Scholars have raised questions about the veracity of a book by noted historian Kerri K. Greenidge, The New York Times reports.
Greenidge’s The Grimkes: The Legacy of Slavery in an American Family, published by Liveright in 2022, tells the story of Sarah and Angelina Grimke, two abolitionist sisters, and their brother Henry Grimke, an enslaver who fathered three children with an enslaved woman.
The book made several lists of the year’s best books and was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction. In a starred review, a critic for Kirkus called the book “a sweeping, insightful, richly detailed family and American history.”
The Times reports that questions surrounding the book date back to 2024, when historian Myra C. Glenn wrote about it in the journal Reviews in American History. “All too often Greenidge lacks the evidence to substantiate many of her major claims,” Glenn charged. “Her work is also riddled with factual errors and repeatedly omits needed endnotes.”
Glenn said that Greenidge cited letters between the Grimke sisters that she said she’d found in the University of Michigan archive; the school, Glenn says, does not actually have those letters. Glenn also called into question Greenidge’s account of an anti-abolitionist attack on Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Hall in 1838.
The Times reports that Liveright has pulled The Grimkes from its website and that Tufts University has confirmed that Greenidge, who taught at the school, is no longer employed there.
Greenidge responded to the allegations, telling The Times, “I am heartbroken that a field I have given my life to can treat me this way. The attack on Black women academics is real. I have never plagiarized anything in my life. I have never fabricated anything. Are there citations that were misattributed? Probably.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
