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Vivian Gibson's bestselling memoir of growing up in the 1950s in a segregated St. Louis neighborhood has been hailed by critics as a spare, elegant jewel of a work and a love letter to Gibson's childhood.

Vivian Gibson grew up in Mill Creek Valley, a segregated working-class neighborhood in St. Louis that was razed in 1959 to build a highway, an act of racism disguised under urban renewal as progress. A moving memoir of family life at a time very different from the present, The Last Children of Mill Creek chronicles the everyday lived experiences of Gibson's large family―her seven siblings, her crafty, college-educated mother, and her hard-working father―and the friends, shop owners, church ladies, teachers, and others who made Mill Creek into a warm, tight-knit African American community. In Gibson's words, This memoir is about survival, as told from the viewpoint of a watchful young girl―a collection of decidedly universal stories that chronicle the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.

Winner of a Missouri Humanities award for literary achievement, The Last Children of Mill Creek is an important book for anyone interested in urban development, race, and community history―or for anyone who was once a child.

Founded in March 1912, DC branch of the NAACP quickly became the leading organization advocating for the city's Black community.

President Woodrow Wilson's institution of Jim Crow segregation in the federal government in the spring of 1913 galvanized the African American community of DC and the NAACP launched a formidable crusade against Wilson's racist policies. As the preeminent civil rights organization of the nation's capital, it also developed a dual role as a watchdog body to prevent the passage of legislation in Congress that negatively affected African Americans.

Archivist and historian Derek Gray chronicles and analyzes the work of the DC NAACP through the civil rights era to the achievement of Home Rule in the District.

Fear, rumor and white supremacist ideals clashed with an unprecedented labor action spawned an epic tragedy.

On November 23, 1887, white vigilantes gunned down unarmed black laborers and their families due to strikes on Louisiana sugar cane plantations. A future member of the U.S. House of Representatives was among the leaders of a mob that routed black men from houses and forced them to a stretch of railroad track, ordering them to run for their lives before gunning them down. According to a witness, the guns firing in the black neighborhoods sounded like a battle. Author and award-winning reporter John DeSantis uses correspondence, interviews and federal records to detail this harrowing true story.

Discover Long Island's pivotal role in the Underground Railroad and the stories of the brave men and women whose legacy lives on today.

From the arrival of the Quakers in the seventeenth century to the enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, Long Island played an important role in the Underground Railroad's work to guide slaves to freedom. In Old Westbury, the Post family established a major stop on the freedom trail with the help of an escaped Virginia slave. In Jericho, families helped escaping slaves to freedom from the present-day Maine Maid Inn. Elias Hicks helped free 191 slaves himself and worked to create Underground Railroad safe houses in many northeastern cities. Some former slaves even established permanent communities across the island. Visit the safe houses--many of which are still standing today--and explore the journey of runaway slaves on Long Island.

In the early 1900s, an indomitable entrepreneurial spirit brought national renown to Tulsa's historic African American community, the Greenwood District.

This "Negro Wall Street" bustled with commercial activity. In 1921, jealously, land lust, and racism swelled in sectors of white Tulsa, and white rioters seized upon what some derogated as "Little Africa," leaving death and destruction in their wake. In an astounding resurrection, the community rose from the ashes of what was dubbed the Tulsa Race Riot with renewed vitality and splendor, peaking in the 1940s. In the succeeding decades, changed social and economic conditions sparked a prodigious downward spiral. Today's Greenwood District bears little resemblance to the black business mecca of yore. Instead, it has become part of something larger: an anchor to a rejuvenated arts, entertainment, educational, and cultural hub abutting downtown Tulsa.

The Tulsa experience is, in many ways, emblematic of others throughout the country. Through context-setting text and scores of captioned photographs, Images of America: Tulsa's Historic Greenwood District provides a basic foundation for those interested in the history of Tulsa, its African American community, and race relations in the modern era. Particularly for students, the book can be an entry point into what is a fascinating piece of American history and a gateway to discoveries about race, interpersonal relations, and shared humanity.

Josiah Henson was born into slavery in La Plata, Maryland, and auctioned off as a child to pay his owner's debt. After numerous trials and abuse, he earned the trust of his slaveholder by exhibiting intelligence and skill.

Daringly, he escaped to Canada with his wife and children. There he established a settlement and school for fugitives and repeatedly returned to the United States to help lead others to freedom along the Underground Railroad. He published a bestselling autobiography and became a popular preacher, lecturer, and international celebrity. He is immortalized as the inspiration for the title character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Author Edna M. Troiano recounts the amazing life of Maryland's Josiah Henson and explores the sites devoted to his memory.

See how the African-American community has played a vital role in the development and success of Vance County, North Carolina.

The African-American community has been an integral part of Vance County's history over the years. From antebellum times, to Reconstruction, to the Civil Rights era, to the present, this community has been through it all. Making a difference in all walks of life--educational, spiritual, commercial, and civic--the black citizens of this historic Tar Heel county share an impressive story, one marked by a determination and undeniable will to succeed through economic hardships and social challenges.

A part of the Underground Railroad, read here of enslaved people and their stories of using Virginia's waterways to achieve freedom.

Enslaved Virginians sought freedom from the time they were first brought to the Jamestown colony in 1619. Acts of self-emancipation were aided by Virginia's waterways, which became part of the network of the Underground Railroad in the years before the Civil War. Watermen willing to help escaped slaves made eighteenth-century Norfolk a haven for freedom seekers. Famous nineteenth-century escapees like Shadrack Minkins and Henry "Box" Brown were aided by the Underground Railroad. Enslaved men like Henry Lewey, known as Bluebeard, aided freedom seekers as conductors, and black and white sympathizers acted as station masters. Historian Cassandra Newby-Alexander narrates the ways that enslaved people used Virginia's waterways to achieve humanity's dream of freedom.

Discover the contributions notable Black South Carolinians gave to bring encouragement and inspiration to their communities.

Did you know that eighty-eight years before Rosa Parks's historic protest, a courageous black woman in Charleston kept her seat on a segregated streetcar? What about Robert Smalls, who steered a Confederate warship into Union waters, freeing himself and some of his family, and later served in the South Carolina state legislature? In this inspiring collection, historian Damon L. Fordham relates story after story of notable black South Carolinians, many of whose contributions to the state's history have not been brought to light until now. From the letters of black soldiers during the Civil War to the impassioned pleas by students of ""Munro's School"" for their right to an education, these are the voices of protest and dissent, the voices of hope and encouragement and the voices of progress.

A history of the Cream City's lost Black neighborhood told by the people who lived there

Some people don't have to imagine what Milwaukee's Bronzeville was like. They have only to remember. They recall Walnut Street alive with businesses serving a hard-working Black population making something out of the meager resources available to them. They describe religious establishments such as St. Marks Methodist Episcopal, St. Benedict the Moor, Calvary Baptist, and St. Matthews CME attending to the spiritual life and remember the Flame, the Metropole, and Satin Doll night clubs taking care of entertainment and secular needs. Above all, they recollect a people looking out for the well-being of all within its realm.

Gathering interviews with residents of the now vanished neighborhood, Dr. Sandra E. Jones reimagines Bronzeville not just as a place, but as a spirit engendered by a people determined to make a way out of no way.

But it is not only this tragedy that has given Walton County a sense of identity. Indeed, other lesser-known events and accomplishments have contributed to its history. Whether boasting Atlanta's first black millionaire, a member of the U.S. Olympic basketball team, or a high school state football championship, Walton County has thrived both in and out of the national spotlight.