Black History

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The riveting, heart wrenching story of slave traders and abolitionists, kidnappers and freedmen, cruelty and courage on Maryland's eastern shore.

African Americans, both enslaved and free, were vital to the economy of the Eastern Shore of Maryland before the Civil War. Maryland became a slave society in colonial days when tobacco ruled. Some enslaved people, like Anthony Johnson, earned their freedom and became successful farmers. After the Revolutionary War, others were freed by masters disturbed by the contradiction between liberty and slavery. Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman ran from masters on the Eastern Shore and devoted their lives to helping other enslaved people with their words and deeds. Jacqueline Simmons Hedberg uses local records, including those of her ancestors, to tell a tale of slave traders and abolitionists, kidnappers and freedmen, cruelty and courage.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The fourth president of the United States, James Madison, and his wife, Dolley, stamped their influence throughout Culpeper, Orange, Madison, and Rappahannock Counties with their plantation, Montpelier, and the enslaved men and women who supported them.

One of those enslaved men, Paul Jennings, whose sons later became Union soldiers during the Civil War, penned his memoir in 1865. The legacy of slavery undergirds the region, and its ravages are undeniably on the faces of minority residents. The Civil War also has a footprint throughout the region; one example is the Battle of Cedar Mountain where, more than 85 years later, the first regional high school for minority children was built. Celebrants include World War I veteran Newman Nighten Gibson, of the 370th Infantry; Nannie Helen Burroughs, who founded a school for African American girls in Washington, DC; and Edna Lewis, who became a master chef in New York in her 30s and later was honored by the US Postal Service on a forever stamp.