People of African descent were some of Galveston's earliest residents, and although they came to the island enslaved, they retained mastery of their culinary traditions. As Galveston's port prospered and became the "Wall Street of the South,'? better job opportunities were available for African Americans who lived in Galveston and for those who migrated to the island city after emancipation, with owner-operated restaurants being one of the most popular enterprises. Staples like Fease's Jambalaya Café, Rose's Confectionery and the Squeeze Inn anchored the island community and elevated its cuisine. From Gus Allen's business savvy to Eliza Gipson's oxtail artistry, the Galveston Historical Foundation's African American Heritage Committee has gathered together the stories and recipes that preserve this culinary history for the enjoyment and enrichment of generations, and kitchens, to come.

This groundbreaking body of comics journalism collects Anderson's entire biography of the renowned civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Over a decade in the making, the saga has been praised for its vivid recreation of one of the most tumultuous periods in U.S. history and for its accuracy in depicting the personal and public lives of King, from his birth to his assassination. King probes the life story of one of America's greatest public figures with an unflinchingly critical eye, casting King as an ambitious, dichotomous figure deserving of his place in history but not above moral sacrifice to get there. Anderson's expressionistic visual style is wrought with dramatic energy; panels evoke a painterly attention to detail but juxtapose with one another in such a way as to propel King's story with cinematic momentum. Anderson's successful use of the graphic novel to tell a major work of nonfiction has drawn favorable comparisons to Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale, Joe Sacco's Palestine, and Osamu Tezuka's Adolph.

King not only recreates the major events in King's public life, but chronicles the daily, rough-and-tumble, behind-the-scenes political maneuverings and strategic compromises that were required to mobilize millions of people toward a common goal. His internal debates with Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson and his hardball negotiations with John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson are dramatized. Anderson's achievement is not merely a political biography filled with names and dates, but a fully rounded portrait of a fallible human engaged in a superhuman effort his fears, his doubts, his relationship with his wife Coretta King, and his children are compassionately and truthfully rendered.

Anderson's visual approach includes the use of photographs, realistic portraiture, and expressionistic imagery alternating between stark black and white chiaroscuro and painterly full color. The dialogue is unflinchingly naturalistic and accurately reflects the moral urgency and labyrinthine political and practical complexities that King was navigating, from his deeply felt, personal commitment to a public cause to the wider political eruptions the country was experiencing. This is a respectful, unsparing, truthful biography of a man and his times that captures the moral and political gravitas of the cause as well as its human dimension. A major work of comics, depicting a major work of history.

*Ships in 7-10 Business Days*

ETAN THOMAS, an eleven-year NBA veteran and lifelong advocate for social justice, weaves together his personal experiences with police violence and white supremacy with multiple interviews of family members of victims of police brutality like exonerated Central Park Five survivor Raymond Santana and Rodney King’s daughter Lora Dene King; as well as activist athletes and other public figures such as Steph Curry, Chuck D, Isiah Thomas, Sue Bird, Jake Tapper, Jemele Hill, Stan Van Gundy, Kyle Korver, Mark Cuban, Rick Strom, and many more.

Thomas speaks with retired police officers about their efforts to change policing, and white allies about their experiences with privilege and their ability to influence other white people. Thomas also examines the history of racism, white supremacy, and the prevalence of both in the current moment. He looks at the origins of white supremacy in the US, dating back to the country’s inception, and explores how it was interwoven into Christianity--interviewing leading voices both in and outside of the church. Finally, with prominent voices in the media and education, Thomas discusses the continued cultivation of these injustices in American society.

Police Brutality and White Supremacy demands accountability and justice for those responsible for and impacted by police violence and terror. It offers practical solutions to work against the promotion of white supremacy in law enforcement, Christianity, early education, and across the public sphere.

Featuring original interviews with: Steph Curry, Chuck D, Yamiche Alcindor, Isiah Thomas, Jemele Hill, Craig Hodges, Stan Van Gundy, Mark Cuban, Jake Tapper, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, Sue Bird, Kyle Korver, Rick Strom, Cenk Uygur, Tim Wise, Chris Broussard, Breanna Stewart, Rex Chapman, Stephen Jackson, Kori Mccoy, Lora Dene King, Chikesia Clemons, Raymond Santana, Alissa Findley, Amber And Ashley Carr, Michelle And Ashley Monterrosa, Chairman Fred Hampton Jr., Abiodun Oyewole, Marc Lamont Hill, Officer Carlton Berkley, Pastor John K. Jenkins Sr., Officer Joe Ested, Captain Sonia Pruitt, and Bishop Talbert Swan.

Now part of the HBO docuseries Exterminate All the Brutes, written and directed by Raoul Peck

The 20th anniversary edition of a pioneering classic that explores the contexts in which history is produced—now with a new foreword by renowned scholar Hazel Carby
 
Placing the West’s failure to acknowledge the Haitian Revolution—the most successful slave revolt in history—alongside denials of the Holocaust and the debate over the Alamo, Michel-Rolph Trouillot offers a stunning meditation on how power operates in the making and recording of history.

This modern classic resides at the intersection of history, anthropology, Caribbean, African-American, and post-colonial studies, and has become a staple in college classrooms around the country. In a new foreword, Hazel Carby explains the book’s enduring importance to these fields of study and introduces a new generation of readers to Trouillot’s brilliant analysis of power and history’s silences.

Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares, originally published in 1985, was the first book to make an in-depth examination of the cadre of African American lawmakers in Texas after the Civil War. Those few books that addressed the subject at all treated black legislators en masse and offered little or nothing about their individual histories. Early scholars tended to present isolated events of the violence and political deterrents inflicted upon black voters but said very little about how these obstacles affected black lawmakers.

Author Merline Pitre has departed from this traditional method and relied upon the untapped original materials found on these black lawmakers. This third edition features a new preface and extended, updated appendixes, ensuring that this study will remain useful to political scientists, sociologists, and historians of Texas political history, Afro-American history, and revisionists of Reconstruction.

Celebrate the life of the extraordinary civil and human rights activist Coretta Scott King with this picture book adaptation of her critically acclaimed adult memoir.

This is the autobiography of Coretta Scott King—the founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change (The King Center), the wife of Martin Luther King Jr., and a singular twentieth-century American civil and human rights activist. Learn about how a girl born in the segregated Deep South became a global leader at the forefront of the peace movement and an unforgettable champion of social change. Resilience, bravery, and joy lie at the center of this timeless story about fighting for justice against all odds.

*This item will ship or be ready for pick up in 7-10 business days

In this joyous collection of essays about historically Black colleges and universities, alumni both famous and up-and-coming write testimonials about the schools and experiences that shaped their lives and made them who they are today.

Edited by the host of NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, Ayesha Rascoe—with a distinguished and diverse set of contributors including Oprah Winfrey, Stacey Abrams, and Branford Marsalis, HBCU Made illuminates and celebrates the experience of going to a historically Black college or university. This book is for proud alumni, their loved ones, current students, and anyone considering an HBCU.

The first book featuring famous alumni sharing personal accounts of the Black college experience, HBCU Made offers a series of warm, moving, and candid personal essays about the schools that nurtured and educated them. The contributors write about how they chose their HBCU, their first days on campus, the dynamic atmosphere of classes where students were constantly challenged to do their best, the professors who devoted themselves to the students, the marching bands and majorettes and their rigorous training.

For some, the choice to attend an HBCU was an easy one, as they followed in the footsteps of their parents or siblings. For others, it was a carefully considered step away from a predominantly white institution to be educated in a place where they would never have to justify their presence. And for some authors here, it was an HBCU that took them in and cared for them like family, often helping them to overcome a rough patch.

For all, the pride in their choice is abundantly clear. HBCU Made is a perfect gift for each generation of prospective students and brand new alumni to come.

In this expansive collection of history, meet ten real-life kings, queens, inventors, scholars, and visionaries who lived in Africa thousands of years ago and changed the world.

Black history begins thousands of years ago with the many cultures and people of the African continent. Through portraits of ten heroic figures, bestselling author Tracey Baptiste takes readers on an empowering, energetic journey through time to meet some of the great leaders and thinkers whose vision built nations and shaped the course of history:

• Menes: Creator of Dynasties
• Merneith: A Queen Erased
• Imhotep: From Peasant to God
• Aesop: The Wisest Man in the Ancient World
• Hannibal Barca: Unparalleled Military Strategist
• Terence: North African Playwright
• Amanirenas: Warrior, Diplomat, Queen
• Tin Hinan: Founder of a City on the Dunes
• Mansa Musa: The Richest Man of All Time
• Queen Idia: Kingmaker

Illustrator Hillary D. Wilson's brilliant portraits accompany each profile, along with vivid, information-filled landscapes, maps, and graphics for readers to pore over and return to again and again. This rich and thrilling work, which celebrates Black excellence and provides an essential correction to Eurocentric tellings of history, will enthrall readers of all ages.

“In African Icons, Baptiste engages in the hard work of unveiling the myths about the African continent to young readers . . . This is a great beginner’s guide to pre-colonial Africa.” —Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning and How to Be an Antiracist  

Acclaimed historian Mary Frances Berry resurrects the remarkable story of ex-slave Callie House who, seventy years before the civil-rights movement, demanded reparations for ex-slaves. A widowed Nashville washerwoman and mother of five, House (1861-1928) went on to fight for African American pensions based on those offered to Union soldiers, brilliantly targeting $68 million in taxes on seized rebel cotton and demanding it as repayment for centuries of unpaid labor. Here is the fascinating story of a forgotten civil rights crusader: a woman who emerges as a courageous pioneering activist, a forerunner of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.

*ships in 7-10 business days*

Michael Eric Dyson dives deep into the true meaning of Barack Obama’s historic presidency and its effects on the changing landscape of race and blackness in America. How has race shaped Obama’s identity, career, and presidency? What can we learn from his major race speeches about his approach to racial conflict and the black criticism it provokes?

Dyson was granted an exclusive interview with the president for this book, and Obama’s own voice shines through. Along with interviews with Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, Maxine Waters, and others, this intimate access provides a unique depth to this engrossing analysis of the nation’s first black president, and how race shapes and will shape our understanding of his achievements and failures alike.

On Sale Date: April 7, 2026

A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction Book of 2024

A leading historian exposes how the rise and tragic failure of the Freedman’s Bank has shaped economic inequality in America.

In the years immediately after the Civil War, tens of thousands of former slaves deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman’s Bank. African Americans envisioned this new bank as a launching pad for economic growth and self-determination. But only nine years after it opened, their trust was betrayed and the Freedman’s Bank collapsed.

Fully informed by new archival findings, historian Justene Hill Edwards unearths a major turning point in American history in this comprehensive account of the Freedman’s Bank and its depositors. She illuminates the hope with which the bank was first envisioned and demonstrates the significant setback that the sabotage of the bank caused in the fight for economic autonomy. Hill Edwards argues for a new interpretation of its tragic failure: the bank’s white financiers drove the bank into the ground, not Fredrick Douglass, its final president, or its Black depositors and cashiers. A page-turning story filled with both well-known figures like Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Jay and Henry Cooke, and General O. O. Howard, and less well-known figures like Dr. Charles B. Purvis, John Mercer Langston, Congressman Robert Smalls, and Ellen Baptiste Lubin. Savings and Trust is necessary reading for those seeking to understand the roots of racial economic inequality in America.

10 illustrations

Winner of a 2005 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award (Honorable Mention)The Mexican Revolution was a defining moment in the history of race relations, impacting both Mexican and African Americans. For black Westerners, 1910-1920 did not represent the clear-cut promise of populist power, but a reordering of the complex social hierarchy which had, since the nineteenth century, granted them greater freedom in the borderlands than in the rest of the United States. Despite its lasting significance, the story of black Americans along the Mexican border has been sorely underreported in the annals of U.S. history. Gerald Horne brings the tale to life in Black and Brown. Drawing on archives on both sides of the border, a host of cutting-edge studies and oral histories, Horne chronicles the political currents which created and then undermined the Mexican border as a relative safe haven for African Americans. His account addresses blacks' role as 'Indian fighters' the relationship between African Americans and immigrants, and the U.S. government's growing fear of black disloyalty, among other essential concerns of the period: the heavy reliance of the U.S. on black soldiers along the border placed white supremacy and national security on a collision course that was ultimately resolved in favor of the latter. Mining a forgotten chapter in American history, Black and Brown offers tremendous insight into the past and future of race relations along the Mexican border.

The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Fascism and Genocide is Boston Review’s 50th anniversary issue. This milestone issue features many of our longtime contributors, including Robin D. G. Kelley, Vivian Gornick, and Elaine Scarry, and celebrates classics from our archive.  In this issue, historian and Boston Review contributing editor Robin D. G. Kelley revisits Noam Chomsky’s landmark 1967 essay, “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” published near the height of the Vietnam War. The essay’s dissident injunction―that those in privileged positions have a duty to “speak the truth and expose lies”―remains a powerful call to conscience, Kelley argues, but the anti-fascist and anti-colonial struggles of even earlier decades reveal its limits, and they show how to refuse and resist complicity in our own age of fascism and genocide. Political philosopher Martin O’Neill, Palestinian human rights lawyer Jennifer Zacharia, and historian David Waldstreicher expand on what this moment requires―of intellectuals, of journalists, and of us all.

Also in the issue, Vivian Gornick reviews Shulamith Firestone’s Airless Spaces, Elaine Scarry challenges the wisdom that Plato banished the poets, Brandon M. Terry interviews political scientist Cathy Cohen about social movements and the future of Black politics, Joelle M. Abi-Rached exposes the contradictions of the liberal international order over Gaza, Samuel Hayim Brody reviews three memoirs on the Arab Jewish world destroyed by colonialism, David Austin Walsh explains what Zohran Mamdani’s triumph means for the future of the Democratic Party, and Sandeep Vaheesan looks to the New Deal to assess the “abundance” agenda.

Plus, seven writers reflect on notable essays from our archive in a special anniversary feature:

* Susan Faludi on Vivian Gornick and anti-feminism
* Naomi Klein on William Callison + Quinn Slobodian and the global right
* Jay Caspian Kang on Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and identity politics
* Ryu Spaeth on Merve Emre and the personal essay
* Lea Ypi on Joseph Carens and amnesty
* Nathan J. Robinson on Noam Chomsky and U.S. foreign policy
* Rick Perlstein on Elaine Scarry and democracy after 9/11

A sweeping history of the Latino experience in the United States.

The first new edition in ten years of this important study of Latinos in U.S. history, Harvest of Empire spans five centuries—from the European colonization of the Americas to through the 2020 election. Latinos are now the largest minority group in the United States, and their impact on American culture and politics is greater than ever. With family portraits of real-life immigrant Latino pioneers, as well as accounts of the events and conditions that compelled them to leave their homelands, Gonzalez highlights the complexity of a segment of the American population that is often discussed but frequently misrepresented. This landmark history is required reading for anyone wishing to understand the history and legacy of this influential and diverse group.

The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series.

“Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again

“Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review

From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box,and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America.

For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues.

In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion.

But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.

How Black women’s visual work functions in an era of new racial and gender meaning

In the wake of contemporary art’s post-Black turn and the mainstreaming of intersectionality, Undesirability and Her Sisters charts a new genealogy of Black women’s art that exposes the unfinished project of racial and gender empowerment in the twenty-first century. Tiffany Barber argues that Black women’s social positions at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and class are inherently queer, thus spurring unexpected aesthetic strategies that throw into high relief the ethical terrain of what it means to be Black and a woman now.

Undesirability and Her Sisters collates what Barber terms “undesirable” representations of Black female bodies in recent American sculpture, collage, photography, and dance-based performance art by Kara Walker, Wangechi Mutu, Xaviera Simmons, and Narcissister. These works not only engage the visual senses but also incorporate olfactory, haptic, and sonic experiences that challenge traditional interpretations of Blackness and womanhood in art history, Black Studies, feminist and gender studies, dance and performance studies, and queer studies. Instead of transcendental beauty, wholeness, and individual and collective becoming, the perverse Black female figures profiled here eschew sublimation and synthesis as necessary responses to racial and gender subjugation in the past, present, and future.

Through its unique, groundbreaking analysis, this book contributes to the ongoing discussions on the ethics of representation―the capacity to speak and act for oneself, to have significance and impact, and ultimately, to reject acknowledgment.

This comparison of the political and social systems of Europe and black Africa from antiquity to the formation of modern states demonstrates the black contribution to the development of Western civilization.

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • One of the first undocumented immigrants to graduate from Harvard reveals the hidden lives of her fellow undocumented Americans in this deeply personal and groundbreaking portrait of a nation.

“Karla’s book sheds light on people’s personal experiences and allows their stories to be told and their voices to be heard.”—Selena Gomez

FINALIST FOR THE NBCC JOHN LEONARD AWARD • NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, NPR, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY, BOOK RIOT, LIBRARY JOURNAL, AND TIME

Writer Karla Cornejo Villavicencio was on DACA when she decided to write about being undocumented for the first time using her own name. It was right after the election of 2016, the day she realized the story she’d tried to steer clear of was the only one she wanted to tell. So she wrote her immigration lawyer’s phone number on her hand in Sharpie and embarked on a trip across the country to tell the stories of her fellow undocumented immigrants—and to find the hidden key to her own. 
 
Looking beyond the flashpoints of the border or the activism of the DREAMers, Cornejo Villavicencio explores the lives of the undocumented—and the mysteries of her own life. She finds the singular, effervescent characters across the nation often reduced in the media to political pawns or nameless laborers. The stories she tells are not deferential or naively inspirational but show the love, magic, heartbreak, insanity, and vulgarity that infuse the day-to-day lives of her subjects. 
 
In New York, we meet the undocumented workers who were recruited into the federally funded Ground Zero cleanup after 9/11. In Miami, we enter the ubiquitous botanicas, which offer medicinal herbs and potions to those whose status blocks them from any other healthcare options. In Flint, Michigan, we learn of demands for state ID in order to receive life-saving clean water. In Connecticut, Cornejo Villavicencio, childless by choice, finds family in two teenage girls whose father is in sanctuary. And through it all we see the author grappling with the biggest questions of love, duty, family, and survival. 
 
In her incandescent, relentlessly probing voice, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio combines sensitive reporting and powerful personal narratives to bring to light remarkable stories of resilience, madness, and death. Through these stories we come to understand what it truly means to be a stray. An expendable. A hero. An American.

Pleasure refers to the freedom to pursue a desire, deliberately sought in order to satisfy the self. Putting pleasure first is liberating. During their extraordinary lives, Lena Horne, Moms Mabley, Yolande DuBois, and Memphis Minnie enjoyed pleasure as they gave pleasure to both those in their lives and to the public at large. They were Black women who, despite their public profiles, whether through Black society or through the world of entertainment, discovered ways to enjoy pleasure.They left home, undertook careers they loved, and did what they wanted, despite perhaps not meeting the standards for respectability in the interwar era. See Me Naked looks at these women as representative of other Black women of the time, who were watched, criticized, and judged by their families, peers, and, in some cases, the government, yet still managed to enjoy themselves. Among the voyeurs of Black women was Langston Hughes, whose novel Not Without Laughter was clearly a work of fiction inspired by women he observed in public and knew personally, including Black clubwomen, blues performers, and his mother. How did these complicated women wrest loose from the voyeurs to define their own sense of themselves? At very young ages, they found and celebrated aspects of themselves. Using examples from these women’s lives, Green explores their challenges and achievements.

PRE-ORDER: ON SALE DATE: March 24, 2026

The award-winning co-anchor of PBS NewsHour presents a sweeping and insightful retrospective on the history of Black comedy in America.

Black comedians have long played a pivotal role in shaping the American sense of humor. The 1990s showcased a golden era for Black comedy, highlighted by the surge of iconic sitcoms that redefined television and left a lasting cultural imprint. Shows like In Living Color, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Living Single, Martin, and A Different World stood on the shoulders of decades of groundbreaking work by Black comedians, both on-screen and on-stage, to deliver nuanced portrayals of life, family, and culture. Yet, just decades earlier, the idea of Black artists dominating American airwaves with characters that were both hilarious and heartfelt would have been unimaginable. How did it come to be?

The journey begins with 19th-century minstrel shows – offensive by today’s standards but the first stage for Black performers to reach mainstream audiences. Over time, comedians challenged racial stereotypes, exploring race and identity through humor. Icons like Jackie “Moms” Mabley, Redd Foxx, Dick Gregory, Flip Wilson, Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg, and Eddie Murphy shifted perceptions and changed how the nation understood itself. In this incisive history, Geoff Bennett tells the story of how they did it.

In Black Out Loud, Bennett chronicles the transformative history of Black comedy in America, drawing on research and interviews with the actors and executives behind some of the most impactful shows. This brilliant exploration traces the evolution of Black comics and provocateurs who reshaped the culture and ultimately became powerful agents of social change -- transforming the way America laughed along the way.

Includes interviews and insights from: Martin Lawrence, Robert Townsend, Debbie Allen, Tisha Campbell, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Quinta Brunson, Arsenio Hall, and many more!

Palestinian women are an essential—often silenced—part of global struggles for freedom. They are at the forefront of the anti-colonial struggle against Israel’s occupation of their lands, as well as being comrades in intersecting movements worldwide.

This series of interviews with Palestinian women living across Palestine and in the diaspora include a journalist on the front line of resistance against settlers and the Israeli army in the West Bank, a BDS activist, a doctor exposing Israel’s deliberate targeting of medical infrastructure as part of its genocidal assault on Gaza, an organiser who critiques the Palestinian Authority’s repression of social media and those making their voices heard in the diaspora, and others.

Everything We Thought Was Beautiful: Interviews with Radical Palestinian Women broadcasts these women’s struggles in their own words and on all fronts—against colonialism, white supremacy, conservatism, patriarchy, state control—and Israel’s occupation. They discuss their politics, the fight for freedom, and their hope for the future.

Complied by Shoal Collective, a co-operative of independent writers and researchers writing for social justice and a world beyond capitalism, the voices include Ayah Al-Ghazzawi, Lina Nabulsy, Samah Fadil, Diana Khwaelid, Shahd Abusalama, Sireen Khudairy, Lama Suleiman, Shrouq Aila, Rana Abu Rahmah, Shatha Abu Srour, Ghada Hamdan, Mona Al-Farra, and Faiza Abu Shamsiyah with a Foreword by Huwaida Arraf.

TWENTY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

The acclaimed collection of Black photography, now featuring more than one hundred photographs from twenty-first-century artists, fundamentally redefines our understanding of American history.

“If a picture truly is worth a thousand words, then Deborah Willis has given us nothing less than an epic history of Homeric proportions. Taken together, Willis’s magnificent gathering of images accompanied by her powerful narrative overturns many common ideas about black life during the last century and a half, and in so doing rewrites American history.”―Robin D. G. Kelley, from the Foreword

Originally published in 2000, Reflections in Black was the first single-volume work to collect the images of leading African American photographers―from the daguerreotype to the digital age. Through its sheer power and inherent beauty, Deborah Willis’s groundbreaking assemblage of photographs of African American life from 1840 to the present triumphantly celebrated family, endurance, and spirituality over the last two centuries as it upended stereotypes and rewrote American history. Aware that so much has changed since 2000, Willis―a world-renowned photographer, curator, and author―has now created a breathtaking twenty-fifth anniversary edition, juxtaposing hundreds of images that appeared in the original edition with 130 new ones.

As the photographic panorama unfolds, we are immersed in hugely moving glimpses of African American life, from the last generation of enslaved people to the urban pioneers of the great migrations of the 1920s, from the rare antebellum daguerreotypes of freemen to the courtly celebrants of the Harlem Renaissance, and from civil rights activists to the postmodern photographic artists of the digital age. Each photograph suggests an astonishing, often spellbinding story. Augustus Washington’s mid-nineteenth-century portraits of key abolitionist figures, for example, offer a seemingly calm window into an era known for its violence. A startling suite of J. P. Ball photographs depicts the life, death, and burial of a Black man hanged for murder in the Montana Territory. Documenting a vibrant family life and a nascent Black middle class as well as Black tenant farmers and educators, the book features James VanDerZee’s famous shot of Marcus Garvey in a Universal Negro Improvement Association parade; Addison N. Scurlock’s dignified portraits of Black intellectuals, artists, and musicians; and John W. Mosley’s World War II–era image of a young drum majorette in an Elks parade in Philadelphia. Reflections in Black also includes a stunning array of celebrity images, among them Booker T. Washington, Langston Hughes, Gladys Bentley, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, and a veiled Coretta Scott King, now accompanied in this edition by Michelle Obama, the Roots, and Angela Davis.

This enhanced volume, with a new foreword from Robin D. G. Kelley and a coda from Kalia Brooks, once again affirms the power of photography to reconfigure our conception of Black life in the African diaspora and American history. Featuring the works of photographers such as Albert Chong, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Lorna Simpson, Allison Janae Hamilton, Renee Cox, Carrie Mae Weems, Andre D. Wagner, and Hank Willis Thomas, this new edition is dedicated to the artists who stretch the definition of photography, creating pieces more akin to multimedia and conceptual art. Written and curated during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the aftermath of the brutal killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade, the images that follow serve as a visual response to these unthinkable experiences as well as to the beauty of life.

Exceptionally handsome and historically consequential, Reflections in Black is not only the rare volume that can be given as a gift on any occasion but a work so significant that it has the power to reconfigure the imagination. This anniversary edition demands to be included in every American’s library as an essential part of our country’s heritage.

544 photographs

A moving portrait of a grim period in American immigration history, when approximately one million ethnic Mexicans―mostly women and children who were US citizens―were forced to relocate across the southern border.

From 1921 to 1944, approximately one million ethnic Mexicans living in the United States were removed across the border to Mexico. What officials called “repatriation” was in fact banishment: 60 percent of those expelled were US citizens, mainly working-class women and children whose husbands and fathers were Mexican immigrants. Drawing on oral histories, transnational archival sources, and private collections, Marla A. Ramírez illuminates the lasting effects of coerced mass removal on three generations of ethnic Mexicans.

Ramírez argues that banishment served interests on both sides of the border. In the United States, the government accused ethnic Mexicans of dependence on social services in order to justify removal, thereby scapegoating them for post–World War I and Depression-era economic woes. In Mexico, meanwhile, officials welcomed returnees for their potential to bolster the labor force. In the process, all Mexicans in the United States―citizens and undocumented immigrants alike―were cast as financially burdensome and culturally foreign. Shedding particular light on the experiences of banished women, Ramírez depicts the courage and resilience of their efforts to reclaim US citizenship and return home. Nevertheless, banishment often interrupted their ability to pass on US citizenship to their children, robbed their families of generational wealth, and drastically slowed upward mobility. Today, their descendants continue to confront and resist the impact of these injustices―and are breaking the silence to ensure that this history is not forgotten.

A wrenching account of expulsion and its afterlives, Banished Citizens illuminates the continuing social, legal, and economic consequences of a removal campaign still barely acknowledged in either Mexico or the United States.

This book provides a narrative historical, postcolonial account of African American religions. It examines the intersection of Black religion and colonialism over several centuries to explain the relationship between empire and democratic freedom. Rather than treating freedom and its others (colonialism, slavery, and racism) as opposites, Sylvester A. Johnson interprets multiple periods of Black religious history to discern how Atlantic empires (particularly that of the United States) simultaneously enabled the emergence of particular forms of religious experience and freedom movements as well as disturbing patterns of violent domination. Johnson explains theories of matter and spirit that shaped early indigenous religious movements in Africa, Black political religion responding to the American racial state, the creation of Liberia, and FBI repression of Black religious movements in the twentieth century. By combining historical methods with theoretical analysis, Johnson explains the seeming contradictions that have shaped Black religions in the modern era.

Examines John Coltrane's "late period" and Miles Davis's "Lost Quintet" through the prisms of digital architecture and experimental photography

Living Space: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Free Jazz, from Analog to Digital fuses biography and style history in order to illuminate the music of two jazz icons, while drawing on the discourses of photography and digital architecture to fashion musical insights that may not be available through the traditional language of jazz analysis. The book follows the controversial trajectories of two jazz legends, emerging from the 1959 album Kind of Blue. Coltrane's odyssey through what became known as "free jazz" brought stylistic (r)evolution and chaos in equal measure. Davis's spearheading of "jazz-rock fusion" opened a door through which jazz's ongoing dialogue with the popular tradition could be regenerated, engaging both high and low ideas of creativity, community, and commerce. Includes 42 illustrations.

Penguin announces a prestigious new series under presiding editor Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

Many works of history deal with the journeys of blacks in bondage from Africa to the United States along the "middle passage," but there is also a rich and little examined history of African Americans traveling in the opposite direction. In Middle Passages, award-winning historian James T. Campbell vividly recounts more than two centuries of African American journeys to Africa, including the experiences of such extraordinary figures as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. DuBois, Richard Wright, Malcolm X, and Maya Angelou. A truly groundbreaking work, Middle Passages offers a unique perspective on African Americans' ever-evolving relationship with their ancestral homeland, as well as their complex, often painful relationship with the United States.

A powerful, groundbreaking new history of Britain and the Caribbean, challenging existing thinking about British colonization and recontextualizing the twin stories of contemporary inequality in both regions.

In Empire Without End, historian Imaobong Umoren delivers an incisive and captivating exploration of the deep, complex ties between Britain and the Caribbean—largely underexamined until now. Spanning from the 16th century to the present, this riveting narrative redefines how we view the Caribbean—not just as a source of labor and resources for the British Empire, but as a dynamic testing ground for social and cultural experimentation. Umoren uncovers how the Caribbean shaped British societal ideals, many of which were exported back to Britain, laying the foundation for a racial-caste system that still affects social, political, and economic life today.

This deeply researched work goes beyond historical accounts of sugar plantations and slavery. Umoren dives deeper, exploring how religion, global migration, war, grassroots protest, and even tourism all played into the Caribbean’s lasting legacy. She boldly connects the dots to modern-day issues, arguing that the shadow of British colonization lingers through neo-colonialism, continuing to shape the lives of Caribbean people. As the world confronts a collective racial reckoning, Empire Without End sheds light on the ongoing fight for reparations and justice, offering a much-needed lens on history’s unfinished business.

Written with clarity and packed with profound insights, Empire Without End is a must-read for anyone curious about the intertwined histories of Britain, the Caribbean, and America. Joining the ranks of acclaimed historical titles like Black Ghosts of Empire and works by Ta-Nehisi Coates, this book provides a fresh, urgent perspective on empire’s enduring impact and the global conversation it demands today.

Sam Cooke's legendary and beloved civil rights anthem is brought to life for the first time with stunning illustrations by Nikkolas Smith.

I was born by the river in a little tent.
Oh, and just like the river, I've been a-runnin' ever since.
It's been a long, a long time coming,
but I know a change gonna come. Oh yes, it will.

The immortal lyrics of Sam Cooke's inspiring civil rights anthem are among the most powerful in music history. Written as an ode to the struggles and joy of Black Americans living under the oppression of Jim Crow, "A Change Is Gonna Come" became a rallying cry for justice and equality when it was shared in 1964. Now, more than sixty years later, the fight for freedom continues, and these sweeping lyrics remain as important and soul stirring as ever.

Alongside Sam Cooke's inspiring words, Nikkolas Smith's breathtaking art guides young readers through pivotal moments in American history. The award-winning illustrator of The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, powerfully references civil rights milestones and Black freedom fighters, empowering all of us to continue the mission of change.

Includes a QR code link to Sam Cooke's iconic recording.