History - African American & Black

This powerful graphic novel follows the courageous life of Rosa Parks, who was arrested in 1955 for not giving up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. With comic book-style illustrations and engaging, easy-to-read text, this biography will inspire, entertain, and inform young...

The story of Jackie Robinson's prodigious talent, his courageous journey, and his influence on both the game of baseball and American society writ large has been told well and often. What hasn't been told is the full story of his first season in the...

Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama "An intense and gripping new drama . . . the kind of new play we desperately need: well-informed and unafraid of the world's brutalities."--David Cote, Time Out New York A rain forest bar and brothel in...

Run, Eisner Award Winner for Best Graphic Memoir, is an essential graphic novel, whether for the home or the classroom. First you march, then you run. From the #1 bestselling, award-winning team behind March.This follow-up to the #1 New York Times bestselling graphic novel...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The superbly researched, spellbindingly told story of athlete, showman, philosopher, and boundary breaker Leroy "Satchel" Paige "Among the rare biographies of an athlete that transcend sports . . . gives us the man as well as the myth."--The Boston...

In the years immediately after the Civil War, tens of thousands of former slaves deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman's Bank. African Americans envisioned this new bank as a launching pad for economic growth and self-determination. But only nine years after it opened,...

In the years immediately after the Civil War, tens of thousands of former slaves deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman's Bank. African Americans envisioned this new bank as a launching pad for economic growth and self-determination. But only nine years after it opened,...

An extraordinary chronicle of youth that evokes the paradoxes of modern Africa--complex, contradictory, and full of conflict, tragedy, and joy. Patrice Nganang, the acclaimed author of Dog Days, Mount Pleasant, and, most recently, A Trail of Crab Tracks, which was a 2022 New Yorker...

Winner, 2025 Merle Curti Intellectual History Award, Organization of American Historians Winner, 2024 Arline Custer Memorial Book Award, Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference Winner, 2025 Eliza Atkins Gleason Book Award, Library History Round Table of The American Library Association Honorable Mention, 2025 Lawrence W. Levine...

Saidiya Hartman has been praised as "one of our most brilliant contemporary thinkers" (Claudia Rankine, New York Times Book Review) and "a lodestar for a generation of students and, increasingly, for politically engaged people outside the academy" (Alexis Okeowo, The New Yorker). In Scenes...

The image of a scorpion surrounded by a ring of fire, stinging itself to death, was widespread among antislavery leaders before the Civil War. It captures their long-standing strategy for peaceful abolition: they would surround the slave states with a cordon of freedom, constricting...

The true story of Robert Smalls, a slave steamboat wheelman who commandeered a Confederate ship during the Civil War and escaped with his family and crew to freedom.Growing up a slave in South Carolina, Robert Smalls always dreamed of the moment freedom would be...

The Story Behind an Unsung Event in the Civil Rights Movement"Over eight days, eight students sparked change that defined their lives, changed an institution and fueled a movement that continues today." ─Alberto Ibargüuuml;en, President and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight...

A landmark reinterpretation of the civil rights movement that challenges reductive heroic narratives of the 1950s and 1960s and invigorates new debates and possibilities for the future of the struggle for liberation. We are all familiar with the romantic vision of the civil rights...

"A timely, detailed, and inspiring book that helps maintain the intellectual legacy of Shirley Chisholm. The book reveals new dimensions of the congresswoman's politics, activism, and spirit."--Regina King, Academy Award-winning actor and star of Shirley Looking beyond her political symbolism to celebrate not only...

In Betty Reid Soskin's 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national disgrace, minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment,...

An acclaimed historian narrates the stories of newly emancipated children who were re-enslaved by white masters through apprenticeships and their parents fights to free them While the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, white southerners established a system of apprenticeship after the Civil War that entrapped...

The first systematic Marxist account of the capitalist character of Atlantic slavery. Karl Marx's writings on enslavement and labor have fallen out of favor among historians, but David McNally injects new life into them. Slavery and Capitalism gives the first systematic Marxist account of...

With a new Afterword and Reading Group Guide exclusive to the paperback edition. In this enlightening personal account, one man tells the story of his groundbreaking project to sleep overnight in former slave dwellings that still stand across the country--revealing the fascinating history behind...

On November 14, 1960, first graders Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne stepped into history by going to school. Escorted by U.S. Marshals and facing swarms of shouting protestors, they became the first children in New Orleans to integrate a previously all-white school,...