A ‘Second Sight’ on American History

When media scholar Sarah J. Jackson began working on her latest book, she didn’t know it would publish three days before Juneteenth and less than three weeks before the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. She hopes people will find the release and timing of “A Second Sight: How the Wonder and Vision of Black Mediamakers Push America Toward Freedom” to be not just serendipitous but urgent.

“Even before the founding of the country, Black mediamakers and storytellers were trying to narrate the country into a fuller democracy, were trying to narrate the nation into something that embraced these values of freedom, liberty, justice, and happiness for all,” she says. And “A Second Sight” provides historical and contemporary examples.

Jackson spoke with Penn Today about her new book—one that she anticipates readers will find hopeful.

Can you talk about what W.E.B. Du Bois meant by a ‘second sight?’

In writings across his own intellectual evolution, Du Bois explains second sight as a unique perspective that arises from standing on the outside looking in; there you can really see the whole picture. He theorizes that African Americans have developed this second sight from being both American and always treated differently than white Americans, allowing them to engage in clear-eyed critique of the failures of the country to treat everyone equally—to live up to the promises espoused by the founders—while also having genuine hope, earnestness, and imagination about how we can get there.

Du Bois himself, as I write about in the book, was also a mediamaker. He’s very much known as a scholar and an intellectual, but he was the editor of The Crisis magazine—the NAACP’s magazine—for decades, and he also wrote speculative fiction.

Can you share a few examples of contemporary Black mediamakers you interviewed, and how each shaped your understanding of other mediamakers, past or present?

I talked to Nikole Hannah-Jones [author of The 1619 Project] a few times for the book. I draw a throughline in one chapter between Ida B. Wells, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Darnella Frazier.

I talked to Gene Demby from NPR’s ‘Code Switch’ [podcast] and many others whose thinking about their roles as practicing journalists is shaped by being subjected to discriminatory police stops. Other Black journalists I talked to are the children of police officers.

In the book, I define media broadly. Things that were printed on the printing press, including slave narratives, were made through a then-contemporary technology. Photography was brand-new when Frederick Douglass became the most photographed man of the 19th century. I work to draw a through line from those historical moments to the present one.

Your book mentions a lot of movies, TV shows, radio shows and podcasts, and pieces of writing by Black mediamakers. What are some that you recommend?

Very few people learn that a Black filmmaker, Oscar Micheaux, made a film in response to ‘Birth of a Nation,’ and it was this film ‘Within Our Gates.’ That’s one that’s really worth checking out.

Chenjerai Kumanyika co-hosts a podcast about the Civil War called ‘Uncivil,’ and I would describe it as a people’s history of the Civil War. They tell incredible stories and do a lot of myth-busting about the Civil War.

There are so many examples, but I would also encourage people to engage with more independent Black-led media. In the book, for example, I write about the BlackStar Film Festival, which is based in Philly.

What are some of the challenges that Black mediamakers face?

Prior to the Civil Rights Movement, media in the United States was segregated. Part of the challenges that Black mediamakers faced was—in the case of someone like Ida B. Wells—open censorship, physical violence, and threats. During the Great Migration and even the Civil Rights Movement, especially in the South, there was a suppression of the circulation of Black newspapers.

After the Civil Rights Movement, the challenges shift, in that more and more mainstream, historically white spaces start to very slowly—not sufficiently—integrate. Black mediamakers who entered big mainstream publications like The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times after the Civil Rights Movement faced professional prejudices.

I talked to a lot of younger mediamakers who were saying that there is pressure to tell traumatic and stereotypical stories about violence, crime, and racism, but they often said, ‘I want the opportunity to tell stories about Black joy.’ Across media industries, the Black mediamakers I talked to have built their own infrastructures and spaces to tell those bigger stories.