Throughout American history, the stories of black Americans have often been overlooked or misrepresented, leaving a gap in our understanding of the nation's past. In the new book Black AF history, the unwhitewashed story of America, acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriet, challenges these narratives by offering an educating and often quite funny retelling of American history. And joining us now is Michael Harriet. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Got to start out with the title Black AF. What made you decide to come up with this title?

I thought it would give people an impetus to read the book. And I thought I didn't want to create a book that was... Although it is scholarly, I wanted to make it accessible to the average reader. And I thought that that's something that might bring the average reader in, whether it was a person in high school or a person who didn't normally read non-fiction or history books. And I thought that title would do it.

And you're right. And I want to quote here, The story of America is a fantastical, overwrought and fictive tale. It is the story of slaves who spontaneously teleported themselves here with nothing but strong backs and a brain full of Negro spirituals, and it is a history predicated on lies. Tell me about how you challenge and deconstruct these narratives throughout the book.

One of the ways that I do it is by using the same template that we learn the mythology with. So, for instance, when we talk about English settlers and Dutch colonists and Africans, enslaved people and Indians or at best, the Native Americans. Well, when you hear those terms, the white people have a backstory and a religious motivation and a political motivation. And then the black people and the non-white people are just from somewhere. They're Native Americans, they're Africans. And so what I did is in the book, when I call all of the French and don't differentiate between the Dutch as just white people, you're learning from the perspective of the people who were enslaved here to the people who were enslaved to the indigenous Americans. They were just white people. They were just people who came to a new land and stole land.

Did you find any historical figures or events that particularly surprised you as you were writing this book?

Yeah, I found many of them. One of the ones that people have found so fascinating is a man who basically was in the headlines in the 1820... From 1820 to 1823. His name was Forrest Joe, and he was a maroon. He had its own colony of freed slaves in a place that was on the border of South Carolina and North Carolina, and he scared people for three years until he was caught. And the way that he was caught was through the creation of what became America's real first police force. The Pineville Police Association was created to catch this enslaved man who terrorized the Coast of South Carolina for three years.

At a time when discussions about teaching about race and history are perhaps more fraught than ever. There's a lot of hand-wringing around CRT, whether you should have it in the schools or not. How do you envision your book contributing to a deeper understanding of America's past?

Well, I think it gives a new perspective. We look at history, we call it American history versus black history, and those are two different things. One is the history of America and one is the history of black people. I wanted to show two things. One, that those are the same things, and two, that the history of America, we rarely get to see this country through the eyes of black people. It's usually through the default lens of whiteness. I wanted to undo those two things and start a conversation about how we view history and who gets to tell our stories.

Michael, we thank you so much for coming on the show. Black AF history, the unwhitewashed story of America is now available to purchase wherever books are sold.

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