Fennell Lecture 2021 - Professor Annette Gordon-Reed

This event has now passed, but you can watch a recording below.

“It is staggering that there is no date commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.” —Annette Gordon-Reed

Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed provides a historian’s view of the USA’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed—herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s—forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state. Combining personal anecdotes with poignant facts gleaned from the annals of American history, Gordon-Reed shows how, from the earliest presence of Black people in Texas to the day in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in the state, African-Americans played an integral role in the Texas story.

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. In 2009 she won the Pulitzer Prize in History for her book, "The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family".

This event, held in honour of the publication of Professor Gordon-Reed’s latest book, "On Juneteenth", is free and open to the public but attendees must register via Eventbrite.

Image: Professor Annette Gordon Reed, © Harvard Law School

Read a review of "On Juneteenth" on the New York Times website