Adopt-a-Book: African American History and Culture
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22
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African Americans on StampsAdoption Amount: $250 At over two hundred pages long, this hardback book is basically an encyclopedia of African American heroes on postage stamps, both from the United States and around the world. Arranged alphabetically by last name, it provides short biographies, followed by black and white illustrations of each postage stamp. The stamps are numbered and references to the numbered stamps are in the biographies. For example, Michael Jordan, illustration #289, Tanzania postage stamp. In the center of the book, to the reader’s delight, are sixteen pages of color plates which vividly depict the United States Postal... Read More |
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African Americans on StampsAdoption Amount: $250 This thin, thirty-paged color booklet was published by the United States Postal Service in 2004. The Black Heritage stamp series began in 1978 and ever since, African American heroes and heroines have been honored on postage stamps. The Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC) votes on which candidate will be the next postage stamp. Harriet Tubman was the first Black Heritage postage stamp. This booklet is arranged alphabetically from A to Z beginning with the dancer Alvin Ailey and ending with Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Whitney Moore Young. Read More |
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African-American Pioneers in AnthropologyAdoption Amount: $250 This book highlights the lives, works, and accomplishments of African American scholars in recent history whose work is influential in the field of anthropology. The contributions of these scholars vary, ranging from the cultural impacts of Zora Neale Hurston’s field works and writings to Caroline Bond Day and her research in physical anthropology. Each chapter focuses on a specific person, discussing both their biography and their scholarly work. This book is important to the collection as documentation of the diversity within anthropology, as well as a thorough biographical resource on... Read More |
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Afro-Americans in DentistryAdoption Amount: $450 African American dental practices were first documented in 18th century when dentistry was a crude trade learned by apprenticeship to perform necessary extractions. Extramural dentistry is the practice of exercising dental expertise outside of the institution and bringing dental care and education into the community. In this book, Clifton Orrin Dummett, D.D.S. and Lois Doyle Dummett, B.A. thread together the dental milestones and contributions in African American history. Their overview addresses such issues as race, segregation, education, and how community dentistry is a uniquely African... Read More |
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The Afronomical WayAdoption Amount: $250 This limited-edition set of 43 vibrant, color printed cards housed in a custom box is parts that together comprise artist Sanford Biggers’ explorations of identity, rituals, and iconography. Divided into three sections—afronomix, fetico, and fides—the images offer moments of both intimacy and surrealism. Biggers defines the first section, afronomix, as the “Kemitic, the study of the corelationship between peoples of the African Diaspora, the cosmos, and time.” The second section, fetico, comes from Portuguese and Latin, meaning both “charm, sorcery” and “... Read More |
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Birth of the CoolAdoption Amount: $500 Birth of the Cool may be the coolest book you will ever see. In this 2008 exhibition catalog of his first retrospective, Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017) distills black identity into powerful three-quarter and full-length portraits that teem with style and attitude. His sitters are unapologetic in their self-presentation and the result is a phenomenal elevation of African Americans who would have otherwise gone unnoticed in the decades immediately following the civil rights movement. The title of this catalog, edited by Trevor Schoonmaker, stems from the iconic 1957 Miles Davis album... Read More |
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Black American Heritage Through United States Postage StampsAdoption Amount: $250 This thin, 26 page booklet has both color portraits and black and white pencil sketches of prominent heroes of Black History. Written by three Black doctors, it was published in Washington, D.C. Part One is arranged in chronological order based on significant events in American history. For example, two Black heroes of the American Revolution (the first Blacks to fight at Bunker Hill), three Black heroes of the Civil Rights Movement, two Black heroes in education, one hero in literature, one scientist, and two heroes in the arts. Part Two covers significant subjects, such as the Thirteenth... Read More |
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Black, Red, and DeadlyAdoption Amount: $250 You may know the names of Jesse James, Billy the Kid, or Pat Garrett. But what about Buss Luckey, the Rufus Buck Gang, the Lighthorsemen, or Zeke Miller? Although whites dominate popular depictions of the lawless west, Black, Red and Deadly presents the sagas of African-American and American Indian outlaws and bona fide law enforcers in Indian Territory. Luckey was an African American convicted bandit who dynamited a train carrying $60,000 in gold bullion. On the good side, there were Cherokee, Choctaw, and Creek Lighthorse units who served as mounted police; and, Miller was a deputy U... Read More |
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Frederick Douglass in Washington, D.C.Adoption Amount: $300 This book covers the final 18 years of Frederick Douglass’ life when he lived in a mansion on top of Cedar Hill in Anacostia, a neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The author is a graduate of George Washington University, a prominent university in Washington, D.C. The book is filled with black and white pencil sketches, images, and photographs, many depicting the interior of Douglass’ home, as well as his family life. This biography includes stories about his children and grandchildren — one earned the rank of Sergeant Major as a Civil War combat soldier and another was a world famous concert... Read More |
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Frederick Douglass: Freedom's VoiceAdoption Amount: $250 This book was written by Dr. Gregory Lampe, a retired provost and vice chancellor for academic and student affairs, and emeritus communications professor at Michigan State University. Since Douglass was an orator, it seems fitting for a communications and speech professor to write about his oratory and rhetoric. Now, after reading this book, you have to go to freedomarchives.org to listen to a recording of Frederick Douglass's voice. His speeches are fiery, and spirit-filled, and he doesn’t just speak, but he preaches about abolition as if it were a sermon, moving today's modern listener to... Read More |
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Freedom Just Around the CornerAdoption Amount: $250 This pocket sized exhibition booklet contains a chronicle of the African American experience told through the unique lens of stamps and mail. At around 100 pages long, it is full of beautiful color illustrations of stamp art. The National Postal Museum's exhibition opened to the public in the middle of Black History Month 2015, and ended in the middle of Black History Month 2016. Museum visitors learned about letters carried by slaves, mail to and from civil rights leaders, and original artwork from the USPS Black Heritage stamp series. This exhibition made history as the National Postal... Read More |
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The Future of the American NegroAdoption Amount: $500 Born a slave on a Virginia farm in 1856, Booker T. Washington taught himself to read after emancipation, worked hard to fund his own education, and eventually attended the Hampton Institute. He became a prominent Black educator and an important voice on race in America during the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Future of the American Negro, written by Washington in 1899, outlines his ideas on the history of enslaved and freed African American people and their need for education to advance themselves. In one chapter, the author discusses the founding of the Tuskegee Institute in... Read More |
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Gullah Culture in AmericaAdoption Amount: $250 The book’s purpose is to take us behind-the-scenes so we can see what it’s like to grow up and live life in the Gullah community. Sayings such as “dog got four feet but can’t walk but one road” are uniquely Gullah. This translates to “you can only do one thing at a time.” The book has black adn white photos of Gullah people fishing, riding on horseback, boating, and playing music. One of the co-authors is of South CarolinaGullah heritage: Dr. Emory Campbell, President of Gullah Heritage Consulting Services. The Gullah community is made up of descendants of freed slaves living in the coastal... Read More |
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The History of the MaroonsAdoption Amount: $1,000 Robert Charles Dallas (1754-1824), a British writer, was born in Jamaica and returned there after an education in England and Scotland. In the West Indies, runaway slaves who formed communities independent from white society (often with American Indians) were called “Maroons.” Those in Jamaica – about whom Dallas provides a first-hand account of their culture and mode of life – were considered the greatest threat to British colonists due to hostilities in the 1730s and again in the 1790s. As a result, Britain established Freetown in Sierra Leone and transported a number of Jamaican Maroons... Read More |
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I Have a DreamAdoption Amount: $250 Each page of this short, beautifully illustrated book is packed with information about Black Heritage Series postage stamps. From Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman to Jesse Owens, twenty-eight African American heroes are described in this book. Each chapter has a portrait of the subject (painted by Thomas Blackshear), followed by an extensive biography and an image of their postage stamp, including its date of issue. Read More |
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick DouglassAdoption Amount: $250 This book is only 75 pages long, but is full of valuable information about Frederick Douglass (1818-1895). It is an unabridged republication of his 1845 autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. In it, Douglass describes, in unflinching honesty, the horrors of slavery. He tells of how he watched a slave mother kill her baby with a piece of wood and saw a slave get shot to death for trespassing. His heartbreaking and disturbing tales make his own escape even more extraordinary and his calls for abolition even more passionate. Read More |
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Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American SlaveAdoption Amount: $250 This autobiography/memoir covers the life of abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass. Its text is preceded by an introduction from Dr. John Blassingame: Yale graduate, Yale professor, and pioneer in the study of American slavery. After the text, there are about fifty pages of historical information, including book reviews written by people shortly after the autobiography was published. What makes this autobiography so significant is the fact that it was written only seven years after Douglass’ escape from slavery. This book added fuel to the abolitionist movement in the United States... Read More |
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Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and MoralAdoption Amount: $25,000 This 1773 collection of poems was the only edition of Phillis Wheatley's work printed in her lifetime. Wheatley was first brought to the United States at age 7 or 8 to be sold into slavery. She was purchased by John Wheatley of Boston and taught to read and write. Having been tutored in the classics by Mrs. Wheatley, Wheatley began to write poetry herself and became well-known for it in Boston's domestic circles. A trip to England in 1773 brought her under the patronage of the Countess of Huntingdon who arranged for this 1773 English edition of her poetry to be published. The book became... Read More |
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SpiralAdoption Amount: $500 In the lead up to 1963’s March on Washington, several of the decade’s most prominent African American artists joined together in a collective called Spiral. Their efforts culminated in a two-day exhibition in June of 1965. This catalogue is the record of that exhibition; it features an illustrated checklist with works from Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, and more, as well as a complete list of the collective’s members. This small pamphlet is held in only two other libraries in the world, but stands as an important record of an ephemeral activity in the fight for Civil Rights in the 1960s. Read More |
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Unbound and UnbrokenAdoption Amount: $250 This book is a treasure trove of color portraits and photographs depicting the life of Frederick Douglass. It is an inspiring work of art divided into ten chapters tracing the highlights of his life from slavery to full citizenship. Because it was published recently, the back of the book offers useful websites after the bibliography. Especially poignant is the image on the title page verso of a ball and chain being broken at the shackles, a very fitting image for this great man's life. Douglass not only escaped his chains, but went on to shatter them, along with the negative perceptions of... Read More |
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Wake Up Our SoulsAdoption Amount: $250 This highly illustrated book is a masterpiece. Over 100 pages in length, it describes the evolution of African American artists over time. This book focuses on the late 1900s and spans through the first decade of the 21st century. This is a Smithsonian American Art Museum publication. A New York native, the author graduated from multiple Ivy League universities including Princeton University and Columbia University. Every chapter is illustrated with reprints of paintings by influential African American artists followed by an extensive bio of each artist. Read More |
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Young Frederick DouglassAdoption Amount: $250 This quick read is directed at teenagers. It is full of powerful black and white sketches. This book shares the fascinating story of Frederick Douglass's young life as well as trials that today's teens can relate to: young Fred’s early life, the deaths of his loved ones, changing his last name to avoid being tracked, learning to stand up for himself and fight, and learning about the importance of education. This biographic work is a classic coming of age true story. Read More |
