For the month of September, to coincide with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History annual meeting September 24-28 in Memphis, we have lowered the e-book list price of three titles in the University of Illinois Press catalog to $2.99.
Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance by Cheryl Janifer LaRoche
In this enlightening study, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche employs the tools of archaeology to uncover a new historical perspective on the Underground Railroad. Unlike previous histories of the Underground Railroad, which have focused on frightened fugitive slaves and their benevolent abolitionist accomplices, LaRoche focuses instead on free African American communities, the crucial help they provided to individuals fleeing slavery, and the terrain where those flights to freedom occurred. This study foregrounds several small, rural hamlets on the treacherous southern edge of the free North. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the Google Play version here. Buy the Nook version here.
A. Philip Randolph and the Struggle for Civil Rights by Cornelius L. Bynum by Cornelius L. Bynum
A. Philip Randolph’s career as a trade unionist and civil rights activist fundamentally shaped the course of black protest in the mid-twentieth century. Examining Randolph’s work in lobbying for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, threatening to lead a march on Washington in 1941, and establishing the Fair Employment Practice Committee, Cornelius L. Bynum shows that Randolph’s push for African American equality took place within a broader progressive program of industrial reform. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the Google Play version here. Buy the Nook version here.
Globetrotting: African American Athletes and Cold War Politics by Damion L. Thomas
Exploring the geopolitical significance of racial integration in sports during the early days of the Cold War, this book looks at the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations’ attempts to utilize sport to overcome hostile international responses to the violent repression of the civil rights movement in the United States. Thomas follows the State Department’s efforts from 1945 to 1968 to showcase prosperous African American athletes including Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, and the Harlem Globetrotters as the preeminent citizens of the African Diaspora rather than as victims of racial oppression. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the Google Play version here. Buy the Nook version here.
Daughter of the Empire State: The Life of Judge Jane Bolin by Jacqueline A. McLeod
This long overdue biography of the nation’s first African American woman judge elevates Jane Matilda Bolin to her rightful place in American history as an activist, integrationist, jurist, and outspoken public figure in the political and professional milieu of New York City before the onset of the modern Civil Rights movement. Drawing on archival materials as well as a meeting with Bolin in 2002, historian Jacqueline A. McLeod reveals how Bolin parlayed her judicial position to impact significant reforms of the legal and social service system in New York. Buy the Kindle version here. Buy the Kobo version here. Buy the Google Play version here. Buy the Nook version here.
