- Libraries list
- Accounts list
Our African American Collection of books is located on the third floor of Ekstrom Library. We also have access to a variety of databases specific to African American history. Our Archives and Special Collections is another important resource, especially for finding primary sources.
Articles from 19th century African American newspapers related to cultural life and history, as well as business and commodity markets, the humanities, world travel and religion. 1827 - 1902.
An African American and Latinx History of the United States by
An intersectional history of the shared struggle for African American and Latinx civil rights Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it. Ortiz challenges the notion of westward progress, as exalted by widely taught formulations such as "manifest destiny" and "Jacksonian democracy," and shows how placing African American, Latinx, and Indigenous voices unapologetically front and center transforms American history into the story of the working class organizing against imperialism. In precise detail, Ortiz traces this untold history from the Jim Crow-esque racial segregation of the Southwest, the rise and violent fall of a powerful tradition of Mexican labor organizing in the twentieth century, to May 1, 2006, International Workers' Day, when migrant laborers-Chicana/os, Afro-Cubanos, and immigrants from nearly every continent on earth-united in resistance on the first "Day Without Immigrants." Incisive and timely, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a bottom-up history told from the viewpoint of African American and Latinx activists and revealing the radically different ways people of the diaspora addressed issues still plaguing the United States today.
The Making of Black Lives Matter by
Started in the wake of George Zimmerman's 2013 acquittal in the death of Trayvon Martin, the #BlackLivesMatter movement has become a powerful and uncompromising campaign demanding redress for the brutal and unjustified treatment of black bodies by law enforcement in the United States. The movement is only a few years old, but as Christopher J. Lebron argues in this book, the sentiment behind it is not; the plea and demand that "Black Lives Matter" comes out of a much older and richer tradition arguing for the equal dignity -- and not just equal rights -- of black people. The Making of Black Lives Matter presents a condensed and accessible intellectual history that traces the genesis of the ideas that have built into the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Drawing on the work of revolutionary black public intellectuals, including Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, Zora Neal Hurston, Anna Julia Cooper, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, and Martin Luther King Jr., Lebron clarifies what it means to assert that "Black Lives Matter" when faced with contemporary instances of anti-black law enforcement. He also illuminates the crucial difference between the problem signaled by the social media hashtag and how we think that we ought to address the problem. As Lebron states, police body cameras, or even the exhortation for civil rights mean nothing in the absence of equality and dignity. To upset dominant practices of abuse, oppression and disregard, we must reach instead for radical sensibility. Radical sensibility requires that we become cognizant of the history of black thought and activism in order to make sense of the emotions, demands, and arguments of present-day activists and public thinkers. Only in this way can we truly embrace and pursue the idea of racial progress in America.
From Slavery to Freedom by
From Slavery to Freedom remains the most revered, respected, and honored text on the market. The preeminent history of African Americans, this best-selling text charts the journey of African Americans from their origins in Africa, through slavery in the Western Hemisphere, struggles for freedom in the West Indies, Latin America, and the United States, various migrations, and the continuing quest for racial equality. Building on John Hope Franklin's classic work, the ninth edition has been thoroughly rewritten by the award-winning scholar Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. It includes new chapters and updated information based on the most current scholarship. With a new narrative that brings intellectual depth and fresh insight to a rich array of topics, the text features greater coverage of ancestral Africa, African American women, differing expressions of protest, local community activism, black internationalism, civil rights and black power, as well as the election of our first African American president in 2008. The text also has a fresh new 4-color design with new charts, maps, photographs, paintings, and illustrations. Instructors and students can now access their course content through the Connect digital learning platform by purchasing either standalone Connect access or a bundle of print and Connect access. McGraw-Hill Connect® is a subscription-based learning service accessible online through your personal computer or tablet. Choose this option if your instructor will require Connect to be used in the course. Your subscription to Connect includes the following: * SmartBook® - an adaptive digital version of the course textbook that personalizes your reading experience based on how well you are learning the content. * Access to your instructor's homework assignments, quizzes, syllabus, notes, reminders, and other important files for the course. * Progress dashboards that quickly show how you are performing on your assignments and tips for improvement. * The option to purchase (for a small fee) a print version of the book. This binder-ready, loose-leaf version includes free shipping. Complete system requirements to use Connect can be found here: http://www.mheducation.com/highered/platforms/connect/training-support-students.html
Creating Black Americans by
Here is a magnificent account of a past rich in beauty and creativity, but also in tragedy and trauma. Eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter blends a vivid narrative based on the latest research with a wonderful array of artwork by African American artists, works which add a new depth to ourunderstanding of black history.Painter offers a history written for a new generation of African Americans, stretching from life in Africa before slavery to today's hip-hop culture. The book describes the staggering number of Africans--over ten million--forcibly transported to the New World, most doomed to brutal servitudein Brazil and the Caribbean. Painter looks at the free black population, numbering close to half a million by 1860 (compared to almost four million slaves), and provides a gripping account of the horrible conditions of slavery itself. The book examines the Civil War, revealing that it only slowlybecame a war to end slavery, and shows how Reconstruction, after a promising start, was shut down by terrorism by white supremacists. Painter traces how through the long Jim Crow decades, blacks succeeded against enormous odds, creating schools and businesses and laying the foundations of ourpopular culture. We read about the glorious outburst of artistic creativity of the Harlem Renaissance, the courageous struggles for Civil Rights in the 1960s, the rise and fall of Black Power, the modern hip-hop movement, and two black Secretaries of State. Painter concludes that African Americanstoday are wealthier and better educated, but the disadvantaged are as vulnerable as ever.Painter deeply enriches her narrative with a series of striking works of art--more than 150 in total, most in full color--works that profoundly engage with black history and that add a vital dimension to the story, a new form of witness that testifies to the passion and creativity of theAfrican-American experience.* Among the dozens of artists featured are Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, Jacob Lawrence, and Kara Walker* Filled with sharp portraits of important African Americans, from Olaudah Equiano (one of the first African slaves to leave a record of his captivity) and Toussaint L'Ouverture (who led the Haitian revolution), to Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X
Children of Fire by
Ordinary people don't experience history as it is taught by historians. They live across the convenient chronological divides we impose on the past. The same people who lived through the Civil War and the eradication of slavery also dealt with the hardships of Reconstruction, so why do we almost always treat them separately? InChildren of Fire, renowned historian Thomas C. Holt challenges this form to tell the story of generations of African Americans through the lived experience of the subjects themselves, with all of the nuances, ironies, contradictions, and complexities one might expect. Building on seminal books like John Hope Franklin'sFrom Slavery to Freedomand many others, Holt captures the entire African American experience from the moment the first twenty African slaves were sold at Jamestown in 1619. Each chapter focuses on a generation of individuals who shaped the course of American history, hoping for a better life for their children but often confronting the ebb and flow of their civil rights and status within society. Many familiar faces grace these pages--Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, and Barack Obama--but also some overlooked ones. Figures like Anthony Johnson, a slave who bought his freedom in late seventeenth century Virginia and built a sizable plantation, only to have it stolen away from his children by an increasingly racist court system. Or Frank Moore, a WWI veteran and sharecropper who sued his landlord for unfair practices, but found himself charged with murder after fighting off an angry white posse. Taken together, their stories tell how African Americans fashioned a culture and identity amid the turmoil of four centuries of American history.
A Pictorial History of African Americans by
Few books in the history of publishing have proved so useful and long-lasting as this pioneering work in the popular history of African Americans. The first edition appeared in 1956, on the eve of the civil rights revolution. A highly original attempt to portray a crucial but long-neglected part of the American past, it soon became a standard work on black history. Its rich variety of more than 1,300 illustrations -- paintings, drawings, cartoons, prints, posters, broadsides, daguerreotypes, photographs, sheet music covers, title pages, and stills from television and films -- brings home to readers young and old the look and feel of the dynamic past. This sixth edition captures the changes on the national scene that have influenced African American life during the Reagan-Bush years and the first stages of the Clinton administration. The new text and photographs illuminate social, economic, political, and cultural trends. The authors discuss government and politics, civil rights, arts and letters, sports, labor and employment, schools, the church, and the mass media, highlighting the role of black leaders who have come to the fore in recent years. Langston Hughes made innumerable contributions to American and world literature and culture. His poems, plays, novels, short stories, and librettos earned him many honors, beginning in the 1920s when he became a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance. By the time of his death in 1967, his work had deeply influenced writers not only at home, but in Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere. One of the most original of black poets, he became known as the poet laureate of his people. Milton Meltzer, historian and biographer, is the author of more than eighty books for adults and young people. His work includes Black Magic: A Pictorial History of the African American in the Performing Arts (with Langston Hughes); Slavery: A World History; Frederick Douglass: In His Own Words; The Black Americans: In Their Own Words; and biographies of Langston Hughes and Mary McLeod Bethune. Among the many honors for his books are five nominations for the National Book Award.
To Make Our World Anew by
The two volumes of Kelley and Lewis's To Make Our World Anew integrate the work of eleven leading historians into the most up-to-date and comprehensive account available of African American history, from the first Africans brought as slaves into the Americas, right up to today's black filmmakers and politicians. This second volume covers the crucial post-Reconstruction years and traces the migration of blacks to the major cities. It describes the remarkable birth of the Harlem Renaissance, the hardships of the Great Depression, and the service of African Americans in World War II. Readers witness the struggle for Civil Rights in the 1950s and '60s and finally, the emergence of today's black middle class. Here is a panoramic view of African-American life, rich in gripping first-person accounts and short character sketches that invite readers to relive history as African Americans have experienced it.