Amplifying Black Voices on Campus

Dennis Childs 

At the start of each course that Associate Professor of African American Literature Dennis Childs teaches at UC San Diego, he challenges his students with the same question: “Who freed the slaves?”

Childs explains that while many give the answer Abraham Lincoln, the story we are often told leaves out how there were actually a quarter million Black people that entered into the war for freedom. Among these individuals was Harriet Tubman, a historic abolitionist, activist and the first woman to lead a major military operation in the U.S. 

“It’s about centering our own role in our own history, specifically through the lens of resistance,” says Childs, who is also the director of the Black Diaspora and African American Studies program (BDAAS). Resistance is a core theme in many of the courses that he teaches.

One of these courses centers around the writings of prisoners and former slaves, exploring the relationship between slavery and prisons in the United States. The class highlights the voices of those who went through these experiences, sharing narratives from individuals such as former UC San Diego graduate student, academic and political activist Angela Davis.

“It’s challenging the traditional models of history that say slavery ended in 1865, when we have the biggest prison system on the planet–at its peak with over 2.3 million people incarcerated. And, we know that close to half of those 2.3 million people are Black.” 

Since his arrival to UC San Diego in 2007, Childs is proud to have seen former students incorporating resistance and activism into their lives and careers. These alumni achievements include serving as the editor of the Harvard Law Review and publishing content on the prison industrial complex, as well as founding a campus organization dedicated to sharing information about mass incarceration. 

Childs invites the campus community to continue learning about resistance at a special panel discussion hosted by BDAAS in Price Center on Feb. 23: “Resisting the Prison Industrial Complex.”