We are pleased to announce that Professor Kellie Carter-Jackson, winner of the James H. Broussard Best First Book Award for her book "Force and Freedom, Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence" will participate in the New Democracy Coalition's Civic Literacy Project Black Author's Series.

Her new book, examines the conditions that led some black abolitionists to believe slavery might only be abolished by violent force. In Force and Freedom, Carter Jackson provides the first historical analysis exclusively focused on the tactical use of violence among antebellum black activists. Go beyond the honorable politics of moral suasion and the romanticism of the Underground Railroad and into an exploration of the agonizing decisions, strategies, and actions of the black abolitionists who, though lacking an official political voice, were nevertheless responsible for instigating monumental social and political change.

Kellie Carter Jackson is the Knafel Assistant Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. She is currently a Newhouse Faculty Fellow in the Center for the Humanities at Wellesley College. She is the author of Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence (UPenn Press, 2019). In 2019, Force and Freedom was a finalist for the MAAH Stone Prize Book Award. Carter Jackson is also co-editor of Reconsidering Roots: Race, Politics, & Memory. Her essays have been featured in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, Transition Magazine, The Conversation, Black Perspectives, and Quartz