February is Black History Month, which makes it a great time to check out some of these books about lesser-known people and events of Black history in the United States.
Black in blues : how a color tells the story of my people
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A National Book Award winner examines the connection of the color blue to Black history, weaving together themes of hope, melancholy and personal experience to examine race in ways that transcend politics and ideology.
A National Book Award winner examines the connection of the color blue to Black history, weaving together themes of hope, melancholy and personal experience to examine race in ways that transcend politics and ideology.
The Black utopians : searching for paradise and the Promised Land in America
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A lyrical meditation on how Black Americans have envisioned utopia—and sought to transform their lives.
A lyrical meditation on how Black Americans have envisioned utopia—and sought to transform their lives.
Blk art : the audacious legacy of Black artists and models in Western art
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A fun and fact-filled introduction to the dismissed Black art masters and models who shook up the world. Quietly held within museum and private collections around the world are hundreds of faces of Black men and women, many of their stories unknown. Then, after hundreds of years of Black faces cast as only the subject of the white gaze, a small group of trailblazing Black American painters and sculptors reached national and international fame, setting the stage for the flourishing of Black art in the 1920s and beyond. Captivating and informative, BLK ART is an essential work that elevates a globally dismissed legacy to its proper place.
A fun and fact-filled introduction to the dismissed Black art masters and models who shook up the world. Quietly held within museum and private collections around the world are hundreds of faces of Black men and women, many of their stories unknown. Then, after hundreds of years of Black faces cast as only the subject of the white gaze, a small group of trailblazing Black American painters and sculptors reached national and international fame, setting the stage for the flourishing of Black art in the 1920s and beyond. Captivating and informative, BLK ART is an essential work that elevates a globally dismissed legacy to its proper place.
Don't let them bury my story : the oldest living survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre in her own words
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Viola Ford Fletcher's memoir Don't Let Them Bury My Story vividly recounts the lasting impact of the Tulsa Massacre on her life. As the oldest survivor and last living witness of the tragic events that unfolded in 1921, she shares her testimony with poignant clarity. From the terror of her childhood as a seven-year-old fleeing the burning streets of Greenwood to her current role as a 109-year-old family matriarch seeking justice for the affected families, Mother Fletcher takes us on a journey through a lifetime of pain and perseverance. Her inspiring story is a powerful reminder that some wounds never fully heal, and we must never forget the lessons of our history.
Viola Ford Fletcher's memoir Don't Let Them Bury My Story vividly recounts the lasting impact of the Tulsa Massacre on her life. As the oldest survivor and last living witness of the tragic events that unfolded in 1921, she shares her testimony with poignant clarity. From the terror of her childhood as a seven-year-old fleeing the burning streets of Greenwood to her current role as a 109-year-old family matriarch seeking justice for the affected families, Mother Fletcher takes us on a journey through a lifetime of pain and perseverance. Her inspiring story is a powerful reminder that some wounds never fully heal, and we must never forget the lessons of our history.
A High Price for Freedom: Raising Hidden Voices from the African American Past
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In A High Price for Freedom, house author and director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library Publishing Project, Clyde Ford surfaces the voices of those buried in the African American past to tell the stories of critical moments in the Black Freedom Struggle, challenging what readers think they know about Black history.
In A High Price for Freedom, house author and director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library Publishing Project, Clyde Ford surfaces the voices of those buried in the African American past to tell the stories of critical moments in the Black Freedom Struggle, challenging what readers think they know about Black history.
Flamboyants : the queer Harlem renaissance I wish I'd known
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Profiling the Black and Queer icons from the Harlem Renaissance, an Emmy nominated, award-winning Black nonbinary author and activist interweaves personal stories to bring these flamboyant writers, artists and activists to life, detailing their contributions to American thought and culture that have profoundly impacted our world.
Profiling the Black and Queer icons from the Harlem Renaissance, an Emmy nominated, award-winning Black nonbinary author and activist interweaves personal stories to bring these flamboyant writers, artists and activists to life, detailing their contributions to American thought and culture that have profoundly impacted our world.
Last seen : the enduring search by formerly enslaved people to find their lost families
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Drawing from an archive of nearly five thousand letters and advertisements, the riveting, dramatic story of formerly enslaved people who spent years searching for family members stolen away during slavery.
Drawing from an archive of nearly five thousand letters and advertisements, the riveting, dramatic story of formerly enslaved people who spent years searching for family members stolen away during slavery.
Madness : race and insanity in a Jim Crow asylum
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Tracing the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people's bodies and minds in our current healthcare system, a Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the nation's last segregated asylums.
Tracing the legacy of slavery to the treatment of Black people's bodies and minds in our current healthcare system, a Peabody and Emmy award-winning journalist tells the 93-year-old history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the nation's last segregated asylums.
Miss Major speaks : conversations with a Black trans revolutionary
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Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a transgender elder and activist who has survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, Attica Prison, the HIV/AIDS crisis and a world that white supremacy has built. Miss Major Speaks is both document of her brilliant life--told with intimacy, warmth and an undeniable levity--and a roadmap for the challenges Black, brown, queer, and trans youth will face on the path to liberation today.
Miss Major Griffin-Gracy is a veteran of the infamous Stonewall Riots, a former sex worker, and a transgender elder and activist who has survived Bellevue psychiatric hospital, Attica Prison, the HIV/AIDS crisis and a world that white supremacy has built. Miss Major Speaks is both document of her brilliant life--told with intimacy, warmth and an undeniable levity--and a roadmap for the challenges Black, brown, queer, and trans youth will face on the path to liberation today.
The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family
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From Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body and a writer who has brilliantly illuminated the Black experience in America for decades (Bryan Stevenson), comes a spirited and riveting memoir of growing up in an interracial family in 1960s Chicago and a daughter's journey to understand her parents' marriage--and her own identity.
From Dorothy Roberts, author of Killing the Black Body and a writer who has brilliantly illuminated the Black experience in America for decades (Bryan Stevenson), comes a spirited and riveting memoir of growing up in an interracial family in 1960s Chicago and a daughter's journey to understand her parents' marriage--and her own identity.
Survival is a promise : the eternal life of Audre Lorde
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The first researcher to explore the full depths of the life, work and enduring impact of the iconic writer shows how her ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be of earth on earth, and how to live the ethics that a Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics demands.
The first researcher to explore the full depths of the life, work and enduring impact of the iconic writer shows how her ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be of earth on earth, and how to live the ethics that a Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics demands.
The Survivors of the Clotilda: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the American Slave Trade
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Joining the ranks of Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Zora Neale Hurston's rediscovered classic Barracoon, an immersive and revelatory history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on US soil, told through the stories of its survivors-the last documented survivors of any slave ship-whose lives diverged and intersected in profound ways.
Joining the ranks of Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and Zora Neale Hurston's rediscovered classic Barracoon, an immersive and revelatory history of the Clotilda, the last slave ship to land on US soil, told through the stories of its survivors-the last documented survivors of any slave ship-whose lives diverged and intersected in profound ways.
The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home
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Drawing on the lives of soldiers and officers, doctors and nurses, journalists and activists, artists and politicians, Haygood illuminates a generation caught between two battles: one on the front lines in Vietnam and another for justice and dignity in America. Among those at the heart of the story are Air Force pilot Fred Cherry, the first Black officer captured by the North Vietnamese and a hero to millions back home; Dr. Elbert Nelson, a doctor who came to Vietnam after watching TV footage of the Watts riots in Los Angeles and soon found himself amid rising Black soldier protests overseas; Wallace Terry, a groundbreaking Black reporter determined to expose the dynamics of race and war to the American public and Philippa Schuyler, a biracial concert pianist who traveled to Vietnam to rescue mixed-race orphans, many fathered by Black soldiers, and died trying to bring them to safety. Surrounding their experiences are the cultural and political forces of the era, including Martin Luther King Jr., Marvin Gaye, Berry Gordy, and Lyndon Johnson, whose voices and actions shaped a decade of turbulence and transformation. The War Within a War is both sweeping history and intimate revelation, capturing the tragedies and triumphs, the honor and hypocrisies, the courage and cowardice that shaped an era and whose repercussions resonate today.
Drawing on the lives of soldiers and officers, doctors and nurses, journalists and activists, artists and politicians, Haygood illuminates a generation caught between two battles: one on the front lines in Vietnam and another for justice and dignity in America. Among those at the heart of the story are Air Force pilot Fred Cherry, the first Black officer captured by the North Vietnamese and a hero to millions back home; Dr. Elbert Nelson, a doctor who came to Vietnam after watching TV footage of the Watts riots in Los Angeles and soon found himself amid rising Black soldier protests overseas; Wallace Terry, a groundbreaking Black reporter determined to expose the dynamics of race and war to the American public and Philippa Schuyler, a biracial concert pianist who traveled to Vietnam to rescue mixed-race orphans, many fathered by Black soldiers, and died trying to bring them to safety. Surrounding their experiences are the cultural and political forces of the era, including Martin Luther King Jr., Marvin Gaye, Berry Gordy, and Lyndon Johnson, whose voices and actions shaped a decade of turbulence and transformation. The War Within a War is both sweeping history and intimate revelation, capturing the tragedies and triumphs, the honor and hypocrisies, the courage and cowardice that shaped an era and whose repercussions resonate today.
We refuse : a forceful history of Black resistance
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Offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women, a noted historian presents a fundamental corrective to the historical record, a love letter to Black resilience and a path toward liberation.
Offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women, a noted historian presents a fundamental corrective to the historical record, a love letter to Black resilience and a path toward liberation.