Perspectives Book Group - Four Hundred Souls

Presenter: Mary C. Kelly

As part of New Hampshire Humanities' Perspectives Book Groups, we're reading Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain.

Edited by two historians of race and African American history, Ibram X. Kendi, with Keisha N. Blain, Four Hundred Souls features readings by familiar names including Nikole Hannah-Jones, Annette Gordon-Reed, Isabel Wilkerson, and Imani Perry. This is a comprehensive collection of short readings on African American history and culture. The editors seek to combat hate through deeper understandings of Black history and experience, and the cultivation of empathy in celebrating Black resilience over the centuries. The book is designed to educate general readers on racial struggles and the role of slavery in American history, using the voices and perspectives of Black writers.  IIt maps the course of enslaved Africans’ forced transport to colonial America, slavery’s institutionalization, sectional pressures prior to the Civil War, Emancipation and codification of the 14th, 15th and 16th Amendments, Reconstruction-era challenges, the Great Migration, the Harlem Renaissance, and Civil Rights activism and Black Power through to our own time.

PRE-REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED TO RECEIVE THE BOOK PRIOR TO DISCUSSION.

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