Challenging Historical Narratives

Our understanding of slavery in the United States has been transformed by the work of many talented scholars, including two authors joining us at DBF: Daniel Rood (In the Shadow of the Great House: A History of the Plantation in America) and John Garrison Marks (Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory). In his new book, Rood argues that plantations were dynamic institutions that shaped economic and political development in the United States, and still endure today. From the advent of sharecropping to today’s chicken-processing plants, the plantation continues to manifest itself. In Marks’s new history, he tells the story of Americans’ long, fraught struggle to come to terms with George Washington’s legacy of slavery by tracing how politicians, abolitionists, educators, and others have remembered, forgotten, and manipulated the role of slavery in Washington’s history. These skillful historians will help us better understand our national history and memory. 

Purchase your book from Charis Books & More. When you check-out from that link, please mention that you will need to pick your book up at the event. Books will also be for sale on-site by Charis, and a portion of your purchase will benefit the Decatur Book Festival.

This event is free and open to the public. No tickets are required, and seating is first come, first served. Signing information: Signing time: 2:30 PM

Signing location: Marriott Conference Center

About the Authors

John Garrison Marks is a historian and writer exploring history, museums, and the ways Americans engage with the past. His most recent book, Thy Will Be Done: George Washington's Legacy of Slavery and the Fight for American Memory, tells the story of how Americans have thought, and fought, over George Washington’s involvement in slavery for the past 250 years. He has written in The Atlantic, TIME, The Washington Post, Defector, Smithsonian magazine, and elsewhere. He earned his PhD in history from Rice University. He is a New Jersey native currently living outside Washington, DC. 

Daniel Rood is an associate professor of history at the University of Georgia specializing in the history of Atlantic slavery. He is the author of The Reinvention of Atlantic Slavery: Technology, Labor, Race, and Capitalism in the Greater Caribbean and his new book, In the Shadow of the Great House: A History of the Plantation in America. He lives in Athens, Georgia.

About the Moderator

Carl Suddler is an associate professor of history at Emory University. His publications, teaching, and public scholarship have placed him among a small number of African American scholars who study the intersections of Black life, crime, and sports since the late nineteenth century. Suddler’s first book, Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York is widely used in college and graduate classrooms across the country. He joined historians of the American carceral state who have produced a burgeoning wave of literature on criminalization, law enforcement, and imprisonment in America from the eras of slavery and settler colonialism to the modern age of mass incarceration and global counterinsurgency.