black

'To me black history is everyone’s history. It's the long, often tragic and always surprising story of Britain’s relationship with Africa and her peoples, both here in Britain but also in Africa and across the Caribbean and North America, and most of it is little known. It’s a major part of the story of us all.' —David Olusoga

In 1897, an unauthorized party of 250 British merchants and African soldiers disguised as porters approached the powerful city of Benin, located in what is now southern Nigeria, intending to overthrow its king and reestablish a once lucrative trade outpost. They were ambushed en route, only two men survived. In revenge, the British sent a punitive expedition to Benin which destroyed the city.

Since its introduction as a slogan in 1966, the term "Black Power" has inspired and shaped African American consciousness in remarkable ways. For many Americans, the idea of Black Power has restructured goals and redefined success. It has also inspired a new generation of activists who continue to build on the potency of these two simple words. Black Power 50 is a captivating introduction to the Black Power movement.

Although black—the color that contains all colors—has been American sculptor Louise Nevelson’s signature color, the artist began incorporating white and gold into her work in the 1960s. This announcement for an exhibition of sculptures by Nevelson at The Pace Gallery, New York, October 23-November 28, 1992, reflects her limited palette. Reproductions of her assemblage sculptures are presented in three die-cut printed pop-ups, printed in silver and gold. Nevelson herself is pictured in a silver-printed portrait on the front cover. The entire elegant presentation is ribbon-tied.

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..." 

Brown Gold traces the development of African American children’s literature from the 1870s to the 2000s. The book includes literary criticism and pedagogy, as well as literary history and cultural analysis. The author discusses the use and impact of racial terms such as Afro, Negro, African American, and others. The book also focuses on African American illustrations, and on how African Americans were portrayed and caricaturized in children’s picture books. The discussion addresses the impact of these portrayals on the experiences of African Americans in their daily lives.

This book traces the life and legacy of Charlie Wiggins, the “Negro Speed King.” Many people do not know that there were African American heroes on the race track. Charlie Wiggins was a four-time champion (1926, 1929, 1931, and 1932) of the Gold and Glory auto race in Indiana. Due to segregation and persecution in the 1920s, African American auto racers formed the Colored Speedway Association. They were attacked by the Klu Klux Klan, which owned the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

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

Africa is rising—fashion, design, wax prints redeux, eco-architecture, floating schools, hammocks in libraries, AK-47s into chairs,  popular culture, récupération, safari lodges, curated dining, LGBT haute couture, Afronauts, sapeurs—where art and design and popular culture collide. Today’s African designers share an unflinching reverence for the past and draw smartly on that heritage in the novelty of their creations. This is not your Africa of yore.

Biologist Ernest Everett Just (1883-1941) is considered to be one of the most brilliant African American scientists of his era.  Born in Charleston, SC, he earned scholarships to attend northern schools, graduating top of his class at Dartmouth. He taught at Howard University where he became head of the new zoology department. He also studied fertilization in marine invertebrates at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratories and eventually earned his Ph.D. in experimental embryology at the University of Chicago in 1916.

“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.