African American Studies

Get Ready for Pearl Primus

As a lead up to our May publication of The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus, by Peggy and Murray Schwartz, there are two dance-related events in New York for the book next week. First up, the Urban Bush Women will perform “Walking with Pearl…Southern Diaries” at the

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THE Book on African-American Health

As part of our Health & Wellness series, YUP is proud to publish Dr. Michelle Gourdine’s Reclaiming Our Health: A Guide to African American Wellness. Drawing from cultural perspective, she approaches the issue of why, according to the Federal Office of Minority Health, African Americans are “affected by serious diseases

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Carla L. Peterson at Weeksville

Carla L. Peterson will be at the Brooklyn Weeksville Heritage Center this Saturday from 1:30-3:30pm to launch her book, Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City. Seats are limited, so be sure to RSVP to events@weeksvillesociety.org or call (718) 756-5250. Peterson will be giving

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Pearl Primus’ Leap Year

What if this were a Leap Year? Anyone with a birthday on February 29 would tell you that it hangs in there somewhere every year, even without a date on the calendar. Black History Month would have an extra day and Women’s History Month would have to wait. Instead, we’ll

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For All the World to See

In September 1955, shortly after Emmett Till was murdered by white supremacists in Money, Mississippi, his grieving mother, Mamie Till Bradley, distributed to newspapers and magazines a gruesome black-and-white photograph of his mutilated corpse. Asked why she would do this, Mrs. Bradley explained that by witnessing, with their own eyes,

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Rapping Across the World of Words

Last Thursday, Adam Bradley, one of the editors of The Anthology of Rap, appeared on Minnesota Public Radio alongside Mark Anthony Neal and Toki Wright to discuss the past 30 years of rap and hip-hop and how they have risen to become the cultural tour-de-force we know today. Meanwhile, the

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The Brown Bomber

Boxing is arguably the most intense of individual sports—high stakes, blood, sweat, and (involuntary) tears, all eyes on you in the ring. It’s no mean feat to hold the title of world heavyweight boxing champion for nearly twelve years. In fact, it’s a record still held today, over sixty years

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The Hanging of Thomas Jeremiah

Not all slave owners were white. On the eve of the American Revolutionary War, South Carolina’s slave population was nearly double that of white Europeans, and while there were a still a handful of free blacks, “free” took a marginalized status in the face of color discrimination. Perhaps the richest

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Podcast Interview with Eric J. Sundquist on KING’S DREAM

Because we want to hear from you about the Yale Press Podcast series, here is an interview with Eric J. Sundquist, author of King’s Dream: The Legacy of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a  Dream” Speech. Listen to or download the podcast here and be sure to read up on

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Molly Rogers’ DELIA’S TEARS and More on Black Family History

This afternoon at 4:30pm, Molly Rogers, author of Delia’s Tears: Race, Science, and Photography in 19th-Century America, will be interviewed by eminent historian David Blight about her book here on Yale’s campus. The book retells the story of seven South Carolina slaves who were photographed at the request of Swiss

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