"America on Fire" with Elizabeth Hinton and René Syler 

On February 16, at 7 p.m., JHC will welcome Yale professor Elizabeth Hinton, acclaimed author of “America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s,” for a virtual discussion of her book. The program will be moderated by journalist and author René Syler, former anchor of CBS News’s “The Early Show” and a frequent commentator on CNN Headline News and NBC’s “The Today Show.”

 “America on Fire” puts the protests over the killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 into historical context: “To many observers, the protests appeared to be without precedent in their scale and persistence.” Yet Hinton argues that “the events of 2020 had clear precursors and any attempt to understand our current crisis requires a reckoning with the recent past.” The book makes the case that Black rebellion “was born in response to poverty and exclusion, but most immediately in reaction to police violence.”

The New York Times named “America on Fire” a Notable Book of 2021, and Time and Smithsonian magazines both named it one of the best books of the year. Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates, Jr., said “there is no scholar more insightful about this issue than Elizabeth Hinton,” and Harvard professor and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore called the book “an indispensable account of the devastating cycle of police violence.”

JHC is grateful to the American Women of African Heritage for co-sponsoring this event.

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The Jay Heritage Center (JHC) is an educational nonprofit and the steward of the Jay Estate in Rye, New York, a 23-acre National Historic Landmark site and public park. JHC hosts programs in American history, social justice, environmental stewardship, architecture, and preservation. Learn more at jayheritagecenter.org or email peraino.jhc@gmail.com for more information.