afro

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.

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.

Upon the discovery of a long-forgotten cemetery in Philadelphia, excavation and study exposed the remains of a Baptist church cemetery and its African-American inhabitants. Thorough research of the skeletons and surrounding area shed light on the living conditions of the African Americans in 19^th-century Philadelphia and its environs. This book is important to scientists and curators studying 19^th-century American life and physical remains of 19^th century Africa -Americans.