Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University, discusses African American Lives at Cambridge Forum in 2005.
Recording the achievements of over 600 individuals, African American Lives is the most comprehensive biography of African Americans both famous and near-forgotten figures of the past 400 years published to date.
From Esteban, the earliest known African to land on America’s shores, to professional golfer Tiger Woods, the stories of these men and women illuminate African American history through the immediacy of personal experience. How do the personal choices and circumstances of a single individual shape the contours of a larger history? What editorial choices had to be made to illuminate this history?
Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham is Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. A prize-winning author and editor, she has devoted her research primarily to the history of African American women.
Recorded in 2005 at Cambridge Forum