Treva B. Lindsey, PhD is a Black feminist historian and Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University. She is the recipient of several prestigious fellowships including the ACLS/Mellon Scholars and Society Fellowship, The Equity for Women and Girls of Color Fellowship at Harvard University, and The Woodrow Wilson Career Enhancement Fellowship. Lindsey is the founder of the Transformative Black Feminisms Initiative at Ohio State and the co-founder of Black Feminist Night School at Zora’s House in Columbus, Ohio. Her latest book entitled America, Goddam: Violence, Black Women, and The Struggle for Justice explores contemporary violence against Black women and girls and how they mobilize to halt violence against them.

TREVA B. LINDSEY

We have to be unwavering in our commitment to principles of justice and freedom and be harbingers of hope. So for me, this is a lifelong thing, and I think of it as ancestor work that I one day will be somebody's ancestor, and I want them to be proud of the work that we did to give them a world that’s a little better of an inheritance than the world that I was born into. And I think that is how we mark progress in more nuanced ways, in more honest ways. It doesn't need to be a straight line towards freedom, more of a journey with wins and losses, setbacks and victories.

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It's what can feel like regression that’s happening. It’s like, okay, there is. I'm thinking about in the country right now, we’ve had these incredible moments, seeing a show like “Pose” on television with so many queer, trans, black, and brown actors. You have Laverne Cox on the cover of TIME, a really wonderful documentary “Disclosure” about trans representation, and some really positive steps made towards trans healthcare. And right now we're seeing all of these bills popping up across States criminalizing trans youth, and it is important for us to recognize at that moment part of that backlash is because certain progress was being made. Because we were starting to question gender and its fixity today and the ways that transphobia operates. Because people were becoming aware of how vulnerable trans people are in our world to violence. And, so of course, we see a response, which means we have to retool and keep fighting. That’s the charge. The struggle is at this point still in an ending one, but it doesn't mean that along the way that certain victories haven’t amassed that give us hope to propel us forward and be ready when the next attack on freedoms, on rights, on justice emerges, because it will. Right? We’re pushing in ways that are uncomfortable because we’re disrupting the center. We’re disrupting the default. We’re disrupting power. And Power it's not just going to concede because we're demanding it.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Kristen Shen with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Jacob A. Preisler. Digital Media Coordinators are Megan Hegenbarth and Jacob A. Preisler.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).