Black History

Proudly printed in America, this beautiful gift edition contains the complete text of the United States Constitution, as well as all of its amendments.

The landmark legal document of the United States, the U.S. Constitution comprises the primary law of the Federal Government. Signed by the members of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, the Constitution outlines the powers and responsibilities of the three chief branches of the Federal Government, as well as the basic rights of the citizens of the United States.

Proudly printed in America, this beautiful gift edition contains the Declaration of Independence along with illustrations and biographies of the signers. It is a treasure for Americans of any age.

Drafted by Thomas Jefferson between June 11 and June 28, 1776, the Declaration of Independence summarizes America's founding political philosophy. At once a cherished symbol of liberty and an expression of Jefferson's monumental talents as a writer, the document captures in unforgettable phrases the ideals of individual liberty and formed the backbone of American's Revolutionary movement. In setting forth these self-evident truths alongside a list of grievances against King George's Brittain, the Declaration of Independence justified the breaking of ties with Mother England and the formation of a new country.

The revolutionary pamphlet that helped light the fire of American Independence in an elegant hardback gift edition.

Thomas Paine arrived in America from England in 1774. A friend of Benjamin Franklin, he was a writer of poetry and tracts condemning the slave trade. In 1775, as hostilities between Britain and the colonies intensified, Paine wrote Common Sense to encourage the colonies to break the British exploitative hold and fight for independence. The little booklet of 50 pages was published January 10, 1776 and sold a half-million copies, approximately equal to 75 million copies today.

National Books Critics Circle - 2024 Finalist: Autobiography

One of Washington Post's 50 most notable non-fiction books of 2024

The Minotaur at Calle Lanza is an unforgettable travel memoir about the mysterious transformations that may lurk inside us all.

Venice, 2020. As a pandemic rages across the globe, Zito Madu finds himself in a nearly deserted city, its walls and basilicas humming with strange magic. As he wanders a haunted landscape, we see him twist further into his own past: his family's difficult immigration from Nigeria to Detroit, his troubled relationship with his father, the sporadic joys of daily life and solitude, his experiences with migration, poverty, foreignness, racism, and his own rage and regret. But as it is with all labyrinths, after finding its center, will he come away unscathed, or will he transform into the gripping, fantastical monstrousness that's out to consume him whole?

With nods to Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, this surrealist debut memoir takes us into the labyrinth of memory and the monsters lurking there.

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.

Colonial Sudbury, Massachusetts, was designated the Puritan Village by author Sumner Chilton Powell in his 1964 Pulitzer Prize–winning history of the founding of this quintessential New England town in 1638. Yet this quiet rural village also had a darker history that is often overlooked. Sudbury’s Puritan inhabitants, including some of the most prominent citizens in town, held and sold enslaved Black people throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Stories gleaned from preserved records highlight the lives of men, women and children held in bondage, including a court case involving an enslaved boy repeatedly beaten and left scarred by his master less than thirty years after the town’s founding, as well as the bill of sale of Phebey, age two, to a woman in another town. Local author Jane Sciacca uncovers the hidden side of suffering in this New England town.

An inside look at the music born, bred, and perfected in Chicago.

Chicago house music originated in the city’s Black, gay underground in the late seventies and became one of the most popular musical genres in the world by the end of the century. In Chicago House Music: Culture and Community, Marguerite Harrold tells the story of the genre’s rise and the prolific creators who have sustained it for decades. You’ll learn about house music’s early innovators, like Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles, who transformed the social and political turmoil around them into a revolution in dance music. You’ll also hear remembrances from contemporary figures in the house community, like DJ Lady D, Avery R. Young, Czboogie and Edgar “Artek” Sinio, who have forged new paths as the genre has evolved. It’s a story about much more than music—it’s about a community struggling for acceptance, love, liberation, and freedom, and about the creative pioneers whose resilience helped turn house music into a worldwide phenomenon.

Full of interviews and first-hand accounts from the people who stood behind the turntables, carried crates of records, or danced until dawn, Chicago House Music is the history of an art form that continues to be a force for social interaction, spiritual liberation, and community today. 

Death on the Turnpike

Discover the bloody story of John Wesley Wable's 1950s killing spree that rocked Western Pennsylvania, and left truckers and drivers alike frightened of the turnpike. After a series of murdered truck drivers and a high-speed interstate chase, Wable's gruesome criminal story also involves a thrilling court case and unresolved mysteries to do this day.

Author Richard Gazarik details the incredible true crime narratives of the man dubbed the "Pennsylvania Turnpike Phantom Killer."

Explore accounts of Oklahoma’s Freedmen as told by their descendants in these stories of resistance and resilience on the Western frontier. The Freedmen of Oklahoma were black people, both enslaved and free, who had been living among the Indian nations. After the official abolition of slavery in 1866, they forged an identity as their own people as they faced the challenges of the western frontier. By 1906, before Oklahoma statehood, over 20,000 people were classified as “Freedmen” from Five Tribes: Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole Nations. For decades, their descendants have been rediscovering their family history and restoring its place in the larger narrative. Angela Walton-Raji has compiled this collection of stories, told by descendants from all five tribes, to ensure that the Freedmen of Oklahoma claim their vibrant part of the state’s heritage.

One of the most memorable speeches in American history, Frederick Douglass’s What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? is now available in an elegant hardcover edition.

Douglass first delivered the famous speech on July 5, 1852, to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society. After paying respect to the patriotic architects of America’s independence, Douglass exposed the hypocrisy of a nation that enshrined the inalienable rights of man yet enslaved millions. The signing of the Declaration of Independence was meaningless to slaves, Douglass argued, and the annual celebration of a freedom not afforded to them was the worst possible insult.

Throughout the speech, Douglass directly quoted passages from the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bible to support his argument that slavery must be abolished in the United States. Douglass was especially critical of the faith leaders in America that used the church to justify slavery rather than to spearhead positive societal change.

Despite Douglass’s condemnation of the institutions that protected slavery, the speech also emphasized America’s young age and her potential to change for the better. In keeping with this belief in an America that would one day guarantee freedom for all, Douglass delivered “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” to audiences nationwide in the decade preceding the Civil War.

Famous figures such as James Earl Jones, Morgan Freeman, and Douglass’s descendants have performed small sections of the hour-long speech. Abridged editions of the speech are also disseminated for educational purposes. Because “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” is an incredibly nuanced speech, it is often misrepresented or shared out of context. Now you can read the speech as it was meant to be experienced, in its entirety.

Frederick Douglass’s most famous speech is as relevant today as when it was first delivered in 1852. A defining document of the United States, What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July? is essential reading for all Americans.

Notable Quotations from Malcolm X

This pocketsized hardcover book contains nearly one hundred quotations from African-American Muslim minister and human rights activist, Malcolm X.

“It’s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody.” —Malcolm X

Author Orice Jenkins tells the full story of Ulysses Goolsby and the Early County massacre more than 100 years later. The Early County Massacre has been known as the Grandison Goolsby War for over a century, focusing on the events of December 30th, 1915, when 46-year-old Grandison used gunfire to defend himself from a lynching mob. Lesser known is that the incident started two days earlier when Grandison’s son was attacked on his way to a wedding, and that it all led to the Supreme Court of Georgia sending that same son to death row five years later.

With over a hundred photos collected by G. Faye Dant, and with an introduction by renowned Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin.

When Mark Twain published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885, he turned Hannibal, Missouri, into one of the most famous towns in the American imagination. But like Twain’s novel, Hannibal’s idyllic façade often elided the darker racial violence that had marked its past, and it overlooked the history and humanity of the Black residents who have called Hannibal home for generations. Without them, there would be no “America’s hometown.”

In Hannibal’s Invisibles, G. Faye Dant, a Hannibal resident and the executive director of Jim’s Journey: The Huck Finn Freedom Center, tells the incredible story of the Black community in this small Missouri town, giving voice to a history that has been marginalized far too long. Hear first-hand accounts from those who survived enslavement, faced racism after emancipation, endured Jim Crow, and contributed to the triumphs of the civil rights movement. These are the stories of Black doctors, entrepreneurs, and teachers who helped uplift the community, and remembrances of the countless individuals who gave richness and meaning to Hannibal’s everyday life. The vintage photographs and historical documents collected here are a celebration of these resilient people who built and sustained this corner of the Midwest, despite the immense obstacles they met at every turn. 

Martha’s Vineyard has always been a unique island and vacation destination, made even more diverse with the arrival of Black homeowners in the 19th century.

Early landowners included the formerly enslaved Charles Shearer, who along with his wife Henrietta, founded Shearer Cottage. However, the fall of the first Black community on the island came in the 1890s when forty Black and Indigenous people were required to remove their cottages from the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association. Despite this painful blow, other families, including the Wests, Jones and Huberts bought island homes, challenging restrictive and racist covenants that encumbered the properties. They then passed their homes on to subsequent generations, leading to a legacy of Black homeownership that thrives to this day. 

Authors Thomas Dresser and Richard Taylor explore the challenges, triumphs and the sense of community that has endured.

Discover a remarkably intimate and compelling view of the riots with stories of individuals on both sides of the conflict that rocked Kensington.

The outskirts of Philadelphia seethed with tension in the spring of 1844. By May 6, the situation between the newly arrived Irish Catholics and members of the anti-immigrant Nativist Party took an explosively violent turn. When the Irish asked to have their children excused from reading the Protestant version of the Bible in local public schools, the nativists held a protest. The Irish pushed back. For three days, riots scorched the streets of Kensington. Though the immigrants first had the upper hand, the nativists soon put the community to the torch. Those who fled were shot. Two Catholic churches burned to the ground, along with several blocks of houses, stores, a nunnery and a Catholic school. Local historian Kenneth W. Milano traces this tumultuous history from the preceding hostilities through the bloody skirmishes and finally to the aftermath of arrests and trials.

"I'd like to see any man do better than we did on this trip." - Alice Burke

In 1916, Alice Burke and Nell Richardson embarked on a daring and unprecedented cross-country journey advocating for women’s suffrage. Before the nineteenth amendment enshrined American women’s right to vote in 1920, it was legal only in a few states. So trailblazing suffragists Alice and Nell loaded a Saxon automobile and embarked on a state-by-state campaign for women’s voting rights. Long before the modern highway system streamlined car travel, Alice and Nell drove a grueling 10,700 miles over twenty-six weeks, traversing some of the roughest roads in America. Backed by the Saxon Motor Car Company—one of the original Detroit automakers—and fueled by their own unwavering spirits, Alice and Nell advocated for women’s suffrage in every town along the way. Author Jeryl R. Schriever shares the remarkable story of the first women to ever drive across the country and back, paving the way for generations of women to follow.

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.

The true story of Marshall Major Taylor, who overcame racial prejudice to become one of the most dominant cyclists in history. Part of Belt's Revival series and with an introduction by Zito Madu.

The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World, which Taylor self-published in 1928, gives a riveting first-person account of his rise to the highest echelons of professional cycling. Born in Indianapolis, he eventually became the first African American cycling world champion, going on to set seven world records in the sport.

Readers will learn about Taylor's exploits as an athlete, including his early taste of success in a grueling six-day race, his unparalleled dominance as a sprinter, and some of his most bitter defeats. But the man who achieved international fame as the Black Cyclone also details the extreme prejudice he faced both on and off the track. It's a story about one of the greatest athletes in American history but also a moving testament to Taylor's resilience and determination in the face of overt racism and seemingly impossible odds.

As he tells us himself, I am writing my memoirs . . . in the spirit calculated to solicit simple justice, equal rights, and a square deal for the posterity of my down-trodden but brave people, not only in athletic games and sports, but in every honorable game of human endeavor.

Authors Joseph Bilby and Harry Ziegler chart the brief rise of the Ku Klux Klan and how New Jersey collectively stood up to bigotry.

The state, though, was not immune to the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan in the first half of the twentieth century. Former vaudevillians Arthur H. Bell and his wife used the tactics of public theater to advertise and recruit for the organization. At a massive riot in Perth Amboy, thousands of immigrants besieged a few hundred Klansmen, tossed them out of building windows, burned their cars and ran them out of town. The allying of pro-Nazi German Bund groups and the Klan in the lead-up to World War II marked the end of the Klan's foothold. Authors Joseph Bilby and Harry Ziegler chart the brief rise of the Ku Klux Klan and how New Jersey collectively stood up to bigotry.

New York City is blessed with an incredible array of public sculptures.

One overlooked aspect of this collection is its monuments of Black Americans, each with its own remarkable story. The first appearance of a Black person in a city monument came in the Civil War Soldiers’ Monument in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery in 1876, but this was a nameless symbolic figure. It wasn’t until 1945 that Booker T. Washington became the first identifiable Black American honored in a New York City monument. In 2007, the city dedicated its first monument to a Black woman, Harriet Tubman. Behind every first is a story of triumph over adversity and exclusion. Local author David Felsen reveals the stories behind thirty inspiring monuments that have endured, as well as how they found their place in the city’s history.

Cincinnati played a large part in creatng a refuge for escaped salaves and in the Underground Railroad movement.

Nearly a century after the American Revolution, the waters of the Ohio River provided a real and complex barrier for the United States to navigate. While this waterway was a symbol of freedom and equality for thousands of enslaved black Americans who had escaped from the horrible institution of enslavement, the Ohio River was also used to transport thousands of slaves down the river to the Deep South. Due to Cincinnati's location on the banks of the river, the city's economy was tied to the slave society in the South. However, a special cadre of individuals became very active in the quest for freedom undertaken by African American fugitives on their journeys to the North. Thanks to spearheading by this group of Cincinnatian trailblazers, the ""Queen City"" became a primary destination on the Underground Railroad, the first multiethnic, multiracial, multiclass human-rights movement in the history of the United States.

By the late 20th century, Montpelier, the home of James and Dolley Madison, had been altered until it would no longer have been recognizable to the couple.

In 2000 the newly-created Montpelier Foundation took over management of the historic home with the seemingly insurmountable task of restoring it to be a visual record of the Madisons' era. Within ten years, the Foundation overcame numerous hurdles, turning Montpelier into a monument to the Father of the Constitution. Over the next decade the site also became a monument to Montpelier's enslaved. The buildings in their community next to the Madisons' home were reconstructed, and award-winning exhibits dramatically illustrate the tragedy of slavery and essential role of enslaved people in Madison's life.

Foundation co-founder William H. Lewis details the nonprofit's ambitious preservation projects and remarkable achievements.

Longlisted for the 2022 PEN America John Kenneth Galbraith Award for Nonfiction, a riveting and tightly argued history of eugenics and its ripple effects, by acclaimed historian Elizabeth Catte.

Between 1927 and 1979, more than 8,000 people were involuntarily sterilized in five hospitals across the state of Virginia. From this plain and terrible fact springs Elizabeth Catte’s Pure America, a sweeping, unsparing history of eugenics in Virginia, and by extension the United States. Virginia’s eugenics program was not the misguided initiative of well-meaning men of the day, writes Catte, it was a manifestation of white supremacy. It was a form of employment insurance. It was a means of controlling “troublesome” women and a philosophy that helped remove poor people from valuable land. It was cruel and it was wrong. As was amply evidenced by her acclaimed 2018 book What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, Catte has no room for excuses; no patience for equivocation. What does it mean for modern America, she asks here, that such buildings are given the second chance that 8,000 citizens never got?

“Grounded, well-rendered, and highly disturbing,” Pure America is another necessary corrective to the historical record, a must-read for anyone concerned with how to repair its damage.

Stonewall Book Award-Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Honoree

Lambda Literary Award Finalist-Gay Memoir/Biography

From an exhilarating new voice, a breathtaking memoir about gay desire, Blackness, and growing up.

Darius Stewart spent his childhood in the Lonsdale projects of Knoxville, where he grew up navigating school, friendship, and his own family life in a context that often felt perilous. As we learn about his life in Tennessee—and eventually in Texas and Iowa, where he studies to become a poet—he details the obstacles to his most crucial desires: hiding his earliest attraction to boys in his neighborhood, predatory stalkers, doomed affairs, his struggles with alcohol addiction, and his eventual diagnosis with HIV. Through a mix of straightforward memoir, brilliantly surreal reveries, and moments of startling imagery and insight, Stewart’s explorations of love, illness, chemical dependency, desire, family, joy, shame, loneliness, and beauty coalesce into a wrenching, musical whole.

A lyrical narrative reminiscent of Saeed Jones’s How We Fight for Our Lives and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, Be Not Afraid of My Body stands as a compelling testament to growing up Black and gay in America, and to the drive in all of us to collect the fragments of our own experience and transform them into a story that does justice to all the multitudes we contain.

Discover a lost world of farmers cutting hay with scythes and dancing to fiddle music on barn floors through the Long Island paintings of William Sidney Mount.

Explore vivid depictions of people of color, presented with great humanity when racist caricatures were the norm.

This landmark book reveals the lives of Rachel, the eel spearer; Henry Brazier, the left-handed fiddler; George Freeman, model for the jaunty banjo player, and other agricultural laborers, domestic workers, and musicians who posed for the artist.

Authors Katherine Kirkpatrick and Vivian Nicholson-Mueller take readers on a fascinating historical journey as they publicly honor, by name, the once-anonymous Black and mixed-race models whose images have achieved international recognition.

Through a fascinating narrative and stunning vintage photographs, readers will discover the struggles and triumphs of the African Americans of Hampton Roads.

It was in Hampton Roads, Virginia, that hundreds gained their freedom. The teeming wharves were once a major station on the Underground Railroad, and during the Civil War, escaped slaves such as Shepard Mallory, Frank Baker and James Townsend fled to Fort Monroe to become contrabands under the protection of General Benjamin Butler. Upon arrival in the region, many took up arms for the Union, and the valiant deeds of some placed them among the first African American Medal of Honor recipients. Join Professor Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander as she charts the history of this remarkable African American community from the Civil War to Reconstruction.

Discover the untold stories of Virginia’s heroes in the Revolutionary War—grief, sacrifice, and courage.

The stories of the passions and personalities that placed Virginia in the forefront of the Revolutionary War were replete with grief and sacrifice. The breakup of families over political differences was common. Bereavement spared few, as evidenced by the death of George Washington’s stepson. But courageous characters persisted, from the “Paul Revere of Virginia” to the enslaved man turned American spy who helped ensure the Continental Army’s final victory at Yorktown. Author and TV host Chuck Mills documents the human side of the Revolution in the Old Dominion, including chronicles of battles, leaders and the impact of war on ordinary men and women.

Faced with decades of land theft, New Mexicans seek justice.

When the Mexican-American War ended in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed previous Spanish and Mexican land grants, as well as rights for Native Americans to their ancestral homelands. However, organized property theft began soon after. People were methodically dispossessed of their homes through manipulation, conspiracy and even organized crime rings, leading to widespread poverty and isolation. Then in 1967, the Tierra Amarilla Courthouse Raid, led by charismatic civil rights leader Reies López Tijerina, brought the age-old struggle over these stolen lands to the national stage. Author Ray John de Aragón brings to light the suffering brought to New Mexico by land barons, cattlemen and unscrupulous politicians and the effects still felt today.

On February 5th, 1946, the Ferguson brothers were concluding a night out celebrating Charles Ferguson's reenlistment in the Army...

Charles, wearing his military uniform, walked with his brothers Alphonso, Joseph, and Richard towards the Freeport Bus Terminal to go home. A provisional Freeport police officer named Joseph Romeika stopped the brothers over a disorderly conduct complaint. Words were exchanged, and Officer Romeika killed Charles, Alphonso and shot Joseph within minutes of the initial stop. Following the unarmed shooting, Romeikia was acquitted despite changing stories of eyewitnesses.

Discover how the shooting became a catalyst for civil rights efforts and immortalized in a Woody Guthrie protest song.

Join Joshua and his grandpa for a heartwarming history of the brave African American Tuskegee Airmen of World War II.

Young readers can sit with Joshua and his friends as his grandfather tells him the story of his service in World War II as a Tuskegee Airman. Topics like war, racism, and segregation may be unfamiliar to young readers, but this story explains complicated topics in ways that any child can understand. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American military pilots, and some of the bravest among all of the armed forces, but pilots weren’t the only important faction— both men and women worked as mechanics, instructors, nurses, cooks, and many more invaluable jobs. As Joshua’s grandpa says, “Everybody who helped America to win the war was a hero. Some people fought America’s enemies in battles overseas. Others fought for freedom at home.”

Learn about the service and sacrifice made by Joshua’s grandpa, grandma, and countless others who made the Tuskegee Airmen legacy last for generations.

African Americans have made rich contributions to Florida throughout its history in all avenues of public and private life, from education, to business, to politics, a keystone of which was the ability to own and sell property. Author Jada Wright-Greene showcases this legacy through historic photographs of black American's homes, detailing the lives of the people who lived in them through engaging narrative.

Surveying the sensational newspaper accounts as events unfolded, author and historian Chris Flook recounts this grisly tale of political intrigue and conspiracy.

In the fall of 1902, Indianapolis police uncovered a prolific graverobbing ring operating across the city. At the time, cemeteries across central Indiana were relieved of their dead by ghouls, as they were called, seeking fresh corpses desperately needed by the city's medical colleges. The ring was also accused of multiple murders. In Hamilton County, a former Confederate soldier named Wade West delivered stolen corpses by floating them down the White River. His counterpart in Indianapolis, Rufus Cantrell, an itinerant preacher and full-time graverobber known as the "King of the Ghouls," ransacked Indy's cemeteries for years before being caught.

During World War II, no American city suffered a worse housing shortage than Detroit, and no one suffered that shortage more than the city's African American citizens.

In 1941, the federal government began constructing the Sojourner Truth Housing Project in northeast Detroit to house 200 black war production workers and their families. Almost immediately, whites in the neighborhood vehemently protested. On February 28, 1942, a confrontation between black tenants and white protesters erupted in a riot that sent at least 40 to the hospital and more than 220 to jail. This confrontation was the precursor to the bloodiest race riot of the war just sixteen months later.

Gerald Van Dusen, author of 2020 Michigan Notable Books nominee Detroit's Birwood Wall, unfolds the background and events of this overlooked moment in Motor City history.

Authors David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker separate fact from fiction in the story of Ohio’s Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad was a macabre sort of dance between good and evil in which each side was trying to steal away the other’s partner. However, in the upside-down-world of pre-Civil War America, the law was firmly on the side of evil and the dance often ended in death. It was a time when the newly formed country was deeply divided on the question of slavery and its fate hung in the balance. Just how long could a house divided against itself be expected to stand?

Prior to the Civil War, thousands escaped slavery via the Underground Railroad. Untold others failed in the attempt.

These unfortunate souls were dragged into bondage via the Reverse Underground Railroad, as it came to be called. With more lines on both roads than any other state, the Free State of Ohio became a hunting ground for slavecatchers and kidnappers who roamed the North with impunity, seeking “fugitives” or any person of color who could be sold into slavery. And when they found one, they would kidnap their victim and head south to reap the reward.

David Meyers and Elise Meyers Walker, authors of Historic Black Settlements of Ohio, reveal not only the terror and injustice but also the bravery and determination born of this dark time in American history.

From Nashville's earliest days as a pioneer town in Middle Tennessee, it would be nothing without its African American community.

Like many cities of the Antebellum South, Nashville was built by enslaved people, as African Americans built the first successful water system, maintained the streets, cultivated crops, and bred livestock. For years, Nashville was considered one of the wealthiest Southern cities, but after the Civil War, it struggled to regain that status while its newly freed Black citizens struggled to survive the South's Reconstruction and subsequent Jim Crow laws. As the Civil Rights era brought long-needed reforms, the Black community of Nashville has persevered through their determination, spiritual strength, and the unique leadership fostered by the visionary city they call home.

In many ways, the story of bondage in Virginia is the story of the state itself...

Richmond's 15th Street was known as Wall Street in antebellum times, and like its New York counterpart, it was a center of commerce. But the business done here was unspeakable and the scene heart wrenching. With over sixty-nine slave dealers and auction houses, the Wall Street area saw tens of millions of dollars and countless human lives change hands, fueling the southern economy. Local historian and author Jack Trammell traces the history of the city's slave trade, from the origins of African slavery in Virginia to its destruction at the end of the Civil War. Stories of seedy slave speculators and corrupt traders are placed alongside detailed accounts of the economic, political and cultural impact of a system representing the most immense, concentrated human suffering in our nation's history.

Seen on the roadways of Charleston County and in museums and galleries worldwide, handmade sweetgrass baskets have been crafted in the Christ Church Parish of Mount Pleasant, SC for more than 300 years.

An ancient African art, sweetgrass basket making utilizes sweetgrass, bullrush, pine needles, and palm leaves to create unique, handmade pieces. Traditionally, artisans use a piece of the rib bone of a cow and a pair of scissors as their only tools for construction. When English settlers founded Christ Church Parish in the late 1600s, they saw a place rich in natural beauty and ideal for harvesting rice, cotton, and indigo. Skilled agricultural laborers were needed, and consequently, South Carolina became the top importer of enslaved West Africans. Finding a landscape similar to their homeland, those who came kept many of their traditional practices. Today, the richness of the West African presence can be seen in Charleston's architecture, basketry, and ironworks.

Much like the rest of the nation, South Central Pennsylvania struggled with slavery. The institution lingered locally for more than fifty years, although it was virtually extinct everywhere else within Pennsylvania.

Gradually, anti-slavery views prevailed. The Appalachian Mountains and the Susquehanna River provided natural cover for fleeing slaves, causing an influx of travel along the Underground Railroad. Locals like William Wright and James McAllister assisted these runaways while publicly advocating to abolish slavery. Historian Cooper Wingert reveals the struggles between slavery and abolition in South Central Pennsylvania.

February 22, 1960, bore witness to an event that would forever change the social, political, and economic life of a city, a state, and millions of inhabitants.

The arrest of 34 Virginia Union University students during a sit-in protest at the most upscale department store in Richmond, Virginia, heralded the upending of a long-established way of life and a change of direction from which there would be no turning back. The students would see their actions galvanize a community into effecting wide-ranging reforms in desegregation and play a significant role in ending the nearly 70-year grip on power of one of the nation’s strongest political machines. Bafflingly, their achievement faded into obscurity, and only in recent years has its importance been recognized.

Dr. Kimberly A. Matthews is a professor of leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Matthews earned her doctorate in education at Virginia Commonwealth University (2012) and began teaching with Virginia Commonwealth University’s LEAD living-learning program. She is the author of a history of the Richmond Crusade for Voters. Dr. Raymond Pierre Hylton is professor of history at Virginia Union University. Dr. Hylton earned his doctorate in history at the University College Dublin, Ireland (1986), and first taught at Virginia Union as an adjunct instructor in 1988. He became a full-time faculty member in 1991 and served as dean and department chair. He is the author of a History of Virginia Union University.

Author Brian Armstrong tells the shocking story of this "sundown town" and how it evolved into the diverse community that exists today.

On March 1, 1894, two African American men broke into a home in rural Franklin Park and murdered a white woman and her daughter before her husband fought and killed the attackers. The newspapers called it the "Franklin Park Tragedy," and the story captivated public attention nationally and abroad. Another tragedy came afterward, with the racist forced expulsion of many local African American residents.

A fascinating history of Suffolk's heroic African-American community. A must-have for African-American and Virginia history enthusiasts.

After the Civil War, African-Americans throughout Suffolk and Nansemond County fought against injustice by demanding equality before the law, the right to vote, and equal access to schools, employment, and professions. Because of their tolerance and sense of fortitude, they were able to own land and businesses and to establish churches, schools, and social organizations that paved the way for generations to come.

Suffolkis a result of the many contributions made by countless pioneers in education, business, religion, social organizations, and community leadership. In this volume, Suffolk native and archivist Annette Montgomery shares timeless, evocative images and passages for all to enjoy.

Galveston was the birthplace of Juneteenth.

Issued in Galveston on June 19, 1865, General Orders, No. 3 announced to the people of Texas that all slaves were free. It is one of the Island's most important historical moments. Although Juneteenth has now become the basis for a national holiday, many Americans wonder how and why this date emerged as the basis for the oldest continually celebrated commemoration of the end of slavery. To even begin to answer these questions, it is necessary to return to the historic roots of the event itself. The Galveston Historical Foundation's African American Heritage Committee tracks Emancipation Day observances through previously unknown images and untold stories which are also part of an interactive exhibit experience at Ashton Villa, the site of Galveston's city-wide Juneteenth celebration.

Slavery is a tragic chapter in the history of Wilkes County with a lasting legacy. Prominent businessmen and celebrated civic leaders, like General William Lenoir and William Pitt Waugh, were among the county's largest slaveholders. Judith Williams Barber endured forty-five years of slavery and garnered respect from both white and black residents. Her story is linked to free person of color and noted landowner Henderson Waugh, whose illustrious, slaveholding white father connected the two families--one slave and the other free. Author Larry Griffin takes readers on an emotional journey to separate fact from myth as he chronicles the history of slavery in Wilkes County.

Prominent businessmen and celebrated civic leaders, like General William Lenoir and William Pitt Waugh, were among the county's largest slaveholders. Judith Williams Barber endured forty-five years of slavery and garnered respect from both white and black residents. Her story is linked to free person of color and noted landowner Henderson Waugh, whose illustrious, slaveholding white father connected the two families--one slave and the other free. Author Larry Griffin takes readers on an emotional journey to separate fact from myth as he chronicles the history of slavery in Wilkes County.

Demanding Freedom, Equality and Women's Rights

One of the defining documents of the women's rights movement in the United States is the Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions. Principally authored by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the declaration was signed by one hundred attendees—sixty-eight women and thirty-two men—at the Seneca Falls Convention in Seneca Falls, NY in July 1848. The controversial and courageous document stated: “…because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of these United States." It would be another seventy-two years before the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote.  This short work is part of Applewood's “American Roots" series, tactile mementos of American passions by some of America’s most famous writers and thinkers.

Stories of a People

Throughout history, African Americans passed along folk tales to ease burdens and make sense of experiences. Tracing back to West Africa, this storytelling tradition provided laughter, instruction and resilience. Animal stories often were proverbs for adults and teaching points for children. Two pioneering Black schoolteachers told of their careers in education. An eyewitness described the Charleston Race Riot in 1919. Others gave testimonies of Denmark Vesey’s attempted slave rebellion. Author Damon L. Fordham presents this collection of Black South Carolina stories and narratives based on interviews and research, including his travels in Africa.

Decades of Duty

IIn 1881, the first Buffalo Soldiers arrived in Arizona pursuing elusive Apaches. Over the following decades, African Americans from the Tenth U.S. Cavalry and Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry added to the laurels won by the Ninth U.S. Cavalrymen. For more than six decades, Black soldiers served with honor, from campaigns against determined Native Americans to facing dangers along the turbulent border as the Mexican Revolution raged. During the dark days of World War II, they prepared for combat against foes both abroad and at home. All the while, they faced an ever-present, persistent enemy: racism.

Author John P. Langellier brings to life the rich history of Buffalo Soldiers in the Copper State.

Between 1914 and 1951, Black Bottom's black community emerged out of the need for black migrants to find a place for themselves.

Because of the stringent racism and discrimination in housing, blacks migrating from the South seeking employment in Detroit's burgeoning industrial metropolis were forced to live in this former European immigrant community. During World War I through World War II, Black Bottom became a social, cultural, and economic center of struggle and triumph, as well as a testament to the tradition of black self-help and community-building strategies that have been the benchmark of black struggle. Black Bottom also had its troubles and woes. However, it would be these types of challenges confronting Black Bottom residents that would become part of the cohesive element that turned Black Bottom into a strong and viable community.

See why and how Pine Bluff/Jefferson County has been one of the Arkansas Delta's most culturally-rich areas since its inception in 1829.

Serving as a haven for runaway slaves during the late years of the Civil War, the Pine Bluff/Jefferson County area attracted droves of African-Americans throughout the Delta and south Arkansas. Brimming with talent and expectations, they and their descendants traveled a road full of extremes. Although they endured what appears to have been the largest mass lynching in United State history in 1866, they also attained one of the largest per-capita concentrations of black wealth in the entire South by 1900.

As the hands that labored in the area's boundless cotton fields and sawmills joined with the hands that held books at the state's only historically black public college, astonishing accomplishments were churned out in every imaginable field. Naturally, Pine Bluff/Jefferson County's Delta roots made its blues, jazz, and gospel contributions a source of pride, with native or area-affiliated artists receiving multiple Grammy awards and nominations, as well as other distinctions.

Once considered the most famous African-American resort community in the country, Idlewild was referred to as the Black Eden of Michigan in the 1920s and '30s, and as the Summer Apollo of Michigan in the 1950s and '60s.

Showcasing classy revues and interactive performances of some of the leading black entertainers of the period, Idlewild was an oasis in the shadows of legal segregation. Idlewild: Black Eden of Michigan focuses on this illustrative history, as well as the decline and the community's contemporary renaissance, in over 200 rare photographs. The lively legacy of Lela G. and Herman O. Wilson, and Paradise Path is included, featuring images of the Paradise Club and Wilson's Grocery. Idlewild continued its role as a distinctive American resort throughout the 1950s, with photographs ranging from Phil Giles' Flamingo Club and Arthur Braggs's Idlewild Revue.

African Americans have lived in Boyle County, Kentucky, since the first settlement of the area in 1775. Mostly enslaved, by the Civil War, the county had one of the largest population of free Blacks in the area with the exception of Jefferson and Fayette Counties.

Their presence in Danville, the county seat, but also in population centers scattered throughout the county resulted in a deep and broad influence, much of which was lost in the early 1900s due to out-migration, deaths, and especially urban renewal between 1963 and 1975. Within Danville, the South Second Street area was the heart of the Black community. Restaurants, groceries, pool halls, barbershops, and beauty shops were the center of commerce from the 1890s until the 1970s. The Bate School also drew students from the outlying settlements that did not have high schools of their own. Today, the majority of the African American community continues to live in the city of Danville, with small pockets in Perryville and outlying areas of Boyle County.

Michael Thomas Hughes is a native of Boyle County and grew up in a segregated society. Michael J. Denis is a retired history teacher from Maine who moved to Boyle County and immediately fell in love with its history. The photographs in this book are mostly from the Danville Boyle County African American Historical Society Inc. collection (DBCAAHS), of which the authors are charter members.

Notable Quotations from Frederick Douglass

This pocket-sized hardcover book contains dozens of quotations from abolitionist, orator, social reformer and statesman Frederick Douglass.

"No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other enfastened about his own neck." —Frederick Douglass, Speech at Civil Rights Mass Meeting, Washington, DC, October 22, 1883

After the Civil War, Black landownership in Fairfax County increased by leaps and bounds.

By the 1870s, retired Union officers were purchasing land that they sold to African Americans like Joshua Ball, Joshua Pearson, Robert Bradley and John Coates. Merrifield, the Pines and Williamstown soon emerged as vibrant communities founded by born-free Blacks, the formerly enslaved and their descendants. These African Americans quickly established farms to provide for their families and engaged in truck farming to stimulate trade. They formed charitable organizations and a church. Unfortunately, from the 1960s through the 1980s, these towns disappeared due to eminent domain practices, modern progress and gentrification. Historian Marion Ransell Dobbins unearths the legacy of these vanished communities.

A detailed history of a New Orleans landmark. Congo Square is an iconic location in New Orleans culture, filled with the echoes of jazz and the footsteps of modern dance. Brimming with the rich history of the city, this auspicious landmark traces its origins back to the 1740s. A popular gathering place for African-Americans, the square hosted public markets, musical events, and even the Congo Circus throughout its history. Johnson's detailed analysis of the development of the landmark places the deep-set culture of both the African-American community and the roots of New Orleans music firmly in the heart of Congo Square.

Durham is a progressive New South city, one in which both the white and black populations have economically and culturally prospered over the past
century.

Durham's Hayti opens a door into the community's past that will allow you to walk down
familiar streets into a time that may seem distant, but is not that far removed, and to experience the full life of Hayti, from its churches and schools to its businesses and recreational pursuits.

Known as the birthplace of black capitalism, Richmond had one of the largest black business districts in America at the turn of the 20th century.

Richmond, Virginia boasts a proud legacy of achievement among its African-American residents. Medical pioneers, civil rights activists, education leaders, and enterprising bankers are listed among the city's African-American sons and daughters. As individuals these men and women made their mark not only on Richmond's, but also the nation's, history. As a community, they have endured centuries of change and worked together for the common good. In their determined faces and in unforgettable scenes of the past, we celebrate and pay tribute to their history.

African Americans are greatly responsible for the impressive growth of Durham County in North Carolina, once known as the "Capital of the Black Bourgeoisie".

Durham County, North Carolina, once called the "Chicago of the South" and the "Capital of the Black Bourgeoisie," has long occupied an important place in the hearts and minds of those who called Durham County home. African Americans have played a vital role in the growth and development of the region over the years, from antebellum times to Reconstruction to the Civil Rights era and in the present. The African American citizens of this historic Tar Heel county share an impressive story marked by determination, economic achievement, and resilience, and they have made a difference in all walks of life - educational, religious, civic, and commercial. This pictorial history reflects upon the rich and vibrant role that African Americans played in the area following emancipation. In its earliest stages, residents in such neighborhoods as Hayti, Hickstown, Crest Street, Pearsontown, the West End, the East End, and Walltown each created sturdy surviving communities that have shaped Durham.

Author and journalist Cody McDevitt tells the story of one of the worst civil rights injustices in Western Pennsylvania history.

In 1923, in response to the fatal shooting of four policemen, the mayor of Johnstown ordered every African American and Mexican immigrant who had lived in the city for less than seven years to leave. They were given less than a day to move or would face crippling fines or jail time and were forced out at gunpoint. An estimated two thousand people uprooted their lives in response to the racist edict. Area Ku Klux Klan members celebrated the creation of a "sundown town" and increased their own intimidation practices. Figures such as Marcus Garvey spoke out in Pittsburgh against it as newspapers throughout the country published condemnations.

From the Siege of Petersburg to the struggle for civil rights, the history of Petersburg's African American community is detailed in this volume.

The city of Petersburg has distinguished itself as a special place for African American history. African Americans in Petersburg have overcome racial and political obstacles placed in their paths. The city was the site of one of the largest free black populations in the South leading up to the Civil War, and more black soldiers participated in the Siege of Petersburg than in any other Civil War engagement. The city is the location of First Baptist Church, the nation's oldest black church; has produced trailblazers in political life, including Virginia's first black mayor; and is the site of the famous Halifax Triangle, a thriving black business district. This diverse and poignant collection of photographs reveals a heritage rich in entrepreneurial spirit, devotion to church life, and unshakable courage in the struggle for civil rights.

Join Author and historian Herman Skip Mason Jr. in this unique look at the rich history of the African-American community of East Point, Georgia.

An industrious, spiritual, and neighborly people, the African-American community of East Point, Georgia has a rich and enduring heritage, explored in this volume of vintage photographs. Notable landmarks such as South Fulton High School, Lige Sims Funeral Home, and Union Baptist Church-all long gone but not forgotten-are seen within these pages. The pioneering leaders who have contributed to the town's growth are highlighted as well, including the civic and social organizations they formed for the betterment of the community.

The Baltimore African-American community, with its well-known personalities and cultural contributions have made the town what it is today.

Throughout the years, the city of Baltimore has played host to many well-known figures, including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and boxer Joe Louis; the city has been called home by Billie Holiday, Frederick Douglass, and Thurgood Marshall. But it is the local African-American community's members, working diligently to advance and empower themselves, who made history while they lived it.