On Thursday, Oct. 7, Fordham University’s English Department hosted Angie Thomas, author of “The Hate U Give,” for its annual Mary Higgins Clark (MHC) keynote speech. Thomas spoke about the inspiration behind her novel — one that has spent the last 228 weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers List. In an hour-long webinar, Thomas recounted growing up in Mississippi, seeing and hearing racism and bias, as well as how these experiences connected to how she saw the world. She spoke on the impact that the murders of Emmett Till, Michael Brown and so many others had on her life, giving the inspiration behind “The Hate U Give.” As Thomas narrated these memories and their influences, she connected her book to the lasting social justice movements of today.

Throughout the webinar, Thomas consistently returned to her roots — how growing up in Jackson, Mississippi allowed her to try and navigate between two worlds. Just like Thomas, in “The Hate U Give,” protagonist Starr Carter is almost constantly switching between her two worlds.
Navigating the poor, mostly Black neighborhood where she lives and the affluent, mostly white prep school that she attends is not easy. This difficulty becomes apparent when the tenuous balance between her separate worlds shatters with the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend at the hands of a police officer.

Pressure creeps in from both sides of her communities, forcing Starr to make a decision that changes her life— stay quiet and blend in, or speak up and stand up for what’s right.
Thomas frequently touches on the influence of her community and how the love she had for it ultimately fostered a sense of pride from where she came from, even amidst the negative connotations about her neighborhood. Growing up, Thomas said that she “remembers the first time [she] saw Emmett Till.” It was the horrific pictures of Till she saw in a magazine that prompted her to ask her mother “what” was it that she was seeing.

Her mother replied, “No, baby, who.”

This came from the woman that lived through gun violence herself, Thomas explained. She told attendees that her mother heard the gunshot that killed civil rights activist and neighbor, Medgar Evers.

It was the devastating murders of black men like Emmett Till that affected her, said Thomas. Black men like Medgar Evers, Oscar Grant, Treyvon Martin, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice: she said they could be her brothers, her cousins. She said it started with Emmett Till, and a lesson she learned from her mother, all too young: “Know your worth, but know that not everyone values you the same way I do, and some don’t value you at all, simply because of the color of your skin.”

With an abrupt change in story, Thomas was ripped out of her predominantly Black neighborhood in Jackson and plopped into her second world: Belhaven University, a private Evangelical Christian school that was mostly white. Thomas said that during college, she started to forget where she came from. Going to her college was like “driving into another planet,” said the author.

Desperate to make everyone believe that she belonged there, Thomas said that she became two separate people, one that spoke and acted differently in each environment she was placed in. Not wanting her classmates to see her as the girl there on affirmative action, or really just different from the rest, Thomas remembers how differently she acted around separate groups. That was, until Oscar Grant.

Oscar Grant was a 22-year-old Black man who was killed in 2009, by BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserie. It wasn’t enough that Thomas had grown up with her mother’s warnings about the danger that she faced because of the color of her skin. Now, Thomas heard it at school as her classmates attempted to justify his death. They said that Oscar Grant was an ex-con, that “maybe he deserved it,” Thomas remembered.

To process her own feelings of hurt and frustration, and for the kids in her neighborhood that were constantly at the risk of a similar fate, Thomas said she channeled all of this to write a short story in Oscar’s name. She called this “using [her] voice,” a notion at the very heart of the book that became, “The Hate U Give.”

She adopted art as activism, saying that she “totally believed in the power of storytelling.” Thomas said she grew up on artists like Tupac, Public Enemy and Kendrick Lamar that believed in “the power of the people.” They spoke to her, to her world and to all the issues that she struggled with growing up, explained Thomas.

Thomas said they inspired her to also use her art as activism. She expressed her belief that through her own art of telling stories, she could foster empathy and compassion. “I wanted to be seen,” she says. “I wanted to be heard.”

“Compassion is the cousin of empathy and understanding,” said Thomas. “I believe it’s our strongest weapon against racism, poverty, sexism, homophobia and so many other societal problems.”

Toward the end of the webinar, Thomas spoke on the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests of last summer. “All lives should matter, but we have a systemic problem in this country where Black lives don’t matter enough,” she said.
Thomas said she writes for young people who are willing and open to learning — it’s how she invests in the future.

“At times you probably feel hopeless, you probably feel powerless, but you’re some of the most powerful people in the world,” she told students. “Use your voice. Your opinions are some of the most valuable … The power you all have is far greater than the hate anyone can give.”

Mary Bly, Ph.D., chair of the Fordham English Department, said that assigning Thomas’s “The Hate U Give” for all incoming Fordham first year students was meant “to connect our MHC read with recent social movements.”

“We are very proud of our Race & Social Justice requirement for majors, as well as our Black Lives Matter and Asian-American statements,” said Bly.