Black history is under siege. Recent political efforts to erase America’s deep-seated legacy of racial injustice have gained ground at an alarming rate. Many narratives of Black America are now being distorted, denied, and buried.

The Center for Brooklyn History and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize bring together three acclaimed writers who have powerfully illuminated undertold Black stories, for a discussion on what’s at stake as the deniers gain ground.

Victor Luckerson’s Built from the Fire documents the rise and destruction of Tulsa’s Black Wall Street in the 1921 Greenwood Massacre. Robert Samuels is co-author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning His Name is George Floyd, a deeply reported biography that reveals the personal and structural forces behind Floyd’s life and death. And Gilbert King is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Devil in the Grove.

Together, they explore the current backlash against racial justice narratives, how truth is being rewritten, and why it matters now more than ever.

Photos clockwise from top left: Victor Luckerson by Joseph Rushmore, Robert Samuels, Gilbert King by Olivia King