Remarkable audio book - compilation of historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes and poems - this book touches the surface of 400 years of what it means to be black, and particularly African born or descended, in the United States.
I learned a lot - and have pages of notes of follow up books I want to read and stories I want to know more about.
Recency is affecting my thoughts here - I realize that it’s impossible to include ALL the events that have shaped the Black American experience of the past 400 years - but when talking about the integration of the US military in the 1940’s - no mention is made of the disproportionate number of African Americans serving as enlisted men in the Army during the VietNam war.
And when Alicia Garza reads a list of victims of racially motivated murders - many of them committed by police officers - she does not include Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Jonathan Ferrell or LaQuan McDonald.

In the final chapter, Keisha Blain ties things together -   “400 years after the 20 or so black people arrived in Jamestown, Virginia, black people across the nation continue to face the same problems our ancestors fought to correct.  . . . .
The task ahead is not an easy one - but we can help chart out a path that leads us ALL to a better future. The kind of future that will more closely resemble our ancestor’s wildest dreams.”