History - African American & Black

The familiar story of civil rights goes like this: once, America's legal system shut Black people out and refused to recognize their rights, their basic human dignity, or even their very lives. When lynch mobs gathered, police and judges often closed their eyes, if...

Before the Ships is a powerful and poetic celebration of the early roots of Black history. The great achievements and accomplishments across Africa prior to the Transatlantic slave trade are told through melodious text and evocative illustrations, that culminate into the strength and resilience...

2017 Reprint of 1868 Edition. An autobiographical narrative, Behind the Scenes traces Elizabeth Keckley's life from her enslavement in Virginia and North Carolina to her time as seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln in the White House during Abraham Lincoln's administration. It was quite controversial...

This timely special edition, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, features a new preface by the authors that places the Party in a contemporary political landscape, especially as it relates to Black Lives Matter and other struggles...

Black and Catholic documents the exclusion, erasure, and systematic racism faced by Black Catholics, filling an essential gap in both Catholic and Black history.In the storied history of the U.S. Catholic community, there is a long-standing myth held by Catholics and non-Catholics alike that...

Black Appalachia: Race, Place, and Identity is the long-awaited successor to Blacks in Appalachia (1985), the first modern anthology to examine the socioeconomic, cultural, and political experiences of Black Appalachians. Edited by Cicero M. Fain III, Sheena Harris Hayes, Wilburn Hayden Jr., and William...

A photographic celebration and exploration of Black identity and experience through the twentieth century from the founder and curator of the hit multimedia platform Black Archives. "Browsing the book ultimately feels like looking through one immense family photo album. And that's intentional."--Essence Renata Cherlise's...

From the Ignatz and Eisner Award-winning cartoonist Ben Passmore comes a whirlwind graphic history of Black life, taken by force It's the summer of 2020, and downtown Philly is up in flames. "You're not out in the streets with everyone else?" Ronnie asks his...

The African diaspora--a direct result of the transatlantic slave trade and Western colonialism--has generated a wide array of artistic achievements, from blues and reggae to the paintings of the pioneering American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner and the music videos of Solange. This study concentrates...

The second book in a three-volume series on Black American artists, featuring work from the 1950s to the 1970s that responded to the cultural, political, and social concerns of the era During the turbulent 1950s to 1970s, Black American artists, responding to increasing civil...

This third and final volume in the Black Artists in America series features work from the transitional moment of the late 1970s to the dawn of the twenty-first century In the 1980s and 1990s, Black artists in the United States who came of age...

The first book to center Black artists' voices on Black aesthetics, revealing a century of evolving relationships to race, identity, and art. What is Black art? No one has thought harder about that question than Black artists, yet their perspectives have been largely ignored....

A portrait of worker solidarity in the South, and of the fight for Black liberation.In 1928, the Third International adopted a resolution on the right of self-determination for African Americans in the Black Belt, in the southeastern US. Over the next decade, this resolution...

A searing new work of nonfiction from award-winning author Brandy Colbert about the history and legacy of one of the most deadly and destructive acts of racial violence in American history: the Tulsa Race Massacre. Winner, Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. In the early morning...

Who were the black cowboys? They were drovers, foremen, fiddlers, cowpunchers, cattle rustlers, cooks, and singers. They worked as wranglers, riders, ropers, bulldoggers, and bronc busters. They came from varied backgrounds--some grew up in slavery, while free blacks often got their start in Texas...

Selected as one of Hyperallergic's 15 Art Books We're Excited to Read in 2026This book chronicles the transformative impact of Black curators on American art museums since the 1970s as told by visionaries at the forefront of the change. The relationship between Black Americans...

Discover the growing community of Black floriculture leading the new vanguard in flowers. Black Flora is the first book to feature profiles of contemporary Black experts innovating in the world of flowers. Author and longtime gardener, Teresa Speight, offers a beautiful intersection of flowers...

There have been countless books, articles, and televised reports in recent years about the almost mythic "white working class," a tide of commentary that has obscured the labor, and even the very existence, of entire groups of working people, including everyday Black workers. In...

"By telling the little-known stories of six pioneering African American entrepreneurs, Black Fortunes makes a worthy contribution to black history, to business history, and to American history."--Margot Lee Shetterly, New York Times Bestselling author of Hidden FiguresBetween the years of 1830 and 1927, as...

The first fully illustrated history of Juneteenth and other Emancipation Day celebrations, told through photographs, art, and an engrossing narrative from an award-winning historian.  For more than 150 years, Black communities have gathered to honor freedom, resilience, and the ongoing struggle for true liberation....