BELLES OF LIBERTY

By Linda Beatrice Brown

Gender, Bennett College, and the Civil Rights Movement in Greensboro, North Carolina,

Second Edition

     Until her retirement in 2014, Linda Beatrice Brown served as the Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Bennett College. During her long teaching career, she previously taught at Kent State University, UNC- Greensboro, and Guilford College, as professor of English, African American Literature, and Creative Writing. She is the author of three published novels, Rainbow ‘Roun Mah Shoulder, Crossing Over Jordan and Black Angels. Black Angels was the “Okra Pick” for the 2009 annual conference of South Carolina Independent booksellers, and was named one of the best books of 2009 by the Chicago Public Libraries.

    Also a poet, Linda has been a guest lecturer at many schools and colleges in different cities throughout the country. She has poetry in several anthologies and magazines. Her newest collection of poems, The House of Gratitude, was published in 2021.

     Plays include, Wildfire: Black Hands, White Marble, about Edmonia Lewis, a Black Indian Sculptor who broke historical barriers with her art. It was performed in both Greensboro, and Winston Salem. Other plays are: Kitchen Talk, and Stop Right There and Let Me Tell You About My Children, which is the Story of Harriet Jacobs, a slave in hiding. Both were performed at Bennett College. Another play, Congo’s River Song, was produced by the NC Museum of Art.

“I cannot promise this is exactly how it happened, but you can trust this is exactly how it felt.”

In The Sad Stays, Ashley Lumpkin weaves prose and poetry, intake form and erasure, screenplay and hymn, to explore the experience of living with mental illness. At turns humorous and heart-rending, this inventive memoir presents a portrait of bipolar disorder beyond its popular misconceptions. Lumpkin invites us into her conversations with doctors, therapists, and friends, and we witness the effects the illness has on her relationships, both romantic and platonic. She wrestles with questions of identity, faith, and responsibility in the face of a disease she can barely control.The Sad Stays offers us a new, lyrical lens through which to comprehend a widely stigmatized and misunderstood illness. More.

In September of 2018, Marcus Deon Smith, a Black man who had committed no crime, died in the custody of the Greensboro Police Department. His death is eventually ruled a homicide.

Ian McDowell explores the narrative the City of Greensboro put forth around the death of Marcus Smith, how that narrative was challenged by citizens first, then lawyers, and how the controversy over Smith’s death played out on the city streets, in City Council meetings, in the press, and in the courts, for years after his death.

Often lauded as ‘a bubble of blue’ in a red state, Greensboro was home to one of the first Civil Rights sit-ins in 1960, as well as the 1979’s Greensboro Massacre, in which Neo-Nazis and the KKK killed five members of the Communist Workers Party. The Marcus Smith case brought to light long standing issues involving the use of force, accountability, and the responsibility of elected officials to respond to concerns within their community.

I Ain’t Resisting reveals how citizens can resist the narratives that arise to justify a needless death.