A groundbreaking Black artist and his career in the Jim Crow SouthThis book is the first biography of Graham Jackson (1903-1983), a virtuosic musician whose life story displays the complexities of being a Black professional in the segregated South. David Cason discusses how Jackson navigated a web of racial and social negotiations throughout his long career and highlights his little-known role in events of the twentieth century.Widely known for an iconic ph...

Winner of the National Book Award for NonfictionFinalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for HistoryFrom the leading historian and Guggenheim fellow, an electrifying story of the sensational murder trial that divided a city and ignited the civil rights struggle.Arc of Justice is a necessary contribution to what seems like an insoluble moral dilemma: race in America.” —Paul Hendrickso...

With a new preface, a "profound, chilling, and heartbreaking, contribution to American history" that investigates the causes of the twentieth century's deadliest race riot and how its legacy has scarred and shaped a community ( Boston Globe).On May 30, 1921, a misunderstanding between a white elevator operator and a Black delivery boy escalated into the worse race riot in U.S. history. In this compelling and deeply human account, James Hirsch investigates h...

A gripping saga of race and retribution in the Deep South. "Like a real-life To Kill a Mockingbird, but with even more subtlety and complexity." —Walter Isaacson, New York Times-bestselling authorIn 1945, Willie McGee, a young African-American man from Laurel, Mississippi, was sentenced to death for allegedly raping Willette Hawkins, a white housewife. At first, McGee's case was barely noticed, until Bella Abzug, a young New York labor lawyer, was ...

This "extraordinary history" of the influential black newspaper is "deeply researched, elegantly written [and] a towering achievement" (Brent Staples, New York Times Book Review).In 1905, Robert S. Abbott started printing The Chicago Defender, a newspaper dedicated to condemning Jim Crow and encouraging African Americans living in the South to join the Great Migration. Smuggling hundreds of thousands of copies into the most isolated communities in the segre...

"A history cum memoir by Lena Horne's daughter tells the story of her forebears . . . eloquently conveys . . . how politics and prejudice can shape a family." — The New YorkerIn The Black Calhouns, Gail Lumet Buckley—daughter of actress Lena Horne—delves deep into her family history, detailing the experiences of an extraordinary African American family from Civil War to Civil Rights.Beginning with her great-great...

NAACP Image Award Finalist: "Boyd's riveting new history…turns an oft-caricatured community into a world of actual, struggling human beings."—Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and MeA Michigan Notable Books HonoreeIn this book, the author of Baldwin's Harlem looks at the evolving culture, politics, economics, and spiritual life of Detroit—in "a blend of memoir, love letter, history, and clear-eyed reportage that explores...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A celebration of American history through the music that helped to shape a nation, by Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and music superstar Tim McGraw“Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw form an irresistible duo—connecting us to music as an unsung force in our nation's history.”—Doris Kearns GoodwinThrough all the years of strife and triumph, America has been shaped not just by our elected leaders and our formal ...

A multigenerational saga of a family and a community in Tulsa’s Greenwood district, known as “Black Wall Street,” that in one century survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, urban renewal, and gentrification“Ambitious . . . absorbing . . . By the end of Luckerson’s outstanding book, the idea of building something new from the ashes of what has been destroyed becomes comprehensible, even hopeful.”—Marcia Chatelain, The New York Times...

They were black and white, young and old, men and women. In the spring and summer of 1961, they put their lives on the line, riding buses through the American South to challenge segregation in interstate transport. Their story is one of the most celebrated episodes of the civil rights movement, yet a full-length history has never been written until now. In these pages, acclaimed historian Raymond Arsenault provides a gripping account of six pivotal months that jolted the consciousness of A...

**NATIONAL BESTSELLER"This book, I suspect, will detonate over certain corners in America.... Darkology is a major and thrilling work of American history." —Dwight Garner, New York Times Book Review, cover storyAs Heard on NPR's Fresh Air: "Quite enlightening." —Terry Gross"Tremendous.... Barnes has corralled the chaos, contradiction, and surprise of American social reality; evaded mythology; and made... the ‘unwritten’ legible.... [A] pai...

Updated With The Latest Facts And Photos"A Black history buff's dream." --EbonyFrom ground-breaking achievements to awe-inspiring feats of excellence, this definitive resource reveals over 450 "firsts" by African Americans in fields as diverse as government, entertainment, education, science, medicine, law, the military, and the business world. Discover the first doctor to perform open heart surgery and the youngest person to fly solo around the wo...