KG: I had worked in Black history museums for about ten years in total, so I already knew a lot about Black history, free Black communities in the North, and Reconstruction-era history. Reconstruction is a period that a lot of people say—these days it’s become almost a cliché— is a direct mirror to our own time. The level of civic violence, white backlash, extreme restriction of Black voting rights alongside extreme expansion of Black achievement really mirrors our own last eight to ten years, but most people don’t really learn much about it because the story isn’t one that fits into America’s idea of itself. In Reconstruction, the bad guys won, and that just set the tone of history for the next hundred years. So, I really wanted to explore that part of US history because I find it so fascinating, and the complications around Black people defining freedom for ourselves is really interesting.

In my research, I also looked at Haitian history, the founding of Black colleges, Black spirituals, Black nineteenth-century travelers, Haitian voodoo, and, because Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward was a homeopath, homeopathy. As a medical practice in the nineteenth century, it was closely aligned with progressive ideals, so people who were part of the abolitionist movement found themselves involved in these health-alternative or progressive health circles, and because it was a newer area of medicine, schools admitted Black people and women. That is how Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward in the historical record was admitted to a homeopathic school in New York. They didn’t know she was Black because of her light skin, and then once she was in the school and they figured it out, she argued to stay. I became super interested in those twin things: that intense interest in making the world better and this interest in health and healing, and the metaphors around that, like what it means for a community to heal.

LB: The book takes place partly in Haiti. How did you go about researching nineteenth-century Haitian politics and its impact on Black Americans during Reconstruction?