General History

Praised by The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate; Publishers Weekly; and more, this is "a bracing corrective to a national mythology" (New York Times) around the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement has become...

"At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book ... without a doubt, not only the very best film book ... but it is also one of the best books of the year in any genre. An absolutely essential read." --Shondaland This unprecedented history...

Now part of the HBO docuseries Exterminate All the Brutes, written and directed by Raoul Peck The 20th anniversary edition of a pioneering classic that explores the contexts in which history is produced--now with a new foreword by renowned scholar Hazel...

The Haitian Revolution, the product of the first successful slave revolt, was truly world-historic in its impact. When Haiti declared independence in 1804, the leading powers--France, Great Britain, and Spain--suffered an ignominious defeat and the New...

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice The fascinating, forgotten story of the 1970s attempt to build a city dedicated to racial equality in the heart of "Klan Country" In 1969, with America's cities in turmoil and racial tensions high, civil...

On July 23, 1968, police in Cleveland battled with black nationalists.The dramatic shootout in the Glenville neighborhood left ten dead and over fifteen wounded. The event sparked days of heavy rioting and raised myriad questions. Were these shootings an...

Fifty years ago, a single bullet robbed us of one of the world’s most eloquent voices for human rights and justice. To the Promised Land goes beyond the iconic view of Martin Luther King, Jr., as an advocate of racial harmony, to explore...

One of Book Riot's "29 Amazing New Books Coming in 2018" A groundbreaking collection based on oral histories that brilliantly plumb the leadership of African American women in the twentieth-century fight for civil rights--many nearly lost to...

Durham and Orange Counties have vibrant and active African American communities. Throughout the region's unjust past, generations have shown extraordinary strength and resolve. Floyd McKissick became the first African American student at the University...

Forsyth County, Georgia, at the turn of the twentieth century was home to a large African American community that included ministers and teachers, farmers and field hands, tradesmen, servants, and children. Many black residents were poor sharecroppers,...

The companion book to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s PBS series, And Still I Rise--a timeline and chronicle of the past fifty years of black history in the U.S. in more than 350 photos.Beginning with the assassination of Malcolm X in February 1965, And Still I...

Robinson explores the singularly curious and inimitable tragic history of the island nation of Haiti, beginning with the present anarchic disrepair of it modern state. From one revolution to another, Haiti has changed the fate of empires yet has not been...

In this first comparative history of race relations in the United States and South Africa, George M. Fredrickson uncovers parallels and differences in the origin and expression of white supremacy in the two countries.

Since its original publication in 1984, Manning Marable's Race, Reform, and Rebellion has become widely known as the most crucial political and social history of African Americans since World War II. Aimed at students of contemporary American politics...

Historian, journalist, educator, and civil rights advocate W. E. B. Du Bois was perhaps most accomplished as a sociologist of race relations and of the black community in the United States. This volume collects his most important sociological writings...

From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date--a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering...