Collection: History

“What we do now becomes history by which our grandchildren will judge us.” August Wilson’s words, delivered in a speech at Theatre Communications Group’s conference...

Founded in 2017 by Stephen Satterfield, Whetstone Magazine is an independently published print and digital publication about global food origins, culture, and culinary anthropology.  ...

While investigating police brutality and corruption in 1970s Detroit, journalist Elena Abbott uncovers supernatural forces being controlled by a secret society of the city's elite....

This richly informative and gorgeously illustrated book celebrates Harlem's vibrant traditions, past and present. A is for Apollo TheatreL is for Liberation BookstoreU is for...

An extraordinary, ambitious, globe-spanning novel about what we owe our consciences   Fleeing her moribund marriage in Cape Town, Beth accepts a diplomatic posting to...

Who's really behind America's appetite for foods from around the globe? This group biography from an electric new voice in food writing honors seven extraordinary...

Perhaps no other symbol has more resonance in African American history than that of 40 acres and a mule--the lost promise of Black reparations for...

A Cold Civil War has engulfed the nation. After a deadly pandemic, shocking incidents of police brutality, a racial justice crisis, and the fall of...

An exceptional resource, this comprehensive reader brings together primary and secondary documents related to efforts to redress historical wrongs against African Americans. These varied efforts...

The first translation and publication of sixteen submissions to the notorious eighteenth-century Bordeaux essay contest on the cause of black skin--an indispensable chronicle of the...

"Before there was such a thing as "California," there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew...

Amid the social turmoil of the 1960s and '70s, Flores Forbes was drawn to the Black Panther Party's mission of organizing resistance to police brutality....

In To Make Negro Literature Elizabeth McHenry traces African American authorship in the decade following the 1896 legalization of segregation. She shifts critical focus from the published...

A beautiful genre-bending tribute to the larger-than-life blues singer Bessie Smith. Scotland's National Poet blends poetry, prose, fiction, and nonfiction to create an entirely unique biography...

Like spiral galaxies composed of millions of orbiting stars, the works of New York State-based artist Shinique Smith are graceful yet forceful combinations of many...

A stunning collection of stoic portraits and intimate ephemera from the lives of Black Civil War soldiers   Though both the Union and Confederate armies...

Thriving stand-up comic and actress Yvonne Orji--best known as Issa Rae's BFF on the HBO series, Insecure--shares the secrets to living the life of your dreams....

Running from Bondage tells the compelling stories of enslaved women, who comprised one-third of all runaways, and the ways in which they fled or attempted...

An incisive, gripping exploration of the forces that pushed our unjust system to its breaking point after the death of George Floyd and a definitive...

WINNER OF THE 2021 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZEWinner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction"Astonishingly good." ―Lily Meyer, NPR"So incantatory and visceral I don’t think I’ll ever...

Across America, the pure love and popularity of barbecue cookery have gone through the roof. Prepared in one regional style or another, in the South...

For readers of Hidden Figures and Something Wonderful, Footnotes is the story of New York in the roaring twenties and the very first Broadway show with an all-Black cast and...

Black Women in New York City's Underground Economy — During the early twentieth century, a diverse group of African American women carved out unique niches...