Los Angeles Review of Books | Learning Black Lives Matter →
DUCHESS HARRIS had just returned to Macalester College from a yearlong sabbatical when Ferguson changed everything. Many of her students in Intro to African Studies and Race and Law had never even heard of the city in St. Louis County until officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown, killing him in the street. Brown’s death provoked different interpretations of culpability, knotted up in power structures, poverty, and inequality.
“We couldn’t be in these classes not talking about what happened,” she said.