History

A long-forgotten Black abolitionist who liberated captive workers by the wagonload, brilliantly satirized slaveholders, and gave the underground railroad its name. Thomas Smallwood was a shoemaker by day and an organizer of mass escapes from slavery by...

A. J. Cade's Death or Victory offers the first in-depth history of the Louisiana Native Guards, pioneering African American regiments within the Union army. Originating as a division of the New Orleans Home Guards in May 1861, the Native Guards consisted...

A FORGOTTEN EPISODE FROM THE ERA OF RECONSTRUCTION: An extraordinary American hero travels to the nation's capital to tell an unforgettable story of violence, resistance, and social action in the post-Civil War South. For Black History Month, the...

Williams fought a good fight for a better democracy and the collective equal rights of African Americans. He was not just a revolutionary voice and internationalist leader and voice in the Black Power movement, and should not be forgotten or dismissed...

W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the leading figures of Pan-African thought and activism in the twentieth century. As a sociologist, Du Bois wrote much about the historical and social circumstances of African Americans while often acknowledging the African...

This souvenir book showcases some of the most influential and important treasures of the National Museum of African American History and Culture's collections. These include a hymn book owned by Harriet Tubman; ankle shackles used to restrain enslaved...

The page-turning and revelatory true story of America's disastrous 1835 attack on the Seminoles in pre-statehood Florida, and the two men--a Black American and a renowned Indigenous warrior--who fought back for their homes and freedom, from the author of...

What does it mean to be deemed promising in an unjust world? The award-winning poet and MIT Distinguished Chair of the Humanities interrogates this question--and offers a more expansive vision of giftedness--in this striking, original work. "The People...

On its one-hundredth anniversary, a powerful and essential meditation on the origins, evolution, and future of Black History Month from one of America's leading historians of Black education and the author of American Grammar. In I'll Make Me a World,...

The dramatic and heartrending true story of one remarkable young man's account of love in the time of war, by a celebrated historian of untold Black stories On the eve of World War II, a handsome young scholar arrived in Paris. The queer, Black son of a...

A history of Black poets in Washington, DC, reveals how they have reflected and transformed American cultural discourseWashington, DC, has long been home to a dynamic and vibrant African American literary community, despite often being overshadowed by...