A radical reframing of the past and present of Black resistance—both nonviolent and violent—to white supremacy 

Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolence and Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary.” In We Refuse, historian Kellie Carter Jackson urges us to move past this false choice, offering an unflinching examination of the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women.  
 
The dismissal of “Black violence” as an illegitimate form of resistance is itself a manifestation of white supremacy, a distraction from the insidious, unrelenting violence of structural racism. Force—from work stoppages and property destruction to armed revolt—has played a pivotal part in securing freedom and justice for Black people since the days of the American and Haitian Revolutions. But violence is only one tool among many. Carter Jackson examines other, no less vital tactics that have shaped the Black struggle, from the restorative power of finding joy in the face of suffering to the quiet strength of simply walking away. 
 
Clear-eyed, impassioned, and ultimately hopeful, We Refuse offers a fundamental corrective to the historical record, a love letter to Black resilience, and a path toward liberation.

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Ages 13-16

Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one of the key figures of the civil rights movement, continues his award-winning graphic novel trilogy with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell, inspired by a 1950s comic book that helped prepare his own generation to join the struggle. Now, March brings the lessons of history to vivid life for a new generation, urgently relevant for today’s world. After the success of the Nashville sit-in campaign, John Lewis is more committed than ever to changing the world through nonviolence - but as he and his fellow Freedom Riders board a bus into the vicious heart of the deep south, they will be tested like never before. Faced with beatings, police brutality, imprisonment, arson, and even murder, the movement’s young activists place their lives on the line while internal conflicts threaten to tear them apart.

But their courage will attract the notice of powerful allies, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy…and once Lewis is elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, this 23-year-old will be thrust into the national spotlight, becoming one of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement and a central figure in the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

“Mahalia Jackson was the greatest gospel singer of her time and an overlooked leader in the Civil Rights Movement. Her voice seemed born of heaven.” ?Henry Louis Gates Jr.

If Americans today still recognize the name Mahalia Jackson, they might recall that she was perhaps the greatest gospel singer who ever lived. But for many people, there is no awareness at all, not even for an entertainer whose “Move On Up a Little Higher” sold eight million copies, who headlined two Newport Jazz Festivals and performed before four United States presidents.

While this rich musical legacy is admired by those in the know, virtually no one recognizes Jackson’s astonishing role in American civil rights history. In this startling new depiction of the renowned gospel singer, New York Times best-selling author Timothy B. Tyson and Mary D. Williams, an acclaimed gospel singer herself, bring Jackson back to soaring life by positioning her as the major civil rights figure she, in fact, was.

Mahlia Jackson, Moving On Up a Little Higher then traces Jackson’s career from abject poverty in New Orleans to global superstardom, revealing how even after meteoric success, Jackson maintained an unwavering devotion to Black freedom. In the 1930s in Chicago, even before the Civil Rights Movement took its modern shape, she used her rapturous voice to support independent Black political power. Her work only intensified in the 1940s and beyond when she campaigned first for Franklin D. Roosevelt, and later for Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson; headlined in Montgomery for the 1955–56 bus boycott; sang for the Birmingham campaign and on the Selma March; and performed at the iconic 1963 March on Washington, where she urged Martin Luther King Jr. to “Tell ’em about the dream.” In retrospect what becomes historically significant is that Mahalia Jackson was present at so many civil rights events, even singing a divine rendition of “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” at Dr. King’s funeral in 1968. Weakened and worn, she succumbed to heart failure four years later at the age of sixty.

Weaving together Mahalia Jackson’s inspiring life journey with her soulful music into a transcendent text, this biography ultimately casts Mahalia Jackson as we’ve never seen her before, as a guiding light for the Civil Rights Movement, whose message still speaks to our struggles today.

5 illustrations

A "provocative, insightful, and urgent" (Peniel E. Joseph) new examination of Malcolm X that shows how the iconic figure was always dedicated to a global movement for Black liberation  

Malcolm X is one of the most iconic figures of the twentieth century. Across countless films, documentaries, and books, we have come to know him as a violent and tragic figure, who, when considered next to Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement, was ultimately and perhaps dangerously misguided. But in the wake of continued police brutality and the rise of white supremacy, it’s time to revisit Malcolm X and ask: What do we really know about what he believed, and what can we do with that political philosophy today? 
 
In Nobody Can Give You Freedom, Kehinde Andrews draws on the speeches and writings of Malcolm X to upend the conventional understanding of Malcolm—from his alleged misogyny to his putative proclivity for violence. Instead, Andrews argues that Malcolm X embraced equality across genders and foresaw a more inclusive approach to Black liberation that relied on grassroots efforts and community building.  
 
Far from a doomed ideologue, Malcolm X was in fact one of the most important, and misunderstood, intellectuals of the twentieth century, whose lessons on how to fight white supremacy are more important than ever.

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Originally published in 1971, Gordon Parks’ Born Black was the first book to unite his writing and his photography. It was also the first to provide a focused survey of Parks’ documentation of a crucial time for the civil rights and Black Power movements. Today, more than 50 years later, this expanded edition of Born Black illuminates Parks’ vision for the book and offers deeper insight into the series within it. The original publication featured nine articles commissioned by Life magazine from 1963 to 1970―some never-before published―supplemented with later commentary by Parks and presented as his personal account of these important historical moments. Born Black includes the original text and images, as well as additional photographs from each series, spreads from the 1971 book, early correspondence, reproductions of related Life articles, and new scholarly essays. The nine series selected by Parks for Born Black―a rare glimpse inside San Quentin State Prison; extensive documentation of the Black Muslim movement and the Black Panthers; his commentaries on the deaths of civil rights leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.; intimate portrait studies of Stokely Carmichael, Muhammad Ali and Eldridge Cleaver; and a narrative of the daily life of the impoverished Fontenelle family in Harlem―have come to define his legendary career as a photographer and activist. This reimagined, comprehensive edition of Born Black highlights the lasting legacy of these projects and their importance to our understanding of critical years in American history. Co-published with The Gordon Parks Foundation

How psychedelics can heal historical, intergenerational, and racialized trauma—an Afrofuturistic take on Black psychedelia toward joy and liberation

The mainstream has long seen psychedelic medicine as the purview of people with privilege: money to burn, time to trip, and the social safety to experiment with drugs without risking arrest or worse. Despite psychedelics’ deep roots in Black and Indigenous cultural practices, most psychedelic spaces have excluded Black people and other People of Color. But psychedelics like psilocybin, MDMA, and ketamine are not just for a rarefied liberal elite—and they’re definitely not just for white people.

Combined with quality therapy, safe and equitable access, and full-scale societal healing, psychedelics are a shortcut to liberation, dignity, and power—the “Promised Land” as envisioned by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Risqué? Sure. But that doesn’t make it any less true.

In Black Psychedelic Revolution, Dr. Nick Powers charts how psychedelics can heal historical, intergenerational, and racialized trauma. He shows how these medicines unlock a return to one’s self, facilitating an embodied experience of safety, peace, and beingness otherwise disrupted by whiteness—and explores psychedelics’ ability to transform individual wellness even as they transcend it. Drugs taken with therapy can heal. But drugs taken with a social movement can heal a nation.

Powers unpacks how the Drug War, racist policing, mass incarceration, and community gatekeeping intersect to sideline POC—and specifically Black people—from the psychedelic movement. He moves past “making space” for Black psychedelia to assert instead the need for a full-stop reclamation and revolution: one that eschews psychedelic exceptionalism, breaks down raced and classed constructs of “good” vs. “bad” drugs, realizes true, full-scale healing, and lives into a free, strong, and independent Blackness. With an Afrofuturist lens, Black Psychedelic Revolution takes utopian politics seriously, re-centering social justice around ownership of historical trauma and giving People of Color the authority to define a new humanism.

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The author of Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom and the author of Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag combine their tremendous talents for a singular picture book biography of Bayard Rustin, the gay Black man behind the March on Washington of 1963.

On August 28, 1963, a quarter of a million activists and demonstrators from every corner of America convened for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. It was there and then that they raised their voices in unison for racial and economic justice for all Black Americans, to call out inequities, and, ultimately, to advance the Civil Rights Movement.

Every movement has its unsung heroes. Individuals in the background who work without praise and accolades, who toil and struggle without notice. One of those unsung heroes was at the center of some of the most important decisions and events of the Civil Rights Movement.

Credited with introducing Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the power of peaceful protest, for orchestrating the March on Washington, and for skillfully composing the program that placed Dr. King at the end of the list of speakers and musicians for what would become his historic “I Have a Dream” speech, this unsung hero will be celebrated for the first time in a picture book.

The unsung hero behind the movement was a quiet man. A gay, African American man. He was Bayard Rustin. On the heels of the sixtieth anniversary of this historic moment, two acclaimed picture book authors tell Bayard's inspiring story in an innovative and timeless book. A Song for the Unsung is the rousing story of one of our nation's greatest calls to action by honoring one of the men who made it happen.

“A gorgeous, captivating gem of a memoir…Josephine Baker’s as enthralling on the page as she was on the stage.” —Abbott Kahler, New York Times bestselling author of Eden Undone and Sin in the Second City

Published in the US for the first time, Fearless and Free is the memoir of the fabulous, rule-breaking, one-of-a-kind Josephine Baker, the iconic dancer, singer, spy, and Civil Rights activist.
 
After stealing the spotlight as a teenaged Broadway performer during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Josephine then took Paris by storm, dazzling audiences across the Roaring Twenties. In her famous banana skirt, she enraptured royalty and countless fans—Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso among them. She strolled the streets of Paris with her pet cheetah wearing a diamond collar. With her signature flapper bob and enthralling dance moves, she was one of the most recognizable women in the world.
 
When World War II broke out, Josephine became a decorated spy for the French Résistance. Her celebrity worked as her cover, as she hid spies in her entourage and secret messages in her costumes as she traveled. She later joined the Civil Rights movement in the US, boycotting segregated concert venues, and speaking at the March on Washington alongside Martin Luther King Jr. 
 
First published in France in 1949, her memoir will now finally be published in English. At last we can hear Josephine in her own voice: charming, passionate, and brave. Her words are thrilling and intimate, like she’s talking with her friends over after-show drinks in her dressing room. Through her own telling, we come to know a woman who danced to the top of the world and left her unforgettable mark on it.

Through paintings, sculptures, drawings and more, John Wilson's work foregrounds the human experience and refuses invisibility

American artist John Wilson was not only a master draftsman, printmaker, painter and sculptor active for over seven decades, but he was also a keen observer and social activist. In his representations of Black Americans in particular, he sought to pay homage to the beauty and truths of ordinary Black people in such a way that all viewers, across race and culture, might see themselves reflected. His multidisciplinary works include unflinching representations of racial violence and war, tender family portraits, monumental bronze heads and landmark commissions such as the bust of Martin Luther King, Jr., which stands in the United States Capitol.
The first major retrospective of the artist’s work, Witnessing Humanity sheds light on Wilson’s life and artistic evolution. Reproductions of artworks and photographs accompany critical essays and personal reflections, including analyses by art historians, interviews with Wilson’s peers, remembrances from fellow Black creatives and a full chronology by the late artist’s gallerist. The varied voices which resonate through this catalog illustrate that it is long past time to recognize Wilson’s art―to celebrate his lifelong dedication to depicting what he described as the "reality of being Black in this impossible world."
John Woodrow Wilson (1922–2015) was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tufts University. He lived in Mexico for five years and became a friend and colleague of artist Elizabeth Catlett. Wilson taught fine art at Boston University from 1964 until 1986.