We're pleased to partner with the AADL to present Kidada Williams in support of her book I Saw Death Coming.
Kidada Williams discusses her new book, a heart-wrenching reexamination of the struggle for survival in the Reconstruction-era South, and what it cost. In I Saw Death Coming, Kidada E. Williams offers a breakthrough account of the much-debated Reconstruction period, transporting readers into the daily existence of formerly enslaved people building hope-filled new lives. Drawing on overlooked sources and bold new readings of the archives, Williams offers a revelatory and, in some cases, minute-by-minute record of nighttime raids and Ku Klux Klan strikes. And she deploys cutting-edge scholarship on trauma to consider how the effects of these attacks would linger for decades—indeed, generations—to come.
Kidada E. Williams is Associate Professor of History at Wayne State University. She is the author of They Left Great Marks on Me, coauthor of Charleston Syllabus, and creator of the podcast Seizing Freedom. Williams has been interviewed on NPR's Morning Edition and On Point, and her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Slate, and multiple scholarly journals. She resides in Detroit.
