"A Second Sight: How the Wonder and Vision of Black Mediamakers Push America Toward Freedom"

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In her new book, Associate Professor Sarah J. Jackson traces how historical and contemporary Black mediamakers and storytellers have strengthened the promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“A Second Sight: How the Wonder and Vision of Black Mediamakers Push America Toward Freedom”

17 Jun 2026
Annenberg School for Communication

When media scholar Sarah J. Jackson began working on her latest book, she didn’t know it would publish three days before Juneteenth and less than three weeks before the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. She hopes people will find the release and timing of “A Second Sight: How the Wonder and Vision of Black Mediamakers Push America Toward Freedom” to be not just serendipitous but urgent.

“Even before the founding of the country, Black mediamakers and storytellers were trying to narrate the country into a fuller democracy, were trying to narrate the nation into something that embraced these values of freedom, liberty, justice, and happiness for all,” she says. And “A Second Sight” provides historical and contemporary examples.

Jackson spoke with Penn Today about her new book—one that she anticipates readers will find hopeful.

Can you talk about what W.E.B. Du Bois meant by a ‘second sight?’
In writings across his own intellectual evolution, Du Bois explains second sight as a unique perspective that arises from standing on the outside looking in; there you can really see the whole picture. He theorizes that African Americans have developed this second sight from being both American and always treated differently than white Americans, allowing them to engage in clear-eyed critique of the failures of the country to treat everyone equally—to live up to the promises espoused by the founders—while also having genuine hope, earnestness, and imagination about how we can get there.
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The author of A Second Sight, Sarah J. Jackson will be at the Harvard Bookstore on August 5th, Wednesday, 2026, at 7:00 pm ET.

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/a-second-sight-sarah-j-jackson

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