This Bla ck History Month\, DC Public Library is celebrating the multi-faceted Black experience with "This Is My Story\," lifting up Black creativity\, c elebrating Black joy\, honoring Black innovation and saluting Black activi sm. As a part of this celebration\, the Library is thrilled to welcome Dr. Ibram Kendi and Dr. Keisha N. Blain for a virtual conversation about thei r book\, \;Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America\, 1619 - 2019< /a>. Let us know you will be joining us by registering for this event ! \;To tune in click the link below or follow us on Facebook to watch on Facebook Live.
\n\nAbout \;Four Hundred Souls
\nIn late 2018\, one year before our nation approached the four-hundred-year ma rk of captive Africans landing in Virginia\, National Book Award winner an d #1 New York Times bestselling author Dr. Ibram X. Kendi knew that he wan ted to try to both capture that long and complex history and highlight som e of the best recorders of Black history and experience writing at that mo ment. He teamed up with Dr. Keisha N. Blain\, award-winning historian\, ed itor\, and president of the African American Intellectual History Society\ , and together\, they assembled a community of eighty Black writers and te n Black poets. The result is FOUR HUNDRED SOULS: A Community History of Af rican America\, 1619-2019 (One World\, available in paperback February 1\, 2022)\, a choral history that details both well-known and largely forgott en moments of history\; together\, they paint a picture of the varied pers pectives that have always defined Black America. \;
\nThroughout FOUR HUNDRED SOULS\, each of the eighty writers&mdash\;a remarkable sampl ing of historians\, journalists\, activists\, philosophers\, novelists\, p olitical analysts\, lawyers\, anthropologists\, curators\, theologians\, s ociologists\, essayists\, economists\, educators\, and cultural critics&md ash\;chronicles a five- year span\, with ten poets recapturing these perio ds in verse\, to cover the 400 years. The volume&rsquo\;s first writer\, P ulitzer Prize-winning creator of the 1619 Project\, journalist Nikole Hann ah-Jones\, covers August 20\, 1619\, which marks the first recorded arriva l of &ldquo\;some 20 and odd Negros\,&rdquo\; to August 19\, 1624. The vol ume&rsquo\;s final writer\, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza\, c overs August 20\, 2014 to August 20\, 2019. Hannah-Jones&rsquo\; retelling of the genesis of African America and Garza&rsquo\;s urgent insights into what it means to be Black in America today bookend the passages\, each of which revolve around a specific person\, place\, idea\, or event.
\nSpeaker Biographies
\n\nDr. Ibram X. Kendi is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and the foundin g director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. He is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a CBS News racial justice contributor. He is th e host of the new action podcast Be Antiracist. Dr. Kendi is the author of many highly acclaimed books including Stamped from the Beginning: The Def initive History of Racist Ideas in America\, which won the National Book A ward for Nonfiction\, making him the youngest-ever winner of that award. H e has also produced five straight #1 New York Times bestsellers\, includin g How to Be an Antiracist\, Antiracist Baby\, and Stamped: Racism\, Antira cism\, and You\, co-authored by Jason Reynolds. In 2020\, Time magazine na med Dr. Kendi one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He was awarded a 2021 MacArthur Fellowship\, popularly known as the Genius Grant. He will publish How To Raise an Antiracist on June 14\, 2022. \;
\ n\n< p>Dr. Keisha N. Blain\, a 2022 National Fellow at New America\, is an awar d-winning historian and writer with broad interests in 20th century United States\, African American History\, the modern African Diaspora\, and Wom en&rsquo\;s and Gender Studies. She is an Associate Professor of History a t the University of Pittsburgh and a columnist for MSNBC. She is currently in residence at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard Univer sity and a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Adv anced Study.\nBlain has published extensively on race\, gender\, an d politics in both national and global perspectives. She is the author of the multi-prize-winning book Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Wome n and the Global Struggle for Freedom (2018) and co-editor of To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (University of Illinois Press\, 2019)\; New Perspectives on the Black Intellectual Tradition (Nor thwestern University Press\, 2018)\; and Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race\, Racism\, and Racial Violence (University of Georgia Press\, 2016).< /p>\n
Her latest books are the #1 New York Times Best Seller Four Hundre d Souls: A Community History of African America\, 1619-2019\, edited with Ibram X. Kendi (Penguin Random House/One World\, 2021)\; and Until I Am Fr ee: Fannie Lou Hamer's \;
\nEnduring Message to America (Beacon Press\, October 5\, 2021). Follow her on Twitter @KeishaBlain and on Insta gram @KeishaNBlain.
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