Sankofa

The memoir of one of the most accomplished figures in African American public life

Sankofa is the anthropologist and educator Dr. Johnnetta Betsch Cole's memoir of nearly nine decades spent building institutions, communities, and a more just world. Drawing on her childhood in Jacksonville, Florida, and the historic Black community of American Beach, through her landmark presidencies of Spelman and Bennett Colleges, to her directorship of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Cole organizes her book around seven essential lessons: on the nature of change, the necessity of self-confrontation, the power of community, the work of friendship across difference, the possibility of democratic marriage, the necessity of the arts, and the meaning carried in the stories we tell.

Rooted in the Akan principle of Sankofa—to go back and retrieve what is useful from the past—the book moves fluidly between personal narrative and broader reflection, weaving together family history, professional memory, and contemporary analysis. Cole writes candidly about triumph and heartbreak alike, offering both a record of a singular American life and a roadmap for readers seeking to understand what sustained, collective social change actually requires. Sankofa is more than a memoir. It is a call to action.