Black Perspectives, the award-winning blog of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS), invites readers to attend a lunchtime book talk with Garrett Felber on his new book, Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State (University of North Carolina Press, 2020). In this bold new political and intellectual history of the Nation of Islam, Garrett Felber centers the Nation in the Civil Rights Era and the making of the modern carceral state. In doing so, he reveals a multifaceted freedom struggle that focused as much on policing and prisons as on school desegregation and voting rights. The book examines efforts to build broad-based grassroots coalitions among liberals, radicals, and nationalists to oppose the carceral state and struggle for local Black self-determination. It captures the ambiguous place of the Nation of Islam specifically, and Black nationalist organizing more broadly, during an era which has come to be defined by nonviolent resistance, desegregation campaigns, and racial liberalism.

Felber will be in conversation with fellow historian Mary Phillips. We encourage attendees to secure a copy of the book and read the pieces in our week-long roundtable on the book in collaboration with the Journal of Civil and Human Rights (JCHR). AAIHS members should take advantage of the exclusive members’ discount on books purchased from UNC Press.

Date: Friday, November 20, 2020

Time: 12noon EST

Registration: https://bit.ly/2Uycsd3

*Registration is free and open to all.