History

When the state of Illinois received its charter in 1818, it was declared a free state, thus drawing many African-American pioneers to the area. Black Life in West Central Illinois offers a glimpse of the rich history of African-American life from the...

Sitting just south of the nation's capital, Alexandria has a long and storied history. Still, little is known of Alexandria's twentieth-century African American community. Experience the harrowing narratives of trials and triumph as Alexandria's African...

The media tends to portray Africa in a manner that grossly distorts reality. The picture they paint is intended to make people of African descent feel ashamed of their past and their identity. This is unacceptable and must change. It is therefore a moral...

Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was...

The revered civil rights activist and pioneering member of Congress chronicles her groundbreaking 1972 run for President as the first woman and person of color--a work of immense historical importance that both captures and transcends its times, newly...

A groundbreaking study about everyday antiblackness and its refusal in an officially raceblind France. What does it mean to be racialized-as-black in France on a daily basis? This study responds to that question. Under the banner of universalism, France...

Harriet Tubman, freedom fighter and leader in the Underground Railroad, is one of the most significant figures in US history. Her courage and determination in bringing enslaved people to freedom have established her as an icon of the abolitionist...

In November 1810, a 29-year-old English botanist and skilled horticulturalist named William John Burchell landed in Cape Town on his first visit to southern Africa. Despite never having traveled in an ox wagon, he commenced a four-year, 7,000 kilometer...

The prolific journey of African Americans in Portland is rooted in the courageous determination of black pioneers to begin anew in an unfamiliar and often hostile territory. Amazingly, a small population of African Americans settled in Portland against a...

Mandela's speeches from 1990 through 1993 recount the course of struggle that put an end to apartheid and opened the fight for a deep-going political, economic, and social transformation in South Africa.

With this explosive analysis, Ira Katznelson fundamentally recast our understanding of twentieth-century American history, demonstrating that the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal eras were not, as we are so often told, fundamentally...