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**A paradigm-shattering biography of the celebrated poet Phillis Wheatley, whose extraordinary work set African American literature at the heart of the American Revolution.** Admired by George Washington, ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson, published in London, and read far and wide, Phillis Wheatley led one of the most extraordinary American lives. Seized in West Africa and forced into slavery as a child, she was sold to a merchant family in Boston, where she became a noted poet at a young age. Mastering the Bible, Greek and Latin translations, and the works of Pope and Milton, she composed elegies for local elites and celebrated political events, adding her voice to a vibrant, multisided conversation about race, slavery, and discontent with British rule. In this new biography, the historian David Waldstreicher offers the fullest account to date of Wheatley’s life and works, correcting myths, reconstructing intimate friendships, and deepening our understanding of her verse and the revolutionary era. **David Waldstreicher** teaches history at the City University of New York Graduate Center and is the author of _Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification and Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin_, _Slavery, and the American Revolution_. He has written for The New York Times Book Review, Boston Review, and The Atlantic, among other publications. **Moderator L’Merchie Frazier** is a visual activist, public historian and artist, innovator, and poet. She is Executive Director of Creative / Strategic PLANNING for SPOKE Arts and former Director of Education and Interpretation for the Museum of African American History, Boston/Nantucket, and was recently named an Art Commissioner for Massachusetts. Presented by the American Inspiration series from American Ancestors/NEHGS in partnership with Boston Public Library, Museum of African American History, and with GBH Forum Network.

A paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow–era violence from a renowned legal scholar, this “meticulously researched and carefully documented” historical work presents ”dozens of fully fleshed out stories…examples, of course, of countless stories left untold.” (Booklist) Many may recognize the names of civil rights activists—from Rosa Parks to Medgar Evers to Martin Luther King Jr.—but they likely have little sense of the quotidian violence of Jim Crow, the system of white supremacy that prevailed between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth century. Now, the gap has been filled by author Margaret Burnham, Northeastern University School of Law’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, and its archive of nearly one thousand cases of previously undocumented racial homicides between 1930 and 1955. Drawn from these archives and augmented by newspaper accounts, court testimony and rulings, coroner’s reports, and interviews with surviving witnesses, family, and clergy, _By Hands Now Known_ is essential reading. Those interested in race, history, and law will find it groundbreaking, illuminating, and moving. **Margaret A. Burnham** is the founding director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at Northeastern University and has been a staffer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a civil rights lawyer, a defense attorney, and a judge. A professor of law, she was nominated by President Biden and confirmed by the US Senate to serve on the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board. **Moderator L’Merchie Frazier** is a visual activist, public historian and artist, innovator, and poet. She is Executive Director of Creative / Strategic PLANNING for SPOKE Arts and former Director of Education and Interpretation for the Museum of African American History, Boston/Nantucket, and was recently named an Art Commissioner for Massachusetts. Presented by the American Inspiration Series from American Ancestors/NEHGS, in partnership with Boston Public Library, Museum of African American History, and GBH Forum Network

Join us for a spirited debate between two celebrated journalists and bestselling authors: Who is the greatest athlete in American history: Jim Thorpe or Bo Jackson? Both made history on the field, and off. Votes will be counted! Some say that Jim Thorpe (1887-1953) was America’s greatest all-around athlete: a gold medalist at the 1912 Olympics in the decathlon and pentathlon; a star on the Carlisle Indian School’s football team and the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame; and a major league baseball player for John McGraw’s New York Giants. Other say Bo Jackson (b. 1962) tops the chart of all-time greats: the first person to simultaneously star in two major professional sports—and the only one to be named an All-Star in both baseball and football. Bo Jackson was a Heisman Trophy winner and a pop culture phenomenon. Despite their vast skills, both struggled against racism, both accomplished great things and reached stardom the American way: on the field of competition. Hear from two acclaimed writers, also super fans, about these remarkable athletes. Then cast your vote! Presented by the American Inspiration Series from American Ancestors/NEHGS in partnership with Boston Public Library and GBH Forum Network

Presented by the American Inspiration Series from American Ancestors/NEHGS and Boston Public Library, in partnership with GBH Forum Network, a groundbreaking new biography of the celebrated painter John Singer Sargent and a page-turning exploration of an epochal time in art history, and in America. John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) is a great American artist who lived among and painted the opinion-leaders and society kingpins of his day. He is also an abiding mystery. Sargent scandalized viewers on both sides of the Atlantic with the frankness and sensuality of his work. He charmed his wealthy patrons, but reserved his greatest sympathies for Bedouins, Spanish dancers, and the gondoliers of Venice. At the height of his renown in Britain and America, Sargent quit his lucrative portrait-painting career. In _The Grand Affair_, the scholar Paul Fisher offers a vivid portrait of the buttoned-up artist and his unbuttoned work, following his trans-European childhood to his spirited travels as an adult to his late-life journeys with his friend and patron Isabella Stewart Gardner. Fisher’s illustrated talk and discussion provides insight into on Sargent’s extensive work at the Boston Public Library, the mural cycle “The Triumph of Religion.” This talk is modoerated by Meghan Weeks, an artist and cultural heritage professional with an academic background in historical structures, painting, and curating.

A landmark biography of the most important multiracial American family of the nineteenth century--a stunning counternarrative of the legendary abolitionist Grimke sisters that reclaims the forgotten Black members of their family. Sarah and Angelina Grimke are revered figures in American history, famous for rejecting their privileged lives on a plantation in South Carolina to become firebrand activists in the North. Their antislavery pamphlets are still read today; yet retellings of their epic story have long obscured their Black relatives. In The Grimkes, award-winning historian Kerri Greenidge reclaims the lost side of this famous family. This grand saga spans the eighteenth century to the twentieth and stretches from Charleston to Philadelphia, Boston, and beyond, revealing the short-comings and injustices perpetuated by the white Grimkes and exposing the limits of progressive white racial politics. Just as the Hemingses and Jeffersons personified the racial myths of the founding generation, the Grimkes embodied the legacy of those myths. Kerri K. Greenidge is a historian at Tufts University and the author of Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter, winner of the 2020 Mark Lynton History Prize, among other honors. Moderator Kellie Carter Jackson is the Michael and Denise Kellen 68’ Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. She is the author of the award-winning book Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and Historian-in-Residence at Boston’s Museum of African American History.

Scholar Stephen Bown shares his compelling narrative history of Canada’s famous Hudson's Bay Company. Follow its rise from a small 1670 trading business backed by Royal Charter through its intersections as a political and economic force working with indigenous people as well as French, and American settlers on both sides of the 49th parallel and beyond. The Company became the single biggest political and economic force in North America, influencing the lives of people from Hudson’s Bay to the Pacific Ocean. See Bown’s illustrated presentation and insights on this rich and peopled history; and his discussion of Canada, then and now, with fellow countryman Jeff Breithaupt. ### RESOURCES Learn more about Stephen Bown and his books, including “The Company,” https://stephenrbown.net/ More about our moderator Jeff Breithaupt and his podcast, Canadians Among Us. https://twitter.com/jeffbreithaupt Find additional author events, webinars, and family history resources, chat with an expert genealogist at www.americanancestors.org Check out the many resources at American Ancestors, like this French-Canadian Genealogy page: https://www.americanancestors.org/education/learning-resources/read/french-canadian-guide

See Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Matteson with his latest work, “A Worse Place Than Hell: How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation.” Matteson is joined by guest moderator author Debby Applegate, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. December 1862: As Abraham Lincoln’s government threatened to fracture, five extraordinary individuals were tested – Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., army chaplain Arthur Fuller, poet Walt Whitman, Louisa May Alcott, and John Pelham, a West Point cadet on the other side of the national schism. The months ahead had repercussions in the country’s law, literature, politics, and popular mythology. Hear about the lives of these individuals and John Matteson’s new work, an interweaving of the personal and the historic. Our featured author is joined on screen by guest moderator author Debby Applegate, also winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History. Image: American Ancestors

Susan Eisenhower joins Boston Public Library President David Leonard, along with Margaret Talcott of American Ancestors NEHGS, to discuss a new book about President Dwight D. Eisenhower and his leadership. From D-Day to Little Rock, from the Korean War to Cold War crises, from the Red Scare to the Missile Gap controversies, few people have made decisions as momentous and varied as President Eisenhower. His granddaughter, Susan Eisenhower, sheds light on his principles and decision making in her new book, "How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower's Biggest Decisions.” This conversation is presented in partnership between the Boston Public Library's Arc of History: Contested Perspectives series and the American Inspiration author series hosted by the American Ancestors/New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS).

From the best-selling author of “Spain in Our Hearts” Adam Hochschild comes the forgotten story of one of the most charismatic radical leaders of the last century. Rose Pastor arrived in New York City in 1903, a Jewish refugee from Russia. She found a partner in James Graham Phelps Stokes, scion of one of the legendary 400 families of New York high society, and together joined the burgeoning Socialist Party. Over the next dozen years, they moved among the liveliest group of activists and dreamers this country has ever seen, including Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene V. Debs, John Reed, Margaret Sanger, Jack London and W.E.B. Du Bois. Adam Hochschild is the author of 10 books, including “King Leopold’s Ghost” and “To End All Wars,” both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and “Bury the Chains,” a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and PEN USA Literary Award.

The New York Times columnist visits Boston to talk about with her new book looking at women and aging in America. With razor-sharp, insightful social commentary, she takes us from colonial times to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, from Sojourner Truth to Mae West.

Gail Collins takes us through America’s History - from the colonies, when a woman was considered marriageable if "Civil, and under 50 years of Age," through a long stretch when they were quietly retired to a rocking chair once they had passed their reproductive years, to 68-year-old Hillary Clinton accepting the Democratic presidential nomination. Collins chronicles the lives of our country's most fascinating women, from Sojourner Truth to Mae West to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as many whose names are less well-known but whose impact on American society is still felt today. Don't miss her razor-sharp, insightful social commentary. Gail is interviewd by Margaret Talcott, curator of the American Inspiration author series.