The Cammett Lecture Series for Economic Justice & Social Change 

Please join Professor Kidada Williams, PhD, from Wayne State University, for a discussion about her new book, I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction, a heart-wrenching reexamination of the struggle for survival in the Reconstruction-era South.

The story of Reconstruction is often told from the perspective of the politicians, generals and journalists whose accounts claim an outsized place in collective memory. But this pivotal era looked very different to African Americans in the South transitioning from bondage to freedom after 1865. Williams offers a breakthrough account of this much-debated period, transporting readers into the daily existence of formerly enslaved people building hope-filled new lives.

Drawing on overlooked sources and bold new readings of the archives, Williams offers a revelatory and, in some cases, minute-by-minute record of nighttime raids and Ku Klux Klan strikes. And she deploys cutting-edge scholarship on trauma to consider how the effects of these attacks would linger for generations to come.

A book signing will follow the talk.

Registration info will be added soon.