David W. Blight, Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, delivered the fourth Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture at Boston University on Monday, Dec. 2. Blight’s topic is “Frederick Douglass: Prose Poet of American Democracy.” The event took place at Tsai Performance Center.
Blight is a teacher, scholar and public historian. His latest book is a full biography, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (2018, Simon and Schuster) has won numerous awards including the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in History, 2018 Los Angeles Book Prize for Biography, and the 2019 Bancroft Prize for History.
Blight is a frequent book reviewer and has written many articles on abolitionism, American historical memory, and African American intellectual and cultural history. Read the popular article “The First Decoration Day,” a people’s history of Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina at the Zinn Education Project.
The Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series was created in 2008 by former Zinn student Alex H. MacDonald (CAS’72) and his wife Dr. Maureen A. Strafford (MED’76). Read more about Zinn’s impact on students in the Our Favorite Teacher series and consider adding your story.
Previous Howard Zinn Memorial Lectures
Eric Foner, March 2019
The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Forged a Constitutional Revolution
Bob Herbert, 2011
Bill Moyers, 2010
