Black Studies

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.

Softcover. NY, W. W. Norton & Company, 1st pbk, 1969, Book: Very Good, Softcover, 334 pages. Study of the living conditions of the Black Americans and the changes - migration to the cities which in the mid 20th century led to riots & social unrest. The authors traveled all over the USA & interviewed many directly involved in the rioting. Different responses to ghetto life, ranging from the apathetic to the militant, from the skid-row bum to the affluent, from the head of a numbers racket to ministers. Observes the riots in Watts, Houston, Hunters Point (Oakland), Newark, Detroit, and Orangeburg,

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.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 1972, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket with light chipping, 180 pages. Ortiz Montaigne Walton was the first African-American member of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and a prominent figure in African-American studies. He performed in Buffalo for three seasons, before moving on to become the first African-American member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Walton later was principal contrabassist with the Cairo Symphony Orchestra in Egypt and performed a number of acclaimed solo recitals. Dust jacket art is a photo-montage by Romare Bearden.

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.

Softcover. The Citadel Press, reprint, 1990, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 223 pages, light marking, bookplate.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, color illustrations by the Dillons. SIGNED BY THE DILLONS on title page.This gorgeous picture book by Newbery Honor winner Patricia C. McKissack and two-time Caldecott Medal-winning husband-and-wife team Leo and Diane Dillon is sure to become a treasured keepsake for African American families. Set in West Africa, this a lyrical story-in-verse is about a young black boy who is kidnapped and sold into slavery, and his father who is left behind to mourn the loss of his son. Here's a beautiful, powerful, truly unforgettable story about family, memory, and freedom.

Hardcover. NY, Random House, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, color illustrations by the Dillons. SIGNED BY THE DILLONS on title page.This gorgeous picture book by Newbery Honor winner Patricia C. McKissack and two-time Caldecott Medal-winning husband-and-wife team Leo and Diane Dillon is sure to become a treasured keepsake for African American families. Set in West Africa, this a lyrical story-in-verse is about a young black boy who is kidnapped and sold into slavery, and his father who is left behind to mourn the loss of his son. Here's a beautiful, powerful, truly unforgettable story about family, memory, and freedom.

Hardcover. NY, E.P. Dutton, reprint, 1954, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover, pictorial boards in a shelf-worn dust jacket. 1954 reprint of this charming title in the Nicodemus series, written in southern Black dialect by the illustrator of Epaminondas. One-color drawings by Hogan throughout. Dust jacket with light tan stain to front panel. Otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Chicago, Whitman, 1st, 1934, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 64 pgs w/ color & 2-color Illustrations throughout by Eleanor Mussey Young. Small blemish to back boards otherwise a clean, tight copy.