America

Legend has it that in 1803 at St. Simons Island, Georgia, a group of 75 Igbo warriors from what is now Nigeria committed mass suicide by drowning rather than begin life in America as slaves. They survived the Middle Passage only to walk willingly into the sea wearing chains. A private land dispute prevents a memorial from being built at the site where this happened. This book was edited by Queen Quet, Chieftess of the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Nation. This book features beautiful color paintings of Gullah life and history.

This large and lovely coffee table book is about a traveling exhibition hosted at the Anacostia Community Museum in 2010. The book is written in both English and Spanish. The exhibit was built by the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. Its main focus was to highlight the fascinating and significant contributions of Africans to the artistic, culinary, musical, and cultural traditions of Mexico.

A detailed and riveting history of early African Americans and aviation written by one of the Tuskegee pilots who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. This book details the stories of those first aviation pioneers and their contributions that aided in the founding of the Tuskegee program and its success. It is unsparing in detailing the realities and risks they faced to achieve their goals.

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.

In the decade before the American Civil War, the United States was preoccupied by efforts for interoceanic communication. The Isthmus of Tehuantepec represented the shortest distance between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, and prior to the opening of the Panama Canal, was a major shipping route. It was during negotiations to end the Mexican war of 1846-1848 that the United States began discussing ways in which the route could be accessed or purchased. Nicolas P.

Fifty years in chains: or, the life of an American slave is an abridged and unauthorized 1858 reprint of the 1836 Slavery in the United States: a narrative of the life and adventures of Charles Ball... . As one of the earliest slave narratives, its influence on later works is a well-established phenomenon.

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 beautiful embossed cover of this 1884 book hints at the delights found inside this paean to the big wheel bicycles of the late 19th century. The author S. Conant Foster was an avid cyclist himself, and his collection includes poems both humorous and somber. One is an ode to a fellow member of a Boston cycling club who died in 1880. But most are lighthearted celebrations of bicycling, and many feature lovely illustrations, including one by renowned American artist Childe Hassam.

This small book, furnished with black and white pencil drawings throughout, details life on a slave ship in vivid detail. It also shares stories of life in a slave castle in Africa prior to boarding the ship. It honestly describes the horrors that enslaved Africans were forced to endure during the Middle Passage crossing from Africa to the New World. Two million kidnapped Africans who were transported across the Atlantic Ocean died during the Middle Passage. Those who survived were delivered into the hands of slavery. 

Written by Dr. Cynthia Carter, former director of Africare and current Chief Development Officer at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, this richly illustrated book uses artifacts, images, and documents to trace the history of slavery in North America, from ancient Africa to the suffering still experienced by African Americans today.

This is a large, thin book with vivid black and white photos throughout. As a young Washington Post reporter covering jazz during the 1930s through 1940s, the author William Gottlieb (1917-2006) took many pictures of Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Dizzy Gillespie.  Before he died, he willed for all his photographs to be put in the public domain. This was carried out four years after his death. The Golden Age of Jazz consists of more than two hundred photos and captions, which are visual thrills for jazz fans.