On Fire Talk: Working with Fire: Making Black Feminist Liberation in the South

This talk opens in the wake of a 2012 arson attack on Women With A Vision (WWAV) and moves with the members of this Black feminist collective as they refused the terror of this attack and rose from the ashes to carry their foremothers’ work forward ever. Their story is a lesson for our times. Our whole world is on fire. And yet, WWAV shows us how the flames meant to destroy us can also birth new dreams. The future is always ours to create. Together, we can already see the embers of a new world glowing all around us.

Laura McTighe is an ethnographer, organizer, educator, and mama, who has dedicated her life to weaving liberatory futures and building the connections that make them possible. She has been a part of the US and global movements to end AIDS and abolish prisons for more than twenty-five years, and currently serves as associate professor of religion at Florida State University and the co-founder of Front Porch Research Strategy in New Orleans. She is the author with Women With A Vision of Fire Dreams: Making Black Feminist Liberation in the South, winner of the 2025 Edie Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing. Her next book, Abolition is Sacred Work, explores the spiritual labor of imagining and building the world that must be.

Deon Haywood is an activist, human rights advocate, mother and grandmother, and community leader from New Orleans. For more than 30 years, she has advocated for the rights of Black women and girls, poor and working class folks, sex workers, substance users, and LGBTQ+ communities in the Deep South. She has led Women With A Vision since 2005, continually growing WWAV’s work to meet the needs of the community. Her work has been honored by the Center for Constitutional Rights, SisterSong, Ms. Foundation, ACLU Louisiana, the Red Door Foundation, Planned Parenthood, Forum for Equality, BET.com, and more. She loves reading, spending time with her family, and investing in the next generation of radical Black women.

Cosponsored by the IHC’s On Fire series

Image: © Carla Jay Harris. Courtesy of Luis De Jesus Los Angeles.