Cultural Literature

An intimate and electrifying collection of essays from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights In these gorgeously written and timely pieces, prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each...

Considered the foremost exponent of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra mastered a wide array of styles that spanned jazz, R&B, exotica, Afro-hybrids, electronic, big band, solo piano, orchestral, experimental, and chamber works. In his 45-year recording career, he...

The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo...

The essential oral history of hip-hop, from its origins on the playgrounds of the Bronx to its reign as the most powerful force in pop culture The music that would come to be known as hip-hop was born at a party in the Bronx in the summer of 1973. Now,...

2019 Foreword INDIES Finalist American Founders reveals men and women of African descent as key protagonists in the story of American democracy. It chronicles how black people developed and defended New World settlements, undermined slavery, and...

2019 Foreword INDIES Finalist American Founders reveals men and women of African descent as key protagonists in the story of American democracy. It chronicles how black people developed and defended New World settlements, undermined slavery, and...

Many documentaries, articles, museum exhibits, books, and movies have now treated the subject of the Tuskegee Airmen, the only black American military pilots in World War II. Most of these works have focused on their training and their subsequent...

This book honors the voices of African Americans of the Civil War era through their letters, inviting readers to engage personally with the Black historical experience. Amidst bloody battles and political maneuvering, thousands of African Americans spent...

Black women are the great American success story: they must acknowledge their power and then wield the hell out of it. Like a shadow's distended, colorless depiction of reality, the truth about Black women has been contorted. In POWER: THE RISE OF BLACK...

Their music changed pop history, but we've never known much about the people who made it...until now. Sly Stone shook the foundations of soul and turned it into a brand new sound that influenced and liberated musicians as varied as Miles Davis, Stevie...

#1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E. Ricks offers a new take on the Civil Rights Movement, stressing its unexpected use of military strategy and its lessons for nonviolent resistance around the world. In Waging a Good...

Tuskegee University Cemetery Stories chronicles the important contributions of those whose last home on this earth is the Tuskegee University Cemetery--those many men and women who diligently built on the foundation laid by Tuskegee founders Lewis Adams...

If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law?In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow...

Discover the early life and legacy of groundbreaking American writer Toni Morrison in this beautifully illustrated nonfiction picture book biography. Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford in Ohio, Toni Morrison grew up listening to her family tell myths, legends,...

In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service recruited 623 African American men from Macon County, Alabama, for a study of "the effects of untreated syphilis in the Negro male." For the next 40 years--even after the development of penicillin, the cure for...

Reverend H. K. Matthews is one of the unsung heroes of the Southern civil rights movement. Among his activism, he participated in the first sit-in demonstrations in northwest Florida, and led a campaign against the use of Confederate symbols at an area...