African American category: 7736 books

Development Arrested is a major reinterpretation of the two-centuries-old conflict between the African Americans and planters in the Mississippi Delta. In a definitive study of the history and social structures of the plantation system, Clyde Woods examines both planter domination of politics and...

Thomas Shapiro reveals how the lack of family assets--inheritance, home equity, stocks, bonds, savings accounts, and other investments-- along with continuing racial discrimination in crucial areas like homeownership dramatically impact the everyday lives of many black families, reversing gains earned...

In Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare, Leigh Raiford argues that over the past one hundred years, activists in the black freedom struggle have used photographic imagery both to gain political recognition and to develop a different visual vocabulary about black lives. Offering readings of the use of photography...

Women were at the forefront of the civil rights struggle, but their indvidiual stories were rarely heard. Only recently have historians begun to recognize the central role women played in the battle for racial equality. In Sisters in the Struggle, we hear about the unsung heroes of the civil rights...

***WINNER, 2008 PEN Oakland - Josephine Miles National Literary Award Blacks have been vanishing from college campuses in the United States and reappearing in prisons, videos, and movies. Cecil Brown tackles this unwitting "disappearing act" head on, paying special attention to the...

As the major gateway into British North America for travelers on the Underground Railroad, the U.S./Canadian border along the Detroit River was a boundary that determined whether thousands of enslaved people of African descent could reach a place of freedom and opportunity. In A Fluid Frontier: Slavery,...

Actor and social commentator Joseph C. Phillips speaks powerfully about the topic of life as a conservative African-American actor, husband, father, and citizen. In today's political climate, with race such an issue, this collection of essays is not only timely, but thought provoking. Like...

Although he was one of the most important African American political leaders during the last decade of the nineteenth century, George Henry White has been one of the least remembered. A North Carolina representative from 1897 to 1901, White was the last man of his race to serve in the Congress during...

Born in Hamburg in the 1930s, Marione Ingram fled Nazi Germany, only to find racism as pervasive in the American South as anti-Semitism was in Europe. Marione moved first to New York and then to Washington, D.C. where, in 1960, she joined the Congress of Racial Equality, protesting discrimination...

In this nuanced and groundbreaking history, Donna Murch argues that the Black Panther Party (BPP) started with a study group. Drawing on oral history and untapped archival sources, she explains how a relatively small city with a recent history of African American settlement produced such compelling...

This revealing look at the slain civil rights leader offers “invaluable information about his activities and progress as an activist and thinker” (The New York Times). From March, 1953 forward, shortly after he was released from a Boston prison, the FBI watched every move Malcolm Little—aka...

The meaning of race in the antebellum southern United States was anchored in the racial exclusivity of slavery (coded as black) and full citizenship (coded as white as well as male). These traditional definitions of race were radically disrupted after emancipation, when citizenship was granted to...

A roadmap to healing America’s wounds, bridging the racial divide, and diminishing our anger. Mathabane touched the hearts of millions of people around the world with his powerful memoir, Kaffir Boy, about growing up under apartheid in South Africa and was praised by Oprah Winfrey and Bill...

Today, black-owned barber shops play a central role in African American public life. The intimacy of commercial grooming encourages both confidentiality and camaraderie, which make the barber shop an important gathering place for African American men to talk freely. But for many years preceding and...