“I Am So Tired of Waiting, Aren’t You?”: Revisiting Black Majority in the Wake of Black Lives Matter

In 1974, Peter H. Wood published his Harvard doctoral dissertation on enslavement in colonial South Carolina. This book has had a lasting impact, and W.W. Norton has recently published a new, updated 50^th-anniversary edition: Black Majority: Race, Rice, and Rebellion in South Carolina, 1670-1740. Professor Wood, an emeritus Duke University historian, will talk about what prompted this groundbreaking research and what he discovered in the Carolina Lowcountry. He will also discuss how his findings have been received in various quarters, and whether they hold renewed relevance in a world where African American history again under attack.