Inspired by a stained-glass window dedicated to his grandmother in the Atlanta church where his family had prayed for generations, American historian David Levering Lewis vowed to excavate the past and tell his family’s story.  Now, the National Humanities Medal recipient and two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize reckons with his legacy in full. 

David Levering Lewis’s lineage led him to two white slaveholding families in Georgia, to a free persons of color slaveholding family in South Carolina and then to an up-from-slavery black family in Georgia. His father introduced him to W.E.B. Du Bois and the good work of Thurgood Marshall, though which he gained a deeper knowledge of America’s racial past. In The Stained Glass Window, Levering Lewis reckons with his legacy, facing his ancestors and all that was lost, all the doors that were closed to them. His chronicle of the antebellum project and the subsequent era of marginalization and resistance transforms our understanding. With the acclaimed historian Professor Kendra T. Field, he will bring to life this “epic” memoir, “rich in family lore and historical fact...a thoughtful addition to the literature of Black life in the American South.” (Kirkus Reviews). Don’t miss their conversation.

David Levering Lewis is professor emeritus of history at New York University. A recipient of the National Humanities Medal, Lewis received the Pulitzer Prize for each volume of his W.E.B. Du Bois biography. He is the author of eleven books. Lewis has received fellowships from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Humanities Center, the Wilson Center, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the MacArthur Foundation. He lives in New York City.

Kendra Field is Associate Professor of History at Tufts University and chief historian for American Ancestors’ 10 Million Names Project.  Professor Field is the author of Growing Up with the Country: Family, Race, and Nation after the Civil War, which traces her ancestors' migratory lives after the Civil War and is currently completing The Stories We Tell, a history of African American genealogy from the Middle Passage to the Present. Field abridged David Levering Lewis’ W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography and is co-founder of the Du Bois Forum.

Presented in partnership with American Ancestors’ 10 Million Names Project