African Americans have played a central role in shaping US history. Hear experts discuss key moments, milestones, and figures in Black history. Learn about military, scientific, cultural, and political achievements from the colonial era through the abolition of slavery, the civil rights movement, and the election of Barack Obama.
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Evelyn Higginbotham
From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans
Since its first edition in 1947, this book has incorporated the Black experience squarely into American history.
Annette Gordon-Reed
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
The story of the Hemings family from its origins in Virginia in the 1700s to the family’s dispersal after Jefferson’s death in 1826
Brenda Stevenson
What Sorrows Labour in My Parent's Breast? A History of the Enslaved Black Family
This book provides a concise history of enslaved people’s family life.
David Blight
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom
Biography of the illustrious African American abolitionist, writer, and orator
Jacqueline Jones
No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era
In nineteenth-century Boston, the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism coexisted with injustice in the workplace.
Chad Williams
The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War
The story of one of the great twentieth-century writers reckoning with the betrayal of Black soldiers during World War I
Mia Bay
Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance
An exploration of what was it like to travel while Black under Jim Crow
Peniel Joseph
The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King
This dual biography shines a light on the twentieth century’s most iconic African American leaders.
Marcia Chatelain
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America
The untold history of how fast food became one of the greatest generators of Black wealth in America
Lonnie Bunch
A Fool’s Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump
The triumphs and challenges of bringing the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture to life.