History - African American & Black

On May 1, 1951, Orestes "Minnie" Miñoso took the field for the Chicago White Sox and broke the color line for Chicago major league baseball. Ernie Banks integrated the Chicago Cubs two years later. The future Hall of Famers began their Chicago baseball careers...

Join thought leaders fighting to win the posthumous pardon of Marcus Garvey, one of the most influential figures in Black history. Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) was a Black political activist, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League,...

The definitive monograph on contemporary African American painter Kerry James Marshall, accompanying a major traveling retrospective. This long-awaited volume celebrates the work of Kerry James Marshall, one of America's greatest living painters. Born before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, in Birmingham, Alabama,...

Discover the incredible story of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who followed her childhood dream of becoming a lawyer and eventually became the first Black woman to sit on the US Supreme Court in this picture book biography. After 232 years and 115 appointments, Ketanji...

"Wilson's melody here is the mournful sound of what might have been, a blues-tinged tale about a driven, almost demonic man. He's a petty thief named King who will stop at nothing for a better life. . . . King Hedley is a big...

A stunning history of the first national anti-terrorist campaign waged on American soil--when Ulysses S. Grant wielded the power of the federal government to dismantle the KKK The Ku Klux Klan, which celebrated historian Fergus Bordewich defines as "the first organized terrorist movement in...

Ladies of Little Rock explores the agency and activism of middle-class Black women and girls who led the movement to desegregate Little Rock Central High School. Misti Nicole Harper argues that these ladies assumed this responsibility as part of a broader legacy of middle-class...

A critically acclaimed debut from an award-winning writer--an epic family saga set against the magic and the rhythms of the Virgin Islands. In the early 1900s, the Virgin Islands are transferred from Danish to American rule, and an important ship sinks into the Caribbean...

The first ever collection of John Edgar Wideman's most influential essays and articles, five decades of cultural and literary criticism that paint a vivid portrait of America's changing landscape and chronicle the emergence and evolution of a major presence in fiction. "A towering figure...

"[A] meticulously excavated tribute to the formerly enslaved mothers, fathers, siblings, and kin who published 'last seen' advertisements in search of loved ones stolen from them in bondage...a vital work of recovery." --Ilyon Woo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Master, Slave, Husband, Wife Drawing from...

"[A] meticulously excavated tribute to the formerly enslaved mothers, fathers, siblings, and kin who published 'last seen' advertisements in search of loved ones stolen from them in bondage...a vital work of recovery." --Ilyon Woo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Master, Slave, Husband, Wife Drawing from...

Discover the fascinating history and current use of Black American Sign Language, then bring it to life with your hands following photo-illustrated instruction. Deaf history has been told primarily from a white-centered lens, pushing Black Deaf history into the background. However, today, Black signers...

A companion novel to Finding Langston, recipient of a Coretta Scott King Writing Honor and winner of the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Behind every bad boy is a story worth hearing and at least one chance for redemption. It's 1946 and Lymon,...

A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail," part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.With an afterword by Reginald Dwayne Betts On April 16, 1923, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., responded to an open letter written...

A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail," part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.With an afterword by Reginald Dwayne Betts On April 16, 1923, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., responded to an open letter written...

This is the inspiring true story of James Forten who served in the American Revolution as a teenager and then dedicated his life to fighting for the ideals set forth by the Declaration of Independence that "all men are created equal."Born in Philadelphia in...

For decades Frank X Walker has reclaimed essential American lives through his pathbreaking historical poetry. In this stirring new collection, he reimagines the experiences of Black Civil War soldiers--including his own ancestors--who enlisted in the Union army in exchange for emancipation. Moving chronologically from...

Winner of the 2019 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Nonfiction Winner of the Shilts-Grahn Triangle Award for Lesbian Nonfiction Winner of the 2019 Phi Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award A New York Times Notable Book...

The first publication on the painting practice of artist Lorna Simpson, whose work combines abstraction and figuration to highlight complexities of memory and representation This revelatory first look at the paintings of Lorna Simpson (b. 1960), an artist who has worked primarily as a...

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLEREmbark on a captivating journey with Love & Whiskey. New York Times bestselling author Fawn Weaver unveils the hidden narrative behind one of America's most iconic whiskey brands. This book is a vibrant exploration set in the present day, delving...