The End of Respectability by Anthony Walton

Please join us for a special event with Anthony Walton and Guy Mark Foster who will be discussing Anthony's new book The End of Respectability.

With Kamala Harris’s rise American Blacks are entering a new phase in the struggle against white supremacy. Standing firmly in the African American tradition Walton believes in the possibility of reconciliation with those whites who desire it offering a hand of friendship and pragmatic ideas for paths forward.

Born into the Civil Rights Movement author Anthony Walton observed firsthand the opening of opportunity for racial reconciliation. He also saw systemic racism and the vicious backlash against Black progress embodied in the Southern Strategy Tea Party and MAGA. Over time Walton came to believe that moving forward requires a “Third Reconstruction” to accomplish what remains: better health outcomes secure voting rights and sustained economic and educational opportunity. Only this approach he believes will accomplish what remains unfinished for true African American equality.

Blending social history bracing analysis and autobiography this dazzling collection includes essays published in The New York Times and The Atlantic—including “Willie Horton and Me” and the much-anthologized “Technology vs. African Americans”—as well as new work that probes Walton’s earlier thinking. Throughout the author delivers insights that wrestle with the hydra-headed ever-changing realities of an American society in which the more things change the more they stay the same.

The End of Respectability illuminates recent American history as experienced by a writer who has remained open to hope unfazed by failures and unflinchingly dedicated to the truth. This book will leave you changed. And just may incite you to be a part of the change we need.

Anthony Walton is a poet as well as the editor and author of several books including the nonfiction work Mississippi: An American Journey. His work has appeared widely in magazines journals and anthologies including The New York Times The New Yorker The Atlantic Oxford American. He is a professor and the writer-in-residence at Bowdoin College.

Guy Mark Foster has published short stories in such places as Shadows of Love: American Gay Fiction Brother to Brother: New Writings by Black Gay Men and Ancestral House: The Black Short Story in the Americas and Europe. He is an Associate Professor of English at Bowdoin College.

Host or Publisher Longfellow Books