History

"I loved this book.... I looked forward to [it] more than any other in a long time, and Howard Bryant exceeded my great expectations. Kings and Pawns is brilliantly conceived and powerfully written." -- David Maraniss, author of Path Lit by LightningA...

Originally published in 2000, Reflections in Black was the first single-volume work to collect the images of leading African American photographers--from the daguerreotype to the digital age. Through its sheer power and inherent beauty, Deborah Willis's...

An absorbing investigation into a little-known historical tragedy--an insurrection which upended a resilient and wealthy Black community who found themselves in the clutches of an insurrection at the turn of the twentieth century in Laurinburg, North...

During a dramatic three-day period in March 1961, nine students from historically Black Tougaloo College staged sit-ins at the all-White Main Library in Jackson, Mississippi. The students conducted their protest and were arrested, held in jail overnight,...

This unprecedented work is the first one-volume study of the history of Christianity in Africa. Written by Elizabeth Isichei, a leading scholar in this field, A History of Christianity in Africa examines the origins and development of Christianity in...

One of The New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2024One of the Washington Post's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024A Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History A New York Public Library Top Ten Book of 2024 A Boston Globe Best Book of 2024A...

In the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, this New York Times bestseller is a page-turning account of one of the nation's last segregated asylums..."a book that left me breathless" (Clint Smith). For centuries, Black patients have been...

Challenging societal beliefs, this volume rethinks African and world history from an Afrocentric perspective.

New York City is blessed with an incredible array of public sculptures. One overlooked aspect of this collection is its monuments of Black Americans, each with its own remarkable story. The first appearance of a Black person in a city monument came in...

A moving and humane portrait of the abolitionist revolutionary Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who led Haiti's fight for independence from French colonial rule "My name has become a horror to all those who want slavery," declared Jean-Jacques Dessalines as he...

After the Civil War, Black landownership in Fairfax County increased by leaps and bounds. By the 1870s, retired Union officers were purchasing land that they sold to African Americans like Joshua Ball, Joshua Pearson, Robert Bradley and John Coates...