A passionate and illuminating account of soul, the hard-won wisdom shepherded by Black people throughout generations

How did enslaved Africans turn America’s infamous failure into the greatest moral occasion of modern Western life? In this book, Christopher Freeburg answers that question with one word: soul. It was soul, Freeburg believes, which drove Black individuals and communities, grappling with horrific strife, to reimagine American life and equality in earnest.

Black cultural life contains a central and significant theme—a soul, or form of life—expressed in a variety of musical, religious, and political forms. Through the work and words of figures ranging from the poet Phillis Wheatley to President Barack Obama and musician Nina Simone to disco owner Jewel Thais-Williams, Freeburg shows how Black communities leaned time and again on soul and its four pillars: resonance, revelation, resilience, and transcendence. It is soul, what Freeburg calls a beautiful transaction between individual and community across time and place, that has allowed Black people over generations to transform feelings of defeat and alienation into moral courage and shared belonging.