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The story behind the BLM image on the Bromfield rock is complicated

There is a new image on the rock that rests on the field beside the Bromfield School: a black fist set against a white background with the words "Black Lives Matter," in block letters above it. Many have taken notice of this recent change in scenery, and the image of the Black Power fist has evoked contrasting emotions in passersby. How the image came to be on the rock and the response it has prompted are reflective of the tumultuous times American communities have been enduring recently and, perhaps, not so recently.

The small, low-lying boulder that is the Bromfield rock has long been a canvas for messages from the outgoing class. Its surface is a shell formed from at least a decade of layers painted by the brushes of prospective Bromfield graduates. Hidden beneath this skin lie the reminders of a few of Harvard’s more painful times.

In 2016, students painted the rock with various symbols of acceptance, including a Star of David. One morning soon after, a new message was found on the rock: The star had been painted over with swastikas, and other racist and homophobic words and symbols defaced the remaining surface.

The event was reported and investigated by local police, but the vandals were never identified. However, the event did act as a catalyst for action in town. Superintendent Linda Dwight saw it as a cue to further curriculum changes to increase social awareness among students. There was also an influx of people interested in the school’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, which prompted the formation of Arm in Arm as a community-based complement to the school’s committee.

The Bromfield rock. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)

This spring a similar incident occurred. The rock had been painted with the words “Class of 2020” and the names and messages of senior class members. According to the president of the senior class, Pedro Pellegrino, an Instagram account run by students from Littleton High School tagged a student-run account for the Bromfield Class of 2020, prompting owners of the Bromfield account to go to the rock. When members of the Student Council did so, they found the rock vandalized with derogatory messages. The students notified the school and the rock was quickly covered with a tarp and later painted white by the town.

“It was really sad because … it was ... the last thing we had that symbolized our class,” Pellegrino said about the rock incident. He said it was especially hard because it happened after in-person learning had been suspended due to the coronavirus. He said it felt like just one more thing that had been taken away from the senior class.

Shortly after the rock was repainted white, the Student Council began thinking about the best way to repaint it. Pellegrino said the group entertained the idea of replacing the names but that a climate of social justice activism prompted them to decide on the current image.

The choice was made shortly after the police killing of George Floyd, when the Black Lives Matter movement was witnessing an upsurge in participation on social media and in other public spheres. “We just thought to ourselves, yeah … the meaning would be so much … better if it was about Black Lives Matter than if it was just another thing about seniors losing their senior year,” said Pellegrino.

Soon after the fist appeared on the rock, people in town began to take notice, and not everybody felt empowered by the message. Harvard resident Deborah Skauen felt strongly enough to send the town administrator an email asking for the image to be removed. “What bothers me [is] the fist, which represents communism and [is] an insult to the veterans,” she explained in an interview. “I think it’s a shame to promote a symbol of communism and of total oppression on a public property.” She also worried about the placement, pointing out that residents would pass by the rock on their way to vote. “I’m just not sure if it’s appropriate there,” she said.

Superintendent Dwight issued a reply to Skauen’s request for removal, stating that the senior class is given the freedom to paint what it likes on the rock each year, with the exception of hate speech. “The message they chose is not defined as hate speech and therefore would be allowed to remain,” she said.

The fist as a symbol has a complicated history, which leads people to interpret it differently. To Pellegrino, one of the decision-makers behind the rock’s new imagery, the fist symbolizes change. He sees it as representative of a group of people striving for equality. To him, it is nearly synonymous with Black Lives Matter and is not associated with violence.

To Skauen, however, the symbol is much more disturbing. To her, the fist represents communism, violence, and the oppression of women.

Historical origins

Whitney Battle-Baptiste is a historical archeologist and assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who focuses on how race shapes today’s cultural landscape. She said in a recent phone interview with the Press that despite their seeming dissonance, the two different views of the Black Power fist have valid historical bases.

In explaining the symbol’s origin, she goes back farther than most current sources to two early forms of the fist as a symbol of power in the African diaspora. One comes from conjures, a folkloric aspect of African culture in which people were given something called a hand: a small root shaped like a fist that was kept on the person. The second is a similar token, a closed hand with the thumb protruding from between the first and middle fingers. The token was worn around the necks of African slaves in Brazil, with the charms resting against their backs.

Both charms were meant to protect the holder and served as important symbols in the African community as it was spread across the world through slave trade. While Battle-Baptiste said it is not clear if the fist used as a symbol today is directly derived from either of these early examples, there is a clear connection between the symbolism. “[We can’t be] exactly sure if it’s directly from those kinds of folk traditions, but there is probably some kind of idea behind the protection and the strength that it symbolizes.”

More direct and modern origins exist as well. Though it is difficult to pinpoint a first use, the symbol has been adopted by protesters, often minority groups striving against ruling powers to acquire rights, from around the world. It was used in the 1900s by anti-fascist groups in Germany and Spain, by strikers from the Industrial Workers of the World in New Jersey, and by various feminist movements.

A symbol of Black Power

In the U.S. the raised fist as a physical expression became popularized in movements for social justice after two American sprinters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, raised their fists and lowered their gazes on the Olympic podium in 1968 to protest the racist treatment of African Americans. Following this show of solidarity, the fist began to represent the reclaiming of African identity and power and was used widely by advocates for the Black Power Movement, which had been ongoing since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1965.

One of the groups to use the symbol during the Black Power Movement was the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. It is this connection that often causes people to associate the symbol with violence, communism, and sexism, and Battle-Baptiste said these connections are valid.

The Black Panthers were a group that operated almost like a small subcommunity. They had their own newspaper, set up a school breakfast program and an afternoon skills learning program, and patrolled and defended their own neighborhoods. “The Black Panthers were not a group that [was] trying to kill people. They were actually a group that [was] trying to protect neighborhoods who were ... in many ways, victims of police brutality and violence,” Battle-Baptiste explained.

However, the group did lean heavily on their Second Amendment rights and carried guns to protect themselves and their communities, especially those targeted by police. Battle-Baptiste said the guns were often symbolic and that the only groups the Black Panthers were ready to use the weapons against were police officers, who often threatened the lives of members of the Black Panthers and their neighborhoods.

Additionally, the Black Panthers were highly supportive of communist ideals. Members read literature by Karl Marx, the co-author of “The Communist Manifesto,” and discussed ideas around the equal distribution of free labor.

This is where Battle-Baptiste said the Black Power fist becomes synonymous with communism and where many begin to feel uncomfortable. “All of … that … is wound up in that symbol of … the Black Power fist.” She said, “Especially if you’re over 50, you are also going to remember Black Power as [the] Black Panthers, Marxists, communists … and these are ways in which, not just white Americans, but some Black Americans have not really embraced the Black Power movement because they felt it threatened the civil rights they had fought for for so long.”

As for sexism, Battle-Baptiste said the Black Panthers were a male-dominated organization. While there were many women who played prominent roles and participated in just about every aspect of the Black Panthers’ efforts, in the end, the group was no more progressive in terms of gender rights than the rest of the country. “The truth is, that you’re talking about an organization that [existed] in a patriarchal society in the 1970s … it’s not as if the Black Panther Party is sexist and the rest of the U.S. is OK.”

Like other groups at the time, leaders of the Black Power Movement were mostly male and the voices and freedoms of women were often suppressed or undermined. Stokely Carmichael, a social activist who coined the term Black Power, notoriously declared that “the only position for women in SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) is prone.”

Given its complex history, the fist is very much an evolving symbol; one that, as has been highlighted in the different reactions of Harvard’s residents, sends a different message to people who have experienced its various uses over time.

Today, Battle-Baptiste sees it as being closely connected with the Black Lives Matter movement. “It’s associated with ... uprising and speaking out against systemic racism and the inability to ignore the fact that, disproportionately, Black men and women, especially Black trans women, are the victims of violence.” The symbol has been “reincarnated” as an acknowledgement of this violence against Black and Indigenous communities, she said—and as a statement that it will no longer be ignored.

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