{"id":288,"date":"2026-07-13T19:38:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T19:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=288"},"modified":"2026-07-13T19:38:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T19:38:40","slug":"celebrated-historians-book-knocking-white-abolitionists-received-rave-reviews-now-its-being-pulled-from-shelves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=288","title":{"rendered":"Celebrated Historian\u2019s Book Knocking White Abolitionists Received Rave Reviews. Now It\u2019s Being Pulled from Shelves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks. This week, we look back at the media\u2019s uncritical celebration of a 2022 book that scrutinized a pair of famed white abolitionists, and we cover more media misses.<\/p>\n

Read more School Administrators Have Stolen Hundreds of Millions by Defrauding Taxpayers, Damning New Report Finds<\/a><\/p>\n

Maybe the Abolitionists Were Good, Actually<\/p>\n

Historian Kerri K. Greenidge\u2019s The Grimkes <\/em>was met with rave reviews when it was published in 2022. The book, which calls into question the virtue of prominent abolitionist sisters in the antebellum south, was called a \u201ccompelling\u201d account of \u201cslavery\u2019s indelible stain on a white abolitionist legend.\u201d Publisher<\/em>\u2019<\/em>s Weekly <\/em>even named it one of the ten best books of that year.<\/p>\n

But now Greenidge\u2019s publisher, Liveright Publishing, has pulled the book from shelves after several of Greenidge\u2019s academic peers came forward with concerns that she had misled readers and failed to present sufficient evidence to back up some of her key claims in the book, which sought to rewrite the narrative around two sisters, Angelina and Sarah Grimke, who were born and raised in a slaveholding family but ultimately denounced their upbringing and branched out on their own as important figures in the abolitionist movement.<\/p>\n

The Grimke sisters were the daughters of John Grimke, who had more than 300 slaves on his South Carolina properties. A New York Times <\/em>book review from 2022 notes historians long believed the Grimke sisters \u201crejected their white inheritance by coming north and joining the movement, gaining moral credibility that few of their peers could match.\u201d However, \u201cGreenidge challenges this narrative, showing that the sisters\u2019 contributions to abolition and women\u2019s rights were undergirded by the privileges they reaped from slavery. The lives they built, and their relationships with Black relatives, were poisoned by the profits, violence and shame of white supremacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

A contemporaneous review from The Atlantic<\/em> similarly found that earlier biographies on the women \u201chailed the sisters\u2019 successes,\u201d while Greenidge \u201cfinds these vitiated by Sarah and Angelina\u2019s unacknowledged \u2018complicity in the slave system they so eloquently spoke against.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Greenidge\u2019s book also worked to dismantle the \u201cfeel-good stories\u201d of the Grimkes\u2019s two biracial nephews, Archibald and Francis, who were born to the women\u2019s brother, Henry, and an enslaved woman. Tales of the brothers\u2019 achievements have ignored \u201cthe superficialities of the colored elite\u201d of which they were members, wrote Greenidge, who also noted the men\u2019s obsession with skin color and class hierarchies in the black community.<\/p>\n

Mainstream media was all too eager to accept the rewritten narrative about two of America\u2019s abolitionist and feminist heroes.<\/p>\n

At the time of the book\u2019s publishing, just one year after the death of George Floyd rewrote the way many of America\u2019s institutions and leaders engaged with conversations about race, the Times <\/em>heralded Greenidge\u2019s book as providing \u201ca consummate cartography of racial trauma, demonstrating, through an adept use of the family\u2019s letters, diaries and other archival materials, how the physical and emotional abuses of slavery traveled through generations long after abolition.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greenidge \u201coffers an intimate and provocative account of a family\u2019s intergenerational struggle to remake itself\u201d and \u201ctakes the Grimke sisters off their pedestal so that we understand them as pieces of a tapestry that could only be sewn in America,\u201d the Times <\/em>review reads.<\/p>\n

However, two years after the book was published, as the excitement around both the book and the country\u2019s racial obsession began to wane, Myra C. Glenn, a retired professor of American history at Elmira College, raised concerns about inaccuracies in the once-celebrated story.<\/p>\n

Glenn was examining Greenidge\u2019s book on behalf of Reviews in American History<\/em>, a scholarly journal published by Johns Hopkins University Press, and found that the book on the Grimkes was \u201cwell-written\u201d but \u201cdeeply flawed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll too often Greenidge lacks the evidence to substantiate many of her major claims,\u201d Glenn wrote. \u201cHer work is also riddled with factual errors and repeatedly omits needed endnotes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the problems that Glenn identified was the use of quotes from letters exchanged between the Grimke sisters that could not be found in the University of Michigan\u2019s archive, as Greenidge\u2019s citations suggested. She further called into question the book\u2019s retelling of an 1838 attack on Pennsylvania Hall in Philadelphia by an anti-abolitionist mob. While Greenidge wrote that the Grimke sisters \u201cled thousands of antislavery women through prayer\u201d and helped them escape the \u201cflaming building,\u201d Glenn argues that \u201cnumerous sources have documented [that] no one was in the building when it was torched since antislavery activists cancelled a scheduled meeting, fearing impending violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Glenn\u2019s critique was the most public facing, Tufts University, where Greenidge was employed at the time of the book\u2019s publishing, had apparently quietly undertaken a review of the book in December 2022 in response to complaints that it contained \u201cmultiple errors of fact and failed to give appropriate credit to the work of another,\u201d according to a statement from the university to the New York Times<\/em> last week.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe university initiated a thorough peer review involving a panel of external scholars of American history which identified multiple errors of fact and citation,\u201d a university spokesperson told the outlet. \u201cIn keeping with its commitment to ethical conduct in research, the university proactively moved to correct the public record by informing publisher W.W. Norton of the peer review findings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Senator Lindsey Graham Dies at 71<\/a><\/p>\n

The university also confirmed Greenidge is no longer employed there as a tenured associate professor in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora.<\/p>\n

The Times <\/em>further reports that the book was seemingly pulled by its publisher, with the title now absent from a list of books written by Greenidge on her author page on the Norton website.<\/p>\n

Greenidge, for her part, defended herself in comments to the Times<\/em>, claiming that the criticisms of her work have been driven by race, because she is black.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am heartbroken that a field I have given my life to can treat me this way,\u201d Greenidge said. \u201cThe attack on Black women academics is real.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never plagiarized anything in my life,\u201d she said. \u201cI have never fabricated anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, she acknowledged that there were \u201cprobably\u201d citations that were misattributed in the book.<\/p>\n

The latest revelations raise questions about how the book\u2019s flaws were so easily overlooked by several major reviewers at the time of its publishing four years ago.<\/p>\n

A New York Times <\/em>book review previously called it a \u201cnuanced, revisionist account of an American family best known for a pair of white abolitionist sisters,\u201d while a subheading in The Atlantic <\/em>read: \u201cThe abolitionists have long been portrayed as heroes. A new book views them, and their family, in a different light.\u201d<\/p>\n

The book also won Greenidge the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize from the American Historical Association in 2023; the award recognizes scholars in women\u2019s history and feminist theory. The Grimkes <\/em>was also a finalist for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award in biography.<\/p>\n

Smithsonian<\/em> magazine dubbed the book one of the ten best history books of 2022, while the Boston Globe <\/em>called the writing \u201cbrilliant\u201d and celebrated Greenidge as \u201can especially elegant writer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Wall Street Journal <\/em>called the book \u201cbrilliant, prodigiously researched, and utterly devastating.\u201d The Los Angeles Review of Books <\/em>described the book as \u201cremarkable,\u201d while the New York Review of Books <\/em>said the biography \u201cgreatly enhances our understanding\u201d of the Grimke family.<\/p>\n

Headline Fail of the Week<\/span>
\nLongtime Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) died on Saturday at the age of 71. Just days after Graham\u2019s death, the New York Times <\/em>chose, for some reason, to highlight his supposedly fraught relationship with black voters. The simplest explanation for Graham\u2019s lack of popularity among the state\u2019s black residents, simple partisan sorting, is ignored in favor of the implication that something about Graham in particular alienated his black neighbors. \u201cLindsey Graham Had a Complicated Relationship With Black Voters.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Times <\/em>wasn\u2019t alone in its distasteful response to Graham\u2019s death: The Young Turks <\/em>co-host Ana Kasparian said, \u201cGood riddance,\u201d in response to the news, while Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt called Graham a \u201clonely and unprincipled man who betrayed his country for power and his decency for attention\u201d in a Substack post.<\/p>\n

Read more Young People Aren\u2019t Having Kids Because Their Friends Aren\u2019t. So What Can Be Done?<\/a><\/p>\n

Media Misses<\/p>\n