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Teaching White Supremacy: America's Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity--Donald Yacovone in conversation with Jillian Ford

Event date: 
Wednesday, September 21, 2022 - 7:30pm to 8:30pm

This event takes place on crowdcast, Charis' virtual event platform. Register here.

Charis welcomes Donald Yacovone in conversation with Jillian Ford for a discussion of Teaching White Supremacy: America's Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity. A powerful exploration of the past and present arc of America’s white supremacy—from the country’s inception and Revolutionary years to its 19th-century flashpoint of civil war; to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and today’s Black Lives Matter. This event is co-hosted by the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History.

In Teaching White Supremacy, Donald Yacovone shows us the clear and damning evidence of white supremacy’s deep-seated roots in our nation’s education system in a fascinating, in-depth examination of America’s wide assortment of texts, from primary readers to college textbooks and other higher-ed course materials. Sifting through a wealth of materials, from the colonial era to today, Yacovone reveals the systematic ways in which white supremacist ideology has infiltrated American culture and how it has been at the heart of our collective national identity.
 
And, the author argues that it is the North, not the South, that bears the greater responsibility for creating the dominant strain of race theory, inculcated throughout the culture and in school textbooks, that restricted and repressed African Americans and other minorities, even as Northerners blamed the South for its legacy of slavery, segregation, and racial injustice.

Donald Yacovone is the lifetime Associate at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African and African American Research. His book, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, co-written with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., won the 2014 NAACP Image Award. He is the recipient of the W.E.B. Du Bois medal, Harvard’s highest honor in the field of African American studies. Yacovone earned a Ph.D. at the Claremont Graduate University and has taught at several colleges and universities. He helped edit the Black Abolitionist Papers, and before becoming the Manager of Research and Program Development at the Hutchins Center, Yacovone was the Senior Associate Editor of Publications at the Massachusetts Historical Society, where he founded and edited the Massachusetts Historical Review.  He has written widely on abolitionism, gender, the African American role in the Civil War, white supremacy, and American cultural history.

Jillian Ford is an associate professor of social studies education in the of Secondary and Middle Grades Education Department at Kennesaw State University. Ford draws on womanist and decolonial frameworks in her research and community work; she aligns herself with collaborative efforts to dismantle the status quo in schooling in the United States. In response to the anti-Black racism in Cobb County School District, she co-founded Stronger Together in 2018. Initially formed as a group with a sole focus on resisting racism in CCSD, the group has evolved to support Black youth and families in Cobb by organizing opportunities for self- exploration and community building. Ford’s published work has appeared in the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, Journal of Lesbian Studies, Multicultural Education, and several edited volumes. She is currently co-editing a volume that interrogates contemporary K-12 schooling with a decolonial lens, titled Disrupting Colonial Pedagogy: Theories and Transgressions. Jillian enjoys gardening, kayaking and using snail mail.

This event is free and open to all people, especially to those who have no income or low income right now, but we encourage and appreciate a solidarity donation in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Charis Circle's mission is to foster sustainable feminist communities, work for social justice, and encourage the expression of diverse and marginalized voices. https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/CharisCircle?code=chariscirclepage

Please contact us at info@chariscircle.org or 404-524-0304 if you would like ASL interpretation at this event. If you would like to watch the event with live AI captions, you may do so by watching it in Google Chrome and enabling captions: Instructions here. If you have other accessibility needs or if you are someone who has skills in making digital events more accessible please don't hesitate to reach out to info@chariscircle.org. We are actively learning the best practices for this technology and we welcome your feedback as we begin this new way of connecting across distances.

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Event address: 
CROWDCAST
Teaching White Supremacy: America's Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity By Donald Yacovone Cover Image
$32.50
ISBN: 9780593316634
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Pantheon - September 27th, 2022

A powerful exploration of the past and present arc of America’s white supremacy—from the country’s inception and Revolutionary years to its 19th century flashpoint of civil war; to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and today’s Black Lives Matter.
 


The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross By Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Yacovone Cover Image
$29.99
Email or call for price.
ISBN: 9781401935153
Published: Smiley Books - February 2nd, 2016

The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross is the companion book to the six-part, six-hour documentary of the same name, which aired on national, prime-time public television in the fall of 2013. The series is the first to air since 1968 that chronicles the full sweep of 500 years of African American history, from the origins of slavery on the African continent and the arrival of th


Lincoln on Race & Slavery By Henry Louis Gates (Editor), Donald Yacovone (Editor) Cover Image
By Henry Louis Gates (Editor), Donald Yacovone (Editor)
$29.65
ISBN: 9780691149981
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: Princeton University Press - March 27th, 2011

From acclaimed scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the most comprehensive collection of Lincoln's writings on race and slavery


Wendell Phillips, Social Justice, and the Power of the Past (Antislavery) By A. J. Aiséirithe (Editor), Donald Yacovone (Editor) Cover Image
By A. J. Aiséirithe (Editor), Donald Yacovone (Editor)
$60.50
ISBN: 9780807164037
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: LSU Press - November 1st, 2016

Born into an elite Boston family and a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Law School, white Massachusetts aristocrat Wendell Phillips's path seemed clear. Yet he rejected his family's and society's expectations and gave away most of his great wealth by the time of his death in 1884.


A Shared Experience: Men, Women, and the History of Gender (Science; 41) By Laura McCall (Editor), Donald Yacovone (Editor) Cover Image
By Laura McCall (Editor), Donald Yacovone (Editor)
$34.50
ISBN: 9780814796832
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 Days
Published: New York University Press - August 1st, 1998

For decades, women's history has been one of the most dynamic fields in all of American history. More recently, the study of manhood has drawn the attention of scholars, students, and general readers. Despite the obvious intersections of female and male gender roles, the nineteenth-century doctrine of "separate spheres" has dominated historical inquiry.


Event Summary: 
A powerful exploration of the past and present arc of America’s white supremacy—from the country’s inception and Revolutionary years to its 19th-century flashpoint of civil war; to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and today’s Black Lives Matter.