About the Book: From the author of the New York Times bestseller “Begin Again,” comes a politically astute, lyrical meditation on how ordinary Black Americans can shake off their reliance on a small group of professional politicians and pursue self-cultivation and grassroots movements to achieve a more just and perfect democracy.
We are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In” We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For,” one of the nation’s preeminent scholars and public intellectuals speaking to the Black experience in America, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how ordinary people have the capacity to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires, rather than outsourcing their needs to leaders who purportedly represent them.
Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is the author of several books, including “Democracy in Black” and the New York Times bestseller “Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own,” winner of the Harriet Beecher Stowe Book Prize. He frequently appears in the media as an MSNBC contributor on programs like “Morning Joe” and “Deadline: White House.” A native of Moss Point, Mississippi, Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University.
Keeanga Yamahtta-Taylor’s “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She is the author, in addition, of “From #Blacklivesmatter to Black Liberation.” Yamahtta-Taylor is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and professor of African American Studies at Princeton University.
This event is co-presented by Labyrinth Books and the library and co-sponsored by Princeton University’s Humanities Council and the Departments of African American Studies and Religion with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
This event was recorded April 17, 2024.