Explore books, streaming videos, databases, and more from the SCC library and learn about Black and African American History in the United States.
What is Black History Month?Black History Month grew out of Negro History Week, which was established in February 1926 by African-American historian Carter G. Woodson, who founded the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History. Expanded in 1976 to a month-long observance, this celebration of the contributions and achievements of African Americans was initially designed to encompass the birthday of the abolitionist orator and journalist Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) on February 14 as well as Abraham Lincoln's birthday. The event is widely observed by schools, churches, libraries, clubs, and organizations wishing to draw attention to the contributions of African Americans.
"Black History Month." Cultural Studies: Holidays Around the World, ed. Pearline Jaikumar, Omnigraphics, Inc., 6th edition, 2018. Credo Reference.
Photograph: “Carter G. Woodson.” Associated Press (AP).
The Association for the Study of African American Life and History chooses a theme every year for Black History Month. For 2024, the theme is African Americans and the Arts. Learn more about this year's theme and check out past themes on their website.
No single artist represented the contemporary art scene of the 1980s more than Jean-Michel Basquiat. He rose from an anonymous, homeless graffiti artist spraying cryptic social messages on building walls around New York City's SoHo and East Village in the late 1970s to become, within five years, one of the first African American artists to receive international recognition, with sales of his works grossing millions of dollars.
"Jean-Michel Basquiat." Contemporary Black Biography, vol. 5, Gale, 1993. Gale In Context: Biography.
Read more about Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, American, 1960 - 1988. The Ankle. 1982. Artstor, library-artstororg.ezproxy.scottsdalecc.edu/asset/AYALEARTIG_10312578845
Author Julian Voloj and illustrator Søren Mosdal's graphic biography of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat is full of "crackling energy and a breakneck pace to match the tumultuous life and career of their subject, whose synthesis of punk, pop, hip-hop, and street cultures continues to be influential more than 20 years after his death" (Library Journal).
In Koshersoul, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them. Koshersoul also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty's own passage to and within Judaism. Koshersoul includes 48-50 recipes.
African American women have played a pivotal part in rock and roll--from laying its foundations and singing chart-topping hits to influencing some of the genre's most iconic acts. Despite this, black women's importance to the music's history has been diminished by narratives of rock as a mostly white male enterprise. In Black Diamond Queens, Maureen Mahon draws on recordings, press coverage, archival materials, and interviews to document the history of African American women in rock and roll between the 1950s and the 1980s.
The first-ever graphic biography of Paul Robeson, Ballad of an American, charts Robeson's career as a singer, actor, scholar, athlete, and activist who achieved global fame. Through his films, concerts, and records, he became a potent symbol representing the promise of a multicultural, multiracial American democracy at a time when, despite his stardom, he was denied personal access to his many audiences.
Contemporary Black Women Filmmakers and the Art of Resistance is the first book-length analysis of representations of Black femaleness in the feature films of Black women filmmakers. These filmmakers resist dominant ideologies about Black womanhood, deliberately and creatively reconstructing meanings of Blackness that draw from their personal experiences and create new symbolic meaning of Black femaleness within mainstream culture.
No real account of black women physicians in the US exists, and what little mention is made of these women in existing histories is often insubstantial or altogether incorrect. In this work of extensive research, Jasmine Brown offers a rich new perspective, penning the long-erased stories of nine pioneering black women physicians beginning in 1860, when a black woman first entered medical school.
Moore delivers an accessible and engaging primer on the Black experience in America. He poses provocative questions, such as "Why is the teaching of Black history so controversial?" and "What came first: slavery or racism?" These questions don't have easy answers, and Moore insists that embracing discomfort is necessary for engaging in open and honest conversations about race.
Shaking up New York and national politics by becoming the first African American congresswoman and, later, the first Black major-party presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm left an indelible mark as an "unbought and unbossed" firebrand and a leader in politics for meaningful change. Anastasia C. Curwood interweaves Chisholm's public image, political commitments, and private experiences to create a definitive account of a consequential life.
An historical graphic novel inspired by the life of legendary mobster Stephanie Saint-Clair. Born on a plantation in the French colony of Martinique, Saint-Clair left the island in 1912 and headed for the United States. In New York she found success, rising up through poverty and battling extreme racism to become the ruthless queen of Harlem's mafia and a fierce defender of the Black community. A racketeer and a bootlegger, Saint-Clair dedicated her wealth and compassion to the struggling masses of Harlem, giving loans and paying debts.
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present. In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years.
When African women arrived on American shores, the three-headed hydra--servile Mammy, angry Sapphire, and lascivious Jezebel--followed close behind. These stereotypes persist to this day through newspaper headlines, Sunday sermons, social media memes, cable punditry, government policies, big screen portrayals, and hit song lyrics. The latest edition of this bestseller features new interviews with diverse Black women about marriage, motherhood, health, sexuality, beauty, and more.
They ride horses, rope calves, buck broncos, ride and fight bulls, and even wrestle steers. They are Black cowboys, and the legacies of their pursuits intersect with those of America's struggle for racial equality, human rights, and social justice. Black Cowboys of Rodeo is a collection of one hundred years of stories, told by revolutionary Black pioneers themselves and set against the backdrop of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation, the civil rights movement, and eventually the integration of a racially divided country.
A fascinating history celebrating Black players in Major League Baseball from the 1800s through today, with special insight into what the future may hold. In Beyond Baseball's Color Barrier: The Story of African Americans in Major League Baseball, Past, Present, and Future, Rocco Constantino chronicles the history of generations of ballplayers, showing how African Americans have influenced baseball from the 1800s to the present.
The 1619 Project's lyrical picture book in verse chronicles the consequences of slavery and the history of Black resistance in the United States, thoughtfully rendered by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones and Newbery honor-winning author Renée Watson.
Buy Black examines the role American Black women play in Black consumption in the US and worldwide, with a focus on their pivotal role in packaging Black feminine identity since the 1960s. Through an exploration of the dolls, princesses, and rags-to-riches stories that represent Black girlhood and womanhood in everything from haircare to Nicki Minaj's hip-hop, Aria S. Halliday spotlights how the products created by Black women have furthered Black women's position as the moral compass and arbiter of Black racial progress.
Black Lives Matter activists and the artists inspired by them have devised new forms of political and cultural resistance. More Than Our Pain explores how affect and emotion can drive collective political and cultural action in the face of a new nadir in race relations in the United States.
What does it mean to be an American? The story of the African American past demonstrates the difficulty of answering this question. If being "American" means living in a land of freedom and opportunity, what are we to make of those Americans who were enslaved and who have suffered from the limitations of second-class citizenship throughout their lives? African American history illuminates the United States' core paradoxes, inviting profound questions about what it means to be an American, a citizen, and a human being.
Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend intends to make a difference, especially in her African American community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she hopes to help women shape their destinies, to make their own choices for their lives and bodies. Civil is shocked to learn that her new patients, Erica and India, are children--just eleven and thirteen years old. As Civil grapples with her role, she takes India, Erica, and their family into her heart. Until one day she arrives at their door to learn the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same for any of them.
In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a black cake, made from a family recipe with a long history, and a voice recording. In her message, Eleanor shares a tumultuous story about a headstrong young swimmer who escapes her island home under suspicion of murder. The heartbreaking tale Eleanor unfolds, the secrets she still holds back, and the mystery of a long-lost child challenge everything the siblings thought they knew about their lineage and themselves.
Kiara and her brother, Marcus, are scraping by in an East Oakland apartment complex. Both have dropped out of high school, their family fractured by death and prison. While Marcus clings to his dream of rap stardom, Kiara hunts for work to pay their rent. One night, what begins as a drunken misunderstanding with a stranger turns into the job Kiara never imagined wanting but now desperately needs: nightcrawling. Her world breaks open even further when her name surfaces in an investigation that exposes her as a key witness in a massive scandal within the Oakland Police Department.
Ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's explosive temper and seek refuge at her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. Joan tries to settle into her new life, but family secrets cast a longer shadow than any of them expected. As she grows up, Joan finds relief in her artwork, painting portraits of the community in Memphis. One of her subjects is their enigmatic neighbor Miss Dawn, who claims to know something about curses, and whose stories about the past help Joan see how her passion, imagination, and relentless hope are, in fact, the continuation of a long matrilineal tradition.
At 22, Cece Cordell reaches the pinnacle of her career as a ballet dancer when she's promoted to principal at the New York City Ballet. She's instantly catapulted into celebrity, heralded for her "inspirational" role as the first Black ballerina in the famed company's history. Even as she celebrates the achievement of a lifelong dream, Cece remains haunted by the feeling that she doesn't belong. As she waits for some feeling of rightness, she begins to unravel the loose threads of her past.
Music professor Bern Hendricks discovers a shocking secret about the most famous American composer of all time--his music may have been stolen from a Black Jazz Age prodigy named Josephine Reed. Determined to uncover the truth that a powerful organization wants to keep hidden, Bern will stop at nothing to right history's wrongs and give Josephine the recognition she deserves.
A Finalist for the National Book Award When Ada leaves home for her freshmanyear at a Historically Black College, it's the first time she's ever been so far from her family-and the first time that she's been able to make her own choices and to seek her place in this new world. As she stumbles deeper into the world of dance and explores her sexuality, she also begins to wrestle with her past-her mother's struggle with addiction, her Nigerian father's attempts to make a home for her. Ultimately, Ada discovers she needs to brush off the destiny others have chosen for her and claim full ownership of her body and her future.
In a small but turbulent Louisiana town, one boy's grief takes him beyond the bayous of his backyard, to learn that there is no right way to be yourself. Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly. When Khalid unexpectedly passed away, he shed what was his first skin for another to live down by the bayou in their small Louisiana town. Khalid still visits in dreams, and King must keep these secrets to himself as he watches grief transform his family.
In this heart-wrenching coming-of-age story about family, grief, and second chances, seventeen-year-old Emmy returns home for the summer to uncover the truth behind her sister Rose's disappearance--only to learn that Rose had many secrets, ones that have Emmy questioning herself and the sister Emmy thought she knew. When her sister Rose disappeared, seventeen-year-old Emmy lost a part of herself. Everyone else seems convinced she ran away and will reappear when she's ready, but Emmy isn't so sure.
A powerful YA novel in verse about a boy who is wrongfully incarcerated. Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet, but even in a diverse art school, because of a biased system he's seen as disruptive and unmotivated. Then, one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. "Boys just being boys" turns out to be true only when those boys are white. The story that I think will be my life starts today Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal is convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?
Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.
At the heart of this feature documentary is the groundbreaking Two Centuries of Black American Art exhibition curated by the late African American artist and scholar David Driskell in 1976. Held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, this pioneering exhibit featured more than 200 works of art by 63 artists and cemented the essential contributions of Black artists in America in the 19th and 20th centuries. The film shines a light on the exhibition’s extraordinary impact on generations of African American artists who have staked a claim on their rightful place within the 21st-century art world.
Discover the life and music of jazz luminary Ron Carter, the most recorded bassist in history. Featuring original concert footage and candid interviews with jazz legends such as Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins and Jon Batiste, Finding the Right Notes is a vibrant portrait of one of America's great musical trailblazers.
Zora Neale Hurston has long been considered a literary giant of the Harlem Renaissance, but her anthropological and ethnographic endeavors were equally important and impactful. This is an in-depth biography of the influential author whose groundbreaking anthropological work would challenge assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had long defined the field in the 19th century.
How It Feels to Be Free takes an unprecedented look at the intersection of African American women artists, politics and entertainment and tells the story of how six trailblazing performers—Lena Horne, Abbey Lincoln, Diahann Carroll, Nina Simone, Cicely Tyson and Pam Grier— changed American culture through their films, fashion, music and politics.
Making Black America: Through the Grapevine is a four-part series hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., that chronicles the vast social networks and organizations created by and for Black people—beyond the reach of the “White gaze.” Professor Gates sits with noted scholars, politicians, cultural leaders, and old friends to discuss this world behind the color line and what it looks like today.
An intimate account of legendary U.S. Representative John Lewis’ life, legacy and more than 60 years of extraordinary activism. Lewis became one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest allies. He organized Freedom Rides and stood at the front lines in the historic marches on Washington and Selma. He never lost the spirit of the “boy from Troy” and called on his fellow Americans to get into “good trouble”.
1619 was a significant year in the history of America for better and for worse. In Jamestown, Virginia the first slaves were imported and sold. Meet Nikole Hannah-Jones; author of New York Times' "1619 Project" who will examine the impact of that year on American History, culture and development.
Find articles, images, and more in these library databases.
