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African-American History
The Haitian-born barber gave Abraham Lincoln shaves, haircuts, and friendly advice in exchange for free legal work.
Col. Harry Stewart downed three advanced Nazi fighter planes in one day, then surprised the Air Force when he and his Tuskegee teammates won the first "top gun" competition.
Her owner planned to take her from California to slave-holding Texas, so Biddy Mason went to court. After a dangerous drama, she won her freedom.
Born a
The brutal murder of hundreds of African-American soldiers at Fort Pillow had a profound effect on Northern sentiment during and after the Civil War.
Dubbed the “AAA guide for black people,” the underground travel manual encapsulated how automobile travel expanded — and limited — African American lives under Jim Crow.
Editor's Note: Candacy Taylor is an award-winning author, photographer, and cultural documentarian.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt’s evolving relationship with African Americans challenged her beliefs about herself and the world she had been raised in.
Editor’s Note: David Michaelis is the author of seven books, including the bestselling biography, N. C.
Jordan’s publisher recalls working with the civil rights and corporate leader, who died on March 1.
Editor's Note: Peter Osnos was a reporter at the Washington Post and a prominent book editor and publisher in New York. He founded PublicAffairs Books in 1997 and served as its Publisher and CEO until 2005. Mr.
The enduring legacy of the Civil Rights Movement lies not in soundbites from its most charismatic leaders, but in the impact it had on the lives of ordinary people.
Editor's Note: Thomas C. Holt is the James Westfall Thompson Professor of American and African American History at the University of Chicago and a preeminent scholar of black heritage and descendants of the African diaspora in America.
The ex-slave and investigative journalist spent a lifetime fighting against lynching and segregation — but also for voting rights for African-American women.
Editor's Note: Susan Ware is a historian, general editor of the American National Biography, and editor of the biographical dictionary, Notable American Women.
The African-American past is an iceberg, still 90 percent submerged. Because so much material remains in family hands or lies piled in the unvisited attics and basements of libraries, newspapers, and even police stations, rich discoveries await.
As General Granger read the announcement in the summer of 1865 that slavery had ended, the celebration began. The date would go down in history — June 19th, soon shortened to Juneteenth.
GALVESTON, TEXAS, June 19, 1865 — A balding, brush-bearded officer in Union blue steps onto the balcony of the finest villa in this coastal town. On the plaza below, hundreds of Texans, black and white, wonder what this is all about. Major General Gordon Granger holds out a parch
Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald built almost 5000 schools for African-Americans and helped educate hundreds of thousands of students.
For most of the 1800s, whites in blackface performed in widely popular minstrel shows, creating racist stereotypes that endured for more than a century.
For most of the 1800s, whites in blackface performed in widely popular minstrel shows, creating racist stereotypes that endured for more than a century.
During the World War I, American jazz bands played at hospitals, rest camps, and other venues, delighting doughboys and Europeans alike.
When the first African-Americans to crew a U.S. warship sailed into the war-tossed North Atlantic, they couldn't have known it would take 50 years to gain honor in their own country.
I sometimes felt like I was swimming against a very strong tide when doing research for my book on the men of the USS Mason. Very few people had ever heard of the first ship in the U.S. Navy manned by African-American sailors.
The noted writer and educator tells of his boyhood in the West Virginia town of Piedmont, where African Americans were second-class citizens, but family pride ran deep.
You wouldn’t know Piedmont anymore—my Piedmont, I mean—the town in West Virginia where I learned to be a colored boy. The 1950s in Piedmont was a sepia time, or at least that’s the color my memory has given it.
J.R. Clifford fought his real battles in the courtroom
My paternal grandfather, Edward St. Lawrence Gates, was buried on July 2, 1960. After the burial, my father showed my brother and me scrapbooks that his father had kept. Within the pages of those scrapbooks was an obituary of my great-great-grandmother, a slave named Jane Gates.
He was a lieutenant in the Army of the United States: he saw no reason to sit in the back of the bus
ON JULY 6, 1944, Jackie Robinson, a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant, boarded an Army bus at Fort Hood, Texas.
By the end of the Civil War, nearly 200,000 African-Americans had fought for the Union cause and freedom.
The American Civil War had cost more than 620,000 lives and had nearly torn the nation apart, but by May 1865, it was finally over. To celebrate, thousands of people gathered in Washington, D.C., to express their gratitude to the military forces that had made the Union victory possible.
A new Greensboro museum celebrates the courage of four young black men 50 years ago.
Winter weather canceled the sold-out gala banquet to celebrate the opening of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Saturday, January 30.
It was the nation’s biggest business, it was as well-organized as a Detroit assembly line, and it was here to stay. It was slavery. David Brion Davis, a lifelong student of the institution, tells how he discovered—and then set about teaching—its vast significance.
From The Souls of Black Folk to The New Jim Crow, these texts are essential for anyone trying to understand the black experience in America.
Editor's Note: Amid nationwide protests over racial injustice and a resurgent Black Lives Matter movement, understanding the experience of African Americans in the U.S. is more relevant than ever.
John Hope Franklin, the greatest historian of the black experience in America, speaks of what has changed during his long life, and what has not.
American jazz musicians once enjoyed a freedom and respect in France’s capital that they could never win at home. Landmarks of that era still abound.
For all the books and films that have been done about painters and writers who went to Paris, far less has been written about the lives of musicians from the United States who settled there, some for a while, a few for their whole lives.
One woman’s journey into her family’s past uncovers a story that affects every American.
April 1997:
On April 15 Jackie Robinson started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers in their opening-day game against the Boston Braves. In so doing, he became the first African-American to play in the major leagues since an abortive attempt at integration in 1884.
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