On February 5, writer and scholar Adolph Reed, Jr. gave a public lecture on Black Politics in New Orleans and Beyond to close out Sites of Resistance: An Exhibit Exploring the Geographies + Histories of Social Change in New Orleans. Reed's work on American politics is notable for its critique of identity politics and antiracism, particularly of their role in Black politics.

Adolph Reed Jr. is currently Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania after having previously been on the faculty at Yale, the New School, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and Northwestern. A native New Orleanian, his career has included more than seven books, countless articles and regular columns in magazines like the Nation, the Progressive, and the Village Voice.

Sites of Resistance was built to reframe a dominant narrative that has obscured New Orleans’ historical role as a site of intense organizing, legal strategy, labor struggle, and civil rights activism. By elevating lineages and spaces of dissent and marginalized stories of inter-racial collaboration, as well as histories of direct conflict and challenge in contested spaces, its intention was to reconnect its audience with the possibilities for making change that have been erased from our civic framework.

Audio: Adolph Reed Jr. on Black Politics in New Orleans and Beyond | Sites of Resistance in New Orleans