Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system f... View More...
From the birth of the United States, African American men and women have fought and died in defense of a nation that has often denied them many fundamental rights of citizenship. Now Gerald Astor has chronicled their efforts and accomplishments in this critically acclaimed survey. From Crispus Attucks, the first casualty of the American Revolution, to fighters on both sides of the Civil War, Astor moves to the postwar Indian campaigns and the infamous Brownsville riot. He also documents the prejudices and grievous wrongs that have kept African Americans from service -- and finally traces their... View More...
Charles Ball's simply stated verbal account of the shocking events in his life provides gripping details of Southern slavery before the Civil War. His recollections and observations encompass the manner in which he was treated by planters and slaveholders in Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia; the conditions and treatment of other slaves; the state of morals among cotton planters; and the perils and suffering of fugitive slaves.One of the earliest and most important slave narratives, this account provides a valuable primary source on early nineteenth-century Southern plantation life. An ins... View More...
Rosa Parks has been called the mother of the civil rights movement. Parks was a seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, when, in 1955, she refused to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger. She was arrested and convicted of violating a local ordinance, but her act of defiance sparked a citywide boycott of the bus system by blacks that lasted more than a year. This single act of defiance was the catalyst for Martin Luther King, Jr., then an unknown clergyman, to rise into the national spotlight.Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed segregation on city buses.In "Rosa Parks", Dougla... View More...
A renowned collector of Civil War photographs and a prodigious researcher, Ronald S. Coddington combines compelling archival images with biographical stories that reveal the human side of the war. This third volume in his series on Civil War soldiers contains previously unpublished photographs of African American Civil War participants--many of whom fought to secure their freedom. During the Civil War, 200,000 African American men enlisted in the Union army or navy. Some of them were free men and some escaped from slavery; others were released by sympathetic owners to serve the war effort. Afr... View More...
Marc Dollinger charts the transformation of American Jewish political culture from the Cold War liberal consensus of the early postwar years to the rise and influence of Black Power-inspired ethnic nationalism. He shows how, in a period best known for the rise of black antisemitism and the breakdown of the black-Jewish alliance, black nationalists enabled Jewish activists to devise a new Judeo-centered political agenda--including the emancipation of Soviet Jews, the rise of Jewish day schools, the revitalization of worship services with gender-inclusive liturgy, and the birth of a new form of ... View More...
Scholar and author Henry Louis Gates Jr returns with this work exploring the evolution of African American society into what has become two distinct and striking communities - the privileged and the disenfranchised. View More...
Chronicles African American participation in the Civil War from their earliest enlistment efforts through veterans' experiences in the postwar years. Military specifics are examined within the broader political contexts of citizenship and emancipation to illuminate the social and historical milieu in which these men served. View More...
"The curious and the practical will find it informative". -- Emerge
A rich source for anyone interested in cultural history, this guide describes 300 cemeteries throughout the U.S. and Canada. Riveting stories recount the struggles of African Americans to maintain vestiges of their heritage through funeral rites and ownership of burial grounds. View More...
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a "groundbreaking" (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society--and in ourselves. "The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind."--The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review - Time - NPR - The Washington Post - Shelf Awareness - Library Journal - Publishers Weekly - Kirkus Reviews Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation... View More...
"His life informed us, his dreams sustain us yet."*On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial looking out over thousands of troubled Americans who had gathered in the name of civil rights and uttered his now famous words, "I have a dream . . ." It was a speech that changed the course of history.This fortieth-anniversary edition honors Martin Luther King Jr.'s courageous dream and his immeasurable contribution by presenting his most memorable words in a concise and convenient edition. As Coretta Scott King says in her foreword, "This collection includes ma... View More...
In the American Revolution, Virginians were the most eloquent spokesmen for freedom and quality. George Washington led the Americans in battle against British oppression. Thomas Jefferson led them in declaring independence. Virginians drafted not only the Declaration but also the Constitution and the Bill of Rights; they were elected to the presidency of the United States under that Constitution for thirty-two of the first thirty-six years of its existence. They were all slaveholders. In the new preface Edmund S. Morgan writes: "Human relations among us still suffer from the former enslavement... View More...
The #1 New York Times bestsellerThe phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space. Now a major motion picture starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner. Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers... View More...
In this controversial essay collection, award-winning writer Shelby Stelle illuminates the origins of the current conflict in race relations--the increase in anger, mistrust, and even violence between black and whites. With candor and persuasive argument, he shows us how both black and white Americans have become trapped into seeing color before character, and how social policies designed to lessen racial inequities have instead increased them. The Content of Our Character is neither "liberal" nor "conservative," but an honest, courageous look at America's most enduring and wrenching social di... View More...
