Leonard Moore

This program is presented by the Newberry Library. Leonard Moore will be in conversation with Laura McEnaney, the Newberry Library’s VP for Research and Education, about his book Teaching Black History to White People.

About Teaching Black History to White People:

Leonard Moore has been teaching Black history for twenty-five years, mostly to white people. Drawing on decades of experience in the classroom and on college campuses throughout the South, as well as on his own personal history, Moore illustrates how an understanding of Black history is necessary for everyone.

With Teaching Black History to White People, which is “part memoir, part Black history, part pedagogy, and part how-to guide,” Moore delivers an accessible and engaging primer on the Black experience in America. He poses provocative questions, such as “Why is the teaching of Black history so controversial?” and “What came first: slavery or racism?” These questions don’t have easy answers, and Moore insists that embracing discomfort is necessary for engaging in open and honest conversations about race. Moore includes a syllabus and other tools for actionable steps that white people can take to move beyond performative justice and toward racial reparations, healing, and reconciliation.

About the speaker:

Leonard Moore is the George Littlefield Professor of American History at the University of Texas at Austin and a graduate of Jackson State University. He is the author of three books on Black politics, the most recent being The Defeat of Black Power: Civil Rights and the National Black Political Convention of 1972.