History

In December 1941 the Japanese invaded Burma. For the British, the longest land campaign of the Second World War had begun. 100,000 African soldiers were taken from Britain's colonies to fight the Japanese in the Burmese jungles. They performed heroically...

Although it occurred nearly a century ago, the Elaine Massacre of 1919 remains the subject of intense inquiry as historians try to answer a multitude of questions, such as why authorities in the Arkansas Delta used such overwhelming violence to put down...

Here is the black Chicago family album, of African Americans leaving the violent, racist South and "goin' to Chicago" to find the American Dream.The story of black Chicago is so rich that few know it all. It began long before the city itself. Wells, the...

"An astonishingly detailed rendering of the variety and complexity of racial experience in an evolving national culture." -The New York Times Book ReviewIn the Obama era, as Americans confront the enduring significance of race and heritage, this...

Civil rights leader and legislator Lloyd A. Barbee frequently signed his correspondence with "Justice for All," a phrase that embodied his life's work of fighting for equality and fairness. An attorney most remembered for the landmark case that...

Springfield became the capital of Illinois due in large part to Abraham Lincoln--lawyer, politician, and president. Lincoln lived in Springfield from 1837 to 1861, and during the decade after his departure, the African American population in the city...

A dozen years in the making, The Inheritors weaves together the stories of three ordinary South Africans over five tumultuous decades in a sweeping and exquisite look at what really happens when a country resolves to end white supremacy. Dipuo grew up...

In the mid-1980s, Emmanuel Jal was a seven year old Sudanese boy, living in a small village with his parents, aunts, uncles, and siblings. But as Sudan's civil war moved closer--with the Islamic government seizing tribal lands for water, oil, and other...

The 1619 Project illuminated the ways in which every aspect of life in the United States was and is shaped by the existence of slavery. Black Ghost of Empire focuses on emancipation and how this opportunity to make right further codified the racial caste...

What began in spring 2020 as local protests in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police quickly exploded into a massive nationwide movement. Millions of mostly young people defiantly flooded into the nation's streets, demanding an...

An important book of epic scope on America's first racially integrated, religiously-inspired political movement for change--The Underground Railroad, a movement peopled by daring heroes and heroines, and everyday folk For most, the mention of the...

Known as the Leopard, the president of Zaire for thirty-two years, Mobutu Sese Seko, showed all the cunning of his namesake -- seducing Western powers, buying up the opposition, and dominating his people with a devastating combination of brutality and...

The classic memoir by Cleveland Sellers that offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into his volunteer work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the 1960s civil rights movement.Among histories of the civil rights movement of the...