Violence against Black people—both physical and psychological—has seemed only to increase in recent years, culminating in the historic pandemic and protests in the summer of 2020. “After centuries of waiting for white majorities to overturn white supremacy,” Charles Blow writes, “ it seems to me that it has fallen to Black people to do it themselves.”

A New York Times op-ed columnist, Blow felt compelled to write a new story for Black Americans, one that involves a succinct, counterintuitive and impassioned correction to the myths that have for too long governed our thinking about race and geography in America. The Devil You Know is a grand exhortation to generations of a people, proposing nothing short of the most audacious power play by Black people in the history of this country.

Join us as Charles Blow offers a road map to true and lasting freedom.

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Part of our Good Lit series, underwritten by The Bernard Osher Foundation.

Photo by Beowulf Sheehan.