Hi everybody, 

The three of us recorded our Shake the Dust bonus episode for March a couple days ago. It’s all about the conflict in Ukraine, and we’re looking forward to sharing it with you next Friday. But more on that next week. Let’s get into this week’s highlights. 

Sy’s recommendations: 

• As a former history major, I would say I get a lot more excited about reading primary source historical documents than the average person (if the average person has any excitement about this at all). But I think all of you will see the value in reading these particular documents. On Sunday, the Washington Post published a series of letters written by Black people in the US to white men and women who previously enslaved them. The letters are powerful, deeply sad, full of conviction, and sometimes quite funny. One is from Frederick Douglass. They remind us of the complexity, beauty, and brilliance of their authors’ lives, so often omitted from highly politicized historical narratives. Because so many enslaved people lived and died in captivity, and because their owners kept them from learning to read or write, the historical record of their lives is not usually from a first person perspective. So letters like these really are a gift.