Erasing Black Truth | Black History in the Age of Fascism | #TheOtherSideOfChange

2.9.2026 #TheOtherSideOfChange: Erasing Black Truth | Black History in the Age of Fascism

Before fascism had a name in America, Black communities were already living under its rules.

What happens to Black history, truth, and justice in an era where authoritarian politics are resurging under new names?

From school board meetings to Supreme Court rulings, we are watching a coordinated effort to erase, distort, or criminalize the very truths that define Black resistance and survival. Anti-Blackness hasn’t vanished — it has evolved, embedding itself in education policy, legal systems, and state power to suppress memory, knowledge, and collective agency.

Long before mainstream media named fascism, Black communities lived under its conditions: surveillance, banned literacy, coerced labor, voter suppression, and the constant threat of state violence. These were not abstract theories. They were lived realities.

Dr. Rob “Biko” Baker, a Milwaukee-born historian, educator, and civic strategist, joins the conversation to place today’s wave of anti-intellectualism and historical erasure within a much longer arc. Drawing on his scholarship in deindustrialization, the war on drugs, and Black resistance movements, he examines how controlling narratives about Black life has always been central to maintaining power — and why reclaiming those narratives remains essential to freedom.

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