American

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.

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

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.

"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 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.

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.

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 beautiful coffee table book book is signed by the author, Jonathan Green of South Carolina. It contains 108 color portraits and paintings, with captions describing each work of art. The first thirty pages share a biography of the artist and describe his life’s work. The rest of the book is devoted entirely to nothing but beautiful art. The images depict the artist’s upbringing. He was raised on a farm in Gullah country, the coastal areas of South Carolina and Georgia, inhabited by the descendants of freed slaves from the area. 

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.

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 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.

The book discusses the transatlantic partnership of the abolitionist movement by describing how Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) got an early start in the abolitionist movement overseas. His 1845 trip to what is known today as the United Kingdom changed his life forever. This book is a set of essays written by ten different scholars, professors of American and African American studies, from both the United States and the United Kingdom. 

Featuring only a few black and white photos (Frederick Douglass, a statue of Frederick Douglass, his first wife, and his second wife), this book is a masterpiece of prose. Professor Benjamin Arthur Quarles, celebrated Frederick Douglass expert, adds value to Douglass’ own three autobiographies by delving deeper into the type of man Frederick Douglass became over the years. From showing immense courage when overcoming obstacles to demonstrating poise in the face of controversy, Frederick Douglass became a hallmark to the U.S. abolitionist movement.

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 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.

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.

This book is a tragic love story. One of Frederick Douglass’ friends from Germany, feminist Ottilie Assing (1819-1884), traveled to the United States, interviewed him, and translated his autobiography into German. Assing was a journalist by profession. They were about the same age. She fell in love with him, but he said he was wary of the racial divide in the United States. After the death of her sister, Assing returned to Europe to settle the family estate. During this trip, she learned through the newspaper that Frederick Douglass had married another woman seven months prior.

This children's book tells the story of how Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) fought his slave master and claimed his freedom from slavery. It is based on the true story of Douglass' escape from slavery and tells of how he earned the respect of the slave masters and his fellow slaves. The book features many beautiful color illustrations by Cedric Lucas, bringing to life Douglass' inspiring and enthralling story.

This seemingly insignificant, slim volume is the catalog for a groundbreaking exhibition curated by Sam Wagstaff at the Detroit Institute of Arts. A renowned curator and collector, Wagstaff is best known as the benefactor of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and poet-musician Patti Smith.

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.

The author of this book, Arnold Shaw (1909–1989) was a songwriter, pianist, composer, and music publisher who wrote a dozen books on 20th century pop music, including two books on Frank Sinatra and a biography of African American pop sensation Harry Belafonte. He founded the Arnold Shaw Popular Music Research Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas in 1985 and taught there for a decade. This 600-page long guide to the history of R&B has eight parts, with seven chapters each. Those chapters are broken out into 25 sections each, which are called grooves.

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.

Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932) was a businessman, billionaire and philanthropist. His net worth was $80M at death (equaling about $1.4B today).  He was half owner of Sears--he saved the company during the infamous financial panic of 1893--and he donated millions to educating African Americans in the South in the 1920s. He also donated to the Tuskegee Institute. In this biography, Mr. Ascoli paints a portrait of Julius Rosenwald, aka, "JR." This book, which was signed by the author, has 450 pages and features black and white photographs.

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.

Described by the Literary World Magazine of 1880 as a “superb holiday volume” and printed on toned paper with a gold deckle edge, this volume is illustrated with engravings of many well-known, and not so well-known, American homes. Not surprisingly, it features a detailed description of the White House, as well as an image of the presidential mansion as the book’s frontispiece. The homes of some Founding Fathers are also highlighted, as are homes of writers like Emerson, Longfellow, and Washington Irving.

For just twenty five cents in 1963, you could buy this little book, documenting plants in Window Rock, Arizona, at the Navajo Tribal Museum. The plants listed in this catalog were collected in the area. The actual dried plant specimens now reside at the Jepson Herbarium at  the University of California, Berkeley. Each plant entry is simple, listing the scientific name, common name, and a brief description of the landscape where the plant was found. In some cases, elevation is listed as well.

Book artist and engineer Joe D'Ambrosio wrote, printed, illustrated, signed, and bound just 125 editions of this book. The first twenty-five copies of the printing have a deluxe binding and additions such as extra hand-coloring, metallic inks, and feathers. This edition is one of the rare twenty-five. The text of the tale is letterpress printed in four colors on two different colors of confetti paper.