"Sittin' in brings to public view for the first time a rare collection of more than two hundred souvenir photographs and memorabilia from the most renowned jazz nightclubs in America in the 1940s and 1950s. In an era of segregation and Jim Crow laws, jazz nightclubs across the country were among the first places where Black and white people mixed in audiences and onstage. These remarkable images, detailed histories of each club, and first-person testimonies...

"The inspiring, dramatic, and heartwarming true account of an escaped convict and his wife of thirty-five plus years who never knew his secret, which captured the imaginations of millions on Humans of New York"-- "The inspiring, dramatic, and heartwarming true account of an escaped convict and his wife of thirty-five plus years who never knew his secret, which captured the imaginations of millions on Humans of New York.Bobby and Cheryl Love were...

An authoritative history by the preeminent scholar of the Civil War era, The Second Founding traces the arc of the three foundational Reconstruction amendments from their origins in antebellum activism and adoption amidst intense postwar politics to their virtual nullification by narrow Supreme Court decisions and Jim Crow state laws. Today these amendments remain strong tools for achieving the American ideal of equality, if only we will take them...

Jessye Norman is not only one of the world's most admired and beloved opera stars--she is an American icon whose life story is as inspiring as the fictional plot triumphs she sang onstage. Born and raised in Augusta, Georgia, a descendant of many generations of hardworking slave and free ancestors, she grew up amid the challenges of Jim Crow racism, with the civil rights movement just beginning to awaken. Nurtured by a close family and tight-knit...

"The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major...

""It is staggering that there is no date commemorating the end of slavery in the United States." -Annette Gordon-Reed. The essential, sweeping story of Juneteenth's integral importance to American history, as told by a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Texas native. Interweaving American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed, the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas in the 1850s, recounts...

"From the Smithsonian Institution, the real story of the American table in a collection of snapshots, stories, and recipes from the pre-colonial era through today, including the people and events that have often been left out. In this exploration of the American table, the Smithsonian Institution presents a fresh look at what and how we've fed ourselves, for sustenance and for pleasure, through the lens of location, immigration, ingenuity, innovation,...

"When Rowan finds a skeleton on her family's property, investigating the brutal, century-old murder leads to painful discoveries about the past. Alternating chapters tell the story of William, another teen grappling with the racial firestorm leading up to the 1921 Tulsa race riot, providing some clues to the mystery"--

"As Ferguson, Missouri, erupted in August 2014, and media commentators across the ideological spectrum referred to the angry response of African Americans as 'black rage, ' historian Carol Anderson wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post showing that this was, instead, 'white rage at work. With so much attention on the flames, ' she writes, 'everyone had ignored the kindling.' Since 1865 and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, every time African...