African American Studies

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...

2000 marks the centenary of Lift Every Voice and Sing, James Weldon Johnson's most famous lyric, which is now embraced as the Negro National Anthem. In celebration, this Penguin original collects all the poems from Johnson's published works--Fifty Years...

"[A] nuanced, Edith Wharton-style treatment of the upper reaches of black society...[Little] is an arbiter of that insular world." --The Washington Post Abra Lewis Dixon is the envy of the fashionable, professional women of her well-heeled social circle...

We can heal our communities--one friendship at a time. Many of us want to do something to improve race relations, but we don't know where to start or even if we can make a difference. In Life-Changing Cross-Cultural Friendships, beloved authors and good...

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...

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...

A "brutal, beautifully rendered" (The New York Times Book Review) collection of essays that offers poignant reflections on living between society's most charged, politicized, and intractable polar spaces--between black and white, rich and poor, thin and...

"Courageous, achingly honest. --Michelle Alexander, New York Times bestselling author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness "A compelling, incisive and thoughtful examination of race, origin and what it means to be called...

Published in time for the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Killing King uncovers previously unknown FBI files and sources, as well as new forensics to convincingly make the case that King was assassinated by a...

Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. At several historic moments, the trajectory of racial inequality could have been altered dramatically. Perhaps no moment was more opportune than the...

A call for the separation of race and state, backed by a deep dive into the surreal world of racial classification in America. Americans are understandably squeamish about official racial and ethnic classifications. Nevertheless, they are ubiquitous in...

How does it feel when your heritage isn't listed as an option on an identification form?What is it like to grow up as the only person in your family who looks like you?Where do you belong if you are simultaneously seen as being 'too much' of one race and...