The Blessings Series continue with a heartwarming novel, Chasing Down a Dream (William Morrow Paperbacks, 2017), about what makes a family when trials test relationships. And in Henry Adams, Kansas, there’s never a dull day. After a horrendous storm,

By drawing on a vast, never-utilized trove of archival materials along with oral histories, choreographic analysis, and embodied research, Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora (Oxford University Press,

What is the labor for Black soldiers of the regiment? That is the question Johari Jabir asks in his book Conjuring Freedom: Music and Masculinity in the Civil War’s “Gospel Army” (Ohio State University Press, 2017).

In 1845 two thinkers from the American hemisphere – the Argentinean statesman Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, and the fugitive ex-slave, abolitionist leader, and orator from the United States, Frederick Douglass – both published their first works.

When Dorothy Sterling wrote her book about nineteenth-century black women in America, she stated in the introduction that the book was not a definitive history of black women but a sourcebook to lead others to “compile a complete history.

First Martyr of Liberty: Crispus Attucks in American Memory (Oxford University Press, 2017) explores how Crispus Attucks’ death in the 1770 Boston Massacre led to his achieving mythic significance in African Americans’ struggle to incorporate their exp...

Addie Wyatt stands at the intersection of unionism, feminism, and civil rights activism in post-World War II America. In Reverend Addie Wyatt: Faith and the Fight for Labor, Gender, and Racial Equality (University of Illinois Press, 2016),

Tanya Ann Kennedy‘s book, Historicizing Post-Discourses: Postfeminism and Postracialism in United States Culture (SUNY Press, 2017), is a complex and important exploration of our collective understanding of questions of racial and gender equality,

Rosalind Rosenberg‘s book Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray (Oxford University Press, 2017) is a multi-layered and rich biography of Pauli Murray, an activist, lawyer and Episcopal priest whose life intersected with the most significant civil and hum...

The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (Temple University Press, 2017) is a book-length justification for the burgeoning field of Black Male Studies. The author posits that we should conceptualize the black male as a victim,...

In his 1903 hit “Congo Love Song,” James Weldon Johnson recounts a sweet if seemingly generic romance between two young Africans. While the song’s title may appear consistent with that narrative, it also invokes the site of King Leopold II of Belgium’s...

Jackson Poetry Prize Winner Speaks Patricia Spears Jones has been writing poetry since she was twenty and then she was “good.” Today, the prolific poet is the winner of one of the most prestigious poetry prizes–the Jackson Poetry Prize.

Leigh Fought is an assistant professor of history at Le Moyne College. Her book Women in the World of Frederick Douglass (Oxford University Press, 2017) offers a detailed and rich portrait of Frederick Douglass’ private and public life and his many rel...

Blue Texas: The Making of a Multiracial Democratic Coalition in the Civil Rights Era (University of North Carolina Press, 2016) is about the “other” Texas, not the state known for its cowboy conservatism, but a mid-twentieth-century hotbed of community...

It’s A Love Story. Set in the 1800s, Ruth’s Redemption (Lift Every Voice, 2012), is an unusual depiction of the lives of slaves and free blacks in pre-Civil War America. Although a slave, Bo is educated. When he gets his freedom,

Dr. Brittney C. Cooper, who is an assistant professor of women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University, explores the intellectual genealogy and geography of the work of African-American women over the course of more than a century in her book,

When the Sun comes back And the first quail calls Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd. For the old man is a-waiting for to carry you to freedom If you follow the Drinkin’ Gourd. -“Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd” author unknown (possibly Peg Leg Joe) They left in the ...

In Afro-Atlantic Flight: Speculative Returns and the Black Fantastic (Duke University Press, 2017), Michelle D. Commander examines the (im)possibility of literal and figurative returns to Africa of African-descended peoples throughout the diaspora.

Josie Flint, known as Jaybird, narrates her story of life in Atlanta during the turbulent South as Jim Crow laws come to an end. Her school desegregates. The country meanders through new ideas brought about by the Civil Rights movement.

The “ownership” of Southern food is a divisive cultural issue, reflective of the ongoing struggle for racial justice in America. Michael Twitty shares with us that struggle in The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the...

What is Black Power? Does it still exist in the so-called post-racial 21st Century? How does Black Power relate to similar movements, like Black Lives Matter? There as so many questions, but there may now be a scholar and text to help answer many of th...

Most psychology books are written by experts with knowledge deriving from professional experience–for which we are grateful. Occasionally, a psychologist ventures to write a book that draws from intimate personal experience to illuminate important psyc...

From the American Revolution to the present day, African Americans have stepped forward in their nation’s defense. Fighting for Uncle Sam: Buffalo Solders in the Frontier Army (Schiffer, 2016) breathes new vitality into a stirring subject,

Public scholarship takes many forms, from op-eds to activism to blog posts. In their new book, Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family (Columbia University Press, 2017), Associate Professor Bruce Haynes and freelance writer,

The legendary band leader Sun Ra said he came from Saturn. Known on Earth for his inventive music and extravagant stage shows, he pioneered free-form improvisation in an ensemble setting with the devoted band he called the “Arkestra,