February is Black History Month
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Race Against Time
by
"As the upheaval of 2020 has made clear, America has utterly failed to atone for its original sin of racism. As America turns blacker and browner, the combination of fearful whites, angry and newly empowered blacks, and an inexcusable absence of leadership from Washington has created ideal conditions for conflict. There is a way out of our burning race crisis -- but in order to prepare for the future, we first need to learn the lessons of the new age of reckoning. The current racial reckoning is the culmination of two decades of political miscalculations and ongoing organizing. In Race Against Time, national political commentator Keith Boykin offers a nuanced, in-depth account of political maneuverings from Washington to the streets, showing how Republicans, Democrats, and even populist movements have failed to address the dire realities that threaten the nation. Boykin details the effects of the emergence and persistence of the Black Lives Matter movement; Democrats' failed strategies of incrementalism during the Obama era and the legacies of Clinton-era policies; the minority, obstructionist policies of the Republicans; and the Bernie Sanders coalition's well-meaning but race-neutral economic reforms.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; E184.A1 B695 2021ISBN: 9781645037262Publication Date: 2021-09-14 -
Four Hundred Souls
by
A chorus of extraordinary voices tells one of history's great epics: The four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619-- a year before the Mayflower dropped anchor off Cape Cod, when the White Lion disgorged "some 20 and odd Negroes" onto the shores of Virginia-- to the present, when African Americans, descendants of those on the White Lion and a thousand other routes to this country, continue a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles, stunning achievements, and millions of ordinary lives passing through extraordinary history. Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume "community" history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a brief period of that four-hundred-year-span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. -- From dust jacket
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; E185 .F625 2021ISBN: 9780593134047Publication Date: 2021-02-02 -
The Cooking Gene
by
"Culinary historian Michael W. Twitty brings a fresh perspective to our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry--both black and white--through food, from Africa to America and from slavery to freedom. Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touchpoints in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine. Twitty travels from the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields to tell of the struggles his family faced and how food enabled his ancestors' survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and visits Civil War battlefields in Virginia, synagogues in Alabama, and black-owned organic farms in Georgia. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the South's past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep--the power of food to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together"--Jacket.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; E185.89.F66 T95 2017ISBN: 9780062379290Publication Date: 2017-08-01 -
Defiant
by
Hudson, Wade, author.
Notes
"The memoir of Wade Hudson, a Black man and Civil Rights activist who came of age in the 1960s at the height of the Civil Rights Movement"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; F376.3 .H83 A3 2021ISBN: 9780593126356Publication Date: 2021-10-12 -
The Kneeling Man
by
"In the famous photograph of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of Memphis's Lorraine Motel, one man kneeled down beside King, trying to staunch the blood from his fatal head wound with a borrowed towel. This kneeling man was a member of the Invaders, an activist group that was in talks with King in the days leading up to the murder. But he also had another identity: an undercover Memphis police officer reporting on the activities of this group, which was thought to be possibly dangerous and potentially violent. This kneeling man is Leta McCollough Seletzky's father"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; F444.M553 M336 2023ISBN: 9781640094727Publication Date: 2023-04-04 -
Caste
by
"As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power--which groups have it and which do not. In this book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings. Beyond race, class, or other factors, there is a powerful caste system that influences people's lives and behavior and the nation's fate. Linking the caste systems of America, India, and Nazi Germany, Wilkerson explores eight pillars that underlie caste systems across civilizations, including divine will, bloodlines, stigma, and more. Using riveting stories about people--including Martin Luther King, Jr., baseball's Satchel Paige, a single father and his toddler son, Wilkerson herself, and many others--she shows the ways that the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. She documents how the Nazis studied the racial systems in America to plan their out-cast of the Jews; she discusses why the cruel logic of caste requires that there be a bottom rung for those in the middle to measure themselves against; she writes about the surprising health costs of caste, in depression and life expectancy, and the effects of this hierarchy on our culture and politics. Finally, she points forward to ways America can move beyond the artificial and destructive separations of human divisions, toward hope in our common humanity. Beautifully written, original, and revealing, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents is an eye-opening story of people and history, and a reexamination of what lies under the surface of ordinary lives and of America life today."--Provided by the publisher
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; HT725.U6 W55 2020ISBN: 9780593230251Publication Date: 2020-08-04 -
The Nickel Boys (Winner 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
by
As the Civil Rights movement begins to reach the black enclave of Frenchtown in segregated Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis takes the words of Dr. Martin Luther King to heart: He is "as good as anyone." Abandoned by his parents, but kept on the straight and narrow by his grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy the future. Elwood is sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, whose mission statement says it provides "physical, intellectual and moral training" so the delinquent boys in their charge can become "honorable and honest men." In reality, the Nickel Academy is a grotesque chamber of horrors where the sadistic staff beats and sexually abuses the students, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to disappear "out back." Stunned to find himself in such a vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold onto Dr. King's ringing assertion "Throw us in jail and we will still love you." His friend Turner thinks Elwood is worse than naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. The tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. Formed in the crucible of the evils Jim Crow wrought, the boys' fates will be determined by what they endured at the Nickel Academy.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; PS3573.H4768 .N53 2019ISBN: 9780385537070Publication Date: 2019-07-16 -
An American Marriage (Oprah's Book Club)
by
"Newlyweds Celestial and Roy, the living embodiment of the New South, are settling into the routine of their life together when Roy is sent to prison for a crime he didn't commit. An insightful look into the lives of people who are bound and separated by forces beyond their control"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; PS3610.O63 A84 2018ISBN: 9781616208776Publication Date: 2018-02-06 -
The House of Eve
by
"Fifteen-year-old Ruby Pearsall is on track to becoming the first in her family to attend college, in spite of having a mother more interested in keeping a man than raising a daughter. But a taboo love affair threatens to pull her back down into the poverty and desperation that has been passed on to her like a birthright... Eleanor Quarles arrives in Washington, DC, with ambition and secrets. When she meets the handsome William Pride at Howard University, they fall madly in love. But William hails from one of DC's elite wealthy Black families, and his parents don't let just anyone into their fold. Eleanor hopes that a baby will make her finally feel at home in William's family and grant her the life she's been searching for. With their stories colliding in the most unexpected of ways, Ruby and Eleanor will both make decisions that shape the trajectory of their lives"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; PS3610.O3758 H68 2023ISBN: 9781982197360Publication Date: 2023-02-07 -
Deacon King Kong (Oprah's Book Club)
by
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; PS3613.C28 D43 2020ISBN: 9780735216723Publication Date: 2020-03-03 -
Skin and Bones
by
"At 40, Lena Baker is at a steady and stable moment in life--between wine nights with her two best friends and her wedding just weeks away, she's happy in love and in friendship until a confession on her wedding day shifts her world. Unmoored and grieving a major loss, Lena finds herself trying to teach her daughter self-love while struggling to do so herself. Lena questions everything she's learned about dating, friendship, and motherhood, and through it all, she works tirelessly to bring the oft-forgotten Black history of Oregon to the masses, sidestepping her well-meaning co-workers that don't understand that their good intentions are often offensive and hurtful. Through Watson's poetic voice, "Skin & Bones" is a stirring exploration of who society makes space for and is ultimately a story of heartbreak and healing."--Amazon.com
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; PS3623.A87335 S55 2024ISBN: 9780316570886Publication Date: 2024-05-07 -
Long Way Down
by
There are three rules in the neighborhood: Don't cry ; Don't snitch ; Get revenge. Will takes his dead brother Shawn's gun, and gets in the elevator on the 7th floor. As the elevator stops on each floor, someone connected to Shawn gets on. Someone already dead. Dead by teenage gun violence. And each has something to share with Will.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; PZ7.5.R49 Lon 2017ISBN: 9781481438254Publication Date: 2017-10-24 -
They Can't Kill Us All
by
A deeply reported book that brings alive the quest for justice in the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray, offering both unparalleled insight into the reality of police violence in America and an intimate, moving portrait of those working to end it. Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today. In an effort to grasp the magnitude of the repose to Michael Brown's death and understand the scale of the problem police violence represents, Lowery speaks to Brown's family and the families of other victims other victims' families as well as local activists.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection E184.A1 L69 2016ISBN: 9780316312479Publication Date: 2016-11-15 -
Defining Moments in Black History
by
The activist and comedian examines key events in black history, from the beginnings of the slave trade in Africa and the Middle Passage to the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection E185 .G74 2017ISBN: 9780062448699Publication Date: 2017-09-05 -
Driving While Black
by
"How the automobile fundamentally changed African American life-the true history beyond the Best Picture-winning movie. The ultimate symbol of independence and possibility, the automobile has shaped this country from the moment the first Model T rolled off Henry Ford's assembly line. Yet cars have always held distinct importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road. Gretchen Sorin recovers a forgotten history of black motorists, and recounts their creation of a parallel, unseen world of travel guides, black only hotels, and informal communications networks that kept black drivers safe. At the heart of this story is Victor and Alma Green's famous Green Book, begun in 1936, which made possible that most basic American right, the family vacation, and encouraged a new method of resisting oppression. Enlivened by Sorin's personal history, Driving While Black opens an entirely new view onto the African American experience, and shows why travel was so central to the Civil Rights movement"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection E185.61 .S667 2020ISBN: 9781631495694Publication Date: 2020-02-11 -
The March Against Fear
by
"Mississippi. 1966. On a hot June afternoon an African-American man named James Meredith set out to walk through his home state, intending to fight racism and fear with his feet. A seemingly simple plan, but one teeming with risk. Just one day later Meredith was shot and wounded in a roadside ambush. Within twenty-four hours, Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, and other civil rights leaders had taken up Meredith's cause, determined to overcome this violent act and complete Meredith's walk. The stakes were high--there was no time for advance planning and their route cut through dangerous territory. No one knew if they would succeed. By many measures the March Against Fear became one of the greatest protests of the civil rights era. But it was also one of the last, and the campaign has been largely forgotten. Critically acclaimed author Ann Bausum brings this crucial turning point of civil rights history back to life, escorting you along the dusty Mississippi roads where heroic marchers endured violence, rage, and fear as they walked more than 200 miles in the name of equality and justice"--Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection E185.93.M6 B37 2017ISBN: 9781426326653Publication Date: 2017-01-03 -
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics
by
"The lives of black women in American politics are remarkably absent from the shelves of bookstores and libraries. For Colored Girls Who Have Consider Politics is a sweeping view of American history from the vantage points of four women who have lived and worked behind the scenes in politics for over thirty years--Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Minyon Moore--a group of women who call themselves The Colored Girls. Like many people who have spent their careers in public service, they view their lives in four-year waves where presidential campaigns and elections have been common threads. For most of the Colored Girls, their story starts with Jesse Jackson's first campaign for president. From there, they went on to work on the presidential campaigns of Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Over the years, they've filled many roles: in the corporate world, on campaigns, in unions, in churches, in their own businesses and in the White House. Through all of this, they've worked with those who have shaped our country's history--US Presidents such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, well-known political figures such as Terry McAuliffe and Howard Dean, and legendary activists and historical figures such as Jesse Jackson, Coretta Scott King, and Betty Shabazz. For Colored Girls Who Consider Politics is filled with personal stories that bring to life heroic figures we all know and introduce us to some of those who've worked behind the scenes but are still hidden. Whatever their perch, the Colored Girls are always focused on the larger goal of "hurrying history" so that every American -- regardless of race, gender or religious background -- can have a seat at the table. This is their story"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection E185.96 .B829 2018ISBN: 9781250137715Publication Date: 2018-10-02 -
The Fire This Time
by
"National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time. In light of recent tragedies and widespread protests across the nation, The Progressive magazine republished one of its most famous pieces: James Baldwin's 1962 "Letter to My Nephew," which was later published in his landmark book, The Fire Next Time. Addressing his fifteen-year-old namesake on the one hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, Baldwin wrote: "You know and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon." Award-winning author Jesmyn Ward knows that Baldwin's words ring as true as ever today. In response, she has gathered short essays, memoir, and a few essential poems to engage the question of race in the United States. And she has turned to some of her generation's most original thinkers and writers to give voice to their concerns. The Fire This Time is divided into three parts that shine a light on the darkest corners of our history, wrestle with our current predicament, and envision a better future. Of the eighteen pieces, ten were written specifically for this volume. In the fifty-odd years since Baldwin's essay was published, entire generations have dared everything and made significant progress. But the idea that we are living in the post-Civil Rights era, that we are a "post-racial" society is an inaccurate and harmful reflection of a truth the country must confront. Baldwin's "fire next time" is now upon us, and it needs to be talked about. Contributors include Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Garnette Cadogan, Edwidge Danticat, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Mitchell S. Jackson, Honoree Jeffers, Kima Jones, Kiese Laymon, Daniel Jose Older, Emily Raboteau, Claudia Rankine, Clint Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Wendy S. Walters, Isabel Wilkerson, and Kevin Young"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection E185.615 .F526 2016ISBN: 9781501126345Publication Date: 2016-08-02 -
Barracoon
by
In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo's past--memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War. Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo's unique vernacular, and written from Hurston's perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.--Publisher's website.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection E445.A3 H87 2018ISBN: 9780062748201Publication Date: 2018-05-08 -
Becoming
by
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites listeners into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations - and whose story inspires us to do the same.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection E909.O24 A3 2018ISBN: 9781524763138Publication Date: 2018-11-13 -
The Blood of Emmett Till
by
In 2014, protesters ringed the White House, chanting, "How many black kids will you kill? Michael Brown, Emmett Till!" Why did demonstrators invoke the name of a black boy murdered six decades before? In 1955, white men in the Mississippi Delta lynched a fourteen-year-old from Chicago named Emmett Till. His murder was part of a wave of white terrorism in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared public school segregation unconstitutional. The national coalition organized to protest the Till lynching became the foundation of the modern civil rights movement. Only weeks later, Rosa Parks thought about young Emmett as she refused to move to the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Five years later, the Emmett Till generation, forever marked by the vicious killing of a boy their own age, launched sit-in campaigns that turned the struggle into a mass movement. "I can hear the blood of Emmett Till as it calls from the ground," shouted a black preacher in Albany, Georgia. But what actually happened to Emmett Till -- not the icon of injustice but the flesh-and-blood boy? Part detective story, part political history, cultural scholar Timothy Tyson draws on a wealth of new evidence, including the only interview ever given by Carolyn Bryant, the white woman in whose name Till was killed.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection HV6465.M7 T97 2017 (also available in ebook format)ISBN: 9781476714844Publication Date: 2017-01-31 -
Stolen Justice
by
"Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction era raised a new question to those in power in the US: Should African Americans, so many of them former slaves, be granted the right to vote? In a bitter partisan fight over the legislature and Constitution, the answer eventually became yes, though only after two constitutional amendments, two Reconstruction Acts, two Civil Rights Acts, three Enforcement Acts, the impeachment of a president, and an army of occupation. Yet, even that was not enough to ensure that African American voices would be heard, or their lives protected. White supremacists loudly and intentionally prevented black Americans from voting -- and they were willing to kill to do so. In this vivid portrait of the systematic suppression of the African American vote, critically acclaimed author Lawrence Goldstone traces the injustices of the post-Reconstruction era through the eyes of incredible individuals, both heroic and barbaric, and examines the legal cases that made the Supreme Court a partner of white supremacists in the rise of Jim Crow. Though this is a story of America's past, Goldstone brilliantly draws direct links to today's creeping threats to suffrage in this important and, alas, timely book"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection JK1924 .G65 2020ISBN: 9781338323481Publication Date: 2020-01-07 -
The Last Negroes at Harvard
by
"The untold story of the Harvard class of '63, whose Black students fought to create their own identities on the cusp between integration and affirmative action. In the fall of 1959, Harvard recruited eighteen "Negro" boys as an experiment, an early form of affirmative action. Four years later they would graduate as African Americans. Some fifty years later, one of these trailblazing Harvard grads, Kent Garrett, began to reconnect with his classmates and explore their vastly different backgrounds, lives, and what their time at Harvard meant. Garrett and his partner Jeanne Ellsworth recount how these young men broke new ground. By the time they were seniors, they would have demonstrated against injustice, had lunch with Malcolm X, experienced heartbreak and the racism of academia, and joined with their African national classmates to fight for the right to form an exclusive Black students' group. Part journey into personal history, part group portrait, and part narrative history of the civil rights movement, this is the remarkable story of brilliant, singular boys whose identities were changed at and by Harvard, and who, in turn, changed Harvard"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection LD2160 .G37 2020ISBN: 9781328879974Publication Date: 2020-02-11 -
Head off and Split
by
"With Head Off & Split, Nikky Finney establishes herself as one of the most eloquent, urgent, fearless and necessary poets writing in America today. What makes this book as important as anything published in the last decade is the irresistible music, the formal dexterity and the imaginative leaps she makes with metaphor and language in these simply stunning poems. This is a very, very important achievement."--Kwame Dawes, author of Hope's Hospice.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection PS3556.I53 H43 2011ISBN: 9780810152168Publication Date: 2011-01-27 -
Lighthead
by
The fourth collection by the author portrays the light-headedness of a mind trying to pull against gravity and time. It sets what it means to be "light longing for lightness" against what it means to "burn with all the humanity fire strips away." Hayes navigates melancholy, irreverence, and the sublime.--Publisher information.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection PS3558.A8378 L54 2010ISBN: 9780143116967Publication Date: 2010-03-30 -
How to Wrestle a Girl
by
"A hilarious, tough, and tender story collection pressurized by grief, sexual longing, the spectrum of gender, and girls with muscle."-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection PS3602.L325289 H69 2021ISBN: 9780374602796Publication Date: 2021-09-07 -
American Spy
by
1986, the heart of the Cold War. A young black woman working in an old boys' club, Marie Mitchell's FBI career has stalled out and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. Given the opportunity to join a task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes. In the year that follows Marie observes Sankara, seduces him-- and has a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister, and a good American. -- adapted from jacket.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection PS3623.I55276 A84 2018ISBN: 9780812998955Publication Date: 2019-02-12 -
A Blade So Black
by
"This isn't the Wonderland you remember. The first time the Nightmares came, it nearly cost Alice her life. Now she's trained to battle monstrous creatures in the dark dream realm known as Wonderland with magic weapons and hardcore fighting skills. Yet even warriors have a curfew. Life in real-world Atlanta isn't always so simple, as Alice juggles an overprotective mom, a high-maintenance best friend, and a slipping GPA. Keeping the Nightmares at bay is turning into a full-time job. But when Alice's handsome and mysterious mentor is poisoned, she has to find the antidote by venturing deeper into Wonderland than she's ever gone before. And she'll need to use everything she's learned in both worlds to keep from losing her head...literally. "--Dust jacket.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection PZ7.1.M4354697 Bl 2018 (also available in the Arne Nixon Center)ISBN: 9781250153906Publication Date: 2018-09-25 -
Hidden Figures
by
Hidden figures : the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection QA27.5 .L44 2016ISBN: 9780062363602Publication Date: 2016-12-06 -
Fighting with Love
by
"In a beautiful prose telling, the story of a groundbreaking civil rights leader, John Lewis. John Lewis left a cotton farm in Alabama to join the fight for civil rights. He was only a teenager. He soon became a leader of a moment that changed a nation. Walking at the side of his mentor, Dr. Martin Luther King, Lewis was led by his belief in peaceful action and voting rights. Today and always his work and legacy will live on"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 3rd Floor - Teacher Resource Center/Curr ; E840.8.L43 C65 2024ISBN: 9781534496620Publication Date: 2024-01-09 -
Fighting with Love
by
Call Number: 3rd Floor - Teacher Resource Center/Curr ; E840.8.L43 C65 2024ISBN: 9781534496620Publication Date: 2024-01-09
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What I Must Tell the World
by
"As a young girl, playwright Lorraine Hansberry walked everywhere with a notebook, eager to capture the sights, sounds, and stories of the people around her. First Lorraine watched her parents' triumph in the Supreme Court case of Hansberry v. Lee. Then she discovered the magic of theater. Next, she unlocked the power of her voice, crafting A Raisin in the Sun. Her play went on to influence generations of artists and the world was never the same. Lyrical, vibrant, and empowering, What I Must Tell the World is a celebration of Lorraine Hansberry's life and legacy, and a love letter to the power of theater and storytelling." -Dust jacket
Call Number: 3rd Floor - Teacher Resource Center/Curr ; PS3515.A515 Z747 2024ISBN: 9781638930693Publication Date: 2024-10-22 -
Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance
by
From Children's Literature Legacy Award-winning author Nikki Grimes comes a feminist-forward new collection of poetry celebrating the little-known women poets of the Harlem Renaissance-- paired with full-color, original art from today's most talented female African-American illustrators.
Call Number: 3rd Floor - Teacher Resource Center/Curr ; PS3557.R489982 L44 2021ISBN: 9781681199443Publication Date: 2021-01-05 -
The Unboxing of a Black Girl
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Set in New York City in the '90s, the author's poems and stories paint a mosaic of childhood that is shaped by the past and reverberates into the present. As the writer navigates the city through memory, this book illuminates the places where Black girls are nurtured or boxed in, through stories and poems about expectations, exploitation, love, loss, and self-realization. These poems center on pivotal moments of Black childhood, using footnotes that encourage readers to listen to songs, watch movies, and even learn how to play Spades to further contextualize and celebrate Black culture in every aspect of life. But even with Black joy, life ain't no crystal stair. Between fond memories, the writer also explores the dark corners of childhood by showing us the ways adultification, misogynoir, and sexual assault can impact girlhood. Every piece in this poetic memoir invites you to unpack the past - to find and transcend the expectations and boxes the world puts Black girls in. -- Adapted from book jacket.
Call Number: 3rd Floor - Teacher Resource Center/Curr ; PS3619.H35568 U543 2024ISBN: 9798890039538Publication Date: 2024-05-07 -
The Unboxing of a Black Girl
by
Call Number: 3rd Floor - Teacher Resource Center/Curr ; PS3619.H35568 U543 2024ISBN: 9798890039538Publication Date: 2024-05-07
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Black Girl You Are Atlas
by
"Poet Renée Watson looks back at her childhood and urges readers to look forward at their futures with love, understanding, and celebration in this fully illustrated poetry collection"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 3rd Floor - Teacher Resource Center/Curr ; PS3623.A87335 B58 2024ISBN: 9780593461709Publication Date: 2024-02-13 -
City Summer, Country Summer
by
Call Number: 3rd Floor - Teacher Resource Center/Juv ; jE PZ2.L4543 cit 2025ISBN: 9780593405567Publication Date: 2025-04-01 -
Marley's Pride
by
"Marley is a little nonbinary kid with big anxieties. Crowds? Pass. Loud noises? No, thanks. When their Zaza is up for an award at Pride, they want to go to the parade for the first time with their beloved grandparent. But can Marley overcome their fears? Highlighting the joyful experiences of a queer family of color finding community at Pride, this story features endmatter about the history of Pride, a glossary of LGBTQ+ terms, and a list of resources." - Amazon.com
Call Number: 3rd Floor - Teacher Resource Center/Juv ; jE PZ2.R3144 mar 2024ISBN: 9798888590751Publication Date: 2024-04-02 -
It's Pride, Baby!
by
"Join a queer family as they celebrate Black Pride in Washington, D.C. From painting posters to walking in a Pride Parade with neighbors to watching fireworks, this special day is packed with fun"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 3rd Floor - Teacher Resource Center/Juv ; jE PZ2.W4627 its 2024ISBN: 9780374390693Publication Date: 2024-05-07 -
Bright Red Fruit
by
"Samira is determined to have a perfect summer filled with fun parties, exploring DC, and growing as a poet--until a scandalous rumor has her grounded and unable to leave her house. When Samira turns to a poetry forum for solace, she catches the eye of an older, charismatic poet named Horus. For the first time, Samira feels wanted. But soon she's keeping a bigger secret than ever before--one that could prove her reputation and jeopardize her place in her community"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 3rd Floor - Teacher Resource Center/Juv ; j PZ1.EL384 bri 2024ISBN: 9780593381205Publication Date: 2024-02-06 -
Big Jim and the White Boy
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"Commonly regarded as one of the great American novels, 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' has captured the hearts and imaginations of readers since 1884. But since its publication, critics have rightfully condemned Mark Twain's troubling portrayal of Black Americans as stereotypes and caricatures, with contemporary fans searching for a modern update to this iconic tale. 'Big Jim and the White Boy' is a radical retelling of this American classic, centering the experiences of Jim, an enslaved Black man in search of his kidnapped wife and children, along with his cheeky sidekick, Huckleberry Finn. Jim and Huck's high-stakes adventures take them on an epic voyage across the antebellum South and Midwest, through Confederate war camps and runaway safe houses, into Old West standoffs, and on the road as covert Underground Railroad agents. Intertwined in the narrative are the stories of Jim's descendants in the 1930s, 1980s, and 2020s, making this a multigenerational family epic as well as an adventure story. With compelling artwork and riveting storytelling, David F. Walker and Marcus Kwame Anderson push the boundaries of 'The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' in this incredible graphic novel, exploring the triumphs and tribulations of Jim and his family, and finally giving him his due as a hero of American literature."-- Page 4 of cover.
Call Number: 3rd Floor - Teacher Resource Center/Juv ; j PZ1.W1515 big 2024ISBN: 9780593836118Publication Date: 2024-10-15 -
Half American
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"The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont. Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. And yet the stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the 'Good War' fought by the 'Greatest Generation.' Half American is American history as you've likely never read it before. In these pages are stories of Black heroes such as Thurgood Marshall, the chief lawyer for the NAACP, who investigated and publicized violence against Black troops and veterans; Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., leader of the Tuskegee Airmen, who was at the forefront of the years-long fight to open the Air Force to Black pilots; Ella Baker, the civil rights leader who advocated on the home front for Black soldiers, veterans, and their families; James Thompson, the 26-year-old whose letter to a newspaper laying bare the hypocrisy of fighting against fascism abroad when racism still reigned at home set in motion the Double Victory campaign; and poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a war correspondent for the Black press. Their bravery and patriotism in the face of unfathomable racism is both inspiring and galvanizing. In a time when the questions World War II raised regarding race and democracy in America remain troublingly relevant and still unanswered, this meticulously researched retelling makes for urgently necessary reading"--Publisher's description.
Call Number: Lower Level ; D810.B53 D45 2022ISBN: 9781984880390Publication Date: 2022-10-18 -
Go Back and Get It
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"One-third of Black Americans descended from slavery are related to the slave masters who bought and sold their ancestors. In other words, one-third of Black Americans descended from slavery are descended also from sexual exploitation. Dionne Ford, whose great-grandmother was the last of six children born to a Louisiana cotton broker called the Colonel and the enslaved woman he received as a wedding gift, is among them. What shapes does this kind of intergenerational trauma take and how to root it out of the body?" -- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: Lower Level ; E185 .F594 2023ISBN: 9781645030133Publication Date: 2023-04-04 -
The Warmth of Other Suns
by
In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America.
Call Number: Lower Level ; E185.6 .W685 2010ISBN: 9780679444329Publication Date: 2010-09-07 -
Waging a Good War
by
"A new history of the Civil Rights Movement with an emphasis on its nonviolent use of military tactics and strategy"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: Lower Level ; E185.61 .R515 2022ISBN: 9780374605162Publication Date: 2022-10-04 -
Waging a Good War
by
Call Number: Lower Level ; E185.61 .R515 2022ISBN: 9780374605162Publication Date: 2022-10-04
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The Third Reconstruction
by
In The Third Reconstruction, distinguished historian Peniel E. Joseph offers a powerful and personal new interpretation of recent history. The racial reckoning that unfolded in 2020, he argues, marked the climax of a Third Reconstruction: a new struggle for citizenship and dignity for Black Americans, just as momentous as the movements that arose after the Civil War and during the civil rights era. Joseph draws revealing connections and insights across centuries as he traces this Third Reconstruction from the election of Barack Obama to the rise of Black Lives Matter to the failed assault on the Capitol--Publisher's description.
Call Number: Lower Level ; E185.615 .J678 2022ISBN: 9781541600768Publication Date: 2022-09-06 -
By Hands Now Known
by
"A paradigm-shifting investigation of Jim Crow-era violence, the legal apparatus that sustained it, and its enduring legacy, from a renowned legal scholar. If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law? In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in a series of harrowing cases from 1920 to 1960. From rendition, the legal process by which states make claims to other states for the return of their citizens, to battles over state and federal jurisdiction and the outsize role of local sheriffs in enforcing racial hierarchy, Burnham maps the criminal legal system in the mid-twentieth-century South, and traces the unremitting line from slavery to the legal structures of this period and through to today. Drawing on an extensive database, collected over more than a decade and exceeding 1,000 cases of racial violence, she reveals the true legal system of Jim Crow, and captures the memories of those whose stories have not yet been heard"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: Lower Level ; KF4757 .B87 2022ISBN: 9780393867855Publication Date: 2022-09-27 -
By Hands Now Known
by
Call Number: Lower Level ; KF4757 .B87 2022ISBN: 9780393867855Publication Date: 2022-09-27
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We Want to Do More Than Survive
by
Drawing on her life’s work of teaching and researching in urban schools, Bettina Love persuasively argues that educators must teach students about racial violence, oppression, and how to make sustainable change in their communities through radical civic initiatives and movements. She argues that the US educational system is maintained by and profits from the suffering of children of color. Instead of trying to repair a flawed system, educational reformers offer survival tactics in the forms of test-taking skills, acronyms, grit labs, and character education, which Love calls the educational survival complex. To dismantle the educational survival complex and to achieve educational freedom—not merely reform—teachers, parents, and community leaders must approach education with the imagination, determination, boldness, and urgency of an abolitionist. Following in the tradition of activists like Ella Baker, Bayard Rustin, and Fannie Lou Hamer, We Want to Do More Than Survive introduces an alternative to traditional modes of educational reform and expands our ideas of civic engagement and intersectional justice--Publisher's description.
Call Number: Lower Level ; LC2717 .L68 2019ISBN: 9780807069158Publication Date: 2019-02-19 -
Saxophone Colossus
by
"Sonny Rollins has long been considered an enigma. Known as the "Saxophone Colossus," he is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time, winning Grammys, the Austrian Cross of Honor, Sweden's Polar Music Prize and a National Medal of Arts. A bridge from bebop to the avant-garde, he is a lasting link to the golden age of jazz, pictured in the iconic "Great Day in Harlem" portrait. His seven-decade career has been well documented, but the backstage life of the man once called "the only jazz recluse" has gone largely untold--until now."-- Adapted from jacket flap.
Call Number: Lower Level ; ML419.R64 L48 2022ISBN: 9780306902796Publication Date: 2022-12-06 -
The Rise and Fall of Paramount Records
by
On the one hand, Scott Blackwood's The Rise and Fall of Paramount is the story of happenstance. But it is also a tale about the sheer force of the Great Migration and the legacy of the music put down into the shellacked grooves of a 78 record: Black America finding its voice. It is the story the legacy of the Great Migration and how blues, jazz, and folk music transcended boundaries, and how this almost never happened. Blackwood brings to life these many moments-through creative nonfiction-and makes present and full-blooded what hadn't been brought to life before"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: Lower Level ; ML3792.P35 B53 2023ISBN: 9780807179147Publication Date: 2023-03-01 -
Seven Days in June
by
"Brooklynite Eva Mercy is a single mom and bestselling erotica writer, who is feeling pressed from all sides. Shane Hall is a reclusive, enigmatic, award-winning literary author who, to everyone's surprise, shows up in New York. When Shane and Eva meet unexpectedly at a literary event, sparks fly, raising not only their past buried traumas, but the eyebrows of New York's Black literati. What no one knows is that twenty years earlier, teenage Eva and Shane spent one crazy, torrid week madly in love. They may be pretending that everything is fine now, but they can't deny their chemistry-or the fact that they've been secretly writing to each other in their books ever since. Over the next seven days in the middle of a steamy Brooklyn summer, Eva and Shane reconnect, but Eva's not sure how she can trust the man who broke her heart, and she needs to get him out of New York so that her life can return to normal. But before Shane disappears again, there are a few questions she needs answered. . . With its keen observations of Black life and the condition of modern motherhood, as well as the consequences of motherless-ness, Seven Days in June is by turns humorous, warm and deeply sensual"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: Lower Level ; PS3623.I566 S48 2021ISBN: 9781538719107Publication Date: 2021-06-01 -
The African American Struggle for Library Equality
by
Call Number: Lower Level ; Z711.9 .J63 2019ISBN: 9781538103081Publication Date: 2019-09-17 -
Composing while black : Afrodiasporic new music today
by
"Composing While Black presents unique new perspectives on Afrodiasporic contemporary composers active between 1960 and the present, a period that academic inquiry, concert programming, and journalistic accounts have largely ignored up to now, particularly in Europe. This interdisciplinary essay collection engages with opera, orchestral, chamber, instrumental, and electroacoustic music, as well as sound art, conceptual art, and digital intermedia, revealing Afrodiasporic new music as an intercultural, multigenerational space of innovation that offers new subjects, histories, and identities."
Call Number: ML390 .C7197 2023ISBN: 9783955932626Publication Date: 2023 -
The Music of Black Americans
by
"Beginning with the arrival of the first Africans in the English colonies, Eileen Southern weaves a fascinating narrative of intense musical activity, which has not only played a vital role in the lives of black Americans but has also deeply influenced music performance in the United States and many other parts of the world. Dr. Southern fully chronicles the singers, instrumentalists, and composers who created this rich body of music and skillfully describes the genres and styles that characterize it from its earliest manifestations among a people in slavery to the rap beat of the late twentieth century. Along the way, she covers numerous topics - such as Colonial-Era music, Revolutionary War performers, church music, minstrelsy, ragtime, swing, concert music, soul, pop, and opera - bringing them to life and placing them in their historical and cultural contexts."
Professor Eileen Southern was the first Black woman tenured in Harvard’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences. Harvard has created an online exhibit on her life and work. https://eileensouthern.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/
Call Number: ML3556 .S74 1997ISBN: 9780393038439Publication Date: 1997-03-01 -
How Hip Hop Became Hit Pop
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"How did rap become the most popular genre in the United States, and what were the consequences of this subculture becoming part of the mainstream? Amy Coddington examines the programming practices at commercial radio stations in the 1980s and early 1990s to uncover how this industry facilitated rap's introduction into the musical mainstream."
Also available as a free ebook: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/jj.5666706
Call Number: PN1991.67.P67 C62 2023ISBN: 9780520383920Publication Date: 2023-09-12 -
The Underground Railroad (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (National Book Award Winner) (Oprah's Book Club)
by
"Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom"--Publisher's description.
Call Number: Popular Reading Collection PS3573.H4768 U53 2016ISBN: 9780385542364Publication Date: 2016-08-02
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African American Arts
by
Signaling such recent activist and aesthetic concepts in the work of Kara Walker, Childish Gambino, BLM, Janelle Monáe, and Kendrick Lamar, and marking the exit of the Obama Administration and the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, this anthology explores the role of African American arts in shaping the future, and further informing new directions we might take in honoring and protecting the success of African Americans in the U.S.
ISBN: 9781684481538Publication Date: 2019-12-06 -
Art for Equality
by
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nation's oldest civil rights organization, having dedicated itself to the fight for racial equality since 1909. While the group helped achieve substantial victories in the courtroom, the struggle for civil rights extended beyond gaining political support. It also required changing social attitudes. The NAACP thus worked to alter existing prejudices through the production of art that countered racist depictions of African Americans, focusing its efforts not only on changing the attitudes of the white middle class but also on encouraging racial pride and a sense of identity in the black community. Art for Equality explores an important and little-studied side of the NAACP's activism in the cultural realm.
ISBN: 0813145163Publication Date: 2014-06-17 -
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Black Internationalist Feminism
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Black Internationalist Feminism examines how African American women writers affiliated themselves with the post-World War II Black Communist Left and developed a distinct strand of feminism. This vital yet largely overlooked feminist tradition built upon and critically retheorized the postwar Left's nationalist internationalism, which connected the liberation of Blacks in the United States to the liberation of Third World nations and the worldwide proletariat. Black internationalist feminism critiques racist, heteronormative, and masculinist articulations of nationalism while maintaining the importance of national liberation movements for achieving Black women's social, political, and economic rights. Cheryl Higashida shows how Claudia Jones, Lorraine Hansberry, Alice Childress, Rosa Guy, Audre Lorde, and Maya Angelou worked within and against established literary forms to demonstrate that nationalist internationalism was linked to struggles against heterosexism and patriarchy. Exploring a diverse range of plays, novels, essays, poetry, and reportage, Higashida illustrates how literature is a crucial lens for studying Black internationalist feminism because these authors were at the forefront of bringing the perspectives and problems of black women to light against their marginalization and silencing. In examining writing by Black Left women from 1945 to 1995, Black Internationalist Feminism contributes to recent efforts to rehistoricize the Old Left, Civil Rights, Black Power, and second-wave Black women's movements.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780252036507Publication Date: 2011-12-14 -
The Black Officer Corps
by
The U.S. Armed Forces started integrating its services in 1948, and with that push, more African Americans started rising through the ranks to become officers, although the number of black officers has always been much lower than African Americans’ total percentage in the military. Astonishingly, the experiences of these unknown reformers have largely gone unexamined and unreported, until now. The Black Officer Corps traces segments of the African American officers’ experience from 1946-1973. From generals who served in the Pentagon and Vietnam, to enlisted servicemen and officers' wives, Isaac Hampton has conducted over seventy-five oral history interviews with African American officers. Through their voices, this book illuminates what they dealt with on a day to day basis, including cultural differences, racist attitudes, unfair promotion standards, the civil rights movement, Black Power, and the experience of being in ROTC at Historically Black Colleges. Hampton provides a nuanced study of the people whose service reshaped race relations in the U.S. Armed Forces, ending with how the military attempted to control racism with the creation of the Defense Race Relations Institute of 1971. The Black Officer Corps gives us a much fuller picture of the experience of black officers, and a place to start asking further questions.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 0415531926Publication Date: 2012-10-17 -
Blues people: Negro music in white America
by
Amiri Baraka's classic work on the place of jazz and blues in American social, musical, economic, and cultural history.
ISBN: 9780688184742Publication Date: 1963 -
Bound to the Fire
by
In grocery store aisles and kitchens across the country, smiling images of "Aunt Jemima" and other historical and fictional black cooks can be found on various food products and in advertising. Although these images are sanitized and romanticized in American popular culture, they represent the untold stories of enslaved men and women who had a significant impact on the nation's culinary and hospitality traditions even as they were forced to prepare food for their oppressors. Kelley Fanto Deetz draws upon archaeological evidence, cookbooks, plantation records, and folklore to present a nuanced study of the lives of enslaved plantation cooks from colonial times through emancipation and beyond. She reveals how these men and women were literally "bound to the fire" as they lived and worked in the sweltering and often fetid conditions of plantation house kitchens. These highly skilled cooks drew upon skills and ingredients brought with them from their African homelands to create complex, labor-intensive dishes such as oyster stew, gumbo, and fried fish. However, their white owners overwhelmingly received the credit for their creations. Focusing on enslaved cooks at Virginia plantations including Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and George Washington's Mount Vernon, Deetz restores these forgotten figures to their rightful place in American and Southern history.Bound to the Firenot only uncovers their rich and complex stories and illuminates their role in plantation culture, but it celebrates their living legacy with the recipes that they created and passed down to future generations.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780813174730Publication Date: 2017-11-17 -
The Cambridge History of African American Literature
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The first major twenty-first century history of four hundred years of black writing, The Cambridge History of African American Literature presents a comprehensive overview of the literary traditions, oral and print, of African-descended peoples in the United States. Expert contributors, drawn from the United States and beyond, emphasise the dual nature of each text discussed as a work of art created by an individual and as a response to unfolding events in American cultural, political, and social history. Unprecedented in scope, sophistication and accessibility, the volume draws together current scholarship in the field. It also looks ahead to suggest new approaches, new areas of study, and as yet undervalued writers and works. The Cambridge History of African American Literature is a major achievement both as a work of reference and as a compelling narrative and will remain essential reading for scholars and students in years to come.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781107571815Publication Date: 2015-12-17 -
Chocolate Cities
by
From Central District Seattle to Harlem to Holly Springs, Black people have built a dynamic network of cities and towns where Black culture is maintained, created, and defended. But imagine-what if current maps of Black life are wrong? Chocolate Cities offers a refreshing and persuasive rendering of the United States-a “Black map” that more accurately reflects the lived experiences and the future of Black life in America. Drawing on film, fiction, music, and oral history, Marcus Anthony Hunter and Zandria F. Robinson trace the Black American experience of race, place, and liberation, mapping it from Emancipation to now. As the United States moves toward a majority minority society, Chocolate Cities provides a provocative, broad, and necessary assessment of how racial and ethnic minorities make and change America’s social, economic, and political landscape.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 0520966171Publication Date: 2018-01-16 -
The Content of Our Caricature
by
"Traces the history of racial caricature and the ways that Black cartoonists have turned this visual grammar on its head. Revealing the long aesthetic tradition of African American cartoonists who have made use of racist caricature as a black diasporic art practice, Rebecca Wanzo demonstrates how these artists have resisted histories of visual imperialism and their legacies. Moving beyond binaries of positive and negative representation, many black cartoonists have used caricatures to criticize constructions of ideal citizenship in the United States, as well as the alienation of African Americans from such imaginaries. The Content of Our Caricature urges readers to recognize how the wide circulation of comic and cartoon art contributes to a common language of both national belonging and exclusion in the United States. Historically, white artists have rendered white caricatures as virtuous representations of American identity, while their caricatures of African Americans are excluded from these kinds of idealized discourses. Employing a rich illustration program of color and black-and-white reproductions, Wanzo explores the works of artists such as Sam Milai, Larry Fuller, Richard 'Grass' Green, Brumsic Brandon Jr., Jennifer Cruté, Aaron McGruder, Kyle Baker, Ollie Harrington, and George Herriman, all of whom negotiate and navigate this troublesome history of caricature. The Content of Our Caricature arrives at a gateway to understanding how a visual grammar of citizenship, and hence American identity itself, has been constructed."--Publisher description.
Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781479840083Publication Date: 2020-04-21 -
A Faithful Account of the Race
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The civil rights and black power movements expanded popular awareness of the history and culture of African Americans. But, as Stephen Hall observes, African American authors, intellectuals, ministers, and abolitionists had been writing the history of the black experience since the 1800s. With this book, Hall recaptures and reconstructs a rich but largely overlooked tradition of historical writing by African Americans.Hall charts the origins, meanings, methods, evolution, and maturation of African American historical writing from the period of the Early Republic to the twentieth-century professionalization of the larger field of historical study. He demonstrates how these works borrowed from and engaged with ideological and intellectual constructs from mainstream intellectual movements including the Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, and Modernism. Hall also explores the creation of discursive spaces that simultaneously reinforced and offered counternarratives to more mainstream historical discourse. He sheds fresh light on the influence of the African diaspora on the development of historical study. In so doing, he provides a holistic portrait of African American history informed by developments within and outside the African American community.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780807859674Publication Date: 2009-10-15 -
Fictional Blues
by
Introduction -- The narrative blues tradition : Tall tales, myths, and Black American folklore -- Shug, Big Mama, and Amy : Autobiographical fictions and addictions -- "I was astounded at what I heard" : Robert Johnson's autobiographical and biographical afterlives -- From John Anthony Gillis to Jack White : A study in blues self-invention -- The blues apprenticeship : Racialized conventions of the acolyte -- Afterword.
Call Number: eBookISBN: 1625345496Publication Date: 2020-12-18 -
Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad
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This enlightening study employs the tools of archaeology to uncover a new historical perspective on the Underground Railroad. Unlike previous histories of the Underground Railroad, which have focused on frightened fugitive slaves and their benevolent abolitionist accomplices, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche focuses instead on free African American communities, the crucial help they provided to individuals fleeing slavery, and the terrain where those flights to freedom occurred. This study foregrounds several small, rural hamlets on the treacherous southern edge of the free North in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. LaRoche demonstrates how landscape features such as waterways, iron forges, and caves played a key role in the conduct and effectiveness of the Underground Railroad. Rich in oral histories, maps, memoirs, and archaeological investigations, this examination of the "geography of resistance" tells the new, powerful, and inspiring story of African Americans ensuring their own liberation in the midst of oppression.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780252038044Publication Date: 2013-12-12 -
The Freedom Schools
by
Launched in 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Schools were designed to counteract segregationist policies that inhibited opportunities for black youth. Providing quality, progressive education, they prepared African American students to fight on all fronts for freedom. These and similar schools were critical to expanding the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. Forming an intimate network, they taught students how, when, and where to engage politically, shaping activists who trained others to contest inequality. Conducting dozens of interviews and consulting rich archival materials, Jon N. Hale weaves a social history of the Mississippi Freedom Schools from the perspective of former students and teachers. Having turned their training into decades of activism, these individuals speak invaluably on the ideologies that informed their practice and the effectiveness of their locally organized, widely transmitted curriculum. They also offer key strategies for further integrating the American school system and politically engaging today's youth.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780231175685Publication Date: 2016-06-07 -
From Slave Ship to Harvard
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From Slave Ship to Harvard is the true story of an African American family in Maryland over six generations. The author has reconstructed a unique narrative of black struggle and achievement from paintings, photographs, books, diaries, court records, legal documents, and oral histories. From Slave Ship to Harvard traces the family from the colonial period and the American Revolution through the Civil War to Harvard and finally today. Yarrow Mamout, the first of the family in America, was an educated Muslim from Guinea. He was brought to Maryland on the slave ship Elijah and gained his freedom forty-four years later. By then, Yarrow had become so well known in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., that he attracted the attention of the eminent American portrait painter Charles Willson Peale, who captured Yarrow's visage in the painting that appears on the cover of this book. The author here reveals that Yarrow's immediate relatives-his sister, niece, wife, and son-were notable in their own right. His son married into the neighboring Turner family, and the farm community in western Maryland called Yarrowsburg was named for Yarrow Mamout's daughter-in-law, Mary "Polly" Turner Yarrow. The Turner line ultimately produced Robert Turner Ford, who graduated from Harvard University in 1927. Just as Peale painted the portrait of Yarrow, James H. Johnston's new book puts a face on slavery and paints the history of race in Maryland. It is a different picture from what most of us imagine. Relationships between blacks and whites were far more complex, and the races more dependent on each other. Fortunately, as this one family's experience shows, individuals of both races repeatedly stepped forward to lessen divisions and to move America toward the diverse society of today.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780823239504Publication Date: 2012-05-14 -
Ghosts of the African Diaspora
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The first monograph to investigate the poetics and politics of haunting in African diaspora literature, Ghosts of the African Diaspora: Re-Visioning History, Memory, and Identity examines literary works by five contemporary writers—Fred D’Aguiar, Gloria Naylor, Paule Marshall, Michelle Cliff, and Toni Morrison. Joanne Chassot argues that reading these texts through the lens of the ghost does cultural, theoretical, and political work crucial to the writers’ engagement with issues of identity, memory, and history. Drawing on memory and trauma studies, postcolonial studies, and queer theory, this truly interdisciplinary volume makes an important contribution to the fast-growing field of spectrality studies.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781512601589Publication Date: 2018-01-02 -
Glory in Their Spirit
by
"In 1945, four African American female privates who were members of the Women's Army Corps (WAC) participated in a strike at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and opted to take a court martial rather than accept discriminatory work assignments. As the army prepared for the court-martial and civil rights activists investigated the circumstances, competing commentaries in African American and mainstream newspapers ignited a passionate public response across the country. Indeed, the insurrection, now little remembered, became the most publicized and recorded protest of Black WACs during World War II as story of how four African American women pushed the army's segregation system to its breaking point. -- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: eBookISBN: 0252083334Publication Date: 2018-04-30 -
The Indignant Generation
by
This the first narrative history of the neglected but essential period of African American literature between the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights era. The years between these two indispensable epochs saw the communal rise of Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and many other influential black writers. While these individuals have been duly celebrated, little attention has been paid to the political and artistic milieu in which they produced their greatest works. With this study, the author recalls the lost history of a crucial era. Looking at the tumultuous decades surrounding World War II, Jackson restores the "indignant" quality to a generation of African American writers shaped by Jim Crow segregation, the Great Depression, the growth of American communism, and an international wave of decolonization. He also reveals how artistic collectives in New York, Chicago, and Washington fostered a sense of destiny and belonging among diverse and disenchanted peoples. As he shows, through contemporary documents, the years that brought us Their Eyes Were Watching God, Native Son, and Invisible Man also saw the rise of African American literary criticism by both black and white critics. Fully exploring the cadre of key African American writers who triumphed in spite of segregation, this work paints a portrait of American intellectual and artistic life in the mid-twentieth century.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781400836239Publication Date: 2021-10-12 -
An Introduction to Black Studies
by
Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780813196930Publication Date: 2023-01-31 -
Jazz Internationalism
by
Jazz Internationalism offers a bold reconsideration of jazz's influence in Afro-modernist literature. Ranging from the New Negro Renaissance through the social movements of the 1960s, John Lowney articulates nothing less than a new history of Afro-modernist jazz writing. Jazz added immeasurably to the vocabulary for discussing radical internationalism and black modernism in leftist African American literature. Lowney examines how Claude McKay, Ann Petry, Langston Hughes, and many other writers employed jazz as both a critical social discourse and mode of artistic expression to explore the possibilities "and challenges "of black internationalism. The result is an expansive understanding of jazz writing sure to spur new debates.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780252041334Publication Date: 2017-10-16 -
Let Us Fight As Free Men
by
Today, the military is one the most racially diverse institutions in the United States. But for many decades African American soldiers battled racial discrimination and segregation within its ranks. In the years after World War II, the integration of the armed forces was a touchstone in the homefront struggle for equality-though its importance is often overlooked in contemporary histories of the civil rights movement. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from press reports and newspapers to organizational and presidential archives, historian Christine Knauer recounts the conflicts surrounding black military service and the fight for integration.Let Us Fight as Free Menshows that, even after their service to the nation in World War II, it took the persistent efforts of black soldiers, as well as civilian activists and government policy changes, to integrate the military. In response to unjust treatment during and immediately after the war, African Americans pushed for integration on the strength of their service despite the oppressive limitations they faced on the front and at home. Pressured by civil rights activists such as A. Philip Randolph, President Harry S. Truman passed an executive order that called for equal treatment in the military. Even so, integration took place haltingly and was realized only after the political and strategic realities of the Korean War forced the Army to allow black soldiers to fight alongside their white comrades. While the war pushed the civil rights struggle beyond national boundaries, it also revealed the persistence of racial discrimination and exposed the limits of interracial solidarity.Let Us Fight as Free Menreveals the heated debates about the meaning of military service, manhood, and civil rights strategies within the African American community and the United States as a whole.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780812245974Publication Date: 2014-03-25 -
Magic City: How the Birmingham jazz tradition shaped the sound of America
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Call Number: ML3508.8.B57 M37 2023ISBN: 9781469676876Publication Date: 2023-11-28"Magic City is the story of one of American music's essential unsung places: Birmingham, Alabama, birthplace of a distinctive and influential jazz heritage. In a telling replete with colorful characters, iconic artists, and unheralded masters, Burgin Mathews reveals how Birmingham was the cradle and training ground for such luminaries as big band leader Erskine Hawkins, cosmic outsider Sun Ra, and a long list of sidemen, soloists, and arrangers. He also celebrates the contributions of local educators, club owners, and civic leaders who nurtured a vital culture of Black expression in one of the country's most notoriously segregated cities." Available as a print book and an ebook. -
A Nation Within a Nation
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John Ernest offers a comprehensive survey of the broad-ranging and influential African American organizations and networks formed in the North in the late eighteenth century through the end of the Civil War. He examines fraternal organizations, churches, conventions, mutual aid benefit and literary societies, educational organizations, newspapers, and magazines. Ernest argues these organizations demonstrate how African Americans self-definition was not solely determined by slavery as they tried to create organizations in the hope of creating a community.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9781566638074Publication Date: 2011-04-16 -
The Practice of Citizenship
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The Practice of Citizenship traces the parallel development of early black print culture and legal and cultural understandings of U.S. citizenship. Considering a variety of texts by both canonical and lesser-known authors, Derrick R. Spires demonstrates how black writers articulated an expansive, practice-based theory of citizenship.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780812250800Publication Date: 2019-03-08 -
Press, Platform, Pulpit
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Press, Platform, Pulpit examines how early black feminism goes public by sheding new light on some of the major figures of early black feminism as well as bringing forward some lesser-known individuals who helped shape various  reform movements. With a perspective unlike many other studies of black feminism, Teresa Zackodnik considers these activists as central, rather than marginal, to the politics of their day, and argues that black feminism reached critical mass well before the club movement’s national federation at the turn into the twentieth century . Throughout, she shifts the way in which  major figures of early black feminism have been understood.           The first three chapters trace the varied speaking styles and appeals of black women in the church, abolition, and women’s rights, highlighting audience and location as mediating factors in the public address and politics of figures such as Jarena Lee, Zilpha Elaw, Amanda Berry Smith, Ellen Craft, Sarah Parker Remond and Sojourner Truth. The next chapter focuses on Ida B. Wells’s anti-lynching tours as working within “New Abolition” and influenced by black feminists before her. The final chapter examines feminist black nationalism as it developed in the periodical press by considering Maria Stewart’s social and feminist gospel; Mary Shadd Cary’s linking of abolition, emigration, and woman suffrage; and late-nineteenth-century black feminist journalism addressing black women’s migration and labor.  Early black feminists working in reforms such as abolition and women’s rights opened new public arenas, such as the press, to the voices of black women. The book concludes by focusing on the 1891 National Council of Women, Frances Harper, and Anna Julia Cooper, which together mark a generational shift in black feminism, and by exploring the possibilities of taking black feminism public through forging coalitions among women of color. Press, Platform, Pulpit goes far in deepening our understanding of early black feminism, its position in reform, and the varied publics it created for its politics.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 1572338261Publication Date: 2011-12-06 -
Racing the Great White Way
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The early drama of Eugene O'Neill, with its emphasis on racial themes and conflicts, opened up extraordinary opportunities for Black performers to challenge racist structures in modern theater and cinema. By adapting O'Neill's dramatic writing-changing scripts to omit offensive epithets, inserting African American music and dance, or including citations of Black internationalism--theater artists of color have used O'Neill's texts to raze barriers in American and transatlantic theater. Challenging the widely accepted idea that Broadway was the white-hot creative engine of U.S. theater during the early 20th century, author Katie N. Johnson reveals a far more complex system of exchanges between the Broadway establishment and a vibrant Black theater scene in New York and beyond to chart a new history of American and transnational theater. In spite of their dichotomous (and at times problematic) representation of Blackness, O'Neill's plays such as The Emperor Jones and All God's Chillun Got Wings make ideal case studies because of the way these works stimulated traffic between Broadway and Harlem-and between white and Black America. These investigations of O'Neill and Broadway productions are enriched by the vibrant transnational exchange found in early to mid-20th century artistic production. Anchored in archival research, Racing the Great White Way recovers not only vital lost performance histories, but also the layered contexts for performing bodies across the Black Atlantic and the Circum-Atlantic.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780472075782Publication Date: 2023-07-19 -
Regina Anderson Andrews, Harlem Renaissance Librarian
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Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780252096419Publication Date: 2014-05-15 -
Schooling Jim Crow
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In 1919 the NAACP organized a voting bloc powerful enough to compel the city of Atlanta to budget $1.5 million for the construction of schools for black students. This victory would have been remarkable in any era, but in the context of the Jim Crow South it was revolutionary.Schooling Jim Crowtells the story of this little-known campaign, which happened less than thirteen years after the Atlanta race riot of 1906 and just weeks before a wave of anti-black violence swept the nation in the summer after the end of World War I. Despite the constant threat of violence, Atlanta's black voters were able to force the city to build five black grammar schools and Booker T. Washington High School, the city's first publicly funded black high school.Schooling Jim Crowreveals how they did it and why it matters. In this pathbreaking book, Jay Driskell explores the changes in black political consciousness that made the NAACP's grassroots campaign possible at a time when most black southerners could not vote, let alone demand schools. He reveals how black Atlantans transformed a reactionary politics of respectability into a militant force for change. Contributing to this militancy were understandings of class and gender transformed by decades of racially segregated urban development, the 1906 Atlanta race riot, Georgia's disfranchisement campaign of 1908, and the upheavals of World War I. On this cultural foundation, black Atlantans built a new urban black politics that would become the model for the NAACP's political strategy well into the twentieth century.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 0813936144Publication Date: 2014-12-03 -
Searching for Black Confederates
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Call Number: eBookISBN: 1469669412Publication Date: 2022-02-01More than 150 years after the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organisations repeat claims that anywhere up to 100,000 African Americans fought in the Confederate army. Kevin Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts and poorly understood primary-source material have helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. -
Suffrage Reconstructed
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The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, identified all legitimate voters as male. In so doing, it added gender-specific language to the U.S. Constitution for the first time. Suffrage Reconstructed is the first book to consider how and why the amendment's authors made this decision. Vividly detailing congressional floor bickering and activist campaigning, Laura E. Free takes readers into the pre- and postwar fights over precisely who should have the right to vote. Free demonstrates that all men, black and white, were the ultimate victors of these fights, as gender became the single most important marker of voting rights during Reconstruction. Free argues that the Fourteenth Amendment's language was shaped by three key groups: African American activists who used ideas about manhood to claim black men's right to the ballot, postwar congressmen who sought to justify enfranchising southern black men, and women’s rights advocates who began to petition Congress for the ballot for the first time as the Amendment was being drafted. To prevent women’s inadvertent enfranchisement, and to incorporate formerly disfranchised black men into the voting polity, the Fourteenth Amendment’s congressional authors turned to gender to define the new American voter. Faced with this exclusion some woman suffragists, most notably Elizabeth Cady Stanton, turned to rhetorical racism in order to mount a campaign against sex as a determinant of one’s capacity to vote. Stanton’s actions caused a rift with Frederick Douglass and a schism in the fledgling woman suffrage movement. By integrating gender analysis and political history, Suffrage Reconstructed offers a new interpretation of the Civil War–era remaking of American democracy, placing African American activists and women’s rights advocates at the heart of nineteenth-century American conversations about public policy, civil rights, and the franchise.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780801450860Publication Date: 2015-11-06 -
The Tar Baby
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A richly nuanced cultural history of an enigmatic and controversial folktale Perhaps the best-known version of the tar baby story was published in 1880 by Joel Chandler Harris in Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, and popularized in Song of the South, the 1946 Disney movie. Other versions of the story, however, have surfaced in many other places throughout the world, including Nigeria, Brazil, Corsica, Jamaica, India, and the Philippines. The Tar Baby offers a fresh analysis of this deceptively simple story about a fox, a rabbit, and a doll made of tar and turpentine, tracing its history and its connections to slavery, colonialism, and global trade. Bryan Wagner explores how the tar baby story, thought to have originated in Africa, came to exist in hundreds of forms on five continents. Examining its variation, reception, and dispersal over time, he argues that the story is best understood not merely as a folktale but as a collective work in political philosophy.0Circulating at the same time and in the same places as new ideas about property and politics developed in colonial law and political economy, the tar baby comes to embody an understanding of the interlocking processes by which custom was criminalized, slaves were captured, and labor was bought and sold. Compellingly argued and ambitious in scope, the book concludes with twelve versions of the story transcribed from various cultures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Call Number: eBookISBN: 9781400885619Publication Date: 2017-04-12 -
Voices of Civil Rights Lawyers
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While bus boycotts, sit-ins, and other acts of civil disobedience were the engine of the civil rights movement, the law was a primary context. Lawyers played a key role amid profound social upheavals, and the twenty-six contributors to this volume reveal what it was like to be a southern civil rights lawyer in this era. These eyewitness accounts provide unique windows onto the most dramatic moments in civil rights history, illuminating the legal fights that heralded the 1965 Selma March, the first civil judgment against the Ku Klux Klan, the creation of ballot access for blacks in Alabama, and the 1968 Democratic Convention. White and black, male and female, northern- and southern-born, these lawyers discuss both the abuses they endured and the barriers they broke as they helped shape a critical chapter of American history.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780813054322Publication Date: 2017-06-06 -
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War! What Is It Good For?
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African Americans' long campaign for "the right to fight" forced Harry Truman to issue his 1948 executive order calling for equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed forces. InWar! What Is It Good For?, Kimberley Phillips examines how blacks' participation in the nation's wars after Truman's order and their protracted struggles for equal citizenship galvanized a vibrant antiwar activism that reshaped their struggles for freedom.Using an array of sources--from newspapers and government documents to literature, music, and film--and tracing the period from World War II to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Phillips considers how federal policies that desegregated the military also maintained racial, gender, and economic inequalities. Since 1945, the nation's need for military labor, blacks' unequal access to employment, and discriminatory draft policies have forced black men into the military at disproportionate rates. While mainstream civil rights leaders considered the integration of the military to be a civil rights success, many black soldiers, veterans, and antiwar activists perceived war as inimical to their struggles for economic and racial justice and sought to reshape the civil rights movement into an antiwar black freedom movement. Since the Vietnam War, Phillips argues, many African Americans have questioned linking militarism and war to their concepts of citizenship, equality, and freedom.
Call Number: ebookISBN: 9780807835029Publication Date: 2012-01-15
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Abina and the Important Men
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This is an illustrated "graphic history" based on an 1876 court transcript of a West African woman named Abina, who was wrongfully enslaved and took her case to court. The main scenes of the story take place in the courtroom, where Abina strives to convince a series of "important men"--A British judge, two Euro-African attorneys, a wealthy African country "gentleman," and a jury of local leaders --that her rights matter.--Publisher description.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection KRX46.M36 G48 2016ISBN: 9780190238742Publication Date: 2015-06-01 -
Bitter Root Volume 1: Family Business
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"In the 1920s, the Harlem Renaissance is in full swing, and only the Sangerye Family, once known as the greatest monster hunters of all time, can save New York -- and the world -- from the supernatural forces threatening to destroy humanity. But those days are fading and the once-great family that specialized in curing the souls of those infected by racism and hate has been torn apart by tragedies and conflicting moral codes. A terrible tragedy has claimed most of the family, leaving the surviving cousins divided between by the desire to cure monsters or to kill them; they must heal the wounds of the past and move beyond their differences ... or sit back and watch a force of unimaginable evil ravage the human race."--Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection PN6728.B4994 W351 2019ISBN: 9781534312128Publication Date: 2019-05-14 -
Incognegro Graphic Mystery
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"This tenth anniversary edition of the acclaimed and fearless graphic novel features enhanced toned art, an afterword by Mat Johnson, character sketches, and other additional material. In the early 20th Century, when lynchings were commonplace throughout the American South, a few courageous reporters from the North risked their lives to expose these atrocities. They were African-American men who, due to their light skin color, could "pass" among the white folks. They called this dangerous assignment going "incognegro." Zane Pinchback, a reporter for the New York-based New Holland Herald, is sent to investigate the arrest of his own brother, charged with the brutal murder of a white woman in Mississippi. With a lynch mob already swarming, Zane must stay "incognegro" long enough to uncover the truth behind the murder in order to save his brother-- and himself. Suspenseful, unsettling and relevant, [this book] is a tense graphic novel of shifting identities, forbidden passions, and secrets that run far deeper than skin color"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection PN6727.J573 I53 2018ISBN: 9781506705644Publication Date: 2018-02-06 -
Dreaming Eagles
by
Dreaming Eagles tells the true story of the first African-American fighter pilots to join the United States Army Air Force in WWII and whose humble beginnings in Tuskegee, Alabama propelled them into the deadly skies above Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Not only were they instrumental against the Nazi war machine, but also braved an equally great challenge, overcoming everyday bigotry amongst their fellow American soldiers as well as civilians at home. High in the heavens, they fought a battle that would change their country for all time.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection PN6727.E56 D74 2016ISBN: 9781935002949Publication Date: 2016-10-25 -
Incognegro Renaissance
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"A page-turning thriller of racial divide, Incognegro: Renaissance explores segregation, secrets and self-image as our race-bending protagonist penetrates a world where he feels stranger than ever before. When a black writer is found dead at a scandalous interracial party in 1920s' New York, Harlem's cub reporter Zane Pinchback is the only one determined to solve the murder. Zane must go "Incognegro" for the first time, using his light appearance to pass as a white man to find the true killer, in this prequel miniseries to the critically acclaimed Vertigo graphic novel, now available in a special new 10th Anniversary Edition. With a cryptic manuscript as his only clue, and a mysterious and beautiful woman as the murder's only witness, Zane finds himself on the hunt through the dark and dangerous streets of "roaring twenties" Harlem in search for justice. In a time when looks could kill. Zane's skin is the only thing keeping him alive"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection PN6727.J573 I536 2018ISBN: 9781506705637Publication Date: 2018-10-23 -
Monk!
by
She is Kathleen Annie Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a free-spirited baroness of the Rothschild family. He is Thelonious Sphere Monk, a musical genius fighting against the whims of his troubled mind. Their enduring friendship begins in 1954 and ends only with Monk's death in 1982. Set against the backdrop of New York during the heyday of jazz, Monk! explores the rare alchemy between two brilliant beings separated by an ocean of social status, race, and culture, but united by an infinite love of music.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection ML417.M846 D368 2018ISBN: 9781626724341Publication Date: 2018-09-25 -
The Life of Frederick Douglass
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Recently returned to the cultural spotlight, Frederick Douglass's impact on American history is felt even in today's current events. Comic book writer and filmmaker David F. Walker joins with the art team of Damon Smyth and Marissa Louise to bring the long, exciting, and influential life of Douglass to life in comic book form. Taking you from Douglass's life as a young slave through his forbidden education to his escape and growing prominence as a speaker, abolitionist, and influential cultural figure during the Civil War and beyond, The Life of Frederick Douglass presents a complete illustrated portrait of the man who stood up and spoke out for freedom and equality. Along the way, special features provide additional background on the history of slavery in the United States, the development of photography (which would play a key role in the spread of Douglass's image and influence), and the Civil War. Told from Douglass's point of view and based on his own writings, The Life of Frederick Douglass provides an up-close-and-personal look at a history-making American who was larger than life.--Amazon.com.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection E449.D95 W35 2018ISBN: 9780399581441Publication Date: 2019-01-08 -
(H)afrocentric Comics
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"When gentrification strikes the neighborhood surrounding Ronald Reagan University, Naima Pepper recruits a group of disgruntled undergrads of color to launch the first and only anti-gentrification social networking site, mydiaspora.com. The motley crew is poised to fight back against expensive avocado toast, muted Prius cars, exorbitant rent, and cultural appropriation. Whether Naima and the gang are transforming social media, leading protests, fighting rent hikes, or working as "Racial Translators," the students at Ronald Reagan University take movements to a new level by combining their tech-savvy, Black Millennial sensibilities with their individual backgrounds, goals, and aspirations"--Page 4 of cover.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection PN6728.H335 S65 2017ISBN: 9781629634487Publication Date: 2017-09-01 -
Hip Hop Family Tree Book 1: 1975 - 1981
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This encyclopedic comics history of the formative years of hip-hop captures the vivid personalities and magnetic performances of old-school pioneers and early stars like DJ Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, plus the charismatic players behind the scenes like Russell Simmons, Debbie Harry, Keith Haring and other luminaries make cameos.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection f ML3531 .P4861 2017ISBN: 9781606996904Publication Date: 2013-12-06 -
March: Book One
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This graphic novel is Congressman John Lewis' first-hand account of his lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a climax on the steps of City Hall. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington D.C., and from receiving beatings from state troopers, to receiving the Medal of Freedom awarded to him by Barack Obama, the first African-American president.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection E840.8.L43 A3 2013 (also available in other collections)ISBN: 9781603093002Publication Date: 2013-08-13 -
Showtime at the Apollo
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"Writer Ted Fox and artist James Otis Smith bring to life Harlem's legendary theater in this graphic novel adaptation of Fox's definitive, critically acclaimed history of the Apollo. Since its inception as an African-American theater in 1934, the Apollo, and the thousands of entertainers who performed there, have led the way in the presentation of swing, bebop, rhythm and blues, jazz, gospel, soul, funk and hip-hop-along with the latest in dance and comedy. The Apollo has nurtured and featured thousands of artists, many of whom have become legends. The beauty they have given the world-their art-transcends the hatred, ignorance, and intolerance that often made their lives difficult. Today, the Apollo enjoys an almost mythical status. With its breathtaking art, this graphic novel adaptation of Showtime at the Apollo brings to life the theater's legendary significance in music history, African American history, and to the culture of New York City."--Publisher's description
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection PN2277.N52 A686 2018ISBN: 9781419731389Publication Date: 2019-01-08 -
Nat Turner
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In graphic novel format, depicts the life and times of the self-educated African American preacher who led a slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, in 1831, believing that God wanted him to free the slaves.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection F232.S7 B345 2016ISBN: 9780810972278Publication Date: 2008-07-01 -
Mandela and the General
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"Will the Freedom Struggle End in a Bloodbath? Nelson Mandela, the anti-apartheid hero and first leader of the new South Africa, is an international symbol of the power of a popular movement to fight structural racism. But that nonviolent struggle for equality and justice very nearly spiraled into an all-out race war that would have only ended in "the peace of graveyards." As the first post-apartheid elections approach in 1994, with South African blacks poised to take power, the nation's whites fear reprisal. White nationalist militias claiming 50,000 well-armed former soldiers stand ready to fight to the death to defend their cause. They need someone who can lead and unite them. That man is General Constand Viljoen, former chief of apartheid South Africa's military. Mandela knows that he can't avert a bloodbath on his own. He will have to count on his archenemy. Throughout those historic months, the two men meet in secret. Can they trust each other? Can they keep their followers and radical fringe elements from acts of violence? The mettle of these two men will determine the future of a nation. The drama of this contest and the history that pivoted on it comes vividly to life in visual form. Veteran British journalist John Carlin teams up with Catalan artist Oriol Malet to create a historically and artistically rich graphic novel with obvious relevance to today's polarized politics."--Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection DT1974 .C37613 2018ISBN: 9780874868203Publication Date: 2018-11-05 -
The Harlem Hellfighters
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"From bestselling author Max Brooks, the riveting story of the highly decorated, barrier-breaking, historic black regiment--the Harlem Hellfighters. The Harlem Hellfighters is a fictionalized account of the 369th Infantry Regiment--the first African American regiment mustered to fight in World War I. From the enlistment lines in Harlem to the training camp at Spartanburg, South Carolina, to the trenches in France, bestselling author Max Brooks tells the thrilling story of the heroic journey that these soldiers undertook for a chance to fight for America. Despite extraordinary struggles and discrimination, the 369th became one of the most successful--and least celebrated--regiments of the war. The Harlem Hellfighters, as their enemies named them, spent longer than any other American unit in combat and displayed extraordinary valor on the battlefield. Based on true events and featuring artwork from acclaimed illustrator Caanan White, these pages deliver an action-packed and powerful story of courage, honor, and heart"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection D570.33 369th .B76 2014ISBN: 9780307464972Publication Date: 2014-04-01 -
Malcolm X
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The age of multitasking needs better narrative history. It must be absolutely factual, immediately accessible, smart, and brilliantly fun. Enter Andrew Helfer, the award-winning graphic-novel editor behind Road to Perdition and The History of Violence, and welcome the launch of a unique line of graphic biographies. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these graphic biographies qualify as tomes. But if you're among the millions who haven't time for another doorstop of a biography, these books are for you. With the thoroughly researched and passionately drawn Malcolm X, Helfer and award-winning artist Randy DuBurke capture Malcolm Little's extraordinary transformation from a black youth beaten down by Jim Crow America into Malcolm X, the charismatic, controversial, and doomed national spokesman for the Nation of Islam.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection BP223.Z8 L5745 2006ISBN: 9780809095049Publication Date: 2006-11-14 -
James Brown: Black and Proud
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"Born in the South during the height of segregation, James Brown went on to become a global sensation, using his immeasurable talent to grasp what he believed was the American Dream. Join the charismatic, hard working, and sometimes tyrannical bandleader on a journey down the roads of America with a group of talented musicians spreading the sound of funk and soul throughout the country. Told against the backdrop of a changing America during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, this is the story of a man and his band that would go on to revolutionize the world of pop music."--Back cover.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection ML420.B818 F38 2018ISBN: 9781684053384Publication Date: 2019-01-29 -
Big Black: Stand at Attica
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"In the summer of 1971, New York's Attica State Prison is a symbol of everything broken in America -- abused prisoners, rampant racism and a blind eye turned towards the injustices perpetrated against the powerless. But when the guards at Attica overreact to a minor incident, the prisoners decide they've had enough and revolt -- taking their jailers hostage and making demands for humane conditions. Frank "Big Black" Smith finds himself at the center of this uprising, struggling to protect hostages, prisoners and negotiators alike. But when the only avenue for justice seems to be negotiating with ambitious Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Big Black soon discovers there may be no hope in finding a peaceful resolution for the prisoners in Attica. This is an unflinching look at the price of standing up to injustice in what remains one of the bloodiest civil rights confrontations in American history." -- Page [4] of cover.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection PN6727.S54584 B543 2020ISBN: 9781684154791Publication Date: 2020-02-18 -
Still I Rise
by
Overview: Still I Rise is a critically acclaimed work with an impressive scope: the entire history of Black America, told in an accessible graphic-novel form. Updated from its original version-which ended with the Million Man March-it now extends from the early days of colonial slavery right through to Barack Obama's groundbreaking presidential campaign. Compared by many to Art Spiegelman's Maus, Still I Rise is a breathtaking achievement that celebrates the collective African-American memory, imagination, and spirit.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection E185 .L35 2009ISBN: 9781402762260Publication Date: 2009-02-03 -
Black History in Its Own Words
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"Black History In Its Own Words started in January 2015 when Matt Bors asked me to find eight quotes and illustrate them for The Nib for February, Black History Month. I chose quotes ranging from the casual to the profound from luminaries both past and present. I had so much fun that I did four extra. The next year, 2016, I drafted 12 more; I had a habit. Presented here are the original 24 as well as 15 new ones for 2017"--Front matte
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection E185 .W76 2017ISBN: 9781534301535Publication Date: 2017-02-14 -
Strange Fruit
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"Strange Fruit, Volume I, Uncelebrated narratives from Black history is a collection of stories from African American history that exemplifies success in the face of great adversity. This unique graphic anthology offers historical and cultural commentary on nine uncelebrated heroes whose stories are not often found in history books. Among the stories included are: Henry 'Box' Brown, who escaped from slavery by mailing himself to Philadelphia; Alexander Crummell and the Noyes Academy, the first integrated school in America, established in the 1830s; Marshall 'Major' Taylor, a.k.a. the Black Cyclone, the first Black champion in any sport; and Bass Reeves, the most successful lawman in the Old West. Written and illustrated by Joel Christian Gill, the diverse art beautifully captures the spirit of each remarkable individual and opens a window into an important part of American history"-- Provided by publisher.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection E185.96 .G54 2014ISBN: 9781938486296Publication Date: 2014-05-01 -
Strange Fruit, Volume II
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A collection of stories from early African American history that represent the oddity of success in the face of great adversity. Each of the eight illustrated chapters chronicles an uncelebrated African American hero or event. Joel Christian Gill offers historical and cultural commentary on heroes whose stories are not often found in history books, such as Cathay Williams, the only known female buffalo soldier, and Eugene Bullard, a fighter pilot who flew for France during World War I. These beautifully illustrated stories offer a refreshing look at remarkable African Americans. --amazon.com.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Graphic Novel Collection E185.96 .G542 2018ISBN: 1938486579Publication Date: 2018-02-01 -
Invisible Men: the Trailblazing Black Artists of Comic Books
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Stories of Black artists who drew -- mostly covertly behind the scenes -- superhero, horror, and romance comics in the early years of the industry.
Call Number: 1st Floor - Popular Reading Collection ; PN6725 .Q38 2020ISBN: 9781684055869Publication Date: 2020-12-15
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The Docuseek African-American Studies CollectionCall Number: Streaming videosThe African-American Studies Collection is an interdisciplinary collection of over 80 films focused on the social, political, and cultural history and present experience of African Americans.
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Race-- the power of an illusion
The division of the world's peoples into distinct groups - "red," "black," "white" or "yellow" peoples - has became so deeply imbedded in our psyches, so widely accepted, many would promptly dismiss as crazy any suggestion of its falsity. Yet, that's exactly what this provocative, new three-hour series by California Newsreel claims. Race - The Power of an Illusion questions the very idea of race as biology, suggesting that a belief in race is no more sound than believing that the sun revolves around the earth. Yet race still matters. Just because race doesn't exist in biology doesn't mean it isn't very real, helping shape life chances and opportunities. By asking, What is this thing called 'race'?, a question so basic it is rarely asked, Race-- the power of an Illusion helps set the terms that any further discussion of race must first take into account. Ideal for human biology, anthropology, sociology, American history, American studies, and cultural studies.
Call Number: Streaming videoPublication Date: 2014 -
I Am Not Your Negro
An Oscar-nominated documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO explores the continued peril America faces from institutionalized racism. In 1979, James Baldwin wrote a letter to his literary agent describing his next project, Remember This House. The book was to be a revolutionary, personal account of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends--Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. At the time of Baldwin's death in 1987, he left behind only thirty completed pages of his manuscript. Now, in his incendiary new documentary, master filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the book James Baldwin never finished. The result is a radical, up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, using Baldwin's original words and flood of rich archival material. I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of #BlackLivesMatter. It is a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of these three leaders, Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very definition of what America stands for.
Call Number: Streaming videoPublication Date: 2016 -
The caged bird : the life and music of Florence B. Price
Call Number: Music/Media DVD disc ML410.P837 C34 2015ISBN: 9781682260067DVD
Documentary about the first African-American woman to have her music performed by a major symphony orchestra. -
Pushout: the Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools
Inspired by the groundbreaking book of the same name by Monique W. Morris, Ed.D, PUSHOUT: THE CRIMINALIZATION OF BLACK GIRLS IN SCHOOLS, takes a deep dive into the lives of Black girls and the practices, cultural beliefs and policies that disrupts one of the most important factors in their lives – education. Alarmingly, African American girls are the fastest-growing population in the juvenile justice system and the only group of girls to disproportionately experience criminalization at every education level. The film underscores the challenges Black girls face with insights from multiple experts across the country who have worked extensively in the fields of social and criminal justice, gender equality and educational equity, giving context to the crisis and providing a roadmap for how our educational system and those who interact with Black girls can provide a positive rather than punitive response to behaviors that are often misunderstood or misrepresented.
Call Number: Streaming videoPublication Date: 2019 -
Finding Vivian Maier
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Call Number: streaming videoPublication Date: 2013Who was Vivian Maier? A mysterious and private woman who worked as a nanny for forty years? Or was she the 20th century's greatest street photographer? The answer is simple: she was both. -
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra: Featuring Paul Gonsalves
Streaming Audio
1962 album featuring tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves and a number of Ellington's well-known tunes. -
Femenine
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Publication Date: 2021Streaming audio
Los Angeles new music group Wild Up performs an open score work by minimalist composer Julius Eastman. -
The Archandroid
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Call Number: 3rd Floor -- Music/Media CD ; CD21080Publication Date: 2010-05-18Afrofuturist musical drama by singer, actress, and composer Janelle Monáe. -
A Love Supreme
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Streaming audio
Coltrane's 1965 masterpiece is among the greatest albums in the history of jazz. -
The Marian Anderson Story: Lady in the Lincoln MemorialStreaming video
This 19 minute documentary follows Marian Anderson's remarkable career from obscure small churches to great opera houses and to her triumphant concert at the Lincoln Memorial. We witness how one woman's life in music was a victory of faith, of talent, and of character. -
The Encyclopedia of African-American Writing
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Call Number: 1st Floor - Reference ; PS153.N5 A3444 2018ISBN: 9781682177181Publication Date: 2018-06-30A timely survey of an important sector of American letters, African American Writers examines a multitude of black cultural leaders from the 18th century to the present. Updated through the present time, this new second edition covers the role and influence of African American cultural leaders from all walks of life. -
International Dictionary of Black Composers
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"This exceptional work provides information on composers of African heritage from around the world during the last 300 years. The 185 signed essays, most of which are accompanied by full-page portraits, are substantial in their coverage and analysis. ... Although all music genres are embraced, nearly half of the 185 entries are on classical composers who have seldom received significant public notice or mention in other reference sources." -- American Libraries, May 2000.
Call Number: Reference f ML105 .I5 1999ISBN: 9781884964275Publication Date: 1999-04-01 -
Abina and the important men : a graphic history.
Call Number: Streaming mediaPublication Date: 2017
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Ethnic Diversity Source This link opens in a new window
This full-text database is a dedicated resource covering the culture, traditions, social treatment and lived experiences of different ethnic groups in America. It provides full text from a growing list of sources including peer-reviewed journals, magazines, e-books, biographies and primary source documents.
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Ethnic NewsWatch This link opens in a new window
Full text collection of 400+ newspapers, journals, and magazines of the ethnic and minority press. Content from 1985-present.
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Exploring Race in Society This link opens in a new window
This research database offers essential content covering important issues related to race in society today. Essays, articles, reports and other reliable sources provide an in-depth look at the history of race and provide critical context for learning more about topics associated with race, ethnicity, diversity and inclusiveness.