Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

A “choral history” of African Americans covering 400 years of history in the voices of 90 writers, edited by the bestselling, National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi and award-winning historian Keisha N. Blain.

2019 marked the four hundredth anniversary of the first captive Africans in Virginia—and also launched the Four Hundred Souls project, spearheaded by Ibram X. Kendi, founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, and Keisha N. Blain, associate professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh and the president of the African American Intellectual History Society. They’ve gathered together ninety Black writers from all disciplines to tell one of history’s great epics: the journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present. With lyrical interludes from ten poets, eighty writers take on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span, exploring their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemic. This comprehensive, dynamic, single-volume work is an essential historical keepsake.