The past is not past. We may think something ancient history, or something that doesn’t affect our present day, but we would be wrong.Those Who Saw the Sun is a collection of oral histories told by Black people who grew up in the South during the time of Jim Crow. Jaha Nailah Avery is a lawyer, scholar, and reporter whose family has roots in North Carolina stretching back over 300 years. These interviews have been a personal passion project for years as she’s traveled across the So...

Inspired by recent true events, the all-original stories in Witnesses for the Dead are set in motion by the act of witnessing. The characters who populate these pages are not themselves the perpetrators of crimes, but find their lives indeliblychanged by what they see as they grapple with coming forward, taking action, or retreating into the shadows.In “Envy” by Christopher Chambers, a sweet, shy wallflower looks on as something horrific happens in his neighborhood—revealing...

A collection of short stories moving through time and place, exploring the spaces where we haunt each other and ourselves through our choices, our institutions, and our dreams.Adam Soto, author of the debut novel This Weightless World, which Robin Sloan called “the social novel for the 21st century,” returns with Concerning Those Who Have Fallen Asleep.In the title story, a one-armed Harlem Hellfighter goes in search of his specially altered military uniform while Influenza...

From the deaf baseball legend and MLB Ambassador for Inclusion, a powerful anthem of ability diversity and overcoming the odds for readers of Nyle DiMarco’s Deaf Utopia and sports memoirs such as Imperfect by Jim Abbott, Des Linden’s Choosing to Run, and Limitless by Mallory Weggemann.FOR...

A searing chronicle of how racist violence became an ingrained facet of policing in the United StatesContrary to competing popular beliefs, police violence against African Americans has neither remained unchanged since the era of slavery nor is it a recent phenomenon disconnected from the past. In Bluecoated Terror, Jeffrey S. Adler draws on rich archival accounts to show how racialized police brutality is part of a larger system of state oppression with roots in the early twentiet...

Lifting the Chains is a history of the Black experience in America since the Civil War, told by one of our most distinguished historians of modern America, William H. Chafe. He argues that, despite the wishes and arguments of many whites to the contrary, the struggle for freedom hasbeen carried out primarily by BlackAmericans, with only occasional assistance from whites. Chafe highlights the role of all-black institutions—especially the churches, lodges, local gangs, neighborhood wo...

When civil rights leader Hosea Lorenzo Williams died in 2000, U.S. Congressman John Lewis said of him, "Hosea Williams must be looked upon as one of the founding fathers of the new America. Through his actions, he helped liberate all of us."In this first comprehensive biography of Williams, Rolundus Rice demonstrates the truth in Lewis's words and argues that Williams's activism in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was of central importance to the success of the l...

Explore the remarkable life and heartfelt verse of the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., the first Black senior minister at Riverside Church in New York City, one of the largest multicultural congregations in the US.As the first Black senior minister at Riverside Church in New York City, James A. Forbes Jr. shattered barriers of Black leadership in mainline Christian denominations. Through his powerful sermons, Forbes brought the rich preaching styles of the African Am...

After retiring from twenty-five years on the bench, former chief judge Belvin Perry Jr. reveals a rare and disturbingly vivid firsthand perspective of the most gruesome death penalty cases in which he played a key role, including the infamous Casey Marie Anthony, who was dubbed “America’s Most Hated Mom” after her shocking acquittal.The Velvet Hammer is the gripping, true-crime memoir of former Chief Judge Belvin Perry Jr., who sentenced some of Florida’s most evil and notorious mu...

America’s criminal justice system perpetuates profound social and racial harms.But despite growing recognition of its destructiveness, the vast machinery of the carceral state remains very much intact. How can its damage be undone?In this pathbreaking reader, three of the nation’s leading advocates for change—Premal Dharia, Maria Hawilo, and the Pulitzer Prize–winning author James Forman Jr.—provide us with tools to move from critique to action and from despair to hope. Dis...

Six heroes challenge the racial barriers of their dayOna Judge wanted more than the best job an enslaved person could have, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman challenged why some people are masters and others enslaved, Ida B. Wells exposed post-slavery brutality, Martin Luther King Jr. was the key voice to overturn Jim Crow, and Barack Obama changed modern-day racial attitudes.For author Ray Anthony Shepard A Long Time Coming is highly personal, a chronicle of the times ...

Grandma BB, the unofficial matriarch of the Jamieson clan, is getting her house in order for the perfect homegoing celebration. After all, she’s eighty-something.She summons Parke Jamieson VI, his brothers, cousins, and their families to play a part in the practice funeral program—only if they follow her instructions to the letter.Since the Jamiesons are at her house with bodyguards Chip and Dale, they might have an impromptu family game night.The evening is full of...