General History

The memory of the long civil rights movement often celebrates white men and women who drew on their religious faith to support Black demands for racial justice. However, the visions and actions of these leaders and their organizations often conflicted...

A gripping biography of a man who escaped slavery to become an influential abolitionist, famously known as the "King of the Underground Railroad" Jermain Wesley Loguen (1813-1872) was a fugitive from slavery, an abolitionist, and a minister, teacher,...

During the first quarter of the twenty-first century, more than one hundred institutions of higher education in the United States launched projects to study and share their histories concerning slavery, segregation, and racial injustice. Slavery,...

Baltimore is key to understanding the trajectory of civil rights in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century In A Brotherhood of Liberty, Dennis Patrick Halpin shifts the focus of the black freedom struggle from the Deep South to argue that...

The construction of the Panama Canal is typically viewed as a marvel of American ingenuity. What is less visible, and less understood, is the project's dependence on the labor of Black migrant women. The Silver Women shifts the focus of this monumental...

Despite significant challenges and historical opposition, Black female teachers stood at the forefront of advocating for and providing education to Black students. Their dedication not only improved opportunities for Black communities but also influenced...

New York Times Book Review Top 100 Books of 2024 Explore the "comprehensive and compelling" (Jon Meacham) biography of civil rights leader John Lewis, celebrated as "the conscience of Congress," through a narrative that weaves together exclusive...

From the acclaimed author of The Fire Is upon Us, the dramatic untold story of Barry Goldwater and Martin Luther King Jr.'s decade-long clash over the meaning of freedom--and how their conflicting visions still divide American politics In the mid-1950s,...

An Escaped Slave who Fought for the Union and Whose Wartime Heroism was Finally Recognized with the Nation's Highest Honor for Military ValorIn 1862, Andrew "Andy" Jackson Smith, son of a white landowner and enslaved woman, es­caped to Union troops...

In the spring of 1969, hundreds of workers, all Black and mostly female, went on strike at Medical College Hospital and Charleston County Hospital to protest racial discrimination, low wages, and the marginalization of their dignity. The movement began...

Born to a formerly enslaved mother and a white planter father, P. B. S. Pinchback (1837-1921) became the first African American governor in the United States. His tenure as governor of Louisiana was brief--a mere thirty-five days--but he remains one of...

In the twentieth century, African Americans not only helped make popular music the soundtrack of the American experience, they advanced American music as one of the preeminent shapers of the world's popular culture. Vast numbers of black American...