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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.

People of African descent have shaped New Orleans from its earliest days into the vibrant city it is today. From the slaves and indentured servants who drained the swamps, erected the buildings, constructed the levees, and dug the canals to the Freedom Riders who fought for racial equality in a segregated South, New Orleans' history and black history in America are intricately connected.

Historian Keith Weldon Medley recounts the rich history of African and African-American cultural influence on one of America's most-beloved cities. This in-depth account is one of personal significance for the author, who was raised in New Orleans' Faubourg Marigny and whose family history is tied to the area. Through fifteen self-contained chapters, Medley takes a chronological and focused look at some of New Orleans' most prominent people and places.

Rife with detailed histories of Faubourg Trem�, Congo Square, and many other pivotal locations, Medley's subjects include the Mardi Gras Indians, the Zulu Parade, and Louis Armstrong and his upbringing in black Storyville. Tales of many other prominent New Orleanians also fill the pages, such as educator and civic leader Fannie C. Williams, founder of the People's Defense League Ernest Wright, and civil rights attorney A.P. Tureaud.

Readers interested in the beginnings and development of Mexican and Mexican American culture and education in Texas will delight in this pictorial history. The Blackwell School, established in 1909 in Marfa, Texas, served as a segregated school for Marfa’s Mexican and Mexican American students. Operating until 1965, eleven years after the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, the Blackwell School shaped the lives of its students while reflecting the struggles of Hispanic segregation in the West Texas community. Despite the challenges, the Blackwell School fostered a sense of community through sports, extracurricular activities, and community-oriented pageants. Today, the Blackwell School stands as a national historic site under the management of the National Park Service, reflecting Marfa’s legacy of resilience and commitment to preserving its history.

Cristobal Lopez has a master of arts in history from the University of Texas at San Antonio. As a field representative for the National Parks Conservation Association, he helped establish the Blackwell School as a unit of the National Park Service. Dr. Kirsten Gardner is a Distinguished Teaching Professor in the University of Texas San Antonio Department of History. Dr. Gardner teaches courses on US history, women and gender studies, history of medicine, modern US history, and public history. The images for this book were selected from the Blackwell School Alliance Virtual Museum, Marfa Public Library, the Presidio County Museum, and the Library of Congress.

Learn the history of one of the oldest Black churches in the United States.

The First Baptist Church of Williamsburg, Virginia, stands as a living monument to the enduring power and resilience of its congregation. Beginning in the hush harbors on plantations owned by Virginia’s most powerful leadership, First Baptist emerged as a powerful force, inextricably linking religious salvation and education as tools of liberation and agency for Africans in America. The church was involved in the American Revolution and the Civil War, thus sealing its place as a key player in Williamsburg. Through the antebellum period, Reconstruction, and modern times, First Baptist and its congregation also resisted the growth of slavery, the dissipation of the rights of free Black people, and the removal of Black-owned homes and businesses.

A powerful icon for freedom, resilience, and hope, the church reflects the larger story of Black voices in Virginia and America.