This online exhibit presents select items from the collection of books on African American culture donated to the Charles Evans Inniss Memorial Library (Medgar Evers College / CUNY) by Mrs. Esther Cooper Jackson, a longtime social activist who has been a crusading editor, a pioneering civil rights leader, and an important […]

This collection of writings by and about W.E.B. Du Bois presents a multidimensional portrait of a man whose life and thought are central to any understanding of black history in the United States. Divided into five major sections, Black Titan opens with a series of brief tributes from some of […]

This 4-volume set can be found in the library Special Collections. Please click here to get the call number. About Frederick Douglass Frederick Douglass (1818-95) was a prominent American abolitionist, author and orator. Born a slave, Douglass escaped at age 20 and went on to become a world-renowned anti-slavery activist. His three autobiographies are considered […]

Paul Robeson was the epitome of the 20th-century Renaissance man. He was an exceptional athlete, actor, singer, cultural scholar, author, and political activist. His talents made him a revered man of his time, yet his radical political beliefs all but erased him from popular history. Today, more than one hundred […]

This book is subtitled Prophets in their Own Country because the editors and contributors to Freedomways were not honored at the journal’s inception. Eventually, however, much of their vision did come to pass. Until now, these documents, which show the depth and breadth of the struggle for democracy, had been […]

About James E. Jackson A Leader from Leigh St. (RichmondMag) James E. Jackson Writings (Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, NYPL) Select works by James E. Jackson Revolutionary Tracings in World Politics and Black Liberation (call number) The View From Here: [Commentaries on […]

Maya Angelou … gives voice in this intensely sensuous poem to the powerful spirit of Black women the world over. It is a complex spirit comprised of remorse, pain, ecstasy, triumph – and above all, strength… Tom Feelings … illuminates Ms. Angelou’s words with eighty-four vibrant sepia-toned portraits of ordinary […]

Hugo Gellert. 1892-1985. People’s Artist (call number) Hugo Gellert. Mary Ryan Gallery. Exhibition Catalogue, 1986 (call number) About Hugo Gellert Hugo Gellert. Biographical Timeline (Graphic Witness) Hugo Gellert Exhibition (Whitney Museum of American Art) Hugo Gellert papers, 1916-1986. Archives of American Art (The collection has been digitized and is available online […]

Black Bolshevik is the powerful story of one black man’s search for answers, from growing up in Omaha, to Minnesota, to Chicago, to Harlem, to France and World War I, to Africa, to Moscow, and back to Harlem USA, struggling every step of the way. This is not merely a […]

Erik. S. Gellman. Death Blow to Jim Crow. The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights (call number) During the Great Depression, black intellectuals, labor organizers, and artists formed the National Negro Congress (NNC) to demand a “second emancipation” in America. Over the next decade, the NNC […]

Brotherman: The Odyssey of Black Men in America – An Anthology. Edited by Herb Boyd and Robert L. Allen (call number) More than a mere anthology, this book is a gateway. This ambitious assemblage of excerpts from essays, stories, documents, poems, narratives, position papers, novels and autobiographies has no equal […]

This is a reprinted special edition of Survey Graphic “Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro” edited by Alain Locke. A collectors item for more than 50 years, this edition contains contributions by Black writers whose names have become synonymous with the Harlem Renaissance. The 103 pages of this special edition […]