African Studies

Junius Wilson (1908-2001) spent 76 years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including 6 in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. But he was deaf and Black in the Jim Crow South. Unspeakable is the story of his life.

Joan, Tisha, and Lila are three single, ambitious party girls embarking on a journey where they attempt to give up sex and draw nearer to God. Giving up their boyfriends and club hopping for empty beds and Bible study is more challenging than they could have imagined. The Single Sister Experiment is a fast-paced, drama-filled ride that you don’t want to miss!

Ninety years of American history as lived by the nation's preeminent African American historian and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. John Hope Franklin lived through America's most defining twentieth-century transformation, the dismantling of legally-protected racial segregation. A...

Blackdom, New Mexico, was a township that lasted about 30 years. In this book, Timothy E. Nelson situates the township’s story where it belongs: along the settlement continuum in Mexico’s Northern Frontier. Dr. Nelson illuminates the set of conscious efforts that helped Black pioneers develop Blackdom Township into a frontier boomtown.

First 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 Ripley's popular Believe It or Not the multiple vignettes in each episode recount short items from Rogers's research. The feature began in the Pittsburgh Courier in November 1934 and ran through the 1960s.

Kelley Fanto Deetz draws upon archaeological evidence, cookbooks, plantation records, and folklore to present a nuanced study of the lives of enslaved plantation cooks from colonial times through emancipation and beyond. She reveals how these men and women were literally "bound to the fire" as they lived and worked in the sweltering, and often fetid, conditions of plantation house kitchens.

In a series of incisive and intimate encounters Sarah Ladipo Manyika introduces some of the most distinguished Black thinkers of our times, including Nobel Laureates Toni Morrison and Wole Soyinka, and civic leaders first lady Michelle Obama and Senator Cory Booker. She searches for truth with poet Claudia Rankine and historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr. She discusses race and gender with South African filmmaker Xoliswa Sithole and American actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith.

The Blindside meets Friday Night Lights in Keanon Lowe's Hometown Victory when an NFL coach returns home after losing a friend to opiods to coach a team of struggling high school kids on a 23-game losing streak. Keanon Lowe was working as an offensive analyst for the San Francisco 49ers when his...

The first genocide of the 20th century, though not well known, was committed by Germans between 1904-1907 in the country we know today as Namibia, where they exterminated thousands of Herero and Nama people and subjected the surviving indigenous men, women, and children to forced labor. The perception of Africans as subhuman - lacking any kind of civilization, history, or meaningful religion - and the resulting justification for the violence against them is what author Elizabeth R. Baer refers to as the "genocidal gaze", an attitude that was later perpetuated by the Nazis.

Learn to leverage privilege. Privilege is a social consequence of our unwillingness to reckon with and turn from sin. But properly stewarded, it can help us see and participate in God's inbreaking kingdom. Scripture repeatedly affirms that privilege is real and declares that, rather than...

"By Any Dreams Necessary" is a transformative guide that offers a strategic vision for enhancing sustainability, building resilience, and achieving environmental justice in African American communities. Dr. Bruce Strouble delivers a strategic plan for African Americans to address systemic racial oppression, economic disenfranchisement, and environmental injustice and turn them into opportunities for empowerment through practical solutions and strategic action. This book blends rigorous academic research with an on-the-ground roadmap for transforming harsh realities into tangible change.

"Devils in the Details" is a thought provoking and insightful book that delves into the complex issues of race, class, and privilege in America. Focusing on the experiences of Foundational Black Americans. The book explores how these individuals are impacted by systemic inequalities and the ways in which their lives are shaped by the social and economic structures of our society.

On August 20, 1619, about 20 Angolans arrived in the British colony of Virginia. They were brought directly to the settlement of Jamestown. There, they were bought or traded for supplies. The English colonists were more than happy to oblige the pirates, who had stolen the slaves from a Portuguese slave ship. Thus was the corruption and greed surrounding the human trafficking that was the slave trade.

The author of Baldwin’s Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual life of Detroit—a blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores the city’s past, present, and future and its significance to the African American legacy and the...

As seen on PBS’s POV An unprecedented guide to helping black boys achieve success at every stage of their lives—at home, at school, and in the world Regardless of how wealthy or poor their parents are, all black boys must confront and surmount the “achievement gap”: a divide that...

Alisado. Estigmatizado. «Domado». Celebrado. Borrado. Gestionado. Apropiado. Siempre incomprendido. El pelo negro nunca es «solo pelo». Este libro trata de por qué el cabello negro es importante y de cómo puede considerarse un modelo de descolonización. A lo largo de una serie de ensayos irónicos e informados, Emma Dabiri nos lleva desde el África precolonial, pasando por el Renacimiento de Harlem, el Black Power y hasta el actual movimiento del pelo natural, la apropiación cultural y más allá.

Ganadora del Premio Pulitzer 2004 y reconocida como el mejor libro de ficción del siglo XXI por el New York Times, The Known Worl, de Edward P. Jones, es una novela debut de una profundidad emocional asombrosa y un poder literario inigualable, y sigue demostrando su importancia en el canon...

Through over ten years of research, interviewing activists along with unprecedented access to their personal archives, Tracy and Sonnie tell a crucial, untold story of the New Left. Their deeply sourced narrative history shows how poor and working-class individuals from diverse ethnic, rural and urban backgrounds cooperated and drew strength from one another. The groups they founded redefined community organizing, and transformed the lives and communities they touched.

Confronted by a crisis in black American leadership, state-sanctioned violence against black communities, and colorblind laws that trap black Americans in a racial caste system, Black Lives Matter activists and the artists inspired by them have devised new forms of political and cultural resistance. More Than Our Pain explores how affect and emotion can drive collective political and cultural action in the face of a new nadir in race relations in the United States. Affect and emotion have moved from the margin to the center of this new human rights movement.

Black churches in America have long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institutions in Black communities. Drawing on interviews with more than 1,800 Black clergy in both urban and rural settings, combined with a comprehensive historical overview of seven mainline Black denominations, C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya present an analysis of the Black church as it relates to the history of African Americans and to contemporary Black culture.