About the Event: From Brooklyn to Boston, from World War II to the present, Jason Sokol traces the modern history of race and politics in the Northeast. Why did white fans come out to support Jackie Robinson as he broke baseball's color barrier in 1947 even as Brooklyn's blacks were shunted into segregated neighborhoods? How was African-American politician Ed Brooke of Massachusetts, who won a Senate seat in 1966, undone by the resistance to desegregation busing in Boston? Is the Northeast's history a microcosm of America as a whole: outwardly democratic, but inwardly conflicted over race?

About Jason: Jason Sokol, an Associate Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire, is a historian of the civil rights movement. He is the author of three books: There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights; All Eyes Are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklyn; and The Heavens Might Crack: The Death and Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. A graduate from Oberlin College, Jason has received post-doctoral fellowships from Harvard, Penn and Cornell.

This event is sponsored by the Friends of the Flint Memorial Library, Friends of the Tewksbury Public Library, and Memorial Hall Library in Andover. It is presented in collaboration with Libraries Working Towards Social Justice.

Register directly for this event on Zoom HERE.