Black AF History; The Un-Whitewashed Story of America

A Bold and Hilarious Retelling of American History

A New York Times Bestseller | NAACP Image Award Nominee | Amazon’s Top 20 History Books of 2023 | B&N Best of Educational History | The Root’s Best Books of 2023 | Chicago Public Library Favorite Books of 2023

In Black AF History, acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot delivers a sharp, witty, and unfiltered retelling of American history—one that corrects long-standing myths and places Black Americans at the center of the narrative.

For generations, the dominant version of U.S. history has been a sanitized mythology—pilgrims building a new nation, Washington’s cherry tree, and a version of slavery that conveniently ignores its brutal realities. Written largely by white men, traditional history books have often erased or distorted the Black experience, shaping a past that is incomplete at best and deliberately misleading at worst.

Harriot dismantles these myths with meticulous research, drawing from primary sources and the work of pioneering Black historians, scholars, and journalists. His provocative storytelling and razor-sharp humor uncover little-known yet pivotal moments in history—from the African Americans who arrived before 1619 to the fugitive bandit who inspired the nation’s first police force.

With biting humor and unapologetic truth-telling, Black AF History offers a long-overdue corrective, revealing the Black experience not as a footnote but as a defining force in America’s past. This isn’t the whitewashed version of history—it’s history, Black AF.