African American Studies

A New York Times Notable Book, Overground Railroad is a compelling and illuminating exploration of the historical role and residual impact of the Green Book, a travel guide for Black motorists used for decades when traveling through segregated America...

This stunning cultural and personal reclamation of Black history and Black botanical mastery offers up lessons from the natural world shared through the stories of long-lived trees. The histories of trees in America are also the histories of Black...

The first-ever Black history to center queer voices, this landmark study traces the lives of LGBTQ+ Black Americans from slavery to present day Gender and sexual expression have always been part of the Black freedom struggle In this latest book in...

Wyatt Outlaw's story was one of Black success: He was a Union League leader, business owner, and the first Black town constable and commissioner in Graham, a small town located in North Carolina's Alamance County. But in 1870, Outlaw was murdered by the...

The author and director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library Publishing Project gives voice to long silent African Americans from the past, allowing them to tell their own stories that shed new light on critical moments in the Black Freedom Struggle,...

For readers of Annette Gordon-Reed and Nikole Hannah-Jones, the shocking untold story of the British royal family's centuries-long investment in slavery and continued profiting off its legacy--from Elizabeth I to the present--and the monarchy's...

A Monument to Blacknessoffers an in-depth look at Black murals across the United States, from interior murals in the South to street murals predominantly in the North and West. It shows us how Black murals were--and remain--an integral but commonly...

The promise of Reconstruction sparked a transformative era in American history as free and newly emancipated Black Americans sought to redefine their place in a nation still grappling with the legacy of slavery. Often remembered as a period of failed...

In 1787, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones left the predominantly white St. George Methodist Episcopal Church to protest the racism and discrimination they faced. A few years later, both men would create their own African American Christian denominations...

The poultry processing industry in El Dorado, Arkansas, was an economic powerhouse in the latter half of the twentieth century. It was the largest employer in the interconnected region of South Arkansas and North Louisiana surrounding El Dorado, and the...

We must speak the word ancestor. We must call their names. We must see them at work. The hand of ancestors in our affairs is undeniable. They exist all around us, motivating individuals and cultures. And yet, the United States is a nation that does not...

An essay on Black-Jewish relations, primarily in the United States, by a professor of African American History who became embroiled in controversy over his classroom use of a book detailing the well- documented Jewish role in the Atlantic slave trade. ...