Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

Black AF History reframes American history by flipping the default viewpoint: instead of treating Black life as a sidebar, Michael Harriot makes it the sun that everything else orbits. Through personal stories, satire, and deeply researched historical scenes—from Jamestown’s collapse to South Carolina’s rice empire, from the Haitian Revolution to Reconstruction’s promise and betrayal—Harriot argues that the nation’s most celebrated myths were built by omission.

Across sixteen chapters, the book tracks how race-based slavery became law, how Black resistance shaped every major era (Revolutionary War, Civil War, civil rights), how the Black church and Black women built institutions and strategy, and how modern systems—segregation, surveillance, and mass incarceration—evolved as “something else” whenever Black people gained ground.

• Listeners who want U.S. history told from a Black-centered perspective with humor and urgency.
• Anyone studying slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, civil rights, surveillance, and the racial wealth gap.
• Readers who enjoy social commentary and memoir-driven storytelling alongside historical synthesis.

Michael Harriot is a journalist and columnist (TheGrio) whose work focuses on race, politics, and culture. He has written for outlets including The Washington Post and The Atlantic, appears as a political commentator, and has been recognized by the National Association of Black Journalists.