What do you think?
Rate this book
Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence
A collection of new essays and columns published in the wake of the 2015 Charleston, SC massacre, along with excerpts from key scholarly books. It draws from a variety of disciplines history, sociology, urban studies, law, critical race theory and includes discussion questions and a selected and annotated bibliography for further reading."
368 pages, Hardcover
First published May 15, 2016
12 people are currently reading
555 people want to read
About the author
Chad L. Williams
10 books51 followersChad Williams is the Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African American Studies at Brandeis University. Chad earned a BA with honors in History and African American Studies from UCLA, and received both his MA and Ph.D. in History from Princeton University. He specializes in African American and modern United States History, African American military history, the World War I era and African American intellectual history.
His first book, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era, was published in 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Widely praised as a landmark study, Torchbearers of Democracy won the 2011 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization of American Historians, the 2011 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History and designation as a 2011 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. He is co-editor of Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism and Racial Violence (University of Georgia Press, 2016) and Major Problems in African American History, Second Edition (Cengage Learning, 2016).
Chad has published articles and book reviews in numerous leading journals and collections. He has earned fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Ford Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.
His next book, The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War, will be published on April 4, 2023 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
His first book, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era, was published in 2010 by the University of North Carolina Press. Widely praised as a landmark study, Torchbearers of Democracy won the 2011 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization of American Historians, the 2011 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for Military History and designation as a 2011 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. He is co-editor of Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism and Racial Violence (University of Georgia Press, 2016) and Major Problems in African American History, Second Edition (Cengage Learning, 2016).
Chad has published articles and book reviews in numerous leading journals and collections. He has earned fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Ford Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.
His next book, The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War, will be published on April 4, 2023 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
May 1, 2016
As an American in Japan there's literally half a world between me and events in my home country. Major news gets clipped down by the Japanese media - "Yet another shooting in America. Somebody shot X people because of historical hatred/current events/being psychologically unstable. Y people are protesting. Police are investigating."
After the Charleston shooting, where a white male shot nine black people in a racially motivated crime, I knew I needed more information. The Japanese news didn't have it. The American online media added some background, but not enough. Luckily #CharlestonSyllabus, a hashtag on Twitter started by the editors of this book, collected all kinds of books, articles, primary source documents, and even songs that related to the shooting and the history that leads up to it. The list is extensive and deep; you can find it here and at the back of the book.
Extensive and deep is good, but it also meant I had no idea where I should start. I put a couple of titles on my library wish list, where they still linger.
That's where this one volume Charleston Syllabus comes in. It's organized into six chapters covering everything from slavery and religion to Malcolm X and Black Lives Matter. Each section starts off with a historical overview before turning over to historical documents, scholarly analysis, and articles from the days and weeks after the massacre. I love how all the different kinds of writing nestle up against each other - a slave's first person account next to a song they may have sung while working, next to a scholarly article on the events of the period. The variety and breadth of the sources help you get a deep understanding of the historical context and how it relates to today's news.
Throughout the book I found myself thinking, how could my education have failed me so badly? Why haven't I studied Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a kick butt investigative journalist? Why wasn't an annotated Constitution of the Confederate States put before me? There is so much more history than the cotton gin and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Charleston Syllabus filled in many of those holes in my knowledge. It opened my eyes to topics and controversies I only heard of in passing. It gave me a lot to think about and pointed me towards time periods and people I'd like to study more deeply.
If you're American this book will help you grapple with the complicated mess that is racial relations in our country. If you're not American it will show you how current events are related to a long and terrifying history of slavery and oppression. Charleston Syllabus is a must read for anyone that wants to understand how things went wrong and think about where we can go from here.
Thanks to University of Georgia Press and NetGalley for providing a review copy.
After the Charleston shooting, where a white male shot nine black people in a racially motivated crime, I knew I needed more information. The Japanese news didn't have it. The American online media added some background, but not enough. Luckily #CharlestonSyllabus, a hashtag on Twitter started by the editors of this book, collected all kinds of books, articles, primary source documents, and even songs that related to the shooting and the history that leads up to it. The list is extensive and deep; you can find it here and at the back of the book.
Extensive and deep is good, but it also meant I had no idea where I should start. I put a couple of titles on my library wish list, where they still linger.
That's where this one volume Charleston Syllabus comes in. It's organized into six chapters covering everything from slavery and religion to Malcolm X and Black Lives Matter. Each section starts off with a historical overview before turning over to historical documents, scholarly analysis, and articles from the days and weeks after the massacre. I love how all the different kinds of writing nestle up against each other - a slave's first person account next to a song they may have sung while working, next to a scholarly article on the events of the period. The variety and breadth of the sources help you get a deep understanding of the historical context and how it relates to today's news.
Throughout the book I found myself thinking, how could my education have failed me so badly? Why haven't I studied Ida B. Wells-Barnett, a kick butt investigative journalist? Why wasn't an annotated Constitution of the Confederate States put before me? There is so much more history than the cotton gin and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Charleston Syllabus filled in many of those holes in my knowledge. It opened my eyes to topics and controversies I only heard of in passing. It gave me a lot to think about and pointed me towards time periods and people I'd like to study more deeply.
If you're American this book will help you grapple with the complicated mess that is racial relations in our country. If you're not American it will show you how current events are related to a long and terrifying history of slavery and oppression. Charleston Syllabus is a must read for anyone that wants to understand how things went wrong and think about where we can go from here.
Thanks to University of Georgia Press and NetGalley for providing a review copy.
February 5, 2023
I'm so grateful that the editors put all of this together otherwise I'm not sure I would've been exposed to some of these texts. I thought the 1861 Stephen's Corner Stone speech was heinous.
I hated to read about the rumors of Black criminality to justify vigilante violence. The assertion of white dominance and Black subordination in their homes and with their families. This all still happens now!
The 1895 Ida B Wells-Barnett excerpt detailing the excuses for the murder of Black people: to stamp out 'race riots'; to avoid 'Negro domination' at the polls; and that Black men have to be killed to avenge the assaults on white women. It really helps me see the media and community response in a different light, particularly here in SC.
I also appreciated the parsing out of whiteness and what that means; how people of colour have been pitted against each other to fight for white approval and to gain their rewards and privileges.
I hated to read about the rumors of Black criminality to justify vigilante violence. The assertion of white dominance and Black subordination in their homes and with their families. This all still happens now!
The 1895 Ida B Wells-Barnett excerpt detailing the excuses for the murder of Black people: to stamp out 'race riots'; to avoid 'Negro domination' at the polls; and that Black men have to be killed to avenge the assaults on white women. It really helps me see the media and community response in a different light, particularly here in SC.
I also appreciated the parsing out of whiteness and what that means; how people of colour have been pitted against each other to fight for white approval and to gain their rewards and privileges.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 27, 2020
On a recent visit to Charleston I stopped in to Buxton books in the downtown area to pick up a book on Charleston history. The woman working there recommended this book and I am so thankful. What an important read and a great collection of works that speaks to the violence shown to African Americans from the beginning of slavery in America to present day. This book helped me understand that the shooting at the AME church on June 17, 2025 was not a random act of violence, but an act that is embedded in a terrible history of abuse towards black people by white supremacists. The organization of the book made a great impact. One would hope that as the history moves into present day these issues would lessen or get better but in many ways they have not. This has sparked in me an awakening to the terrible cancer we have in America: white supremacy. I am disgusted and saddened by our country and what we continue to allow. This is an important work especially if you are looking for an overview of our violent history in America towards our own citizens, sisters and brothers.
February 9, 2020
This is definitely a syllabus and academic, but still largely accessible to this out-of-practice reader of academia. As I got further into the book it became harder to read because events and situations are arranged chronologically so that by the time I got to the last few essays about prejudice & racism in suburban Chicago, it was only a handful of years before I moved there as an adult with my husband and children & I feel complicit in the whole rotten system (because of this and other reading). Still, this was eye-opening to me in so many ways and I'm glad to have read it and have it in my library to go back to when needed, and I'm sure I'll be going back to re-read portions of it.
May 30, 2016
4.5 stars.
April 8, 2025
10 years ago, a domestic white supremacist terrorist committed mass murder at the historic Mother Emmanuel AME church in Charleston; Twitter users began sharing links to contextualize this event using the hashtag #Charlestonsyllabus. This book compiled many of those collected resources into a sweepingly comprehensive volume of approximately 2-10 page excerpts spanning all kinds of writing about American racism, violence, and activism from accounts of the Atlantic slave trade to 2015 Kendrick Lamar lyrics. I found the sections on Reconstruction, the Civil Rights movement, and 2015 dialogue especially moving because they show the wide diversity of thought within social movements and especially how unsettled “history” is at the time it is happening. It helps one to remember that backlash to increasing racial equity has happened before and Americans before us have braved much scarier times than our current moment. We owe it to them, ourselves, and our county to learn from history and continue to fight against hatred and racism even when the path forward is unclear or we disagree on the tactics.
May 30, 2017
Excellent presentation of the history and current situation of race, racism and violence in the US as seen through the lens of the slaying of 9 African American men and women of faith at Emmanuel AME in Charleston, SC (2015). Foundational text for any course in Black Studies, Black Religious Studies, etc.
December 18, 2019
This is a really important, useful interdisciplinary book for teaching the history as well as current analysis of race and racial violence in the U.S. It's not meant to be comprehensive, but rather a doorway into many kinds of analysis. It's an incredibly vital, useful introduction that I hope many students have a chance to read.
May 3, 2018
Amazing collection of readings that really helps give context to racial violence, if anyone needed it. I liked how they combined songs, primary sources, and academic discourse. I had to stop periodically and process what I was reading--very powerful.
September 10, 2020
This is a collection of accounts and poems of the history of Black experiences in the American South.
It gave me a new understanding of our racial problems and possible solutions toward equality for all citizens. This book should be in our school's curriculum.
It gave me a new understanding of our racial problems and possible solutions toward equality for all citizens. This book should be in our school's curriculum.
January 22, 2023
This is a book that I feel all Americans should read, but it was tough to get through the last 100 pages. This book teaches important and disgusting parts of our country’s history that everyone should be aware of.
April 12, 2018
Opened my eyes to the magnitude that racism influenced the decisions and events in America. Highly recommend this book.
March 12, 2019
Should be on the book case. Full stop
May 13, 2016
Custer's die everyday
the American Indian makes it so
First People, First victims
a discussion on black suppression
must ALWAYS be filtered through the Native experience
reparations for the various tribes trump all others
Crazy Horse and fellow Sioux and Crow
wiped out Custer's entire unit - to a soldier
where is the Black Panthers' Little Big Horn?
where is there protracted battle against whites?
It took one-quarter of the U. S. Army, years and years
to capture Geronimo (not a chief) and all of seventy braves
now the Native American is less than one-percent of the population
the black man is great in numbers, this book, any book does nothing
rise up to the very end and absolutely never bend.
Chris Roberts
the American Indian makes it so
First People, First victims
a discussion on black suppression
must ALWAYS be filtered through the Native experience
reparations for the various tribes trump all others
Crazy Horse and fellow Sioux and Crow
wiped out Custer's entire unit - to a soldier
where is the Black Panthers' Little Big Horn?
where is there protracted battle against whites?
It took one-quarter of the U. S. Army, years and years
to capture Geronimo (not a chief) and all of seventy braves
now the Native American is less than one-percent of the population
the black man is great in numbers, this book, any book does nothing
rise up to the very end and absolutely never bend.
Chris Roberts
February 7, 2017
I'm exhilarated and exhausted after reading this very intense book. Some parts are literally page-turners, at least for me. I'm gonna get political for a minute: this country has NOT been so great! And, it still isn't. There. I said it. Think this statement is wrong, unfair? Read this book, all of it, as I just did. It's scholarly, reliably accurate and dispassionate, and chilling in its telling of this horrific part of America's racial past and present.
Read
April 26, 2016Essential readings.
January 4, 2017
SO NECESSARY.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews