400 Years of Witnessing
by Molefi Kete Asante

What is a person to do with the pain, anger, fear, frustration and dismay of Black defamation and demise due to White supremacy’s racism and anti-Blackness? Even more, how does one celebrate the triumph of surviving and escaping enslavement, establishing civil rights, creating and promulgating renaissance after renaissance as social movements while inspiring the world to take note? Wonder no more. Dr. Molefi K. Asante has eloquently penned an emotional spectrum of poems truly reflecting the spirit, soul, and humanity of Black people in 400 Years of Witnessing: A Memoir of a People 1619-2019.

The substantive and meaningful reflections on and about Black life and the social conditions it has encountered and often endured over 400 years fosters a compelling need for readers to journey page-by-page through each poem. With effortless ease to read, Dr. Asante weaves a tapestry of Black strength, vulnerability, and resolve unlike any other collection of Black poetic expressions through what is likely to become a literary favorite though the brilliance of 400 Years of Witnessing: A Memoir of a People 1619-2019.