South African History

Africa's spiritual traditions are diverse and profound, offering unique paths to connect with the divine. This comprehensive guide will help you navigate these rich spiritual landscapes.

The transatlantic slave trade was founded by the Portuguese in the 15th century for the specific purpose of supplying the New World colonies with African slave labor. It was soon joined by all the major trading powers of Europe, and it reached its peak in the 18th century with the founding and development of plantation economies that ran from the South American mainland through the Caribbean and into the southern states of the United States. The East African Slave Trade, on the other hand, was more complex, far older, and significantly more widespread.

This groundbreaking book tracks the massive wealth amassed from slavery from pre-Civil War to today, showing how our modern economy was built on the backs of enslaved Black people—and lays out a clear argument for reparations that shows exactly what was stolen, who stole it, and to whom it is...

“[A] meticulously excavated tribute to the formerly enslaved mothers, fathers, siblings, and kin who published ‘last seen’ advertisements in search of loved ones stolen from them in bondage…a vital work of recovery.” —Ilyon Woo, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Master, Slave...

2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018 A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in...

The “enlightening” (The Guardian) true story of the last ship to carry enslaved people to America, the remarkable town its survivors’ founded after emancipation, and the complicated legacy their descendants carry with them to this day—by the journalist who discovered the ship’s remains...

At a time when most of the public discourse was dominated by men, Anna Julia Cooper’s writings offered a blistering rebuke to that status quo. The essays and speeches collected here anticipated the debates about racism, sexism, and intersectionality that we are still having today. Cooper argues in particular for the importance of Black women’s participation in identifying and combating the structures of oppression that surrounded them - and that made life so much more difficult for many other groups as well.

From one of America's most venerable politicians, The First Eight is an extraordinary work of living history: the powerful, untold story of the pioneering Black politicians from South Carolina who were elected to Congress in the aftermath of the Civil War, and a revealing explanation of why it...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out of the archives...

It was a mild May morning in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1862, the second year of the Civil War, when a 23-year-old slave named Robert Smalls did the unthinkable and boldly seized a Confederate steamer. With his wife and two young children hidden on board, Smalls and a small crew ran a gauntlet of heavily armed fortifications in Charleston Harbor and delivered the valuable vessel and the massive guns it carried to nearby Union forces.

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour. With the passing of Nelson Mandela, ‘the father of the nation’, comes the end of an era, and the moment to look back on his remarkable saving, and remaking, of South Africa. After years of oppression and racial inequality, concentrated...

#1 New York Times Bestseller NAACP Image Award Winner From Joy-Ann Reid, a triumphant work of biography that repositions slain Civil Rights pioneer Medgar Evers at the heart of America's struggle for freedom, and celebrates Myrlie Evers's extraordinary activism after her husband's assassination...

In this atmospheric novel set in the Jim Crow South, a powerful Black family fights to protect their empire—an "unforgettable must-read" for readers of Tayari Jones (Victoria Christopher Murray, New York Times bestselling author). Jordan Sable, a prosperous undertaker turned political boss...

From the New York Times contributing opinion writer and award-winning author of Reading While Black, a riveting intergenerational account of his family’s search for home and hope “Powerful . . . McCaulley uses examples of his own family’s stories of survival over time to remind readers...

Step into the untold story of resilience, perseverance, and hope in The Son of a Sharecropper. Author Roger Leaks Jr. takes listeners on an intimate journey through the trials and triumphs of growing up Black in the rural South during the era of segregation, sharecropping, and systemic inequality. This deeply personal memoir captures the harsh realities of life in the early 20th century, including the struggles of sharecropping families, the impact of Jim Crow laws, and the unyielding spirit of a young boy determined to rise above his circumstances.

The long-awaited second volume of Nelson Mandela’s memoirs, left unfinished at his death and never before available, are here completed and expanded with notes and speeches written by Mandela during his historic presidency, making for a moving sequel to his worldwide bestseller Long Walk to...

Scars on the Land is the first comprehensive history of American slavery to examine how the environment fundamentally formed enslaved people's lives and how slavery remade the Southern landscape. Over two centuries, from the establishment of slavery in the Chesapeake to the Civil War, one simple calculation had profound consequences: Rather than measuring productivity based on outputs per acre, Southern planters sought to maximize how much labor they could extract from their enslaved workforce.

Winner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction This “elegant” and “unfailingly empathetic” narrative (The New York Times) follows three ordinary South Africans living through the most extraordinary reckoning with race and power any modern country has ever faced. Dipuo, who...

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER THE SUNDAY TIMES LITERARY AWARD WINNER AN LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST A WASHINGTON POST AND NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A deeply researched, shattering new account of Nelson Mandela’s relationship with Winnie...

“A debut of enormous ambition” spanning eight generations of a Black family in West Tennessee as they are repeatedly visited by the Devil (Nathan Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Sweetness of Water) Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the...