Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard Law School Professor and Pulitzer-Prize winner for The Hemingses of Monticello, will discuss her newest book, On Juneteenth. She provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicles, and searing episodes of memoir, Gordon-Reed—herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s — forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all.

Ella Altidor, our Robbins House and Concord Museum intern from Brown University, will introduce Annette Gordon Reed.