Join us for the culmination of the first half of Better Through Books: Healing Community Together with this compelling keynote author talk featuring E. Dolores Johnson and her family memoir, Say I'm Dead: A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets, and Love. 

In 1943, black Charles and white Ella fled Indiana’s anti-race-mixing law, city council Klansmen and a historic lynching. Ella disappeared, evaded an FBI search to marry in Buffalo, then lived in hiding for 36 years – until their adult daughter, the author, questioned who and where their white family was. 24 years before Richard and Mildred Loving overturned anti-miscegenation laws in a 1967 Supreme Court win, this couple chose love over the law.Say I’m Dead: A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets, and Love is the heartfelt recounting of generations of a family who refused to be bound by anti-race-mixing norms/laws and persistent bigotry. In following their story, we travel through America’s racial history. This is a memoir of secrets, separation, and transformation that reveals America’s changing attitudes toward race, discovered through the courageous journeys of the women in Johnson’s family.

The Library has purchased 50 copies of the book, which you can request here.  The audiobook can be requested here.

Registration is required; Zoom information will be sent in your registration confirmation.

Thanks to our community co-sponsors and the Friends of the Belmont Public Library to make this amazing series of events possible.