[T]he African American experience through the intriguing lens of evidence. A timely and provocative history.--Kirkus Reviews Anyone seeking to understand our predicaments must read Candis Watts Smith's magnificent Black Evidence , whose eloquent storytelling and impeccable research illuminate how we got here--and offer crucial lessons for our escape. Here is our beautiful, terrible, and complicated past and present, told in all their sparkling complexity. This is history that explodes indoctrination and offers a vision of democracy that calls us toward belonging.--Timothy B. Tyson, author of The Blood of Emmett Till In Black Evidence , Candis Watts Smith delivers a blistering indictment of America's enduring refusal to believe Black people. With razor-sharp insight and electrifying prose, Smith exposes how this deep-rooted distrust has warped justice, disregarded Black humanity, and further eroded an already fragile democracy.

Yet this is not a book of despair. Smith highlights moments when people have truly reckoned with Black testimony, reminding us that doing so is not only possible but essential.--Ruha Benjamin, author of Imagination: A Manifesto Candis Watts Smith delivers both a powerful testimony and an incisive corrective. By tracing how Black truth has long been denied, she exposes not only the foundations of racial inequality in America, but also the deepest fault lines in American democracy. A searing indictment of the failure of America to sit with uncomfortable truths, if you look away from Black Evidence , you'll be failing to reckon with the lessons Black history wants to teach us all.--Blair LM Kelley, author of Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class Black Evidence is a searing account of the failure of the United States to reckon with its past and take seriously the testimonies of Black Americans. The wisdom Candis Watts Smith distills in this illuminating book is desperately needed in these turbulent times.--Keisha N.

Blain, author of Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights.