In Defiance: 20 Abolitionists You Were Never Taught in School
Event Details
This is a virtual event.
On Zoom
Join us for a zoom presentation with Tom Weiner, Northampton-based writer and educator, and Dr. Amilcar Shabazz, University of Massachusetts Amherst Professor of History and Africana Studies in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, to learn about their new book, In Defiance: 20 Abolitionists You Were Never Taught in School (Simon and Schuster, 2025).
The book features previously untold stories of individuals–Black and white– who risked their lives to fight enslavement in the United States. In this illustrated presentation, the authors will share some of the stories contained in the book as well as their motivation for writing it, their research, and the importance of this history, then and now.
About the Authors
Dr. Amilcar Shabazz is a professor of history and Africana Studies in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His work focuses on the political economy of social and cultural movements, education, and public policy. His book Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas was the winner of the T.R. Fehrenbach Book Award. The Forty Acres Documents, a volume he co-edited, was one of the earliest scholarly works in the modern movement for reparations for slavery and the racial oppression of people of African descent in North America.
Tom Weiner is an author and retired educator. His previous books include Called to Serve: Stories of Men and Women Confronted by the Vietnam War Draft and Photographed Letters on Wings: How Microfilmed V-Mail Helped Win World War II. A graduate of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, he taught 3rd-6th grade at the Smith College Campus School for 40 years and middle and high school summer school for 34 years. He is a longtime resident of Northampton, Massachusetts.