biography black studies

Hardcover. New York, Collins Brother & Co, 1st, 1845, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, 309 pages. Hardcover, full leather with black band on spine. Heavy wear to tan leather edges. Water staining throughout bottom half pages, heavy foxing and tanning. bottom corners bumped. Previous owner's name on front fly leaf and end paper. Front end paper has previous owner's name pasted on small piece of paper bottom corner. Binding tight for age of copy.

Hardcover. Boston/NY, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Boston Globe reporter Haygood ( Two on the River ) weaves together interviews and research to create a nuanced yet vivid narrative about the crusading Harlem congressman who served in the House for 24 years and whose controversial behavior and womanizing often overshadowed his crucial contribution to the War on Poverty. Haygood astutely traces how the light-skinned Powell (1908-1972), who tried to pass as white when a Colgate student, later embraced his blackness and demanded acceptance in the white world. Mixing New York and national political history with Powell's rise as a Baptist minister and politician, Haygood adds deft cameos of characters like Hattie Dodson, Powell's devoted secretary, and Hazel Scott, the jazz star whose wedding to the divorced congressman was "the stuff of grand romance and intrigue." Expelled from Congress in 1966 for alleged misappropriations and an unpaid libel judgment, Powell, Haygood writes poignantly, was shunned by black leaders and, even after reinstatement by the Supreme Court, disparaged by many he had helped. Though less authoritative in assessing Powell's political milieu than Charles V. Hamilton's 1991 book, Adam Clayton Powell Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma , this is a richer portrait of Powell the man. Clean copy.

Softcover. Authors Choice Press, reprint, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, b&w illustrations, 216 pages. Originally published in 1973 and covers the early and essential years of her life and career. The story of a shy girl from Mississippi who became a world opra star told in a sympathetic light.

Hardcover. Boston, MA, New England Publishing Company, 1st Edition, 1879, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 373 pages. Hardcover. Front hinge cracked. Frontispiece (b/w) is disconnected from binding and laid in. Ex library book with expected markings, labels, etc. Brown cover boards, gilt title on spine and front cover boards with black decoration. Fold out copy of original poem written by hand by author. Account of the life and education of Laura Bridgman (1829-1889), who was the first blind-deaf person to receive a formal education and whose longtime residence at the Perkins Institution for the Blind influenced a generation of students, including Anne Sullivan (who went on to fame as Helen Keller's teacher).

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, unclipped. The moving story of the life of the woman behind A Raisin in the Sun, the most widely anthologized, read, and performed play of the American stage. Written when she was just twenty-eight, Lorraine Hansberry's landmark A Raisin in the Sun is listed by the National Theatre as one of the hundred most significant works of the twentieth century. Hansberry was the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway, and the first Black and youngest American playwright to win a New York Critics' Circle Award. Charles J. Shields's authoritative biography of one of the twentieth century's most admired playwrights examines the parts of Lorraine Hansberry's life that have escaped public knowledge: the influence of her upper-class background, her fight for peace and nuclear disarmament, the reason why she embraced Communism during the Cold War, and her dependence on her white husband-her best friend, critic, and promoter. Many of the identity issues about class, sexuality, and race that she struggled with are relevant and urgent today. This dramatic telling of a passionate life-a very American life through self-reinvention-uses previously unpublished interviews with close friends in politics and theater, privately held correspondence, and deep research to reconcile old mysteries and raise new questions about a life not fully described until now.

Hardcover. London, Faber & Faber, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 72 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to edges. Black and white illustrations throughout by Mezzo. From 'Crossroads Blues' to 'Sweet Home Chicago', 'Hellhound on My Trail' to 'Come On In My Kitchen', Robert Johnson wrote some of the most enduring and formative songs of the original blues era, songs that would go on to help shape the birth of rock 'n' roll in the 1960s. Beloved of Clapton, Dylan and the Stones, Robert Johnson remains one of the most iconic and mythologized figures in popular music (and the first of many to die at the age of 27). Born in the in the South in Mississippi, Johnson made his way to the urban North as a traveling musician, but it was only when he returned to the South that he recorded the twenty-nine songs, in two sessions, which would create his legacy. Exploring the stories and legends that surround his life and death -- his childhood, his womanizing, his pact with the devil at the crossroads -- Mezzo and DuPont have produced a fittingly creative and beautiful depiction of this most extraordinary life.

NY, Viking, 4th pr., 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 594 pages, b&w illustrations. Of the great figure in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world. Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination.

Hardcover. London, Pandora, 3rd pr., 1993, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 211 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. Pages have darkening on edges. A tight copy. Black and white pictures in center.

Softcover. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pbk proof, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 420 pages. Publishers uncorrected proof with flyer promoting the title laid in. The first major biography of the great jazz pianist and singer, written with the full cooperation of his family. When he died in 1965, at age forty-five, Nat King Cole was already a musical legend. As famous as Frank Sinatra, he had sold more records than anyone but Bing Crosby. Written with the narrative pacing of a novel, this absorbing biography traces Cole's rise to fame, from boy-wonder jazz genius to megastar in a racist society. Daniel Mark Epstein brings Cole and his times to vivid life: his precocious entrance onto the vibrant jazz scene of his hometown, Chicago; the creation of his trio and their rise to fame; the crossover success of such songs as "Straighten Up and Fly Right"; and his years as a pop singer and television star, the first African American to have his own show.Epstein examines Cole's insistence on changing society through his art rather than political activism, the romantic love story of Cole and Maria Ellington, and Cole's famous and influential image of calm, poise, and elegance, which concealed the personal turmoil and anxiety that undermined his health.

Hardcover. New York, Harper & Row, 1st, 1974, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 217 pages. Hardcover with price-clipped dust jacket. Clean, tight copy. Scarce biography of Robeson by Hamilton, a noted African-American children's book author.

NY, Knopf, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Passionate and enormously talented, Paul Robeson lived one of the great lives of the twentieth century. Martin Duberman's classic biography is a monumental and powerfully affecting portrait of one of this century's most notable performers, political radicals, and champions of racial equality. Drawing on a vast archive of family papers and interviews with friends and relatives as well as FBI files, Paul Robeson charts the heroic and tragic course of Robeson's life: from his early days as the son of a former slave to his rise to unprecedented international acclaim as a stage actor and singer, and from his political awakening to his downfall as a victim of McCarthyism and the efforts of the U.S. government to destroy him. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Alfred A. Knopf, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 356 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY THE EDITOR EMILY BERNARD on the title page. Langston Hughes is widely remembered as a celebrated star of the Harlem Renaissance -- a writer whose bluesy, lyrical poems and novels still have broad appeal. What's less well known about Hughes is that for much of his life he maintained a friendship with Carl Van Vechten, a flamboyant white critic, writer, and photographer whose ardent support of black artists was peerless.Despite their differences a Van Vechten was forty-four to Hughes twenty-two when they met. Hughes and Van Vechten's shared interest in black culture lead to a deeply-felt, if unconventional friendship that would span some forty years. Between them they knew everyone from Zora Neale Hurston to Richard Wright, and their letters, lovingly and expertly collected here for the first time, are filled with gossip about the antics of the great and the forgotten, as well as with talk that ranged from race relations to blues lyrics to the nightspots of Harlem, which they both loved to prowl. Clean copy.

NY, Farrar, Straus and Company, 1st, 1950, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Fair, Hardcover in a very worn, chipped dust jacket, 312 pages. This autobiography details the struggle of a young Negroe's struggle to rise from a Knoxville slum to reach the ministry in the first half of the 20th century.

Hardcover. San Francisco, Pomegranate Communications, 1st, 2004, Book: Near Fine, Dust Jacket: Near Fine, Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Hardcover, 136 pages, b&w photos of the artist at work. Foreword by David Driskell, introduction by Ruth Fine.

Hardcover. US, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 160 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. a celebration of jazz legend Sonny Rollin's incredibly prolific career. This intimate appreciation in pictures and words combines the images of John Abbott, who was Rollin's photographer of choice for the past twernty years has captured the saxophonist at home and at work, and the essays of Bob Blumenthal, a jazz critic who has chronicled Rollins and his art for nearly four decades.

Hardcover. NY, Birch Lane Press, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, white cloth covers with black lettering on spine, no dust jacket. 238 pages with b&w photos. Biography by nephew of Malcolm X. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Little Brown, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. This is a biography of C.L. Franklin, one of the black preachers in American history. It tells the story of black migration and activism, alongside the rise of gospel, blues, and soul music, with a cast of characters including Martin Luther King, Jr., B.B. King, Art Tatum, and Coleman Young.

Hardcover. self-published, 1st, 1920, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt rules and a drawing of a fern on front cover, "WH" with dates on spine. 253 pages, an exceptionally bright copy with no markings and a like-new binding, appearance. 1st Ed., portraits, maps, plates. Howes H-500. Privately printed for friends. Hinchman was with Palmer on the 1867 surveying expedition to find the best route for a railroad to California thru Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. A most interesting account, various Indian troubles including the attack of the Apaches in Sycamore Canyon Arizona. Much on ranching, Indians including Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Sioux, Comanche, Crow, Blackfoot, and Kiowa. Profusley illustrated with drawings and nature studies by Hinchman, many in color. Very scarce item.

Hardcover. New York, John S. Taylor, 2nd pr., 1837, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, leather bound with gilt design on front and rear covers, spine also with gilt design with the title Cabinet of Freedom (the series under which the publisher issued this narrative). 517 pages with an extra illustrated title page dated 1836, the regular title page dated 1837. All edges gilt. First published by John Shugert in Lewistown PA a year earlier. Written with the help of Isaac Fisher, a white Philadelphia lawyer, who declares in his preface that he has edited the oral narrative Ball had dictated to him to omit any beliefs or feelings Ball may have expressed about slavery. This declaration of significant editing has led scholars to debate the authenticity of Ball's narrative, but most agree that it represents a true story. Ball describes his experiences as a slave, including the uncertainty of slave life and the ways in which the slaves are forced to suffer harsh and inhumane conditions. In particular, he recounts the qualities of his various masters, and the ways in which his fortune depended on their temperament. The leather has separated from the spine of the book but appears to be very repairable. The first 3 pages loose (a blank leaf and the two title pages), there is a light stain to the illustrated one and light foxing. The interior of the book is clean, tight with minimal foxing throughout.

Hardcover. NY, One World/Ballantine, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A fictional narrative base on the life of America's first black female millionaire. Born to former slaves on a Louisiana plantation in 1867, Madam C.J. Walker rose from poverty and indignity to become America's first black female millionaire, the head of a hugely successful company, and a leading philanthropist in African American causes. Renowned author Alex Haley became fascinated by the story of this extraordinary heroine, and before his death in 1992 he embarked on the research and outline of a major novel based on her life. Now with The Black Rose, critically acclaimed writer Tananarive Due brings the work to inspiring completion. "I got my start by giving myself a start," Madam C.J. was fond of saying as she recounted her transformation from the uneducated laundress Sarah Breedlove to a woman of wealth, culture, and celebrity. Madam C.J. was nearing forty and married to a maverick Denver newspaperman when the wonder-working hair care method she discovered changed her life. Seemingly overnight, she built a marketing empire that enlisted more than twenty thousand bright young African American women to demonstrate and sell her products door-to-door. By the time she died in 1919, Madam C.J. Walker had constructed her own factory from the ground up, established a training school, and built a twenty-room mansion at Irvington on the Hudson, New York, called Villa Lawaro.

Softcover. Madison WI, University of Wisconsin, reprint., 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover in pictorial wraps, 244 pages. The Blind African Slave recounts the life of Jeffrey Brace (ne Boyrereau Brinch), who was born in West Africa around 1742. Captured by slave traders at the age of sixteen, Brace was transported to Barbados, where he experienced the shock and trauma of slave-breaking and was sold to a New England ship captain. After fighting as an enslaved sailor for two years in the Seven Years War, Brace was taken to New Haven, Connecticut, and sold into slavery. After several years in New England, Brace enlisted in the Continental Army in hopes of winning his manumission. After five years of military service, he was honorably discharged and was freed from slavery. As a free man, he chose in 1784 to move to Vermont, the first state to make slavery illegal. There, he met and married an African woman, bought a farm, and raised a family. Although literate, he was blind when he decided to publish his life story, which he narrated to a white antislavery lawyer, Benjamin Prentiss, who published it in 1810. Upon his death in 1827, Brace was a well-respected abolitionist. In this first new edition since 1810, Kari J. Winter provides a historical introduction, annotations, and original documents that verify and supplement our knowledge of Brace's life and times. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 408 pages, color illustrations, In this provocative and resonant autobiography, world-renowned artist and feminist icon Judy Chicago reflects on her extraordinary life and career. Judy Chicago is America's most dynamic living artist. Her works comprise a dizzying array of media from performance and installation to the glittering table laid for thirty-nine iconic women in The Dinner Party (now permanently housed at the Brooklyn Museum), the groundbreaking Birth Project, and the meticulously researched Holocaust Project. She designed the monumental installation for Dior's 2020 Paris couture show and, in 2019, established the Judy Chicago Portal, which will help to accomplish her lifelong goal of overcoming the erasure that has eclipsed the achievements of so many women. The Flowering is her vivid and revealing autobiography, fully illustrated with photographs of her work, as well as never-before-published personal images and a foreword by Gloria Steinem. Black remainder line on bottom edge, otherwise clean and bright.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 512 pages. The second volume in this masterful biography finds Hughes rooting himself in Harlem, receiving stimulation from his rich cultural surroundings. Here he rethought his view of art and radicalism, and cultivated relationships with younger, more militant writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Amiri Bakara. Illustrated with black & white photographs, a few by Roy DeCarava with whom Hughes published "The Sweet Flypaper of Life" and a portrait by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer John Matteson, an account of the "Susan Sontag" of nineteenth-century America.A brilliant writer and a fiery social critic, Margaret Fuller (1810-1850) was perhaps the most famous American woman of her generation. Outspoken and quick-witted, idealistic and adventurous, she became the leading female figure in the transcendentalist movement, wrote a celebrated column of literary and social commentary for Horace Greeley's newspaper, and served as the first foreign correspondent for an American newspaper. While living in Europe she fell in love with an Italian nobleman, with whom she became pregnant out of wedlock. In 1848 she joined the fight for Italian independence and, the following year, reported on the struggle while nursing the wounded within range of enemy cannons. Amid all these strivings and achievements, she authored the first great work of American feminism: Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Despite her brilliance, however, Fuller suffered from self-doubt and was plagued by ill health. John Matteson captures Fuller's longing to become ever better, reflected by the changing lives she led. 28 black-and-white illustrations. Smallbump to top corner otherwise like new.