Cultural Literature

After a decade restoring the Camptown Cemetery in Brenham, Texas, the state's oldest established Black graveyard, Charles Swenson researched the names he found there, developing a narrative of the freedom colony. The cemetery becomes not just a place...

At a time when America faces escalating racial tensions, the re-emergence of white nationalist movements, and growing threats to democracy, Ralph Remington's Penetrating Whiteness is an urgently needed clarion call. This powerful and timely collection of...

For readers of Kiese Laymon's Heavy and Hanif Abdurraqib's A Little Devil in America, a beautiful, painful, and soaring tribute to everything that Black men are and can be Growing up in the Bronx, Jo?l Leon was taught that being soft, being vulnerable,...

A groundbreaking look at how Black visionaries--from Wall Street to Lagos and beyond--are reimagining capitalism to benefit the needs of Black people and, ultimately, everyone. To many, the term "Black Capitalists" is oxymoronic. Black people were the...

A vibrant, deeply researched biography of A'Lelia Walker--daughter of Madam C.J. Walker and herself a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance--written by her great-granddaughter. Dubbed the "joy goddess of Harlem's 1920s" by poet Langston Hughes,...

From convicted felon to Olympic representative, Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr., better known as Snoop Dogg, has navigated a life of extraordinary highs and lows. From co-hosting "Martha & Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party" to becoming a pop culture icon, Snoop's...

After the Civil War, Black landownership in Fairfax County increased by leaps and bounds. By the 1870s, retired Union officers were purchasing land that they sold to African Americans like Joshua Ball, Joshua Pearson, Robert Bradley and John Coates...

Explore the remarkable life and heartfelt verse of the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., the first Black senior minister at Riverside Church in New York City, one of the largest multicultural congregations in the US. As the first Black senior minister at...

The Art of Afrofuturism explores the groundbreaking artwork of dozens of artists from multiple continents and across the African Diaspora who are contributing to a new vision of the future and their place in it. Whether from the continent of Africa, the...

Black Earth Rising presents works by artists of African diasporic, Latin American, and Native American identity that address vital questions of land, presence, climate crisis, and social and environmental justice against the historical backdrop of...

What is beauty, and what is its political function? In what ways might it help undermine white supremacy and cultivate a more democratic political culture? Democracy and Beauty shines a light on W. E. B. Du Bois's attempts to answer these questions...

These striking studio portraits, curated and brought together following ten years of research championed by Autograph, constitute the most comprehensive collection of nineteenth-century photography depicting the Black subject in the Victorian era,...

A military memoir by a biracial child of refugees and survivors, Roadside is about life and death, about family lost and gained, and about America, as a dream and a reality. It's about the roads one takes to leave home and find it again. As a...

As seen on Humans of New York, Jonathan Conyers introduces us to the teachers, his debate coach, a homeless man, and a boy named Diego who changed his life. Booklist calls it "a moving story about finding your supporters and building your future." ...

A gorgeous, authoritative, and image-filled celebration of pageantry and community created by ballroom culture for Black and Brown LGBTQIA+ people. The subculture of Ballroom emerged in Harlem in the '60s out of a need for safe and inclusive spaces for...

A sweeping history of one of the nation's most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice--from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Kevin Sack Few people beyond South Carolina's...