This program is being livestreamed from MDC’s Wolfson Campus. For more information about this in-person program, please visit MiamiBookFair.com.
Long before his name became synonymous with civil rights, George Floyd, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by a white police officer, was a father, partner, athlete, and friend striving for a better life. Deeply researched, His Name Is George Floyd: One Man’s Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice, co-written by Toluse Olorunnipa and Robert Samuels, places Floyd’s narrative within the context of the country’s legacy of institutional racism. In The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family, historian Kerri K. Greenidge offers a parallel narrative, shifting the focus from the white abolitionist sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimke to the Black Grimkes, descendants of their older brother and one of the women he owned, Nancy Weston. The Grimkes deepens our understanding of the long struggle for racial and gender equality. And in Race and Reckoning: From Founding Fathers to Today’s Disruptors, veteran journalist and author Ellis Cose addresses chattel slavery and the New Deal to the COVID pandemic, exploring how throughout our nation’s history, racialized pivotal decisions have established and perpetuated discriminatory practices. American politicians have waxed eloquently and endlessly about bettering the nation; Cose asks, bettering it for whom?