Milkweed Books presents Beronda Montgomery

Milkweed Books is thrilled to present Beronda Montgomery, in Minneapolis to launch her new book, When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and Americas’s Black Botanical Legacy. Beronda will be supported by local writer and activist JoJo Bell.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This stunning cultural and personal reclamation of Black history and Black botanical mastery offers up lessons from the natural world shared through the stories of long-lived trees.
The histories of trees in America are also the histories of Black Americans. Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; sycamore trees were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching; and willow bark has offered the gift of medicine. These trees, and others, testify not only to the complexity of the Black American narrative but also to a heritage of Black botanical expertise that, like Native American traditions, predates the United States entirely.
In When Trees Testify, award-winning plant biologist Beronda L. Montgomery explores the ways seven trees—as well as the cotton shrub—are intertwined with Black history and culture. She reveals how knowledge surrounding these trees has shaped America since the very beginning. As Montgomery shows, trees are material witnesses to the lives of enslaved Africans and their descendants.
Combining the wisdom of science and history with stories from her own path to botany, Montgomery talks to majestic trees, and in this unique and compelling narrative, they answer.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Beronda L. Montgomery, PhD, is a writer, researcher, and scholar who pursues a common theme of understanding how individuals perceive, respond to, and are impacted by the environments in which they exist. Her primary laboratory-based research has been focused on the responses of photosynthetic organisms (i.e., plants and cyanobacteria) to external light cues. Additionally, Beronda pursues this theme in the context of effective mentoring and leadership of individuals, and the role of innovative leaders in supporting success.

Beronda is author of two books When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy (2026, Henry Holt and Co.) and Plants (2021, Harvard University Press).

Jokeda "JoJo" Bell is the executive director and the director of exhibitions and programming for the African American Interpretive Center of Minnesota (AAICM). Her roles within the organization have led to collaborative programming with institutions like the Minnesota Historical Society and the Minnesota Museum of American Art. She has also appeared as an expert in the Minnesota Historical Society's documentary, Storied: African Americans in WWI. In 2019, JoJo curated "The Builders" exhibition for AAICM, which was named one of the top ten art exhibitions of the year by the Star Tribune. Bell is a PhD candidate in the history department at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include Black homesteading and belonging in the Upper Midwest. In 2024, she published her award-wining book Red Stained: The Life of Hilda Simms.

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