Book Signing With Author Heather Ann Thompson

Meet The New Yorker’s 2016 top 5 finalist for the National Book Award, Heather Ann Thompson. Thompson is the author of Blood in the Water, the first definitive account of the infamous 1971 Attica Prison uprising, New York state's violent response, and the victims’ decade-long quest for justice. Blood in the Water is gripping account of one of this nation’s most important civil rights stories and protests of the last century–one that ended in tragedy with law enforcement shooting scores of unarmed men and severely wounding more than a hundred others... No one has ever been held accountable for these killings.

Throughout American history, there have been countless acts of injustice and deeply-rooted systemic racism. The recent events of protest and activism that took place in our city are not unique to Charlotte or this particular moment in time. In today's social climate, it's important to continue to have conversations about the national state of affairs, as well as, what we can actively do to prevent repeating mistakes of the past.

The Harvey B. Gantt Center in partnership with UNC Charlotte's Center for the Study of the New South, is excited to join the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, and the Schomburgh Center for Research in Black Culture in commemorating author Heather Ann Thompson's newest book, Blood in the Water.

Mirrored by the recent and alarming numbers of unarmed black men and women whose lives have been lost at the hands of government officials, still today, no one has ever been held accountable for the Attica Prison killings of 1971. Join us for a morning book signing at the Harvey B. Gantt Center, and later for an evening discussion for participants to voice their opinions, share experiences and to create strategies to move forward, together at UNCC Center City’s campus with author Heather Ann Thompson. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Heather Ann Thompson is a native Detroiter currently on faculty of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Thompson has just completed the first comprehensive history of the Attica Prison Rebellion of 1971 and its legacy for Pantheon Books. While completing this history of the Attica Uprising, Thompson has written numerous popular as well as scholarly articles on the history of mass incarceration as well as its current impact. These include pieces for the New York Times, Time Magazine, The Atlantic, Salon.com, Dissent, New Labor Forum, as well as the award-winning articles: “Why Mass Incarceration Matters: Rethinking Crisis, Decline and Transformation in the Postwar United States,” Journal of American History (December 2010), and “Rethinking Working Class Struggle through the Lens of the Carceral State: Toward a Labor History of Inmates and Guards.” Labor: Studies in the Working Class History of the Americas (Fall, 2011). Thompson’s recent piece in the Atlantic Monthly on how mass incarceration has distorted democracy in America was named a finalist for the best magazine article of 2014 award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. Thompson recently was honored to be named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians and, her forthcoming book, in Blood in the Water: the Attica Prison uprising of 1971 (Pantheon Books, 2016) was just named the finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Award for best work-in-progress in non-fiction by Columbia University’s School of Journalism. Thompson is also the author of Whose Detroit: Politics, Labor and Race in a Modern American City (new edition out 2017) as well as the edited collection, Speaking Out: Protest and Activism in the 1960s and 1970s.