Lunch and Learn: Caleb Gayle on "Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State"

Co-presented with the Prince George's County Office of Human Rights

This summer, grab your favorite lunch at noon and tune in to virtual conversations with the Prince George’s County Office of Human Rights and the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System on topics from repairing the effects of racial injustice to fighting for equitable access to recovering from exile and loss. Let’s learn together!

Lunch and Learn returns with special guest Caleb Gayle in conversation with the Prince George's County Office of Human Rights and the Prince George's County Memorial Library System discussing his new book, "Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State."

Registration not required. Click on the YouTube video linked below to stream the program live or watch the recording later.

About the Book:

The remarkable story of Edward McCabe, a Black man who tried to establish a Black state within the United States.

In this paradigm-shattering work of American history, Caleb Gayle recounts the extraordinary tale of Edward McCabe, a Black man who championed the audacious idea to create a state within the Union governed by and for Black people — and the racism, politics, and greed that thwarted him.
 
As the sweeping changes and brief glimpses of hope brought by the Civil War and Reconstruction began to wither, anger at the opportunities available to newly freed Black people were on the rise. As a result, both Blacks and whites searched for new places to settle. That was when Edward McCabe, a Black businessman and a rising political star in the American West, set in motion his plans to found a state within the Union for Black people to live in and govern. His chosen site: Oklahoma, a place that the U.S. government had deeded to Indigenous people in the 1830s when it forced thousands of them to leave their homes under Indian Removal, which became known as the Trail of Tears.
 
McCabe lobbied politicians in Washington, D.C., Kansas, and elsewhere as he exhorted Black people to move to Oklahoma to achieve their dreams of self-determination and land ownership. His rising profile as a leader and spokesman for Black people as well as his willingness to confront white politicians led him to become known as Black Moses. And like his biblical counterpart, McCabe nearly made it to the promised land but was ultimately foiled by politics, business interests, and the growing ambitions of white settlers who also wanted the land.
 
In Black Moses, Gayle brings to vivid life the world of Edward McCabe: the Black people who believed in his dream of a Black state, the white politicians who didn’t, and the larger challenges of confronting the racism and exclusion that bedeviled Black people’s attempts to carve a place in America for themselves. Gayle draws from extraordinary research and reporting to reveal an America that almost was.

About the author: 

Caleb Gayle is an award-winning journalist who writes about race and identity and is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine. His writing has been recognized by the Matthew Power Literary Reporting Award, the PEN America Writing for Justice Fellowship, the Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellowship, the New America Fellowship, among others. Caleb’s writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, the Three Penny Review, Guernica, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic, the Harvard Review, Pacific Standard, the New Republic, The Boston Globe, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Root, the Daily Beast, and more. Caleb’s writing has been anthologized as a Notable Essay in the 2019 Best American Essays.

His first book, "We Refuse to Forget: A True Story of Black Creeks, American Identity, and Power," tells the extraordinary story of the Creek Nation, a Native tribe that two centuries ago both owned slaves and accepted Black people as full citizens.  You can find the book in our collection here.

He is also the author of the children's book, "What Was the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921?" where he writes about what led to one of the worst moments of racial violence in America's history, The Tulsa Race Massacre, which destroyed a flourishing neighborhood of 10,000 Black residents. You can find the book in our collection here.

Caleb completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Oklahoma as a Truman Scholar. He also completed his graduate studies at the University of Oxford, and has an MBA and a master’s in public policy, both Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School respectively where he attended as a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow. In addition to writing, Gayle serves as a Senior Fellow and Professor of Practice at Northeastern University as well as a Visiting Scholar at the Arthur Carter Journalism Institute at NYU. He is currently completing his next book as a fellow at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Caleb lives in Boston with his wife, Ramone, and mini-goldendoodle, Asher.