The African Burial Ground: An American Discovery is a fascinating four part series that focuses on the history of the African American experience in New York, urban archaeology, and social activism. Part One - The Search, explores the search and discovery of the African Burial Ground in Lower Manhattan. It examines the archeological dig that resulted in unearthing the remains of some 400 African men, women and children. Part Two - a History, presents...

Presents a history of African American visual arts and artists from the days of slavery to the present.

Read Martha A. Sandweiss's posts on the Penguin Blog
The secret double life of the man who mapped the American West, and the woman he loved
Clarence King was a late nineteenth-century celebrity, a brilliant scientist and explorer once described by Secretary of State John Hay as "the best and brightest of his generation." But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for thirteen years he...

She was black and a woman and a prosecutor, a graduate of Smith College and the granddaughter of slaves, as dazzlingly unlikely a combination as one could imagine in New York of the 1930s--and without the strategy she devised, Lucky Luciano, the most powerful Mafia boss in history, would never have been convicted. When special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey selected twenty lawyers to help him clean up the city's underworld, she was the only member of...

The inspirational story of William "Bill" Lewis, a hardworking blacksmith who slowly saved his money to free his family--Publisher-provided summary.

1.2 million African Americans served in World War II in some capacity, and although largely forgotten by history, nearly 2,000 African Americans were among the troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy.

This film traces the remarkable journey of New Communities, Inc. and the struggle for racial justice and economic empowerment among African Americans in southwest Georgia. NCI was created in 1969 in Albany, Georgia by leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, including Congressman John Lewis, and Charles and Shirley Sherrod, to help secure economic independence for African American families. For 15 years, NCI cooperatively farmed nearly 6,000 acres, the...

"The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major...