View a video of this program.Tues, Dec 6, 7:30 PM – Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Hackett Fischer will share his latest book, African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals, which explores the history of how enslaved people from different regions of Africa interacted with colonists of European origins to create new regional cultures in the colonial United States. The Africans brought with them linguistic skills, novel techniques of animal husbandry and farming, and generations-old ethical principles, among other attributes. This startling history reveals how much our country was shaped by these African influences in its early years, producing a new, distinctly American culture.
David Hackett Fischer is a Wayland resident and the University Professor and Warren Professor of History emeritus at Brandeis University. He is the author of numerous books, including the 2005 Pulitzer Prize winner Washington’s Crossing and Champlain’s Dream. In 2015, he received the Pritzker Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing.