When we look at American history, it’s impossible to look at our country’s institutions of power and wealth without also looking at the foundational labor of enslaved Black men and women. The slave trade was essential to U.S. commodities like tobacco and cotton, and it shaped institutions from transportation and law enforcement to medicine and financial services.
In his newest book, Of Blood and Sweat, author Clyde W. Ford looks at the lives of individual Black men and women and their roles in creating and sustaining the wealth of the white one percent throughout American history. Today, as activists take the fight for racial equity and justice to the streets, Ford traces the roots of this struggle from pre-colonial Africa through post-Civil War America.
Ford joins us at Town Hall to discuss how the past holds broad implications for present-day calls for racial equity, racial justice, and the abolishment of systemic racism and offers invaluable insight into our understanding of Black history and the story of America.