In response to police shootings, to #BlackLivesMatter, and to the 2015 murders at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church, historian Susan Strasser seeks to provide historical perspective to people grappling with contemporary issues of race and racism. This is the second of a series of illustrated talks, “A White Historian Reads Black History,” sponsored by Bethesda Friends Meeting. The talk will be followed by poet Marcia Cole (www.historyworthwhile.com) reading her powerful “A Bitter Suite,” winner of the 2010 College Language Association Creative Writing Contest first prize in poetry. Dr. Strasser, Richards Professor of American History Emerita at the University of Delaware, is a prize-winning historian, praised by the New Yorker for “retrieving what history discards: the taken-for-granted minutiae of everyday life.” For more about her, see susanstrasser.net. Many scholars and activists remind us that every image of a tormented black body has power in our culture. This presentation will include some disturbing images, offered as stark evidence of our shared history and in memory of those whose murder and torture they represent.