*A Kirkus Best Book of 2022*A stirring consideration of homeownership, fatherhood, race, faith, and the history of an American city.In 2016, Lawrence Jackson accepted a new job in Baltimore, searched for schools for his sons, and bought a house. It would...

This "important and timely" (Drew Faust, Harvard Magazine) #1 New York Times bestseller examines the legacy of slavery in America--and how both history and memory continue to shape our everyday lives. Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint...

The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series.“Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again“Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as...

A perceptive and inspiring biography of an extraordinary woman born into slavery who, through grit and determination, became a historic social and educational leader.The life of Betsey Stockton (ca. 1798–1865) is a remarkable story of a Black woman’s...

A rigorous study of the social meaning and consequences of racist humor, and a damning argument for when the joke is not just a joke. Having a "good" sense of humor generally means being able to take a joke without getting offended—laughing even at a...

Examines how the media influenced ideas of race and beauty among African American women from the Harlem Renaissance to World War II.Between the Harlem Renaissance and the end of World War II, a complicated discourse emerged surrounding considerations of...

On June 17, 2015, a white supremacist entered Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and sat with some of its parishioners during a Wednesday night Bible study session. An hour later, he began expressing his hatred for African Americans, and...

Even the most cursory review of black literary production during the nineteenth century indicates that its primary concerns were the issues of slavery, racial subjugation, abolitionist politics and liberation. How did the writers of these narratives...

How black women have personified art,expression,identity, and freedom through performanceWinner, 2016 William Sanders Scarborough Prize, presented by the Modern Language Association for an outstanding scholarly study of African American literature or...

How activists in Ghana, South Africa, and Brazil provide inspiration and strategies for combating the gender violence epidemic in the United StatesHow can the U.S. learn from the perspectives of anti-gender violence activists in South America and Africa...

How black Americans use digital networks to organize and cultivate solidarityUnrest gripped Ferguson, Missouri, after Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson in August 2014. Many black Americans turned to their...

Shares wrenching accounts of the everyday violence experienced by emancipated African AmericansWell after slavery was abolished, its legacy of violence left deep wounds on African Americans’ bodies, minds, and lives. For many victims and witnesses of the...

Gayraud S. Wilmore, an internationally renowned scholar of the history of the African American church, is one of the founders of black theology and author of Black Religion and Black Radicalism. Pragmatic Spirituality brings together some of his most...

“Black Television Travels provides a detailed and insightful view of the roots and routes of the televisual representations of blackness on the transnational media landscape. By following the circulation of black cultural products and their...

A PBS NewsHour Best Book of the Year A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year in Nonfiction A brilliant scholar imparts the lessons bequeathed by the Black community and its remarkable artists and thinkers. Farah Jasmine Griffin has taken to her heart...

Mahalia Jackson was one of the greatest gospel singers America has ever known, the woman who almost singlehandedly brought black gospel from the churches of Chicago into the public eye. In her pink, floor-length organza gown, her black beehive piled high...

Winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize“This trenchant work of literary criticism examines the complex ways…African American authors have written about animals. In Bennett’s analysis, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Jesmyn Ward, and others subvert...

Originating with the birth of the nation itself, in many respects, the story of the domestic slave trade is also the story of the early United States. While an external traffic in slaves had always been present, following the American Revolution this was...

Michael J. Klarman, author of From Jim Crow to Civil Rights, which won the prestigious Bancroft Prize in American History, is one of the leading authorities on the history of civil rights law in the United States. In Unfinished Business, he illuminates...

Black politics are key to recognizing the most important social dynamics of the United States. Over the past forty years, no commentator has been as deeply insightful about the paradoxes and personalities of Black American public life as the journalist...