their lives would have been lost, and she refused to, give up that membership list, and they threatened her with jail. She was in jail for refusing to give that membership list because she knew what would happen. And the case went to the US Supreme Court, many times before the NAACP finally won. It nearly bankrupt them, those cases within in Arkansas and Alabama and other cases in which, people like Daisy Bates as a member of the NAACP was standing up, but she also faced sexism within the civil rights movement. There were you know, most of the time when you see the pictures of civil rights, leaders, they're they're all male. But behind the scenes, you had women like Daisy Bates who were working hard to make sure that the movement moved forward, and they usually didn't get any credit. They usually didn't get speaking roles to let people know who they were, but Daisy Bates was someone who decided that she was going to continue to be an activist all of her life. And she died nearly penniless. That's the community. I met people who used to bring her food when she was older, and I just wanted to, have her in my book as someone who is should be known, hasn't been known as much. And like so many other activists, like Mother Jones during her time, they were people who garnered headlines in their local communities and sometimes national headlines, and then later on were forgotten. And Mother Jones was an amazing person in the labor movement, especially in the early 1900s when people were, in West Virginia and others in Pennsylvania.

00:42:06 Andrew Keen: You're slipping her in. I only asked for one.

00:42:09 Gloria Browne-Marshall: I know.

00:42:09 Andrew Keen: You're cheating.

00:42:10 Gloria Browne-Marshall: I know. I am. And I'll leave it at that.

00:42:12 Andrew Keen: I'm very pleased that you talked about Daisy Bates. And, for anyone who wants to read more about Mother Jones and Bates and all these other figures who Gloria sees as central to American protest history — they need to get the book. It's out in paperback. Finally, Gloria, let's end where we began. I mentioned, earlier that we did a show a couple of days ago with Curtis White on resistance, a manifesto for artists to fight what he sees as the current fascism in America. I'm guessing you probably are quite sympathetic with that. You're also an artist. You've written, a, a two act courtroom drama that's done rather well. Some of your plays have been televised and won awards. So you wear a number of different hats. This hat is one as a historian and a legal scholar authority. Do you sometimes feel that you'd be better off writing plays or screenplays or novels about this sort of thing? What's the best vehicle for you as someone who clearly has very strong feelings on this subject?

00:43:34 Gloria Browne-Marshall: I feel I'm very blessed to be able to look at a topic and think, and this happened just yesterday. What's the best way to deliver this to people to communicate it? And so whether or not it's a screenplay, and I have screenplays, I have other plays I'm working on. Is it a poem? I've had poem— poetry published. I'm working on a novel now. I think it's just such a blessing to be able to say, how can this be communicated most effectively? What platform should I use? Whether or not it's Martyrs Day, which is, a day that I founded for July 5 to recognize slain protesters, or is it, a podcast that I have? So and the podcast is the forthcoming one is "She Took Justice" podcast, or the one I have now, the Law and Policy Group website has, like, my nonprofit information. I just think people have so many different ways in which they can share their talents, and we need to look in ourselves and figure out what we can do to make society a better place. And we each have something we can offer, but we can do something. And I think that's the important part for me. Can you do something? Yes. What is it that you have to do? Ask yourself. Ask yourself that question. What should I be doing in this moment? And that's what I ask myself. My best life would be being able to have the platforms to deliver this information and perhaps from your show, have people actually receive it and think, oh, I can do something. I do have power, and I will make a change in my community.

00:45:16 Andrew Keen: Well, Gloria, we'll have to have you back on the show when the novel is done. The book, A Protest History of the United States, had already, won, a gold medal for History, independent publishers. So congratulations on that. Lovely to talk to you. As you say, we should be thinking about, celebrating August 28, March on Washington anniversary. So maybe, later in the month, people would think of that. Thank you so much, Gloria.

00:45:45 Gloria Browne-Marshall: Thank you.