The United States was founded on the backs of millions of slaves. Memories of injustices and suffering — slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow, racial profiling — plague our nation’s distant and not-so-distant past. The stories black Americans tell about this problematic history through film, popular literature, dance and heritage tourism are critical to understanding and forging a modern black identity.

In Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America Since 1940, Jonathan Holloway explores race memory from the dawn of the modern civil rights era to the present. In the book, he asks: What stories are told about the past? How do we balance the desire for tales of exceptional accomplishment with the need for painful doses of reality? How hard do we work to remember our past or to forget it?

Join New America NYC for a discussion on how we remember, forget, or rework our past – and how it has shaped a modern black American identity.

Books will be available for purchase.

GUARANTEE YOUR PLACE, RSVP NOW

JONATHAN HOLLOWAY

Chair & Professor, African American Studies, Yale University

Author, Jim Crow Wisdom: Memory and Identity in Black America Since 1940

JELANI COBB

Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut

Contributor, NewYorker.com

SOLEDAD O’BRIEN

CEO, Starfish Media Group

Broadcast Journalist
 

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