New Books in African American Studies

Shelley Fisher Fishkin, "Jim: The Life and Afterlives of Huckleberry Finn’s Comrade" (Yale UP, 2025)

21 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Twain’s Jim, introduced in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), is a shrewd, self‑aware, and enormously admirable enslaved man, one of...

Blair LM Kelley, "Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days" (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026)

19 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days (Black Dog & Leventhal, 2026) is the first fully illustrated history of Junetee...

Youssef J. Carter, "The Vast Oceans: Remembering Allah and Self on the Mustafawiyya Sufi Path" (UNC Press, 2026)

19 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Youssef J. Carter’s The Vast Oceans: Remembering Allah and Self on the Mustafawiyya Sufi Path (UNC Press, 2026) is a stunning meditation on Black ...

Anna O. Law, "Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants" (Oxford UP, 2026)

18 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Anna O. Law, the Herbert Kurz Chair in Constitutional Rights in the Department of Political Science at City University of New York-Brooklyn Campus, ha...

Joe P. L. Davidson, "Saving Utopia: Imagining Hopeful Futures in Dystopian Times" (MIT Press, 2026)

17 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

There is no alternative. The End of History. Climate Apocalypse. It seems that our contemporary moment is defined by the idea that things can only g...

Robert Suits, "The Hobo: A History of America's First Climate Migrants" (Princeton UP, 2026)

16 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

From the mid-nineteenth century through the dust bowl years of the Great Depression, a new kind of migrant worker became a familiar sight in communiti...

Stephanie Coontz, "For Better and Worse: The Complicated Past and Challenging Future of Marriage" (Viking, 2026)

14 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Marriage rates have fallen dramatically since the 1970s. Yet far from devaluing marriage, people still overwhelmingly describe marriage as the...

Javier Arbona-Homar, "Explosivity: Following What Remains" (U Minnesota Press, 2025)

08 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Offering a novel approach to contemporary landscape studies, Explosivity: Following What Remains (U Minnesota Press, 2025) unearths the hidden legac...

Terese Mason Pierre, "As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories" (Spiderline, 2025)

08 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with editor, poet, and author, Terese Mason Pierre about As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculat...

Bruce Dearstyne, "Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change" (SUNY Press, 2026)

08 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Revolutionary New York: 250 Years of Social Change (SUNY Press, 2026), edited by Bruce Dearstyne and published by SUNY Press, examines what the volu...

Allyson Nadia Field, "Acts of Love: Black Performance and the Kiss That Changed Film History" (U California Press, 2026)

06 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 1898, vaudeville actors Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown joyously embraced in a short silent film titled Something Good—Negro Kiss. The first known...

Mollie Barnes, "Paper Heroines: Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838-1902" (U South Carolina Press, 2026)

04 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Paper Heroines: Women Writers in Conversation and Community Across the Sea Islands, 1838-1902 (U South Carolina Press, 2026), Dr. Mollie ...

David Cunningham on Contesting Confederate Monuments (JP)

04 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

David Cunningham joins John to speak about his pathbreaking article about visiting each of the 113 communities that removed or relocated Confederat...

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word and Me" (37 Ink, 2026)

02 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The N-word is one of the most perplexing, controversial and misunderstood words in the American lexicon. It’s a word that Elizabeth Pryor has not on...

On The State of Black Men's Studies and Black Masculinist Thought Scholarship

02 Jun 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Wide ranging interview with Dr. Ronald L. Jackson II, Professor and Department Chair of Communication Studies, the University of Miami. Interview exp...

Gary Hoover, "Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead" (U California Press, 2026)

30 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Ladder or Lottery: Economic Promises and the Reality of Who Gets Ahead (University of California Press, 2026), Gary Hoover asks the reade...

Annette Gordon-Reed ed., "Jefferson on Race: A Reader" (Princeton UP, 2026)

30 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

From The New York Times–bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Hemingses of Monticello, a groundbreaking collection of Thomas Jeffer...

Ashley Rose Young, "Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in New Orleans" (Oxford UP, 2025)

29 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

For much of the Crescent City's history, days began with the cries of roaming street vendors and the percussive thwack of butchers' meat cleavers echo...

Robin R. Means Coleman and Novotny Lawrence eds., "The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film" (Oxford UP, 2024)

29 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Since the release of Jordan Peele's Academy Award-winning horror hit Get Out (2017), interest in Black horror films has erupted. This renewed intrig...

The Instigators

28 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Black women have always been the most relentless instigators for change—building a democracy for all. In The Instigators: How Black Women Have Bee...

Michael E. Sawyer, "The Door of No Return: Being-As-Black" (Temple UP, 2026)

28 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In The Door of No Return: Being-As-Black (Temple University Press, 2026), Michael E. Sawyer presents a bold work of speculative theory and philosophy ...

David Faflik, "Segregation Games: Boston, Busing, and the Making of Red Sox Nation" (U Massachusetts Press, 2026)

27 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A cultural history of race, resistance, and representation in a city divided by politics and playWhen outfielder Bernie Carbo joined the Red Sox in 19...

Claudia Smith Brinson, "Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina" (U South Carolina Press, 2020)

25 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Stories of Struggle: The Clash over Civil Rights in South Carolina (U South Carolina Press, 2020), longtime journalist Claudia Smith Brinson deta...

Shane Breaux, "Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns" (Routledge, 2026)

24 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Reverberations of Culture: Racialized Performance in Early Twentieth-Century Musical Variety by Just a Buncha Clowns (Routledge, 2026) by Dr. Shane B...

Mary T. Freeman, "Abolitionists and the Politics of Correspondence" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

23 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Mary Freeman, associate professor of history at the University of Maine, joins Michael Stauch to discuss her new book Abolitionists and the Politi...

James O'Neil Spady, "Take Freedom: Recovering the Fugitive History of the Denmark Vesey Affair" (UNC Press, 2026)

23 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 1822, Black Charlestonians attempted to overthrow slavery. They were exposed before they could strike, and many were tried and executed in what has...

Anna O. Law, "Migration and the Origins of American Citizenship: African Americans, Native Americans, and Immigrants" (Oxford UP, 2026)

22 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Since the late nineteenth century, the US federal government has enjoyed exclusive authority to decide whether someone has the ability to enter and st...

Steven W. Thrasher, "The Overseer Class: A Manifesto" (Amistad, 2026)

19 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

“The poor, of whatever color, do not trust the law and certainly have no reason to, and God knows we didn't. ‘If you must call a cop,’ we said i...

Heather Ann Thompson, "Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage" (Pantheon, 2026)

18 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Historian Heather Ann Thompson’s Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage (Pantheon, 2026) ...

Justin Randolph, "Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in America’s Jim Crow Countryside (UNC Press, 2026)

17 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Justin Randolph, assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University, joins Michael Stauch to discuss Mississippi Law: Policing and Reform in A...

Fabio Rojas, "From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline" (JHU Press, 2010)

13 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The black power movement helped redefine African Americans' identity and establish a new racial consciousness in the 1960s. As an influential politica...

Wil Haygood, "The War within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home" (Knopf, 2026)

12 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Award-winning author Wil Haygood joins Michael Stauch to discuss The War within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home (Knopf, 2026) h...

Es-pranza Humphrey, "Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen" (Poster House Museum, 2026)

12 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Starting in the 1880s, Black performers, and those invested in telling stories centering Black people, attempted to counter the dehumanizing and harmf...

Samiha Rahman, "Black Muslim Freedom Dreams: Islamic Education, Pan-Africanism, and Collective Care" (NYU Press, 2026)

11 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Samiha Rahman’s Black Muslim Freedom Dreams: Islamic Education, Pan-Africanism, and Collective Care (New York University Press, 2026) follows thre...

Terror, Hope, & Exodus: The Testimony of Henry Adams, Freedman

09 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

May 5, 2026—In March 1880, an extraordinary American traveled to Washington, DC, to testify before a Senate committee investigating the exodus of fo...

Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia

07 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Prince George’s County, Maryland, is a suburban jurisdiction in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area and is home to the highest concentration of ...

Lerone Martin, "Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr." (Amistad, 2026)

05 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

We know who Martin Luther King Jr. became, but who was he at the beginning of his life? How did his youth inform his outlook and activism? Before Mar...

Benjamin Y. Fong and Paul Prescod, "Rustin's Challenge" (2026)

04 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

There was no more trenchant and substantive critic of the Left from the Left in the 1960s and 1970s than Bayard Rustin. Some liberals and leftists t...

Alice Echols, "Black Power, White Heat: From Solidarity Politics to Radical Chic" (Oxford UP, 2026)

03 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A rich history of cross-racial coalitions and alliances of the Sixties' freedom movement, acclaimed historian Alice Echols's Black Power, White Heat r...

Jason R. Young, "The Mask of Memory: White Racial Fantasy After the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2026)

01 May 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the early twentieth century, a group of white writers, artists, and performers from the cultural hub of Charleston, South Carolina, created and cur...

The Lost World of African American Cantors 1915–1953

28 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Histories of Black-Jewish cultural interaction often focus on how Jews adopted and adapted Black vernacular music—ragtime, jazz, swing, R&B, blues—...

Emely Rumble, "Bibliotherapy in The Bronx" (Row House, 2025)

18 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Bibliotherapy in The Bronx (Row House, 2025) by Emely Rumble, LCSW, is a groundbreaking exploration of the healing power of literature in the lives ...

Rawlston Williams, "The Caribbean Cookbook" (Phaidon Press, 2026)

15 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

An exploration of Caribbean cuisine and culinary history, featuring more than 380 authentic home cooking recipes from across the region Caribbean cuis...

Voices from a Century of Struggle: Writings of the Jim Crow Era

14 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Tuesday, April 7, 2026—Confronting disenfranchisement, legal segregation, and terrorist violence in the aftermath of the Civil War, Black Americans ...

Cedric de Leon, "Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity" (U California Press, 2025)

09 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Our guest today is Cedric de Leon, author of Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity (U California Press, ...

Michael W. Tuck, "The Castle Slaves of the Gambia River: A Creole Community in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World" (Brill, 2026)

08 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In his new book, The Castle Slaves of the Gambia River: A Creole Community in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World (Brill, 2026) historian D...

Danielle Bainbridge, "Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive" (NYU Press, 2026)

03 Apr 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive (NYU Press, 2026) is a bold and incisive reconsideration of the relationship...

Tyesha Maddox, "A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024)

31 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity (U Pennsylvania Press, 2024) examines the signif...

Why Did Langston Hughes's "Troubled Lands" Go Unpublished for Nearly a Century?: A Conversation with Ricardo Wilson

27 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Why did Langston Hughes's translations of Mexican and Cuban stories go unpublished for nearly a century? A landmark book—the first complete publica...

Hsuan L Hsu, "Olfactory Worldmaking" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

24 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Smell is a vital, if underappreciated, medium through which we inhabit and imagine the world. In Olfactory Worldmaking (University of Minnesota Pres...

Katharine Gerbner, "Archival Irruptions: Constructing Religion and Criminalizing Obeah in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica" (Duke UP, 2025)

23 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 1760, following the largest slave revolt in the eighteenth-century British Empire, the Afro-Caribbean word Obeah first appeared in British coloni...

Prolepsis

23 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of High Theory, Gloria Fisk talks to Kim about Prolepsis. Defined by Gerard Genette in the 1970s, prolepsis is a flash forward, the op...

Lisa Nakamura, "The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet" (U Minnesota Press, 2026)

18 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet (U Minnesota Press, 2026) by Dr. Lisa Nakamura challenges the widespread myth that the...

Antwain K. Hunter, "A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race, and Community in North Carolina, 1715-1865" (UNC Press, 2025)

16 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Spanning the 1720s through the end of the Civil War, A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race, and Community in North Carolina, 1715-1865 (UNC Press, 20...

Ethelene Whitmire, "The Remarkable Life of Reed Peggram" (Viking, 2026)

15 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

On the eve of World War II, a handsome young scholar arrived in Paris. The queer, Black son of a housecleaner, who had nevertheless been decorated in ...

Jessica Ann Levy, "Black Power, Inc.: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026)

13 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Black Power, Inc.: Corporate America and the Rise of Multinational Empowerment Politics, (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026), traces the rise of Black...

Austin McCoy, "Living in a D.A.I.S.Y. Age: The Music, Culture, and World De La Soul Made" (Atria/One Signal, 2026)

12 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

For fans of Dilla Time and The Chronicles of DOOM, a culturally connected celebration of the groundbreaking hip-hop group De La Soul, and how they...

Michelle Adams, "The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North" (FSG Press, 2025)

11 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across...

Selina Nwulu, "Black Climates: Notes on Race, Our Environment, and Visions for Equitable Futures" (Chatto & Windus, 2025)

11 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Brought to you by the BISA Environment and Climate Politics Working Group. Globally, Black people are among the most affected by the climate crisis,...

Dana A. Williams, "Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer's Legendary Editorship" (Amistad, 2025)

10 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon's profound imp...

Danielle Wiggins, "Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

08 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A provocative new history of modern black liberalism Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025...

Nicole E. Trujillo-Pagán, "Detroit Never Left: Black Space, White Borders, Latino Crossings" (NYU Press, 2025)

03 Mar 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Detroit seemed to experience an explosive rebirth following its bankruptcy, the largest in US municipal history. It was as if the slate had been wiped...

Clarissa E. Francis, "Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement" (Routledge, 2025)

28 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Black Women's Bodily Autonomy, Sexual Freedom, and Pleasure: Explorations of the Hot Girl Movement (Routledge, 2025) explores scholarship, practice,...

Sarah Jones Weicksel, "A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era" (UNC Press, 2026)

27 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

During the American Civil War, clothing became central to the ways people waged war and experienced its cost. Through the clothes they made, wore, men...

Stephen Stacks, "The Resounding Revolution: Freedom Song After 1968" (U Illinois Press, 2025)

24 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What happened to freedom singing after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination? Stephen Stacks considers this question in The Resounding Revolution...

John Drabinski, "So Unimaginable a Price: Baldwin and the Black Atlantic" (Northwestern UP, 2025)

18 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

What happens if we turn to James Baldwin, not just for the amazing quotations and excellent photos, but as a critical theorist? What if we read his no...

Brian Hallstoos, "Sol Butler: An Olympian's Odyssey through Jim Crow America" (U Illinois Press, 2026)

17 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

A superstar in both football and track and field Sol Butler pioneered the parlaying of sports fame into business prosperity. In Sol Butler: An Oly...

Cassandra Shepard, "Settler Colonialism is the Disaster: A Critique of New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina and During the COVID-19 Pandemic" (U Illinois Press, 2026)

15 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Settler Colonialism is the Disaster: A Critique of New Orleans After Hurricane Katrina and During the COVID-19 Pandemic (U Illinois Press, 2026) ...

Heather Ann Thompson, "Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage" (Pantheon, 2026)

12 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In this masterful, groundbreaking work Fear and Fury: The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage (Pantheon, 2...

Nicholas Boggs, "Baldwin: A Love Story" (FSG, 2025)

10 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Baldwin: A Love Story (FSG, 2025) the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, reveals how profoundly the writer’s personal relati...

Joshua Clark Davis, "Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back" (Princeton UP, 2025)

10 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back (Princeton UP, 2025) shatters one of the...

Gloria Browne-Marshall, "A Protest History of the United States" (Beacon Press, 2026) Revisited

08 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In December 2025, writer, civil rights attorney, playwright, speaker, and Professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Glo...

Ian Smith, "Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race" (Cambridge UP, 2022)

07 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Ian Smith urges readers of Othello, The Merchant of Venice, ...

Garrett Felber, "A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre" (AK Press, 2025)

06 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The first biography of the revolutionary political prisoner who laid the foundation for contemporary abolitionist struggles and Black anarchism. A Co...

Dianna N. Watkins-Dickerson, "A Black Woman for President: Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Kamala Harris" (UP of Mississippi)

04 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Throughout US history, only three Black women—Shirley Chisholm, Carol Moseley Braun, and Kamala Harris—have given successfully recognized bids for...

The Caste Question with Suraj Yengde and Anupama Rao

01 Feb 2026

Contributed by Lukas

TCP’s inaugural episode features Suraj Yengde and Anupama Rao, two scholars whose academic work and activism have helped to set the parameters of th...

Blair Kelley, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class" (LIveright, 2023)

31 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the United States, the stoicism and importance of the “working class” is part of the national myth. The term is often used to conjure the contr...

Justin L. Mann, "Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation" (Duke UP, 2026)

29 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Breaking the World: Black Insecurity and the Horizons of Speculation (Duke UP, 2026) takes Black speculative fiction as a central archive for under...

Ghost in the Criminal Justice Machine

29 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Despite reform efforts that have grown in scope and intensity over the last two decades, the machine of American mass incarceration continues to flour...

Mark Anthony Neal, "New Black Man" (Routledge, 2015)

28 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In honor of the twentieth anniversary of Mark Anthony Neal’s pivotal text New Black Man (Routledge, 2015), Mickell Carter interviews Neal abou...

Alaina M. Morgan, "Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora" (UNC Press, 2025)

27 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Alaina Morgan's Atlantic Crescent: Building Geographies of Black and Muslim Liberation in the African Diaspora (UNC Press, 2025) introduces the conc...

Kimberley Johnson, "Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis" (Cornell UP, 2025)

25 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Dark Concrete: Black Power Urbanism and the American Metropolis (Cornell UP, 2025) by Dr. Kimberley Johnson is about how the Black Power movement res...

Terence Keel, "The Coroner’s Silence: Death Records and the Hidden Victims of Police Violence" (Beacon Press, 2025)

23 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they’ve sworn to protect and serve. While some cases, like George Floyd’s and Sandra Bland’s, ...

O. Jennifer Dixon-McKnight, "We Paved the Way: Black Women and the Charleston Hospital Workers' Campaign" (UP of Mississippi, 2025)

20 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In the spring of 1969, hundreds of workers, all Black and mostly female, went on strike at Medical College Hospital and Charleston County Hospital to ...

Kellen Hoxworth, "Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance" (Northwestern UP, 2024)

20 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

In Transoceanic Blackface: Empire, Race, Performance (Northwestern UP, 2024) Dr. Kellen Hoxworth presents a sweeping history of racialized performan...

Johanna Lukate, "(Dis)Entangled: Black Hair, Race, and Identity" (Coronet, 2025)

16 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Even before we get to introduce ourselves by name, our hair has already started to tell stories about who we are, where we are from and where we are a...

John Samuel Harpham, "Intellectual Origins of American Slavery: English Ideas in the Early Modern Atlantic World" (Harvard UP, 2025)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The period from 1550 to 1700 was critical in the development of slavery across the English Atlantic world. During this time, English discourse about s...

Chris Boucher, "Harry "Bucky" Lew: A Biography of the First Black Professional Basketball Player" (McFarland, 2026)

11 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Harry "Bucky" Lew leapt over pro basketball's color wall in 1902 and continued to integrate every single role in the game over the next 25 years. He w...

Kendra D. Boyd, "Freedom Enterprise: Black Entrepreneurship and Racial Capitalism in Detroit" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

10 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The Great Migration saw more than six million African Americans leave the US South between 1910 and 1970. Though the experiences of migrant laborers a...

Sonya Lea, "American Bloodlines: Reckoning with Lynch Culture" (UP of Kentucky, 2025)

09 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Summer 1936: Rainey Bethea, a young Black man, is tried for the rape and murder of an elderly white woman. The all-white, all-male jury takes just fou...

Keidrick Roy, "American Dark Age: Racial Feudalism and the Rise of Black Liberalism" (Princeton UP, 2024)

08 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Though the United States has been heralded as a beacon of democracy, many nineteenth-century Americans viewed their nation through the prism of the Ol...

W. Ralph Eubanks, "When It's Darkness on the Delta: How America's Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land" (Beacon Press, 2026)

07 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted fo...

Robert D. Bland, "Requiem for Reconstruction: Black Countermemory and the Legacy of the Lowcountry's Lost Political Generation" (UNC Press, 2026)

05 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

The promise of Reconstruction sparked a transformative era in American history as free and newly emancipated Black Americans sought to redefine their ...

Ashley Brown, "Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson" (Oxford UP, 2023)

03 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

From her start playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem as a young teenager to her eleven Grand Slam tennis wins to her professional golf career...

Andrew S. Curran, "Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race from Louis XIV to Thomas Jefferson" (Other Press, 2026)

02 Jan 2026

Contributed by Lukas

An engaging investigation of how 13 key Enlightenment figures shaped the concept of race, from the acclaimed author of Diderot and the Art of Thinking...

Nicholas L. Caverly, "Demolishing Detroit: How Structural Racism Endures" (Stanford UP, 2025)

26 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode, Nick Caverly talks about his new book, Demolishing Detroit: How Structural Racism Endures (Stanford UP, 2025). For decades, Detro...

Trymaine Lee, "A Thousand Ways to Die: The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America" (St. Martins, 2025)

25 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A few years ago, Trymaine Lee, though fit and only 38, nearly died of a heart attack. When his then five-year-old daughter, Nola, asked her daddy why,...

Brittany Michelle Friedman, "Carceral Apartheid: How Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons" (UNC Press, 2025)

24 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It is impossible to deny the impact of lies and white supremacy on the institutional conditions in US prisons. There is a particular power dynamic of ...

Karma F. Frierson, "Local Color: Reckoning with Blackness in the Port City of Veracruz" (U California Press, 2025)

23 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Caribbean port city of Veracruz is many things. It is where the Spanish first settled and last left the colony that would go on to become Mexico. ...

Cupid Jamila and Joell Myescha, "Who's in the Room? A Guide to Public Relations from the Black Professional Perspective" (Kendall Hunt, 2025)

20 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Who’s in the Room?: A Guide to Public Relations from the Black Professional Perspective (Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2025) has been created to serve ...