Matt Sandler, director of the MA program in American Studies in the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University, is the author of "The Black Romantic Revolution: Abolitionist Poets at the End of Slavery" published by Verso Books in 2020. He discusses how Black poets in the 19th century articulated their ideas about slavery, emancipation, freedom, and activism. Sandler reads "Free Labor" by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper.
Sandler states, "We are still in a state of arrested development as a result of the conflict around slavery."
