New Books in African American Studies
Episodes
Micah McCrary, "Island in the City" (U Nebraska Press, 2018)
08 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
If you read a lot of nonfiction, you may be familiar with what some call the “memoir quandary”—the complaint that memoir and autobiography are t...
Elliott J. Gorn, "Let the People See: The Story of Emmett Till" (Oxford UP, 2018)
05 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The story of Emmett Till’s death at the hands of white Mississippians is well known. For many Americans, it highlights the racism of the Jim Crow So...
Calvin Schermerhorn, "Unrequited Toil: A History of United States Slavery" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
25 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At this point, it is hard to fathom the shear volume of studies of American slavery that scholars have produced. And new works on American slavery are...
Daina Ramey Berry and Leslie Harris, "Sexuality and Slavery: Reclaiming Intimate Histories in the Americas" (U Georgia Press, 2018)
24 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Scholarly interest in the institution of American slavery is enjoying a kind of resurgence. Researchers are examining heretofore rarely (or never) stu...
Clarence Taylor, "Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City" (NYU Press, 2018)
18 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In his most new book Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City (NYU Press, 2018), Clarence Taylor, ...
Ashley D. Farmer, "New Perspectives of the Black Intellectual Tradition" (Northwestern UP, 2018)
11 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The field of African American intellectual history is enjoying a kind of renaissance at the moment. The resurgence is due to the work of the African A...
Robin Marie Averbeck, "Liberalism is not Enough: Race and Poverty in Postwar Political Thought" (UNC Press, 2018)
10 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Robin Marie Averbeck is a writer, activist and teacher at California State University, Chico. Liberalism is not Enough: Race and Poverty in Postwar Po...
William D. Green, "The Children of Lincoln: White Paternalism and the Limits of Black Opportunity in Minnesota, 1860–1876" (U Minnesota Press, 2018)
08 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
At a speech before the unveiling of the Freedman’s Monument in 1876, Fredrick Douglass stated, “You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are on...
Michael Fischbach, "Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color" (Stanford UP, 2018)
04 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one of the great animating foreign policy issues of the twenty-first century, one that provokes fierce divisions a...
Maurice J. Hobson, "The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta" (UNC Press, 2017)
02 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Dr. Maurice J. Hobson’s new book The Legend of the Black Mecca: Politics and Class in the Making of Modern Atlanta (University of North Carolina Pre...
Laura McEnaney, "Postwar: Waging Peace in Chicago" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
24 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When World War II ended, Americans celebrated a military victory abroad, but the meaning of peace at home was yet to be defined. From roughly 1943 onw...
Kellie Jones, "South of Pico: African American Artists in the 1960s and 1970s" (Duke UP, 2017)
24 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
New York City might have been the epicenter of the twentieth century American art scene, but Los Angeles was no slouch either, writes Kellie Jones in ...
James Baldwin, "Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood" (Duke UP, 2018)
21 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This 2018 reprint of Little Man, Little Man exemplifies communal and collaborative textual production. The story was written by James Baldwin and illu...
Jessica Trounstine, "Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities" (Cambridge UP, 2018)
12 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
2018 has been a great year for books about sub-national government in the United States. The year ends with another to add to the list. Jessica Trouns...
McKenzie Wark, "General Intellects: Twenty-One Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century" (Verso, 2017)
06 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
McKenzie Wark’s new book offers 21 focused studies of thinkers working in a wide range of fields who are worth your attention. The chapters of Gener...
Aram Goudsouzian and Charles McKinney, "An Unseen Light: Black Struggles for Freedom in Memphis, Tennessee" (UP of Kentucky, 2018)
04 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Most people will know that Memphis, Tennessee is where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. That's too bad, because Memphis played an impo...
Adam Malka, "The Men of Mobtown: Policing Baltimore in the Age of Slavery and Emancipation" (UNC Press, 2018)
04 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Criminal justice, policing, and mass incarceration have gained significant political attention recently, and the problems of these systems have drawn ...
John C. Hajduk, "Music Wars: Money, Politics, and Race in the Construction of Rock and Roll Culture, 1940–1960" (Lexington Books, 2018)
03 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his new book Music Wars: Money, Politics, and Race in the Construction of Rock and Roll Culture, 1940–1960(Lexington Books, 2018), John C. Hajduk...
Sharon Block, "Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
28 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we have a certain idea of "race"; it's socially constructed, conventional, and not really biological-grounded in any sense. Yet we commonly us...
Keisha Lindsay, "In a Classroom of Their Own: The Intersection of Race and Feminist Politics in All-Black Male Schools" (U Illinois Press, 2018)
28 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
According to most experts, boys have more trouble in schools than girls. Further, African-American boys have even more trouble than, say, white boys. ...
Michael E. Staub, “The Mismeasure of Minds: Debating Race and Intelligence Between Brown and The Bell Curve” (UNC Press, 2018)
21 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision required desegregation of America’s schools, but it also set in motion an agonizing multi-decade deb...
Ruma Chopra, “Almost Home: Maroons between Slavery and Freedom in Jamaica, Nova Scotia, and Sierra Leone” (Yale UP, 2018)
21 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
After being exiled from their native Jamaica in 1795, the Trelawney Town Maroons endured in Nova Scotia and then in Sierra Leone. In Almost Home: Maro...
Yael Ben-zvi, “Native Land Talk: Indigenous and Arrivant Rights Theories” (Dartmouth College Press, 2018)
15 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Histories of rights have too often marginalized Native Americans and African Americans. Addressing this lacuna, Native Land Talk: Indigenous and Arriv...
Vernon Keeve III, “Southern Migrant Mixtape” (Nomadic Press, 2018)
15 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we speak with Vernon Keeve III about his book Southern Migrant Mixtape (Nomadic Press, 2018), a collection published by Nomadic Pre...
Tracy Fessenden, “Religion Around Billie Holiday” (Penn State UP, 2018)
14 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Billie Holiday is one of the most iconic jazz performers of all time. Her voice is certainly unmistakable but for many her religious sensibilities may...
Alisha Gaines, “Black for a Day: White Fantasies of Race and Empathy” (UNC Press, 2017)
14 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How does one show empathy towards someone across racial lines? In her new book Black for a Day: White Fantasies of Race and Empathy (University of ...
Bernard Fraga, “The Turnout Gap: Race, Ethnicity, and Political Inequality in a Diversifying America” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
12 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Following a historic election, we return again to the question of turnout. Who turned out in large numbers to shift power in the House back to the Dem...
R. C. Romano and C. B. Potter, “Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past” (Rutgers UP,
07 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Historians on Hamilton: How a Blockbuster Musical is Restaging America’s Past (Rutgers University Press, 2018), edited by Renee C. Romano and Clair...
Caitlin C. Rosenthal, “Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management” (Harvard UP, 2018)
31 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The familiar narrative of American business development begins in the industrial North, where paternalistic factory owners, committed to a kind of Pro...
Stefan M. Bradley, “Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Ivy League” (NYU Press, 2018)
26 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The eight elite institutions that comprise the Ivy League, sometimes known as the Ancient Eight—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia, Brown, Dar...
Jonathan Shandell, “The American Negro Theatre and the Long Civil Rights Era” (U Iowa Press, 2018)
26 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The role of the artist in the cause of Black freedom has been a hotly debated topic for generations now. Dr. Jonathan Shandell’s The American Negro ...
Sylvia Chan-Malik, “Being Muslim: A Cultural History of Women of Color in American Islam” (NYU Press, 2018)
17 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The story of Muslims in America has primarily been told through the experiences of men and often revolves around narratives of immigration. Sylvia Cha...
Andrew M. Busch, “City in a Garden: Environmental Transformations and Racial Justice in Twentieth-Century Austin, Texas” (UNC Press, 2017)
16 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Austin, Texas has a reputation as a vibrant, youthful capital city buoyed economically and culturally by the University of Texas. In City in a Garden:...
Stefan M. Wheelock, “Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic” (U Virginia Press, 2015)
15 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Barbaric Culture and Black Critique: Black Antislavery Writers, Religion, and the Slaveholding Atlantic (University of Virginia Press, 2015), Dr....
Treva Lindsey, “Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhood in Washington D.C.” (U Illinois, 2017)
08 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The New Negro Movement is typically seen as a Harlem-based project. Dr. Treva Lindsey’s important book, Colored No More: Reinventing Black Womanhoo...
Matthew Harper, “The End of Days: African American Religion and Politics in the Age of Emancipation” (UNC Press, 2016)
02 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the wake of the bloody Civil War, millions of slaves were emancipated. How did those freed slaves, along with African Americans freed before the Ci...
Laila Amine, “Postcolonial Paris: Fictions of Intimacy in the City of Light” (U Wisconsin Press, 2018)
27 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
At the heart of Laila Amine’s book is a crucial question: where is Paris? This question may be surprising for anyone who can readily point to the Fr...
Nicholas Grant, “Winning Our Freedoms Together: African Americans and Apartheid, 1945–1960” (UNC Press, 2017)
25 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The links between African Americans and the global struggle for decolonization, particularly in Africa are well-documented. Facing similar kinds of re...
Christina Snyder, “Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson” (Oxford UP, 2017)
18 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Great Crossings: Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in the Age of Jackson (Oxford, 2017) is a dramatic and vibrant story of a little-known Kentucky school,...
Freeden Blume Oeur, “Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Male Public Schools” (U Minnesota Press, 2018)
13 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do schools empower but also potentially emasculate young black men? In his new book, Black Boys Apart: Racial Uplift and Respectability in All-Ma...
M. Cooper Harriss, “Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Theology” (NYU Press, 2017)
12 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man is a milestone of American literature and the idea of invisibility has become a key way for understanding s...
Keri Leigh Merrit and Matthew Hild, eds., “Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power” (UP of Florida, 2018)
11 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In their new edited volume Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power (University Press of Florida, 2018), Keri Leigh Merritt and...
David García, “Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins” (Duke UP, 2017)
05 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music’s African Origins (Duke University Press, 2017), David García reminds us...
Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood, “Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston” (UNC Press, 2018)
29 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Boston’s political culture is most known within the frame of antebellum political struggles over the institution of slavery. What about Reconstructi...
Brian Abrams, “Obama: An Oral History, 2009-2017” (Little A, 2018)
21 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Brian Abrams interviewed more than 100 people – Democrats, Republicans, cabinet officials, White House aides, campaign operatives, congresspeople an...
Lessie B. Branch, “Optimism at All Costs: Black Attitudes, Activism, and Advancement in Obama’s America” (U Massachusetts Press, 2018)
17 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Optimism at All Costs: Black Attitudes, Activism, and Advancement in Obama’s America (University of Massachusetts Press, 2018) takes as its point ...
Judith Weisenfeld, “New World A-Coming: Black Religion and Racial Identity during the Great Migration” (NYU Press, 2017)
17 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A wave of religious leaders in black communities in the early twentieth-century insisted that so-called Negroes were, in reality, Ethiopian Hebrews, A...
Kristen Epps, “Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras” (U Georgia Press, 2016)
16 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Kansas-Missouri border holds a place of infamy in the history of American slavery as the chief battleground of the Bleeding Kansas crisis of the m...
Naomi André, “Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
08 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Naomi André’s innovative new book, Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement (University of Illinois Press, 2018) is an example of a concept she cal...
Heather Schoenfeld, “Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
08 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How did prisons become a tool of racial inequality? Using historical data, Heather Schoenfeld’s new book Building the Prison State: Race and the P...
Vanessa Valdés, “Diasporic Blackness: The Life and Times of Arturo Alfonso Schomburg” (SUNY Press, 2018)
03 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As every scholar of African Americans knows, Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is an essential resource for black history. But...
Wendy Laybourn and Devon Goss, “Diversity in Black Greek-Letter Organizations: Breaking the Line” (Routledge, 2018)
01 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Black Greek-Letter organizations (BGLOs) appeared as an initiative from black college students to provide support, opportunities and service, as well ...
J. Samuel Walker, “Most of 14th Street Is Gone: The Washington, DC Riots of 1968” (Oxford UP, 2018)
30 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Fifty years ago, the United States, and many other societies, experienced one of the most turbulent years of the century. In 1968, Americans were de...
Ian Rocksborough-Smith, “Black Public History in Chicago: Civil Rights Activism From World War II Into the Cold War” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
30 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Activism comes in many forms, be it political, educational, or social. Less often though, do people perceive historical activism in such conversations...
Kelley Fanto Deetz, “Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine” (UP of Kentucky, 2017)
26 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The concept of “Southern hospitality” began to take form in the late eighteenth century and became especially associated with Virginia’s grand p...
Tameka Bradley Hobbs, “Democracy Abroad, Lynching at Home: Racial Violence in Florida” (UP of Florida, 2015)
26 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The World War II era was a transformative period for the United States’ relationship to the rest of the world. Exporting liberal democracy was an im...
Anna-Lisa Cox, “The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality” (PublicAffairs, 2018)
09 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Most people’s image of the American frontier does not conjure anything relating to people of African descent. But, as Anna-Lisa Cox’s points ou...
Hilary Green, “Educational Reconstruction: African American Schools In The Urban South, 1865-1890” (Fordham UP, 2016)
09 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In cities ravaged by years of bloodshed and warfare, how did black populations, many formerly enslaved, help shape the new world that the Civil War le...
Roger Biles, “Mayor Harold Washington: Champion of Race and Reform in Chicago” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
05 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Harold Washington’s election as mayor of Chicago in 1983 sent a shockwave through the politics of America’s third largest city, one that reverbera...
Frank R. Baumgartner, “Suspect Citizens: What 20 Million Traffic Stops Tell Us about Policing and Race” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
04 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We recently marked the 50th Anniversary of Terry vs. Ohio, the US Supreme Court case that dramatically expanded the scope under which agents of the st...
Martha S. Jones, “Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America” (Cambridge UP, 2018)
02 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The contemporary moment has brought to the forefront the question of what constitutes an American citizen. The legal question in popular understanding...
Christopher W. Schmidt, “The Sit-Ins: Protest and Legal Change in the Civil Rights Era” (U Chicago Press, 2018)
22 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The sit-in movement that swept the Southern states in 1960 was one of the iconic moments of the post-World War II civil rights movement. Yet the image...
Jacqueline Jones, “Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical” (Basic Books, 2017)
18 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The award-winning author Jacqueline Jones is the Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women’s History at the University of Texas. Goddess of Anarchy: The Life a...
Sami Schalk, “Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction” (Duke UP, 2018)
12 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What do werewolves, enslaved women and immortal beings have in common? And how can they shed light on contemporary questions of ableism and police bru...
Sandra Jean Graham, “Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Entertainment Industry” (U Illinois Press, 2018)
12 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What happened in popular entertainment when African Americans could access the stage after the Civil War? In Spirituals and the Birth of a Black Enter...
Charles Hughes, “Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South” (UNC Press, 2015)
06 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
As America changed in the Civil Rights and Black Power eras, the Southern music industry was changing as well. The music studios of Nashville, Memphis...
Halifu Osumare, “Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir” (UP of Florida, 2018)
04 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Combining memoir with auto-ethnography, historical study and sociocultural analysis, Halifu Osumare draws on her decades of experience to explore the ...
Avidit Acharya et al., “Deep Roots: How Slavery Still Shapes Southern Politics” (Princeton UP, 2018)
30 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Several weeks ago, we had Professor Lilliana Mason on the podcast talking about her book about the process of social sorting that has deepened divides...
Ethan J. Kytle and Blain Roberts, “Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy” (The New Press, 2018)
22 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A book that strikes at the source of the recent flare-ups over Confederate symbols in Charlottesville, New Orleans, and elsewhere, Ethan J. Kytle and ...
John Munro, “The Anticolonial Front: The African-American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonization” (Cambridge UP, 2017)
21 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
John Munro’s new book, The Anticolonial Front: The African-American Freedom Struggle and Global Decolonization (Cambridge University Press, 2017) i...
Katharine Gerbner, “Christian Slavery: Conversion and Race in the Protestant Atlantic World” (U Pennsylvania Press, 2018)
16 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Could slaves become Christian? If so, did their conversion lead to freedom? If not, how could perpetual enslavement be justified? In her recent book, ...
Matthew Karp, “This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at The Helm of American Foreign Policy” (Harvard UP, 2016)
14 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Most people know that slavery was foundational to the economic development of the United States in the antebellum period. Fewer people are aware that ...
Nancy Mitchell, “Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War” (Stanford UP, 2016)
09 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked with Nancy Mitchell about her book Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the Cold War, published by Stanford University Press in 2016 as pa...
Lisa A. Lindsay, “Atlantic Bonds: A Nineteenth-Century Odyssey” (UNC Press, 2017)
27 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The title of Lisa A. Lindsay’s book Atlantic Bonds: A Nineteenth-Century Odyssey from America to Africa (University of North Carolina Press, 2017),...
Averell Smith, “The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige’s Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic” (U Nebraska Press, 2018)
26 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Averell “Ace” Smith, The Pitcher and the Dictator: Satchel Paige’s Unlikely Season in the Dominican Republic (University ...
Keisha N. Blain, “Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom” (U Penn Press, 2018)
26 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Keisha N. Blain teaches African American and gender and women’s history at the University of Pittsburg. Her book Set the World on Fire: Black Nation...
John Gennari, “Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge” (U Chicago Press, 2017)
25 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In his book, Flavor and Soul: Italian America and Its African American Edge (University of Chicago Press, 2017), scholar John Gennari examines the i...
Greg Berman and Julian Adler, “Start Here: A Roadmap to Reducing Mass Incarceration” (The New Press, 2018)
23 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The United States leads the world in incarceration. That’s a problem, especially the disproportionate impact of “mass incarceration” on low-inco...
Imani Perry, “May We Forever Stand: A History of the Black National Anthem” (UNC Press, 2018)
23 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the national anthem in August 2016 prior to a preseason game reopened a national conversation about public p...
Lisa Ze Winters, “The Mulatta Concubine: Terror, Intimacy, Freedom, and Desire in the Black Transatlantic” (U Georgia Press, 2016)
20 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Popular and academic representations of the free mulatta concubine repeatedly depict women of mixed black African and white racial descent as defined ...
Koritha Mitchell, ed., “Iola Leroy Or, Shadows Uplifted” by Frances E.W. Harper (Broadview Editions, 2018)
20 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s nineteenth-century novel Iola Leroy has not always been considered a core text in the canon of African American liter...
Gary Dorrien, “The New Abolition: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel” (Yale UP, 2018)
18 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The black social gospel–formulated and given voice by abolitionists and post-reconstruction Black men and women–took the United States by storm in...
Sharla Fett, “Recaptured Africans: Surviving Slave Ships, Detention, and Dislocation in the Final Years of the Slave Trade” (UNC Press, 2017)
12 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Amistad Rebellion is usually remembered as the only instance in which a US court sent re-captured slaves back to Africa. Yet as Sharla Fett shows ...
Amy Bass, “One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together” (Hachette Books, 2018)
04 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Amy Bass, author of the book One Goal: A Coach, A Team, and the Game that Brought a Divided Town Together (Hachette Books, 2018...
Julian Lim, “Porous Borders: Multiracial Migrations and the Law in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands” (UNC Press, 2017)
30 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
With the railroad’s arrival in the late nineteenth century, immigrants of all colors rushed to the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, transforming the region ...
J. Michael Butler, “Beyond Integration: The Black Freedom Struggle in Escambia County, Florida 1960-1980” (UNC Press, 2016)
27 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Historians have long debated when the Black Freedom Struggle began and when it ended. Most point to the King years, 1955-1968. In his excellent book B...
Marcus Rediker, “The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became The First Revolutionary Abolitionist” (Beacon Press, 2017)
20 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the annals of abolitionist history, names like William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, the Grimke sisters, and Harriet Tubman are well known. D...
Matthew Clavin, “Aiming for Pensacola: Fugitive Slaves on the Atlantic and Southern Frontiers” (Harvard UP, 2015)
13 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We all know that most runaway African-American slaves fled north in pursuit of freedom. Most, but not all. Some also fled to Pensacola, a city located...
Kali Nicole Gross, “Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso” (Oxford UP, 2016)
13 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
True crime is as popular as ever in our present moment. Both television and podcast series have gained critical praise and large audiences by explorin...
Jeffrey Stewart, “The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke” (Oxford UP, 2018)
26 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Through his work as a scholar and critic, Alain Locke redefined African American culture and its place in American life. Jeffrey Stewart‘s book The ...
Seth Markle, “A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism 1964-1974” (Michigan State UP, 2017).
16 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we talked to Seth Markle about his book, A Motorcycle on Hell Run: Tanzania, Black Power, and the Uncertain Future of Pan-Africanism 1964-1974, ...
Douglas Hartman, “Midnight Basketball: Race, Sports, and Neoliberal Social Policy” (U Chicago Press, 2016)
12 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The concept of late-night basketball gained prominence in the late 1980s when G. Van Standifer founded Midnight Basketball League as a vehicle upon wh...
Paul Ortiz, “An African American and Latinx History of the United States” (Beacon Press, 2017)
05 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Throughout many American classrooms, students learn how the United States was formed, and most importantly, the historical figures who helped produce ...
Sridhar Pappu, “The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age” (HMH, 2017)
01 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today we are joined by Sridhar Pappu, author of the book The Year of the Pitcher: Bob Gibson, Denny McLain and the End of Baseball’s Golden Age (Hou...
Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, “Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship before the Civil War” (UNC Press, 2016)
29 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Typically the Jim Crow Era of segregation is understood as beginning directly after Reconstruction and going into the mid-twentieth century with the d...
Robert Hunt Ferguson, “Remaking the Rural South: Interracialism, Christian Socialism, and Cooperative Farming in Jim Crow Mississippi” (U of Georgia Press, 2018)
24 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In an unlikely place at an unlikely time, a group of black and white former sharecroppers, socialist organizers, and Christian reformers began an agri...
Brian McCammack, “Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago” (Harvard UP, 2017)
11 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What can we learn about African American life between the world wars if we center our attention on the parks and pleasuring grounds of the urban North...
Ula Yvette Taylor, “The Promise of Patriarchy: Women and the Nation of Islam” (UNC Press, 2017)
11 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Nation of Islam and other black nationalist groups are typically known for their male leaders. Men like the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister...
Elizabeth McRae, “Mothers of Massive Resistance: White Women and the Politics of White Supremacy” (Oxford UP, 2017)
01 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Much attention has been drawn to the role of white women in the recent Alabama senate election and the earlier election of Donald J. Trump as presiden...
Kay Wright Lewis, “A Curse upon the Nation: Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World” (U. Georgia Press, 2017)
01 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In her new book, A Curse upon the Nation: Race, Freedom, and Extermination in America and the Atlantic World (University of Georgia Press, 2017), Howa...