"Inspired by memories of her beloved grandmother, photographer and author Alysia Burton Steele--picture editor on a Pulitzer Prize-winning team--combines heart-wrenching narrative with poignant photographs of more than 50 female church elders in the Mississippi Delta. These ordinary women lived extraordinary lives under the harshest conditions of the Jim Crow era and during the courageous changes of the Civil Rights Movement. With the help of local pastors, Steele recorded these living witnesses to history and folk ways, and shares the significance of being a Black woman--child, daughter, sister, wife, mother, and grandmother in Mississippi--a Jewel of the Delta. From the stand Mrs. Tennie Self took for her marriage to be acknowledged in the phone book, to the life-threatening sacrifice required to vote for the first time, these 50 inspiring portraits are the faces of love and triumph that will teach readers faith and courage in difficult times"
"In A Dreadful Deceit, award-winning social historian Jacqueline Jones traces the lives of six African Americans from the colonial era to the late 20th century, using their stories to illustrate the complex ways in which racial ideologies in this country have changed since the first Africans arrived on the nation's shores hundreds of years ago. The very idea of "blackness," she shows, has changed fundamentally over this period. For Antonio, an enslaved Angolan man tortured to death by his owner in 1650s Maryland, being black meant being defined purely in terms of physical characteristics, without regard to his actual ethnicity (his Angolan identity) and without association with any countrymen, confederates, or co-religionists who might support him. The label made Antonio uniquely vulnerable, and indeed gained traction precisely because it defined, rationalized, and exploited that vulnerability. It is one of the terrible ironies of history that later generations of African Americans developed a shared identity around this mythologized label, yet it is also true that each generation has also had to confront its limits and limitations."
Presents outstanding women from all walks of life, sharing intimate insights into what their dark skin means to them. Features celebrities such as Lupita Nyong'o, Vanessa Williams, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Judge Mablean Ephriam, Brandi and Karli Harvey. --From publisher description.
African American Fraternities and Sororities: The Legacy and the Vision explores the rich past and bright future of the nine Black Greek-Letter organizations that make up the National Pan-Hellenic Council. In the long tradition of African American benevolent and secret societies, intercollegiate African American fraternities and sororities have strong traditions of fostering brotherhood and sisterhood among their members, exerting considerable influence in the African American community, and being on the forefront of civic action, community service, and philanthropy. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Toni Morrison, Arthur Ashe, Carol Moseley Braun, Bill Cosby, Sarah Vaughan, George Washington Carver, Hattie McDaniel , and Bobby Rush are among the many trailblazing members of these organizations. The rolls of African American fraternities and sororities serve as a veritable who's who among African American leadership in the United States and abroad. African American Fraternities and Sororities places the history of these organizations in context, linking them to other movements and organizations that predated them and tying their history to one of the most important eras of United States history―the Civil Rights struggle.
In the spring and summer of 1961, several hundred Americans—blacks and whites, men and women—converged on Jackson, Mississippi, to challenge state segregation laws. The Freedom Riders, as they came to be known, were determined to open up the South to civil rights: it was illegal for bus and train stations to discriminate, but most did and were not interested in change. Over 300 people were arrested and convicted of the charge "breach of the peace." The name, mug shot, and other personal details of each Freedom Rider arrested were duly recorded and saved by agents of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a Stasi-like investigative agency whose purpose was to "perform any and all acts deemed necessary and proper to protect the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi." How the Commission thought these details would actually protect the state is not clear, but what is clear, forty-six years later, is that by carefully recording names and preserving the mug shots, the Commission inadvertently created a testament to these heroes of the civil rights movement.
"An extraordinary history...Deeply researched, elegantly written...a towering achievement that will not be soon forgotten." --Brent Staples, New York Times Book Review NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review * The Washington Post * Amazon Giving voice to the voiceless, the Chicago Defender condemned Jim Crow, catalyzed the Great Migration, and focused the electoral power of black America. Robert S. Abbott founded The Defender in 1905, smuggled hundreds of thousands of copies into the most isolated communities in the segregated South, and was dubbed a "Modern Moses," becoming one of the first black millionaires in the process. His successor wielded the newspaper's clout to elect mayors and presidents, including Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy, who would have lost in 1960 if not for TheDefender's support. Along the way, its pages were filled with columns by legends like Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, and Martin Luther King. Drawing on dozens of interviews and extensive archival research, Ethan Michaeli constructs a revelatory narrative of race in America and brings to life the reporters who braved lynch mobs and policemen's clubs to do their jobs, from the age of Teddy Roosevelt to the age of Barack Obama.
The heroism of those involved in the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott is presented here in poignant and thorough detail. The untold stories of those, both black and white, whose lives were forever changed by the boycott are shared, along with a chilling glimpse into the world of the white council members who tried to stop them. In the end, the boycott brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to prominence and improved the lives of all black Americans. Based on extensive interviews conducted over decades and culled from thousands of exclusive documents, this behind-the-scenes examination details the history of violence and abuse on the city buses. A look at Martin Luther King Jr.'s trial, an examination of how black and white lawyers worked together to overturn segregation in the courtroom, and even firsthand accounts from the segregationists who bombed the homes of some of Montgomery's most progressive ministers are included. This fast-moving story reads like a legal thriller but is based solely on documented facts and firsthand accounts, presenting the compelling and never-before-told stories of the beginning of the end of segregation.
Dreadlocks are a modern phenomenon with roots reaching as far back as the fifth century. According to ancient Hindu beliefs, dreads signified a singleminded pursuit of the spiritual. Devotion to God displaced vanity, and hair was left to its own devices. Dreads captures this organic explosion of hair in all its beautiful, subversive glory. One hundred duotone portraits present dread-heads from around the world, in all walks of life. Interviewed on location by the photographers, jatta-wearers wax philosophic about the integrity of their hair, and every stunning image confirms their choice. Alice Walker puts words to pictures, offering lyrical ruminations about her decision to let her own mane mat.
"Combining the passion of a family member with the skepticism of a social sicentist, Lightfoot raises the standard of authenticity in African American biography."-Washington Post Book World. Winner of the Christopher Award.
When wealthy Mississippi cotton planter Isaac Ross died in 1836, his will decreed that his plantation, Prospect Hill, should be liquidated and the proceeds from the sale be used to pay for his slaves' passage to the newly established colony of Liberia in western Africa. Ross's heirs contested the will for more than a decade, prompting a deadly revolt in which a group of slaves burned Ross's mansion to the ground. But the will was ultimately upheld. The slaves then emigrated to their new home, where they battled the local tribes and built vast plantations with Greek Revival-style mansions in a region the Americo-Africans renamed "Mississippi in Africa." In the late twentieth century, the seeds of resentment sown over a century of cultural conflict between the colonists and tribal people exploded, begetting a civil war that rages in Liberia to this day. Tracking down Prospect Hill's living descendants, deciphering a history ruled by rumor, and delivering the complete chronicle in riveting prose, journalist Alan Huffman has rescued a lost chapter of American history whose aftermath is far from over.
The inspiring story of one of the greatest moments in civil rights history seen through the eyes of four young people at the center of the action.
The 1963 Birmingham Children?s March was a turning point in American history. In the streets of Birmingham, Alabama, the fight for civil rights lay in the hands of children like Audrey Hendricks, Wash Booker, James Stewart, and Arnetta Streeter. We?ve Got a Job tells the little-known story of the 4,000 black elementary, middle, and high school students who voluntarily went to jail between May 2 and May 11, 1963. The children succeeded ?where adults had failed?in desegregating one of the most racially violent cities in America.
By combining in-depth, one-on-one interviews and extensive research, author Cynthia Levinson recreates the events of the Birmingham Children?s March from a new and very personal perspective.
The Post-Racial Negro Green Book is a state-by-state compilation of occurrences, information, and data that document a pattern of 21st century racial bias against Black people in the United States. It is an archive intended to preserve the voluminous amount of contemporary history on the topic in a permanent medium for the sake of review, consideration, discussion, and action.
African American Fraternities and Sororities by 
The African American Roots of Modernism by 
Black Wall Street by Breach of Peace by 
Creative Conflict in African American Thought by 
We Speak Your Names by