Hardcover. New York, McGraw Hill, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 171 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket with art by Charles Lilly.

Softcover. London, Merrell Publishers, 1st pbk, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 240 pages, mostly b&w photos, some color. Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, Feb. 16 - Apr. 29, 2001. The 94 African American photographers whose works appear in this volume, have used their equipment as tools of social commentary and personal and artistic exploration, bearing witness to the changes in American society over the past 50 years. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 2nd pr., 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. George Schuyler, a renowned and controversial black journalist of the Harlem Renaissance, and Josephine Cogdell, a blond, blue-eyed Texas heiress and granddaughter of slave owners, believed that intermarriage would "invigorate" the races, thereby producing extraordinary offspring. Their daughter, Philippa Duke Schuyler, became the embodiment of this theory, and they hoped she would prove that interracial children represented the final solution to America's race problems. Able to read and write at the age of two and a half, a pianist at four, and a composer by five, Philippa was often compared to Mozart. During the 1930s and 40s she graced the pages of Time and Look magazines, the New York Herald Tribune, and The New Yorker. Philippa grew up under the adoring andinquisitive eyes of an entire nation and soon became the role model and inspiration for a generation of African-American children. But as an adult she mysteriously dropped out of sight, leaving America to wonder what had happened to the "little Harlem genius." Suffering the double sting of racismand gender bias, Philippa had been rejected by the elite classical music milieu in the United States and forced to find an audience abroad, where she flourished as a world-class performer and composer. She traveled throughout South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia performing for kings, queens, and presidents. By then Philippa had added a second career as an author and foreign correspondent reporting on events around the globe--from Albert Schweitzer's leper colony in Lamberene to the turbulent Asian theater of the 1960s. She would give a command performance for Queen Elisabeth of Belgium one day, and hide from the Viet Cong among the ancient graves of the Annam kings another.

Hardcover. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1st, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, black cloth stamped in gilt, 204 pages. Dust jacket with partial fading, edgewear. Clean copy. The author's last work, a study of the Dahomean Kingdom, it's history and the part gold, colonialism and the slave trade played in it's fortunes. Scarce title.

Softcover. NY, Praeger, reprint, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 189 pages, b&w illustrations. This ground-breaking work brings dance into current discussions of the African presence in American culture. Dixon Gottschild argues that the Africanist aesthetic has been invisibilized by the pervasive force of racism. This book provides evidence to correct and balance the record, investigating the Africanist presence as a conditioning factor in shaping American performance, onstage and in everyday life. She examines the Africanist presence in American dance forms particularly in George Balanchine's Americanized style of ballet, (post)modern dance, and blackface minstrelsy. Hip hop culture and rap are related to contemporary performance, showing how a disenfranchised culture affects the culture in power. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Hyperion Books for Children, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Unpaginated. Hardcover with matching dust jacket. SIGNED AND INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR ON FRONT FLY LEAF. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. St. Paul MN, Minnesota Historical Society, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards. 143 pages, b&w photos throughout. After serving in World War II, John Glanton returned home to Minnesota and began taking his camera around the streets, parks, clubs, restaurants, and private homes of Minneapolis, capturing the sights and scenes of everyday life for African Americans in the city. The images--from intimate portraits to public gatherings--reveal a dynamic and diverse community at a time when the nation was entering the postwar boom but before the civil rights movement had taken root. Glanton's photos offer a rare look into the lives and lifestyles of families and individuals often left out of histories of Minnesota's past, showing people at work and play, young and old, happy and sad. The images highlight black-owned businesses of the day, the music and club scene, and weddings and other family occasions to depict the experiences of African American people as presented through the lens of an African American photographer. Long forgotten in the garage of a family member, the photo negatives were recently rediscovered and digitized. A selection of 200 of the more than 800 images are featured here, along with commentary that further illuminates the lives and experiences of African Americans in postwar Minnesota.

Hardcover. New York, Greenwillow, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 180 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket that is price clipped and has some wrinkling on rear flap. Otherwise, clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Jefferson NC, McFarland, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 223 pages, b&w photos. Eugene Jackson became a child star in 1924 playing "Pineapple" in the original "Our Gang" comedy shorts. Join him as he shares his life story -- a story that preserves the history of vaudeville and early Hollywood as well as chronicles the African American experience in the entertainment business.

Hardcover. Johannesburg SA, Penguin Books, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 130 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to boards. Some fading to spine. and laminate is bubbled in some spots. A fascinating book of photographs of mainly Black life during the 1950s in South Africa.

Softcover. Charleston, SC, Arcadia Publishing, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 128 pages, b&w photos throughout. At the foot of the Huachuca Mountains, the U.S. Army founded one of the most crucial military posts for American expansion into the southwest frontier. Soldiers had been stationed in the region for decades, but in 1877 Fort Huachuca became the symbolic cornerstone of America's western domain. The Native American word huachuca, meaning "place of thunder," described the sporadic but marvelous electrical storms in the area, but the skies would not be the only thing booming. During the tumultuous campaigns to resolve American and Indian disputes, the U.S. infantry and famed Buffalo Soldiers faced off with Geronimo and his Apache nation in both tense negotiations and bitter combat. As time marched on, the fort developed into a permanent installation with barracks, modern training grounds, and other facilities to accommodate troop rotations and eventually became the innovative Center for Military Intelligence. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Oxford University Press, reprint, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 402 pages, b&w illustrations. An insightful examination of the impact of the Civil Rights Movement and African Independence on jazz in the 1950s and 60s, Freedom Sounds traces the complex relationships among music, politics, aesthetics, and activism through the lens of the hot button racial and economic issues of the time. Ingrid Monson illustrates how the contentious and soul-searching debates in the Civil Rights, African Independence, and Black Power movements shaped aesthetic debates and exerted a moral pressure on musicians to take action. Throughout, her arguments show how jazz musicians' quest for self-determination as artists and human beings also led to fascinating and far reaching musical explorations and a lasting ethos of social critique and transcendence. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University , 1st, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 173 pages. This work is a brief look at worldwide slave revolts in the 17th through 19th centuries, emphasizing their interrelations with European power struggles, which gave rebels hope of finding weak spots in the defenses of the slave powers. The French Revolution also had an influence on slave revolts, but the canny European powers used indigenous peoples to suppress slave revolts (e.g., native Americans) and took advantage of African ethnic divisions as well. American slaves stood little chance of revolt and were under constant surveillance from Southerners, who coward in fear after the successful rebellions in the Caribbean, particularly in Hispaniola, and after Nat Turner and John Brown's efforts. Genovese also brings up religion's double-edged sword: one side used to pacify slaves and the other side to inspire them to break their chains. In short, this scholarly treatise is thought-provoking as well as informative and ends with an inspirational quote from one of Frederick Douglass's lectures. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise a clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, American Unitarian Association, 1st, 1905, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, black cloth with white lettering, 232 pages. Collection of six essays, including "Atlanta University" by Professor W. E. Burghardt Du Bois in which the author discusses the significance of Atlanta University. Other institutions and authors include: Howard University by Prof. Kelly Miller; Berea College, by President William G. Frost; Tuskegee Institute by Prof. Roscoe Conkling Bruce; Hampton Institute by Principal H. B. Frissell; and Fisk University by President James G. Merrill. From a church library with label on spine, bookplate and stamp on front endpapers. Otherwise a sharp copy with no other markings or residue. Scarce in original edition.

Softcover. Bloomington IN, Indiana University Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 209 pages. This groundbreaking study explores the Harlem Renaissance as a literary phenomenon fundamentally shaped by same-sex-interested men. Christa Schwarz focuses on Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent and explores these writers' sexually dissident or gay literary voices. The portrayals of men-loving men in these writers' works vary significantly. Schwarz locates in the poetry of Cullen, Hughes, and McKay the employment of contemporary gay code words, deriving from the Greek discourse of homosexuality and from Walt Whitman. By contrast, Nugent-the only "out" gay Harlem Renaissance artist-portrayed men-loving men without reference to racial concepts or Whitmanesque codes. Schwarz argues for contemporary readings attuned to the complex relation between race, gender, and sexual orientation in Harlem Renaissance writing. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1st, 1874, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 256 pages. Fold-out frontis, b&w Illustrations, very nice, clean copy. Written by "two of its teachers." Includes "Fifty Cabin and Plantation Songs" arranged by Thomas P. Fenner. Illustrated with a four-fold engraved frontispiece, depicting several of the school's buildings as seen from the water, and many other engravings. An interesting account of the school, including a brief history of Virginia and of slavery and its aftermath in that state, and one of the earliest publications of slave music.

Hardcover. New York, Quantuck Lane Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. 120 pages. Introduction by Robin D. G. Kelley. Color photography of Alice Attie. Rubbing, light edgewear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. Naperville IL, Sourcebooks MediaFusion, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. 502 pages, b&w illustrations. For three decades after World War I, Harlem was the site of burgeoning racial and cultural awareness and ambitions among African Americans. In the opening section of this book, Wintz provides the historical context for what became known as the Harlem Renaissance. In separate sections devoted to poetry, music, politics, art, and the phenomenon of the New Negro, contributors profile many of the era's major figures, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, W. E. B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, A. Phillip Randolph, and Marcus Garvey. The essays place the Harlem Renaissance in the broader context of an awakening of black culture throughout the U.S. The book contains references to the accompanying CD, which offers 60 minutes of music, poetry, interviews, performances, and speeches, giving voice to the vibrant life of Harlem. Photographs, drawings, book covers, and posters add to the richness of this collection. A fabulous resource on the Harlem Renaissance.

Hardcover. Washington DC, Brassey's, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 301 pages, b&w illustrations. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR opposite title page. The 369th became one of the few U.S. units that American commanding general John J. Pershing agreed to let serve under French command. Donning French uniforms and taking up French rifles, the men of the 369th fought valiantly alongside French Moroccans and held one of the widest sectors on the Western Front. The entire regiment was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the French government's highest military honor. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Washington DC, Brassey's , 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, b&w illustrations, 293 pages. INSCRIBED BY HARRIS on the title page.

Hardcover. Washington DC, Brassey's , 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, b&w illustrations, 293 pages. The 369th became one of the few U.S. units that American commanding general John J. Pershing agreed to let serve under French command. Donning French uniforms and taking up French rifles, the men of the 369th fought valiantly alongside French Moroccans and held one of the widest sectors on the Western Front. The entire regiment was awarded the Croix de Guerre, the French government's highest military honor. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press , 1st, 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 364 pages, illustrated throughout in color. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Photographer Camilo Jose Vergara has been chronicling the neighborhood for forty-three years, and Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto is an unprecedented record of urban change. Vergara began his documentation of Harlem in the tradition of such masters as Helen Levitt and Aaron Siskind, and he later turned his focus on the neighborhood's urban fabric, both the buildings that compose it and the life and culture embedded in them. By repeatedly returning to the same locations over the course of decades, Vergara is able to show us a community that is constantly changing--some areas declining, as longtime businesses give way to empty storefronts, graffiti, and garbage, while other areas gentrify, with corporate chain stores coming in to compete with the mom-and-pops. He also captures the ever-present street life of this densely populated neighborhood, from stoop gatherings to graffiti murals memorializing dead rappers to impersonators honoring Michael Jackson in front of the Apollo, as well as the growth of tourism and racial integration. Woven throughout the images is Vergara's own account of his project and his experience of living and working in Harlem. Taken together, his unforgettable words and images tell the story of how Harlem and its residents navigated the segregation, dereliction and slow recovery of the closing years of the twentieth century and the boom and racial integration of the twenty-first century. A deeply personal investigation, Harlem will take its place with the best portrayals of urban life.

Hardcover. NY, STEWART TABORI CHANG, 1ST, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 378 pages. Here is a musical history told in legends, facts, and rumors every bit as colorful as the images that illustrate the book. The story is filled with characters such as O.V. Wright, a singer deemed "too ugly to tour"; Frnakie Lymon, who received a hot dog as full payment for some of the greatest R&B songs of all time; LaVern Baker, a.k.a. "Little Miss Sharecropper"; Bille Holiday shooting dice with the boys on the bus; Solomon Burke, R&B immortal and Doctor of Mortuary Sciences; soul ghoul Screamin' Jay Hawkins locked in his coffin by the Drifters; and many otehr talented and unique entertainers. Illustrated with more than 400 original photographs, publicity shots, posters, programs, advertisements, program covers, magazine covers, album covers and sleeves, sheet music, and record labels in full color, this is a story of hot music and high style, of people who made history by being themselves and made the world a richer, wilder and definitely cooler place for the rest of us.

Hardcover. NY, Balzer + Bray, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. The story of America and African Americans is a story of hope and inspiration and unwavering courage. In Heart and Soul, Kadir Nelson's stirring paintings and words grace 100-plus pages of a gorgeous picture book. SIGNED (REALLY INITIALED) BY KADIR WITH 2011 DATE on title page.Heart and Soul is about the men, women, and children who toiled in the hot sun picking cotton for their masters; it's about the America ripped in two by Jim Crow laws; it's about the brothers and sisters of all colors who rallied against those who would dare bar a child from an education. It's a story of discrimination and broken promises, determination, and triumphs. Winner of numerous awards, including the Coretta Scott King Author Award and Illustrator Honor is told through the unique point of view and intimate voice of a one-hundred-year-old African-American female narrator.

Hardcover. NY, Simon & Schuster, 1st, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 254, b&w illustrations. A veteran of seven decades of professional baseball reminisces about his days in the Negro Leagues, offers an intimate portrait of Satchel Paige, and reveals his current work scouting for the Kansas City Royals at age eighty-two. Buck O'Neil was a former all-star player and manager for the Kansas City Monarchs; he also has the distinction of being the first black to hold a coaching position in major league baseball. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Vol. 1: Slaves and Liberators, 379 pages with 156 b&w, 40 color illustrations. Vol. 2: 306 pages, 131 b&w, 52 color illustrations. Both volumes like new, shrinkwrapped in cardboard slipcases. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1978, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn and chipped dust jacket with a bar code sticker on rear panel. INSCRIBED TO TV TALK SHOW HOST DICK CAVETT BY AUTHOR on front fly leaf: "To Dick Cavett with appreciation for your steady excellence and thoughtful commentary -with regards and highest esteem - A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr./June 30, 1978". Focusing on the actions and attitudes of the courts, legislatures, and public servants in six colonies, Judge Higginbotham shows ways in which the law has contributed to injustices suffered by Black Americans Judge Higginbotham chronicles in unrelenting detail the role of the law in the enslavement and subjugation of black Americans during the colonial period. 512 pages, b&w illustrations. No markings.

Hardcover. New York, Publishers Company, 2nd edition, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 5 volumes: 291, 291, 317, 304, and 306 pages. Light brown cloth covers, with silver and black titles, profusely illustrated with b&w plates. Slight rubbing to covers, small brown stain to spines of Theater and Civil War volumes, previous owner's embossed stamp to all title pages, ex-lib bookplates to all copyright pages, pages very crisp and unmarked, tight binding; overall, volumes are in clean, tight condition. NOTE: DUE TO WEIGHT AND SIZE, DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. With the same piercing intelligence as the bestselling Say it Loud!, Interracial Intimacies hits a nerve at the center of American society: race relations and our most intimate ties to each other. Analyzing the tremendous changes in the history of America's racial dynamics, Randall Kennedy challenges us to examine how prejudices and biases still fuel fears and inform our sexual, marital, and family choices. He takes us from the injustices of the slave era up to present-day battles over race matching adoption policies, which seek to pair children with adults of the same race. He tackles such subjects as the presence of sex in racial politics, the historic role of legal institutions in policing racial boundaries, and the real and imagined pleasures that have attended interracial intimacy. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Pantheon Books, 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 55 pages, illustrated with b&w photos by the author, very clean, tight copy, small taped tears to dust jacket.

Softcover. Charlottesville VA, University of Virginia Library, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 64 pages, b&w photos throughout. This is a history of African-American public school education in Henrico County, Virginia. Introductory essay by William A. Link. Author documented his work (as a field agent for the General Education Board) being an amateur photographer. Davis' photographs are organized by subject (Events, People, Demonstration Farming, etc.). Limited to 3.000 copies. Clean.

Hardcover. University Of Iowa Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 168 pages. Using jazz as the key metaphor, Porter refocuses old interpretations of Ellison by placing jazz in the foreground and by emphasizing, especially as revealed in his essays, the power of Ellison's thought and cultural perception. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown , 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. 32 pages illustrated in color by Grifalconi, Bright, unclipped dust jacket. Sissy, a pensive, round-faced, soft-eyed little black girl, mopes around her Georgia farm feeling neglected, lonely and "all grumpy-like." She is missing her father, who ". . . had died back when I was a baby girl." But her understanding uncle emerges from the fields, sees her sadness, and makes her feel better by reminding her that "we all be family." Uncle Dan knows that, just like his crops, she needs a little watering, a little love , and a little attention to shake off her blues. Sissy's Uncle Dan is able to cheer the little girl up when he takes her into the corn fields and points out to her how each and every one of the ears of corn is different from the other.

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.

Hardcover. New York, D. Appleton and Co, 1st, 1890, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 273 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Silver gilt ornate decoration on front and spine. Previous owner's stamp on front fly leaf. Light soil on bottom spine, and light edgewear on edges. A period story set in the Okefenokee Swamp with illustrations by E.W. Kemble, including three images showing black people, and one scene of a dog fighting a cougar.

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. New York, Grosset & Dunlap , reprint, 1942, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Color illustrated boards. Non paginated. Extensive color and b&w illustrations throughout. Illustrated endpapers and flyleaves. Illustrated frontispiece. Spine cracked. Front fly leaf loose. Otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Altemus, 1st thus, 1928, Book: Fair, Dust Jacket: None, 62 pages, illustrated in color by Ver Beck. Heavy edgewear to pictorial boards, previous owner's signature on front and rear endpapers. Pages darkened. Hinge separated, loose pages.

Hardcover. Philadelphia, Altemus, 1st thus, 1928, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 62 pages, illustrated in color by Verbeck. Light edgewear to pictorial boards, previous owner's signature on front and rear endpapers. Internally neat and bright.

Hardcover. New York , Platt & Munk, reprint, 1928, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, yellow cloth with pictorial label on front cover. Illustrated in color and b&w by Eulalie. Unpaginated but 28 pages. Light soil to covers, binding fragile, shaken.

Hardcover. Chicago, Follett Publishing Co., 1st, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover. B&W illustrations by Paul Giovanopoulos. 192 pages in a nice, price-clipped dust jacket. The saga of the Amistad. Off the Cuban coast, a slave from Sierra Leone took over the ship which drifted and was taken into custody by the US Navy. The return to Sierra Leone after protracted legal battles. Clean copy.

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.

Hardcover. New York, Dodd Mead , reprint , 1902, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. 227 pages. Green cloth covers with gold lettering and decoration by Margaret Armstrong. Rubbing to spine, corners. Top edge gilt. Frontispiece portrait of the author. First published in 1899, this is a 1902 printing. Clean.

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.

Softcover. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1st pbk, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 411 pages, b&w illustrations. Tracing the erosion of white elite paternalism in Jim Crow Virginia, Douglas Smith reveals a surprising fluidity in southern racial politics in the decades between World War I and the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. Smith draws on official records, private correspondence, and letters to newspapers from otherwise anonymous Virginians to capture a wide and varied range of black and white voices. African Americans emerge as central characters in the narrative, as Smith chronicles their efforts to obtain access to public schools and libraries, protection under the law, and the equitable distribution of municipal resources. This acceleration of black resistance to white supremacy in the years before World War II precipitated a crisis of confidence among white Virginians, who, despite their overwhelming electoral dominance, felt increasingly insecure about their ability to manage the color line on their own terms. Exploring the everyday power struggles that accompanied the erosion of white authority in the political, economic, and educational arenas, Smith uncovers the seeds of white Virginians' resistance to civil rights activism in the second half of the twentieth century. Light marking to 10 pages, otherwise clean, very good.

Hardcover. New York, Atria Books, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 271 pages, b&w photos, very clean, tight copy, like new.

Softcover. Lincoln NE, iUniverse, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 236 pages. "Forward! Double-Quick!" and away we all rushed toward the fort... capturing two brass field pieces, one of which the rebels left loaded." A true account of Vermont men of color in battle during the Civil War. A barely known fact is that the tiny state of Vermont provided over one hundred and fifty African American soldiers to fight for the Union and by doing so, free millions of their own race. This is their story. Derived from historical archives and through their own words. Clean copy. Hastily signed by the author on the half-title page.

Hardcover. Liberty Street, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 196 pages. A stirring visual tribute to the Civil Rights Movement and the long and difficult battle for racial equality captures in more than 150 extraordinary photographs the leaders and events of the era, with portraits of Sidney Poitier, James Baldwin, Miles Davis, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other activists, both famous and unknown, who took part in the struggle.

Hardcover. NY, Hill and Wang, BC Ed., 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 352 pages, with illustrations. Minor dust jacket edge wear, otherwise, very clean and tight copy. In the middle of a frigid Sunday night in January 1856, a twenty-two-year-old Kentucky slave named Margaret Gamer gathered up her family and raced north, toward Cincinnati and freedom. But Margaret's master followed just hours behind and soon had the fugitives surrounded. Thinking all was lost, Margaret seized a butcher knife and nearly decapitated her two-year-old daughter, crying out that she would rather see her children dead than returned to slavery. She was turning on her other three children when slave catchers burst in and subdued her.Margaret Garner's child-murder electrified the United States, inspiring the longest, most spectacular fugitive-slave trial in history. Abolitionists and slaveholders fought over the meaning of the murder, and the case came to symbolize the ills of the Union in those last dark decades before the Civil War.