General History

On July 23, 1968, police in Cleveland battled with black nationalists in a night of terror that saw 6 people killed and at least 15 wounded. The gun battle touched off days of heavy rioting. The confrontation was surprising given that Cleveland had just...

In "South Side Girls" Marcia Chatelain recasts Chicago's Great Migration through the lens of black girls. Focusing on the years between 1910 and 1940, when Chicago's black population quintupled, Chatelain describes how Chicago's black social scientists,...

Mary McLeod Bethune was often called the "First Lady of Negro America," but she made significant contributions to the political climate of Florida as well. From the founding of the Daytona Literary and Industrial School for Training Negro Girls in 1904, B

"Freedom Summer" presents finely rendered portraits of the courageous black citizens--and Northern volunteers--who refused to be intimidated in their struggle for justice, and the white Mississippians who would kill to protect a dying way of life.A...

Newark's volatile past is infamous. The city has become synonymous with the Black Power movement and urban crisis. Its history reveals a vibrant and contentious political culture punctuated by traditional civic pride and an understudied tradition of...

A vibrant, deeply researched biography of A'Lelia Walker--daughter of Madam C.J. Walker and herself a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance--written by her great-granddaughter.   Dubbed the "joy goddess of Harlem's 1920s" by poet Langston...

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...

The epic story of Detroit's struggle to integrate schools in its suburbs--and the defeat of desegregation in the North. In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school...

"The Barn is the most brutal, layered and absolutely beautiful book about Mississippi, and really how the world conspired with the best and worst parts of Mississippi, I will ever read...Reporting and reckoning can get no better, or more important, than...

With brilliantly objective scholarship, respected historian and author John G. Jackson reexamines the outdated, racist, and Westernized history of Africa that is still taught in schools, and presents one infinitely more rich, colorful, varied-and...

An "electrifying" biography of Walter White, a little-remembered Black civil rights leader who passed for white in order to investigate racist murders, help put the NAACP on the map, and change the racial identity of America forever (Chicago Review of...

The triumphant story of how an all-Black Broadway cast and crew changed musical theatre--and the world--forever. This musical introduced Black excellence to the Great White Way. Broadway was forever changed and we, who stand on the shoulders of our...