Kategoria BISAC: History >> African American & Black

The life of Nina Simone is one of blocked paths and surprising detours. Some people are born to an obvious destiny, only to find that society, circumstance, and chance steer them onto an entirely different course. Had Nina been born at a different time, she could very well have been a superstar of classical music at an early age. However, the severe oppression of African Americans in the United States during the 1950s forced her to find her fate down a different road. That she did so with flair, grace, and brilliance speaks to the resilience of the oppressed spirit.

Though...

Dido Elizabeth Belle was born in 1761. It would be nearly 100 years before slavery was abolished. The date would be of little importance if not for one important factor: Belle's father was white, but her mother was African. It was an unthinkable act for the time, and Belle's life was destined for only bad things. But remarkably bad things did not happen.

Belle was sent to live with her uncle, the Earl of Mansfield; here she was raised as a free woman and given the same privileged upbringing as her cousins. This book tells the inspiring true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, and...

A lightning rod for liberal and conservative opposition alike, affirmative action has proved one of the more divisive issues in the United States over the past five decades. Dennis Deslippe here offers a thoughtful study of early opposition to the nation's race- and gender-sensitive hiring and promotion programs in higher education and the workplace. This story begins more than fifteen years before the 1978 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. Partisans attacked affirmative action almost immediately after it first appeared in the 1960s....

-Loved this and I'm not a big history buff. This was an eye-opener. This will make you have an even deeper respect for those who went through slavery and all they endured.- -- Pollard House
During the 1850s and 1860s more than 100,000 people escaped slavery in the American South by following the Underground Railroad, a complex network of secret routes and safe houses. This inexpensive compilation of firsthand accounts offers authentic insights into the Civil War era and African-American history with compelling narratives by Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, and...

Find out what the words in your favorite blues songs really mean In The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu (Foreword by Dr. John), rock musician Debra Devi defines 170 blues terms like mojo, hoodoo, buffet flat and killing floor with wild stories and fresh insights from her interviews with such blues stars as Hubert Sumlin, Robert Jr. Lockwood, Henry Gray, Little Milton Campbell, Bob Margolin, Jody Williams, Robben Ford, Jimmie Vaughan, and more. Devi combines her interviews with in-depth research into etymology, African language, voodoo and the origins of...

In mid-twentieth century America, Harlem was the cultural capital of African America, and the Theresa was the place for black people to see and be seen. The hotel was known to have the hottest nightlife in the world and to be the only grand hotel in Manhattan that welcomed nonwhites. The thirteen-story building still stands on the historic corner of...

With Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784) became the first English-speaking person of African descent to publish a book and only the second woman--of any race or background-- to do so in America. Written in Boston while she was just a teenager, and when she was still a slave, Wheatley's work was an international sensation. In Phillis Wheatley, Vincent Carretta offers the first full-length biography of a figure whose origins and later life have remained shadowy despite her iconic status.

A scholar with extensive knowledge...

"Addresses key historical and theoretical debates of the archaeology of the African diaspora. Theoretically complex and methodologically rigorous, it is the first serious study to locate maroon groups in the...

In August 1831, in Southampton County, Virginia, Nat Turner led a bloody uprising that took the lives of some fifty-five white people--men, women, and children--shocking the South. Nearly as many black people, all told, perished in the rebellion and its aftermath. Nat Turner and the Rising in Southampton County presents important new evidence about the violence and the community in which it took place, shedding light on the insurgents and victims and reinterpreting the most important account of that event, The Confessions of Nat Turner. Drawing upon largely untapped sources,...