Barbara Fields on The 1619 Project

Barbara Fields in The Civil War by Ken Burns

Many of you were introduced to Barbara Fields in connection to Ken Burns’s Civil War documentary, which originally aired on PBS documentary in 1990.

A few years ago I read her book, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, which she co-authored with her sister, Karen E. Fields. It’s a challenging read that offers an entirely new way to think about the history of race in America and the language we use to describe it. I am now rereading it for a number of reasons.

I can’t recommend it enough. I think she is one of the most thoughtful historians writing today.

Here she is discussing The 1619 Project.

Here is Professor Fields in conversation with historian Adam Rothman, who was one of her students at Columbia University. The conversation covers a good deal of ground. It offers an overview of the concept of racecraft and reflections on an essay that Fields and Rothman co-authored about the police shooting of a white woman named Hannah Fizer, which was almost entirely overlooked by the media.

Let me know what you think.

I recently ordered Fields’s book, Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century, which I am very much looking forward to reading.