We Refuse To Forget, A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power by Caleb Gayle

A landmark work of untold American history that reshapes our understanding of identity, race, and belonging.

In We Refuse To Forget, award-winning journalist Caleb Gayle tells the extraordinary story of the Creek Nation, a Native tribe that two centuries ago both owned slaves and accepted Black people as full citizens. The efforts of Creek leaders like Cow Tom, a Black Creek citizen who rose to become chief, led the U.S. government to recognize Creek citizenship in 1866 for its Black members. Yet this equality was shredded in the 1970s when tribal leaders revoked the citizenship of Black Creeks. Why did this happen? How was the U.S. government involved? And what are Cow Tom's descendants and other Black Creeks doing to regain their citizenship? These are some of the questions that Gayle explores in this provocative examination of racial and ethnic identity. We Refuse To Forget is an eye-opening account that challenges our preconceptions of identity as it shines new light on the long shadows of white supremacy and marginalization that continue to hamper progress for Black Americans.

Soft cover.

Caleb Gayle is an award-winning journalist who writes about race and identity. A professor at Northeastern University, he is a fellow at New America, PEN America, and Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and is a visiting scholar at New York University. Gayle's writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Guernica, and other publications. The son of Jamaican immigrants, he is a graduate of the University of Oklahoma and the University of Oxford, and has an MBA and a master's in public policy, both from Harvard University. He lives in Boston.