Tue, Oct 1, 2024/6:30pm – 8:00pm
RSVP required: www.bklynlibrary.org

Prithi Kanakamedala explores Brooklyn’s communities of free Blacks and their radical anti-slavery vision in her book, Brooklynites: The Remarkable Story of the Free Black Communities that Shaped a Borough. In conversation with CBH’s chief historian Dominique Jean-Louis, Kanakamedala reveals how these Black men and women resisted the systems of racism in the decades following the Revolution and leading up to the Civil War, risking their own safety to build a Brooklyn based on equality. She also lays out the depth and scope of their activism, which spanned institution-building, fundraising, entrepreneurship, investment in property. In doing so she centers Brooklyn’s place in the history of social justice movements.