Black Historian Kerri Greenidge Blames Racism After Book Found To Be Riddled With Inaccuracies

Interesting history, professor, slavery, tufts university admin July 18, 2026 0 Comments

Black Historian Kerri Greenidge Blames Racism After Book Found To Be Riddled With Inaccuracies

Former professor and black historian Kerri Greenidge slammed white scholars for racism in an interview with the New York Times Friday after academics criticized her book on slavery for being riddled with inaccuracies and poor sourcing.

Greenidge’s book, “The Grimkes,” tells the story of a prestigious South Carolina family that owned slaves yet played a role in the abolition movement. Greenidge challenges the typical historical narrative of praise for the Grimke sisters — who traveled North to fight for abolition and women’s rights — instead describing their efforts as underpinned by their privileged position within a slave-owning family.

Greenidge, a former professor at Tufts University near Boston, received high praise when her book was published in 2022, with the New York Times Book Review commending it as “a consummate cartography of racial trauma” and Publishers Weekly calling it one of the 10 best books of the year. The historian also received the Joan Kelly Memorial Prize from the American Historical Association in 2023 for her work. (RELATED: Jasmine Crockett Claims America Owes Black Women ‘Everything’)

Yet when several scholars began fact-checking her work, allegations of inaccuracies and bad sourcing surfaced, according to a report published by The NYT.

Myra C. Glenn, who previously served as a professor of American history at Elmira College and has written multiple books on U.S. history, described “The Grimkes” as “a deeply flawed book” in a March 2024 article for Reviews in American History, which the Times cited.

“All too often, Greenidge lacks the evidence to substantiate many of her major claims. Her work is also riddled with factual errors and repeatedly omits needed endnotes,” Glenn wrote in the article.

Glenn’s review described how the book included letters between the Grimke sisters that Greenidge claimed were in the University of Michigan’s archive — but were not actually there, according to Glenn’s research. She also outlined factual inaccuracies between Greenidge’s description of an anti-abolitionist mob’s attack on Pennsylvania Hall in 1838, in which she describes the sisters as helping women escape a flaming building, and historical documents that indicate that no one was there when the building was burned.

“I said, ‘Where is she getting this?’” Glenn said in an interview with The NYT. “Boy, it became a major problem.”

Greenidge also drew criticism for poor sourcing in her 2019 biography of civil rights leader William Monroe Trotter entitled “Black Radical.”

Stephen Fox, a historian who previously wrote a biography on Trotter, told the Times the book appeared “well done” until he looked at the footnotes. He checked the footnotes against their sources after the book was published and alleged that many did not correspond with the material they cited. Criticism of “The Grimkes” led him to wonder whether the inaccuracies and poor sourcing were part of a pattern.

“I started to think maybe it wasn’t just sloppy,” he said. “I think it’s something deeper.”

Greenidge slammed white scholars, alleging they tore apart her life’s work because of their views on white supremacy and racism in her interview with The Times.

“I am heartbroken that a field I have given my life to can treat me this way,” Greenidge said. “The attack on Black women academics is real.”

She denied doing anything wrong, saying she had never plagiarized or fabricated anything, but admitting that some citations are “probably” misattributed.

Liveright Publishing, a division of W.W. Norton & Co., published “The Grimkes,” but the book is no longer on their website, leading The NYT to speculate that it may have been pulled because of the errors.

Patrick Collins, a spokesman for Tufts University, told The Times Thursday that Greenidge was no longer working for the college but did not answer questions about her departure. Collins indicated the school realized the book contained errors and did not cite sources well in December 2022. After a peer-reviewed study that “identified multiple errors of fact and citation,” the college informed W.W. Norton of its findings, according to Collins.

Greenidge refused to speak to the NYT about leaving the university or the current status of her books, but criticized members of the peer-review panel, saying two senior historians on it were hostile toward black female academics. She also alleged that complaints from a white female scholar led to the review and said she had sought a restraining order against that woman.

Collins maintained the review was “fair, fact-based, thorough, and objective” in a follow-up statement to the Times, saying that “[w]e stand by the review and strongly deny any allegations of bias.”