Four Hundred Souls

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019 is a 2021 anthology of essays, commentaries, personal reflections, short stories, and poetry, compiled and edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain. Conceived and created to commemorate the four hundred years that had passed since the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia, the book concerns African-American history and collects works written by ninety Black writers. A winner or finalist of multiple awards in its print and audiobook editions, Four Hundred Souls has been widely praised by reviewers for its prose and historical content.

Background

From 1841 to 2019, the vast majority of books telling a history of African America were written by individuals, also almost always male. As the 400th anniversary of Black Africans' arrival in British North America approached, Ibram X. Kendi contemplated how to commemorate the "symbolic birthday of Black America" and the whole 400-year period. Kendi resolved to invert the trend by "bringing together a community of writers" and encouraging them to both write history and make history, creating an artifact capturing what Black Americans were thinking during that anniversary year.

Kendi and Keisha N. Blain collaborated to compile and edit the book project, titled Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619–2019, and together they invited ten poets and eighty writers from a diverse range of professions—including historians, anthropologists, journalists, novelists, economists, theologians, educators, and more—to contribute. Reviewer Don Polite called the resulting contributor list a "who's who of African America" and "a remarkable cross section of the Black community". Many contributors are "huge names", but Four Hundred Souls also features numerous "up-and-coming writers". Most of the authors wrote their chapters in 2019.