General History

Between the world wars, Chicago Race women nurtured a local yet widely resonant Black classical music community entwined with Black civic life. Samantha Ege tells the stories of the Black women whose acumen and energy transformed Chicago's South Side...

Inspiring stories of those who risked their lives so others would be free. In Defiance is a corrective. American history has historically suffered from the systematic effort of many in power to suppress the stories of those whose lives serve as models...

A new way of seeing Black history--the sweeping story of how American cities as we know them developed from the vision, aspirations, and actions of the Black poor. Building the Black City shows how African Americans built and rebuilt thriving cities for...

The battle for equality in education during the civil rights era came at a cost to Black Americans on the frontlines. In 1964 when fourteen-year-old June Manning Thomas walked into Orangeburg High School as one of thirteen Black students selected to...

They call it Spanish Harlem or sometimes just El Barrio. But for over a century, East Harlem has been a melting pot of many ethnic groups, including Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban, and Mexican immigrants, as well as Italian, Jewish, and African American...

In 1842, Black Rhode Islanders secured a stunning victory, a success rarely seen in antebellum America: they won the right to vote. Amid heightened public discourse around shifting ideas of race, citizenship, and political rights, they methodically...

The autobiography of a local and national leader in education and civil rightsCarver Clark Gayton's story bears witness to Seattle's experience of race and the importance of family, teachers, teamwork, and building bridges in the context of the civil...

New neighborhoods began emerging north of Main Street in Spartanburg, South Carolina in the 1870s as emancipated Black men and women spent their hard-won post-slavery wages to purchase lots and build homes. As the decades rolled by, they and their...

IN 1932, A JAMAICAN MAN NAMED LEONARD PERCIVAL HOWELL began leading nonviolent protests in Kingston, Jamaica, against British colonial rule. While history books rightly credit Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. with popularizing nonviolent protest...

The first new translation in over 400 years of one of the great works of the Renaissance: an African diplomat's guide to Africa A Penguin Classic In 1518, al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan, a Moroccan diplomat, was seized by pirates while travelling in the...

In this down-to-earth memoir, longtime educator and community leader Press L. Robinson Sr. recounts his hardscrabble childhood in South Carolina, his education at Morehouse College and Howard University, his career as a professor and administrator in the...

"Powerful and deeply moving."--Los Angeles Times From a groundbreaking scholar, a heart-wrenching reexamination of the struggle for survival in the Reconstruction-era South, and what it cost. The story of Reconstruction is often told from the...