Award-winning professor, historian speaks at Chico State
White people have the capacity to overpower was one of the takeaways from professor, historian and author Jefferson Cowie’s speech at Chico State on Thursday night.
Cowie spoke about his new book, “Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power” which was released in November 2022 and climbed onto the New York Times bestseller list.
Cowie talked about how white people came into Creek nation in Oklahoma and drove out Native Americans and African Americans. He also spoke of how Alabama governor George Wallace led the South in protest of racial integration.
Periods of federal intervention were Indian removal, reconstruction and flourishing democracy.
Cowie is a leading social and political historian who focuses on how class, inequality and labor shape American politics and culture.
Chico State history department chair Robert Tinkler, who introduced Cowie before his speech, said he was happy with the turnout during the lecture. He said the university brings in one historian per year to talk at Chico State. He was intrigued by the questions from the audience.
“I was delighted with the questions asked,” Tinkler said.
Cowie was interested in history from way back. He
credits his world history teacher for getting him interested in history.
“Mr. Pekoe turned me onto history,” Cowie said.
Relatives of The Joanna Dunlap Cowden Memorial Lecture presented Cowie’s talk. The lecture was attended by Dunlap’s relatives.
Cowie took several questions from the audience after his speech and signed copies of his books after the talk. Cowie was also happy with the question and answer portion.
“The questions were great and everyone was engaged,” said Cowie. “People had historic but also contemporary questions.”
Jeff Shesol puts in his New York Times review the book explores local history, “in the way that Gettysburg was a local battle or the Montgomery bus boycott was a local protest.” In examining the county’s 200-year history, Cowie shows how, in Shesol’s words, “white Southerners portrayed the oppression of Black people and Native Americans not as a repudiation of freedom, but its precondition, its very foundation,” according to the Chico State website.
The History Department sponsored the lecture, with the support of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. Cowie has written four books so far and has won many accolades.
For more information about Humanities and Fine Arts events visit https:// www.csuchico.edu/hfa/ news-events/22-23-events. shtml.