African American Studies

In this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake." Activating multiple registers of "wake"--the path...

"The question about teaching slaves to read and write remained a dilemma throughout the entire slave period. The slave master knew that to teach the slave to read and write he might ultimately emerge as a thinker. These thinkers would inevitably question...

The first popular history of the former American slaves who founded, ruled, and lost Africa's first republic In 1820, a group of about eighty African Americans reversed the course of history and sailed back to Africa, to a place they would name after...

An insider's look at the formative years of the Black Panther Party, this raw, sympathetic portrayal is as fresh today as when first published in 1971. Reginald Major knew and worked with leaders of the Party prior to its organization, and from this...

One of our most visceral and important memoirs on race in America, this is the story of Nathan McCall, who began life as a smart kid in a close, protective family in a black working-class neighborhood. Yet by the age of fifteen, McCall was packing a gun...

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time In Up from Slavery, Washington recounts the story of his life--from slave to educator. The early sections deal with his upbringing as a slave and his efforts to get an...

A recently discovered collection of folktales celebrating African American oral tradition, community, and faith...”splendidly vivid and true.”--New York Times Every Tongue Got to Confess is an extensive volume of African American folklore that...

A moving essay collection promoting freedom, self-love, and divine wholeness for Black women and opening new levels of understanding and ideological transformation for non-Black women and allies "Candice Marie Benbow is a once-in-a-generation theologian,...

Two longtime friends share an intimate and urgent conversation about life, music, and their enduring love of America, with all its challenges and contradictions, in this stunningly produced expansion of their groundbreaking Higher Ground podcast,...

African-Americans are entering the business world in unprecedented numbers, and Earl G. Graves serves as their role model and mentor. Graves, one of the most influential and well-known executives in the world, in this timely andimportant book shows how...

Classic collection of black history and triviaFirst published in 1934 and revised in 1962, this book gathers journalist and historian Joel Augustus Rogers' columns from the syndicated newspaper feature titled Your History. Patterned after the look of...

Forsyth County, Georgia, at the turn of the twentieth century, was home to a large African American community that included ministers and teachers, farmers and field hands, tradesmen, servants, and children. But then in September of 1912, three young...

Slavery helped finance the Industrial Revolution in England. Plantation owners, shipbuilders, and merchants connected with the slave trade accumulated vast fortunes that established banks and heavy industry in Europe and expanded the reach of capitalism...

With more than two million copies in print, Manchild in the Promised Land is one of the most remarkable autobiographies of our time--the definitive account of African-American youth in Harlem of the 1940s and 1950s, and a seminal work of modern...

"A firsthand, eye-opening story of a prosecutor that exposes the devastating criminal punishment system. Laura Coates bleeds for justice on the page." --Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an...

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten...