Brian Jones in conversation with Naomi Murakawa—Black History Is for Everyone

Name: Brian Jones in conversation with Naomi Murakawa—Black History Is for Everyone
Start: 2026-01-28T18:00:00-05:00
Location: Labyrinth Books Princeton

Schedule

Wed, 28 Jan, 2026 at 06:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Labyrinth Books Princeton | Princeton, NJ

Longtime educator Brian Jones discusses his new book with Naomi Murakawa. Black History Is for Everyone explores how the study of Black history challenges our understanding of race, nation, and the stories we tell about who we are.
Black history is under attack from powerful forces that seek to excise it from classrooms, libraries, and the popular imagination. Yet its opponents fail to understand a simple truth: the best education challenges our assumptions, helps us see larger forces at work, and gives us glimpses of alternate futures.
In Black History Is for Everyone, Brian Jones offers a meditation on the power of Black history, using his own experiences as a lifelong learner and classroom teacher to question everything—from the radicalism of the American Revolution to the meaning of “race” and “nation.”
With warmth and immersive storytelling, Jones encourages us to delve deeper into our collective history, explores how curiosity about our world is essential—and reminds us that with stakes so high, the effort is worth it.
Brian Jones has taught many ages and grades in New York City’s public schools and the City University of New York. He served as the inaugural director of the Center for Educators and Schools at the New York Public Library and was the associate director of education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The author of The Tuskegee Student Uprising: A History, his writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Guardian, and Jacobin.
Naomi Murakawa is an associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University. She studies the reproduction of racial inequality in 20th and 21st century American politics, with specialization in crime policy and the carceral state. She is the author of The First Civil Right: How Liberals Built Prison America, and her work has appeared in Law & Society Review, Theoretical Criminology, Du Bois Review, and several edited volumes. She has received fellowships from Columbia Law School’s Center for the Study of Law and Culture, as well as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Health Policy Research Program.
This event is co-sponsored by Haymarket Books, Princeton University's Department of African American Studies, Princeton's SPIA in NJ, Princeton's Institutional Antiracism and Accountability Project, and Labyrinth Books.