African American Studies

A conservative columnist makes an eye-opening case for why immigration improves the lives of Americans and is important for the future of the country Separating fact from myth in today's heated immigration debate, a member of The Wall Street Journal...

The phrase "stay woke" was introduced into the American lexicon by the talented Black musician Huddie William Ledbetter ("Lead Belly") in 1938 in a song called Scottsboro Boys. The Scottsboro Boys were nine young Black men unjustly imprisoned following...

The West fears desire. It fears ecstasy. It fears flesh. It copes with its fears by deploying its intellectual, political, and religious instruments to regulate, discipline, and punish. Western fear of the erotic has led to its regimes of racial and...

At five years old, Kristal Brent Zook sat on the steps of a Venice Beach, California, motel trying to make sense of her white father's abandonment, which left her feeling unworthy of a man's love and of white protection. Raised by her working-class...

"The centuries-long attack on Black history represents a strike against our very worth, brilliance, and value. We're ready to fight back. And when we fight, we win." -Colin KaepernickSince its founding as a discipline, Black Studies has been under...

The First Migrants recounts the largely unknown story of Black people who migrated from the South to the Great Plains between 1877 and 1920 in search of land and freedom. They exercised their rights under the Homestead Act to gain title to 650,000 acres,...

A critical and nuanced look at societal perceptions of Black hair, past and present Black Hair in a White World is an in-depth study of the cultural history, perceptions, and increasing acceptance of Black hair in the broader American society. The...

An adventurous collection that examines how the design field has consistently failed to attract and support Black professionals--and how to create an anti-racist, pro-Black design industry instead. An Anthology of Blackness examines the intersection of...

A collection of personal essays that grapples with Ziwe's (mis)understanding of identity, by comedy's most iconic voice Ziwe made a name for herself staring interviewees in the eye and asking, "How many Black friends do you have?" She is an expert at...

The civil rights movement is often defined narrowly, relegated to the 1950s and 1960s and populated by such colossal figures as Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Many forget that the movement was bigger than the figures on the frontline and that it...

A large swath of literature on the civil rights movement exists in the United States. Much of that literature focuses on the dramatic events of the African American resistance to Jim Crow and oppression from the mid 1950s through the early 1970s...

The Awful Grace of God chronicles a multi-year effort to kill Martin Luther King Jr. by a group of the nation's most violent right-wing extremists. Impeccably researched and thoroughly documented, this examines figures like Sam Bowers, head of the White...