In person at Brookline Booksmith! Celebrate the release of The End of Respectability with author Anthony Walton, in conversation with Dr. Rohit Chandra, January 21 at 7 pm.

Register for the event!

RSVP to let us know you’re coming! Depending on the volume of responses, an RSVP may be required for entrance to the event. You will also be alerted to important details about the program, including safety requirements, cancellations, and book signing updates. In the event that we reach capacity and have to close RSVPs, there will not be a waiting list.

The End of Respectability: Notes of a Black American Reckoning with His Life and His Nation

American Blacks are entering a new phase in the struggle against white supremacy. Standing firmly in the African American tradition, Walton believes in the possibility of reconciliation with those whites who desire it, offering a hand of friendship and pragmatic ideas for paths forward.

Born into the Civil Rights Movement, author Anthony Walton observed firsthand the opening of opportunity for racial reconciliation. He also saw systemic racism and the vicious backlash against Black progress embodied in the Southern Strategy, Tea Party, and MAGA. Over time, Walton came to believe that moving forward requires a “Third Reconstruction” to accomplish what remains: better health outcomes, secure voting rights, and sustained economic and educational opportunity. Only this approach, he believes, will accomplish what remains unfinished for true African American equality.

Blending social history, bracing analysis, and autobiography, this dazzling collection includes essays published in The New York Times and The Atlantic–including “Willie Horton and Me” and the much-anthologized “Technology vs. African Americans”–as well as new work that probes Walton’s earlier thinking. Throughout, the author delivers insights that wrestle with the hydra-headed, ever-changing realities of an American society in which the more things change, the more they stay the same.

The End of Respectability illuminates recent American history as experienced by a writer who has remained open to hope, unfazed by failures, and unflinchingly dedicated to the truth. This book will leave you changed. And just may incite you to be a part of the change we need.

Anthony Walton received a Whiting Award for his non-fiction work Mississippi: An American Journey. His essays, poems, and reviews have appeared widely in magazines, journals, and anthologies, including The New YorkerHarper’sNotre Dame MagazineOxford Americanthe New York Times, and the BBC. He is currently a professor and senior writer-in-residence at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine.

Dr. Rohit Chandra is a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist at a community health center, (MGH Chelsea) and an Instructor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.  He lives in Brookline and Brookline Booksmith is his local independent bookstore.