Hardcover. New York, Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1st, 1938, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardbound, 82 pages. Black & white illustrations by Erick Berry. Pink stain front cover. Story of a slave girl who lived at Mt. Vernon and was Nellie Custis's servant. Takes place at Mount Vernon in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. No dust jacket.
Softcover. Urbana IL, University of Illinois Press, reprint, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 433 pages. From the plaintive tunes of woe sung by exiled kings and queens of Africa to the spirited worksongs and "shouts" of freedmen, enslaved people created expansive forms of music from the United States to the West Indies and South America. Dena J. Epstein's classic work traces the course of early black folk music in all its guises. Anchored by groundbreaking scholarship, it redefined the study of black music in the slavery era by presenting the little-known development of black folk music in the United States. Her findings include the use of drums, the banjo, and other instruments originating in Africa; a wealth of eyewitness accounts and illustrations; in-depth look at a wide range of topics; and a collection of musical examples. This edition offers an author's preface that looks back on the twenty-five years of changes in scholarship that followed the book's original publication. 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.
Softcover. Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 777 pages. The largest collection of annotated and authenticated accounts of slaves ever published in one volume. In them, the slaves of Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Henry Clay, and others speak for themselves about their culture, plantation life, the adequacy of their food, clothing, and shelter, the sexual exploitation of black women, and the psychological response to bondage. The views given are those of house servants and field hands, docile slaves and rebels, urban slaves and rural slaves, slaves with kind masters and those with cruel ones. These wide-ranging documents, together with annotations, notes, an index, dozens of illustrations, and an incisive introduction, form a volume of unusual scope and character. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Urbana IL, University of Illinois Press, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a dust jacket with two small holes to front cover, 227 pages with index. "Slavery was a social and an economic institution of such power that it sustained and extended an economic system whose demands went far to determine the domestic and foreign policy of the "agrarian" party in our early history. For the agrarian politics of Jefferson, while possibly benefiting the small freeholder, very closely served the interests of the plantation system, at least as the planters conceived their interests." Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Softcover. Montgomery AL, Equal Justice Initiative, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 58 pages. Slavery in America: The Montgomery Slave Trade documents American slavery and Montgomery's prominent role in the domestic slave trade. The report is part of a project focused on developing a more informed understanding of America's racial history and how it relates to contemporary challenges.
Softcover. NY, The New Press, 1st, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 403 pages. Edited by Ira Berlin, the Bancroft Prize-winning author of Many Thousands Gone, and Leslie Harris, Slavery in New York brings together twelve new contributions by leading historians of slavery and African American life in New York. Published to accompany a major exhibit at the New York Historical Society, the book demonstrates how slavery shaped the day-to-day experience of New Yorkers, black and white, and how, as a way of doing business, it propelled New York to become the commercial and financial power it is today. Powerfully illustrated with images from the New York Historical Society exhibit, Slavery and the Making of New York will be the definitive account of New York's slave past.
Softcover. UK, Cambridge University Press, 1st pbk, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 352 pages, b&w illustrations. Wilma Dunaway breaks new ground by focusing on slave experiences on small plantations in the Upper South. She argues that a region was not buffered from the political, economic, and social impacts of enslavement simply because it was characterized by low black population density and small slaveholdings. By drawing on a massive statistical data base derived from antebellum census manuscripts and county tax records of 215 counties in nine states, on a vast array of slaveholder manuscripts, and on regional slave narratives, she pinpoints several indicators that distinguished Mountain South enslavement from the Lower South. These include a higher incidence of ethnic mixing between African and Native American slaves, heavier reliance on the field labor of women and children, and more frequent assignment of slaves to non-agricultural occupations. Dunaway also calls into question the notion that large numbers were necessary before slaves could engage in community building and resistance. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 3rd pr., 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 290 pages. This book about slavery and the southern plantation system includes writings by Nat Turner, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Jefferson, and many others. Name on a blank prelim page, otherwise clean.
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, McGraw Hill, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 230 pages. Cultural commentary and autobiography of life in Alabama. The euthor's second book.
Hardcover. Chicago, American Colortype Company, 1st, 1940, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pictorial boards with red cloth spine. 96 pages illustrated in 2-colors by Dorothy Wagstaff. 22 short stories of a stereotypical black boy done in the style of the time. Chipping and wear to paper on the covers, interior clean, solid binding.
Hardcover. New York, Harper Collins, 2nd, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Unpaginated. Hardcover with dust jacket. Color illust. by Fred Marcellino. SIGNED BY MARCELLINO ON TITLE-PAGE. Tight and bright copy.
Hardcover. Boston, Jr. Lit. Guild/Houghton Mifflin, 1st, 1940, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 202 pages. Hardcover with black stamped illustration on front cover. B&w illustrations by Manning de V. Lee. Mild stain to several pages and light rubbing to covers, otherwise tight and clean. Faded spine.
Softcover. NY, Routledge, 1st pbk, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 366 pages. The African Diaspora presents musical case studies from various regions of the African diaspora, including Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Europe, that engage with broader interdisciplinary discussions about race, gender, politics, nationalism, and music. Clean copy.
Hardcover. Westport CT, Greenwood Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, glazed pictorial boards, 177 pages. Postma draws on primary sources and current historical scholarship to offer secondary readers and researchers a comprehensive and well-written history. He covers the entire Atlantic slave trade era, from the 1400s to the final abolition of chattel slavery in the New World in 1888. The focus is on Africa and the entire New World. While he describes the many horrors of the Middle Passage, he also examines how the slave trade contributed to the development of the modern international economy. The last chapters discuss the efforts to abolish the slave trade and its legacy. Throughout, Postma documents the sources that support his discussion and conclusions. Chapter notes are supplemented by an extensive annotated bibliography that includes books, articles, films, and electronic resources. The volume concludes with biographical sketches of important people and excerpts from primary documents written by enslaved Africans and white officials. The black-and-white reproductions of period illustrations add little to the text. Clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Abrams Press, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Illustrations, 470 pages with index. A groundbreaking, timely history of the largely unknown early days of Black basketball, bringing to life the trailblazers, entertainers, gangsters, and supremely talented athletes who made the game From the introduction of the game of basketball to Black communities in 1904 to the integration of the NBA in 1950, there was a full era in the development of the game. It was a time when Black players were discriminated against and opportunities were limited, but entrepreneurial men and women nurtured the game and breathed life into a sport they loved. This period was known as the Black Fives Era (teams at the time were often called "fives"), and was akin to the golden age of the Negro Leagues. But despite fierce rivalries between big-city clubs, innovative managers, and star players, this period is almost entirely unknown to basketball fans. Claude Johnson has made it his mission to change that. An advocate fiercely committed to our history, for more than two decades Johnson has conducted interviews, mined archives, collected artifacts, and helped to preserve an important, culturally rich era that otherwise would have been lost. The Black Fives is the result of his work, a landmark narrative history that will braid together the stories of these forgotten pioneers and rewrite our understanding of the story of basketball.
Softcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press , reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 167 pages. After nearly 200,000 African-American soldiers fought in the Civil War, Congress enacted legislation to authorize regiments of cavalry and infantry for service in the West. The Ninth and Tenth cavalries won fame as "buffalo soldiers" in the Indian wars, nearly overshadowing the critical support role of the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth infantries. Now Arlen L. Fowler brings to light the story of African-American infantry service from 1869 to 1891 in Texas, Indian Territory, the Dakotas, Montana, and Arizona.
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, The Viking Press, reprint, 1956, Book: Very Good, Hardcover, tan cloth covers with brown lettering, 187/189 pages. Lyrics with music and a preface of the songs. Two volumes in one. No dust jacket. Inscription on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.
Hardcover. Norman OK, University of Oklahoma Press, Revised Ed., 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 319 pages. B&w illustrations. A well-researched and authoritative study of 'negro' soldiers who wished to remain in the United States Army following the Civil War. They were eventually organized into the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry Regiments their service in controlling Indians on the Great Plains during the next twenty years was as invaluable as it was unpraised. With Bibliography and Index. Clean copy.