A LIBRARIAN’S ORIENTATION
What this book explores
Historian Jemar Tisby traces white Christian complicity in American racism from slavery and segregation through the civil-rights era and contemporary institutions. Written as a narrative history with an explicit Christian moral call, it shows how churches and leaders repeatedly chose compromise, silence, paternalism, or active support for racial hierarchy.
EDITORIAL NOTE
Why it’s in the Library
It helps travelers connect present church patterns with institutional history instead of locating racism only in individual prejudice or distant extremists. Tisby's Christian framing makes repentance concrete as more than regret and asks what accountability requires of communities. The book is a strong accessible doorway, while deeper regional, denominational, and Black church histories remain necessary.
Good starting place if…
You want a readable history of white US church complicity in racism joined to a Christian call for institutional truth-telling and action.
Know before you begin…
This is a broad narrative rather than an exhaustive history of American Christianity, racial formation, or every denomination. It includes slavery, lynching, segregation, racist violence, and institutional betrayal. The direct accountability may provoke defensiveness or overwhelm; discomfort is not itself transformation, and Black readers should not be expected to process white readers' reactions.