African American History and Culture

Controversy and Hope is an immersion into not only the 54-mile Voting Rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, but also a view into a range of civil rights events from 1960 to 1965. Photojournalist James Karales was also an acquaintance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Droning a drowsy syncopated tune; Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon..." 

With over 500 photographs dating from the turn of the 20th century to the present day, Black: A Celebration of a Culture exhibits the vivacious landscape of black culture not only in America, but also around the world.

Where the Salmon Run follows the life and activism of Billy Frank, Jr., a member of the Nisqually tribe in Washington state who became one of the most prominent American Indian activists during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and 1970s.  Frank was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 because his activism—Frank hosted fish-ins that were modeled after sit-ins—that led up to 1979 Supreme Court case United States v. Washington, commonly known as the Boldt Decision.

The gift of a single poster has swelled into a respected and comprehensive collection of more than 25,000 rare film posters, lobby cards, and photographs, resulting in what is now the Separate Cinema Archive. Started in 1972 and collected and maintained by the archive’s founder and professional photographer, John Kisch, the collection chronicles the historic and blustery journey of the Black film industry, Black actors and directors, and the struggle for African-American equality. Kisch collaborated with film historian Dr. Edward Mapp to create this companion book for the Archive in 1991.

Ailey Spirit is a reflection of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s amazing journey as it has progressed from “a small group of young, African-American dancers traveling the country in a station wagon, to what we now respect as one of the best modern dance companies in the world.”  Photographs from an array of

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.

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.

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.

The Hampton Album elegantly depicts the industrial and agricultural skills that were taught to students at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (later Hampton Institute in 1930, and finally Hampton University in 1984), the historically black school founded in Virginia in 1868 to educate freed slaves. The original images in this album were part of a series of photographs compiled by W.E.B Du Bois for the exhibition of African American life featured at the sensational world’s fair, the Paris Exposition of 1900.

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.

John Bigelow (1817-1911), born into a prominent New England family, was a newspaper writer and editor at the New-York Evening Post, under the leadership of William Cullen Bryant. An opponent of slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War, Bigelow travelled to Jamaica in 1850 to study the island’s economics following the abolition of slavery. His book soundly repudiated the assertion that freed slaves were incapable of self-governance and is still considered an authoritative analysis. It has been reprinted more than once in modern times, but this is the original publication. Our

“Let your motto be resistance! resistance! resistance! No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance. What kind of resistance you had better make, you must decide by the circumstances that surround you, and according to the suggestion of expediency.” This powerful quote from Henry Highland Garnet inspired the title of this book. Dr.

Travel to Paris was a prerequisite for aspiring American painters of the late nineteenth century. Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), an African American painter born in Pittsburgh, was among the throng of artists to journey there. Tanner decided to become a painter at the age of thirteen after seeing an artist painting outdoors in a park in Philadelphia. In 1897, Tanner enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where he studied under Thomas Eakins (1844-1916).

In Booker T. Washington’s landmark autobiography Up From Slavery, he gives one of the earliest accounts of the "Black Belt." This term was first used geographically for the band of dark, rich soil that runs through the Deep South.

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.

Published five years after his death, the editor of Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois incorporated selected works related to certain passages’ subjects. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) was an African American author and civil rights activist who focused on advancing education and representation for African Americans. The last of his three autobiographies, this work expanded on his previous essays to provide a new reflective perspective on his 9 decades of life.

Maya Angelou (1928-2014) is best remembered as a prominent African American poet and civil rights activist.

This wonderful book is about the history of the famous Japanese flowering cherry trees in Washington, D.C. It’s co-authored by Roland Jefferson, the first African American botanist  at the U.S. National Arboretum (USNA), hired in 1956.  Mr. Jefferson began his career studying crabapple trees, but eventually became an international authority on flowering cherries, making many plant collecting trips to Japan.

Dark Companion chronicles the polar expedition of African American explorer, Matthew Henson. Born in 1866, four years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Henson went on to triumph as one of the first men to “stand on top of the world." On April 6, 1909, Henson along with Robert Peary co-discovered the North Pole. Hundreds had previously attempted and failed to reach the elusive polar ice cap.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one." Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington is an American jazz legend – a talented pianist, a composer of over 1,000 songs, and a bandleader who gained national attention through his orchestra’s appearances at the famed Cotton Club in Harlem. In this book, Ellington tells the stories of his life and career. He describes growing up in Washington, D.C. in the early 1900s, when he dreamed of playing baseball, not the piano. He shares photographs of his beloved parents and other family members and friends who influenced him.

This fascinating biography of celebrated linguist, Dr. Lorenzo Dow Turner (1890-1972), appropriately written by a linguistics professor, features eight plates of black and white photos of Dr. Turner and his family from different stages of his life. The author, Dr. Margaret Wade-Lewis, was Director of the Linguistics Program at SUNY New Paltz and was the first African American woman to earn a PhD in linguistics from NYU. Dr. Turner’s widow, Lois Turner Williams, contributed the introduction to the book. A Harvard graduate, Dr.

This is a new edition of Turner's original 1949 masterpiece, which was a seminal work in Afrocentric linguistics. Arranged like a dictionary, it has Gullah words on the left side of each page and the corresponding West African words on the right side. Gullah is a language spoken by the eponymous people descended from former slaves in the coastal regions of South Carolina and Georgia. Pioneering linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner also uses this book to discuss the distinctively Gullah way of writing.

This children's book is filled with colorful art on every page by artist Daniel Minter. The book consists of 12 short poems, each poem named after a month of the year. The author, Katharine Boling, grew up in the Gullah region of South Carolina, an area on the coast populated with descendants of freed slaves. At the end of the book is a glossary of Gullah terms. Some words in the poems include puntop (on top of), bittle (food), and bex (angry). Each poem describes what life is like during the seasons of the Gullah year, in Gullah country, in Gullah language.

At less than 200 pages, this small paperback book is filled with black and white photographs depicting Gullah life. Gullahs are the descendants of slaves, specifically from the Lowcountry regions of the United States, including Georgia and South Carolina. The author is from South Carolina Gullah country. This book is about roots that can be used for healing, curses, good luck, bad luck, etc. The author’s dad was the county coroner, so he is familiar with death. Folk magic permeates Gullah culture, in a way very similar to voodoo.

Mrs. Sallie Ann Robinson is the Gullah Diva chef. Raised in South Carolina Gullah country on an island only accessible by boat, she is used to eating what can easily be farmed, hunted, or caught. At about one hundred fifty pages, this cookbook is divided into three sections: morning, noon, and night. They correspond with breakfast recipes, lunch recipes, and supper recipes. The beginning of the book has black and white photos of Gullah life. The Gullah are descendants of slaves in the Lowcountry regions of the United States, specifically South Carolina and Georgia.