Why am I passionate about this?
I love writing and teaching about topics that help me understand my life and my community better. And I love to contemplate the question - How do we come to care about the same things? As a psychotherapist I have firsthand experience in the disruption that any type of violence causes until it's repaired. One way to advocate for the vulnerable who do not have protection in their communities is to tell the story of the silent, unknown victims of lynching and other acts of racism and racial violence. Only by memorializing the stories of the victims of racial injustice can we repair the trauma and tell the true story of structural racism in America today.
Judith's book list on the power of memory to heal racial trauma
Why did Judith love this book?
I recommend this first book because I believe racial violence won’t stop in our country until we tell the truth about our past. Only by memorializing the accurate stories of racial injustice in our history can we convince good people that white supremacy is alive and strong and destroying our national unity.
In their book, historians Kyle and Roberts reveal the links between the beliefs of the confederacy in the 1850s South and the modern-day massacre by white supremacist Dylann Roof who sought out slavery’s descendants and terrorized them anew in the 2015 Charleston massacre.
The murdered churchgoers were elders in the exact church that Denmark Vesey founded back in 1818. His statue and memorial garden is one of those public memorials we are still fighting about.
The story of resistor Denmark Vesey and other freedom fighters like him can lead to solutions for the tragedy of persistent racial violence.
1 author picked Denmark Vesey's Garden as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
One of Janet Maslin's Favorite Books of 2018, The New York Times
One of John Warner's Favorite Books of 2018, Chicago Tribune
Named one of the "Best Civil War Books of 2018" by the Civil War Monitor
"A fascinating and important new historical study."
-Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"A stunning contribution to the historiography of Civil War memory studies."
-Civil War Times
The stunning, groundbreaking account of "the ways in which our nation has tried to come to grips with its original sin" (Providence Journal)
Hailed by the New York Times as a "fascinating and important new historical…