Historian Brenna Wynn Greer on Race Representation in the Media

“February is a really busy month for me. Despite being an African American historian, who specializes in African American history, I am not the biggest fan of Black History Month,” began Dr. Brenna Wynn Greer in Hall on February 14. A historian of race, gender, and culture in the twentieth century United States, and a professor of history at Wellesley College, she continued, “I should be very clear that what I mean is I am not the biggest fan of how society observes it.” 

“When it comes to celebrating Black history, it seems we have little imagination or curiosity, because we keep drawing on the same black figures, and more often than not, in their most heroic and very simplistic forms,” she explained. This notion, of viewing important historical figures—especially those of color—as two-dimensional is a sentiment that Pulitzer-winning biographer Jonathan Eig spoke about during this year’s MLK Commemoration Hall on January 14. Dr. Greer continued, stating “I’ve spent my entire career thinking about and battling what I call symbolic Blackness, meaning simplistic ideas or examples of Blackness that have become so dominant within popular culture, that they stand in for complex histories of complex people.”

Dr. Greer displayed on the screen the widely circulated and famous photo of Rosa Parks sitting at the front of a bus during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and the ongoing fight for desegregated bussing in Montgomery, Alabama. “What most people don’t know is that this photograph is completely staged,” Dr. Greer explained. “It’s a collaboration between Rosa Parks and the members of the press that tracked her down the morning the boycott ended.”

In Hall, Dr. Greer spoke about the depiction and representation of Black culture in history, imagery, and the media. Dr. Greer’s research and teaching focus on the relationships between social movements—especially the civil rights movement—the market, and visual culture. At Wellesley she teaches courses on World War II, the Cold War, the civil rights movement, consumerism, fashion, visual culture, and Black print culture. Her first book, Represented: The Black Imagemakers Who Reimagined African American Citizenship, examines the work of Black entrepreneurs in the World War II era. She is currently at work on a second book titled Issues of Color: Black Magazine and the Business of Black Life, which examines the mid-twentieth century commercial Black magazine publishing industry, and the role that popular Black periodicals played in Black life.

As her talk concluded, Dr. Greer fielded thoughtful questions from the audience, ranging from the use of black and white photos versus colored photos in many Black History Month graphics to Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show. Following the Hall, she joined Mr. Thompson’s U.S. History class to discuss and analyze WWII propaganda posters with the students.