The A List Series: A Conversation with Leon Litwack April 13, 2011

Widely venerated and greatly admired, Pulitzer Prize winner Leon Litwack has devoted his entire life to the advancement of American history. As early as the 11th grade he challenged his teacher’s standard textbook version of Reconstruction, which he felt contained distortions racial bias. Having already read Howard Fast’s “Freedom Road” he was led to research WEB DuBois’ “Black Reconstruction”, the light of which was not to illumine the darkened corners of accepted post-Civil War orthodoxy until the black history movement of the late ‘60’s.

Litwack went on to distinguish himself in the halls of academia receiving both his BA and PHD from Berkeley where from 1964 to 2007 he taught a course in post-Civil War American History to some 30,000 students. In addition to two distinguished teacher awards and the Golden Apple Award presented to him by the University of California Berkeley, Litwack was elected to the presidency of the Organization of American Historians and was profiled in Newsweek’s 2007 Giving Back Awards.

Leon Litwack’s groundbreaking work “Been in the Storm So Long” captured the Pulitzer Prize by its painstaking documentation of the enslaved African-American reaction to the Civil War and its Reconstruction aftermath. Litwack will be in conversation with former syndicated-columnist, talk show host and Marin IJ op-ed contributor, Noah Griffin.

The A List Series presents conversations with Authors, Artists, Athletes, Adventurers, Academics and Anarchists.

Official Website: http://www.142throckmortontheatre.org