Philip F. Rubio, postal worker-turned-history scholar and author of There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality, has recently lent his expertise on race issues in government employment and especially the postal service in two very different but equally fascinating news outlets. In a recent Huffington Post feature, “Black… Continue Reading Philip Rubio comments on black unemployment & the legacy of segregation
As you probably know, February is African American History Month, when we celebrate the countless contributions of African Americans to our country and recognize the struggles of generations past and present. Titles that treat the many facets of African American culture and history have always been one of the strongest and most important components of UNC Press’s list. Here are… Continue Reading Everything You Need for an African American History Month Reading List
A couple years ago some colorful and inspiring murals started popping up in Durham, NC, where I live. On Foster Street, down by the YMCA and the Farmers’ Market. On Chapel Hill Street, on the side of the Durham Food Co-op building. Three more within a stone’s throw of each other on Chapel Hill Road, along the exterior walls of… Continue Reading Let the Month of Murray Begin
Earlier this month the 12th annual Harlem Book Fair hosted a panel that included UNC Press authors Frank A. Guridy and Stephen Gillroy Hall. A video of the discussion, called “Can We Tell the Truth About the Black Past?”, is available through C-SPAN’s Book TV, which can be viewed here. Guridy is the author of Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African… Continue Reading WATCH: Harlem Book Fair Panel – “Can We Tell the Truth about the Black Past?”
We welcome a guest post today from Anne E. Marshall, author of Creating a Confederate Kentucky: The Lost Cause and Civil War Memory in a Border State, which we’ll publish in December 2010. The book traces the development of a Confederate identity in Kentucky between 1865 and 1925 that belied the fact that Kentucky never left the Union and that… Continue Reading Confederate History Month and the Politics of Memory
If you are familiar with the UNC Press Blog, you probably know that we know a thing or two about celebrating. If it has a national celebration day, week, or month, we probably have it marked on our calendars well in advance. Why else would we have a 1000-word post on the merits of National Chili Day, like we did… Continue Reading National Women’s History Month: Women at War
This week for Black History Month, we’re sharing an excerpt from the introduction of Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement by Bobby J. Smith II which was the first book in our Black Food Justice Series. “[Smith] shows how the struggles of the region’s Black communities laid the groundwork for the modern food justice… Continue Reading Food As a Weapon: An excerpt from “Food Power Politics”
The following is an excerpt from Cedric J. Robinson’s Black Marxism, Revised and Updated Third Edition: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. In this ambitious work, first published in 1983, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand Black people’s history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European… Continue Reading Racial Capitalism: The Nonobjective Character of Capitalist Development
Happy Women’s History Month! Women’s History Month had its origins as a national celebration in 1981 when Congress passed Pub. L. 97-28 which authorized and requested the President to proclaim the week beginning March 7, 1982 as “Women’s History Week.” Throughout the next five years, Congress continued to pass joint resolutions designating a week in March as “Women’s History Week.”… Continue Reading Class Interruptions: The Wrong Side of The Tracks
The following is an excerpt from Edward Onaci’s Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State. On March 31, 1968, over 500 Black nationalists convened in Detroit to begin the process of securing independence from the United States. Many concluded that Black Americans’ best remaining hope for liberation was the creation of a… Continue Reading Birth of the New Afrikan Independence Movement: A Historical Overview
The following is an excerpt form Traci Parker’s Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s. In this book, Traci Parker examines the movement to racially integrate white-collar work and consumption in American department stores, and broadens our understanding of historical transformations in African American class and labor formation. Built… Continue Reading Race and Class Identities in Early American Department Stores
Recently, William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen, authors of From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, were featured on Reset Race’s podcast. Racism and discrimination have choked economic opportunity for African Americans at nearly every turn. At several historic moments, the trajectory of racial inequality could have been altered dramatically. Perhaps no moment was… Continue Reading Authors William Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen featured on Reset Race
As I sit in my office at UNC Press on a rare day’s visit to the premises, given our collective pandemic caution, I gaze—lovingly, it’s fair to say—at the Savor the South cookbook collection sitting on my bookshelf. Twenty-four cookbooks, twenty-four southern foods and food traditions. And on March 1, with the publication of Michael Twitty’s Rice: A Savor the… Continue Reading Happy Book Birthday to Michael Twitty’s “Rice”
In light of Black History Month’s annual coinciding with Presidents Day, the following excerpt relevant to that reality is taken from The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, from the Washingtons to the Obamas by Adrian Miller. “You know, the White House is really modeled after a plantation big house.” Chef… Continue Reading African American Presidential Cooks in Antebellum America
This week we have books perfect for readers interested in True Crime, Southern Queerness in US Fiction, the Jargon Society, and the life of an enslaved doctor on one of the South’s largest plantations. Check out all of these new titles that, as of yesterday, are officially on-sale wherever books are sold. You can also visit our Hot Off the… Continue Reading New This Week: November 12
From Black US Persona Poetry to food waste in Belgium we have a big selection of new books releasing this week. Browse these new titles that are now available wherever books are sold, or take a look at everything that released this month. Another Throat: Twenty-First-Century Black US Persona Poetry and the Archive by Ryan Sharp “Sharp’s analysis and thoughtful treatment… Continue Reading New This Week: October 29
Another week, another batch of new books publishing. Today we have books spanning topics on segregation scholarships in the US south, teen pop culture at the turn of the twenty-first-century, and North Carolina Politics. Find your next favorite read among these new titles or browse our Hot Off The Press page to see everything new this month. A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners,… Continue Reading New This Week: October 15th
Another week, another New Books Tuesday! This week we’re celebrating the release of TANGLED JOURNEYS, an ambitious historical narrative that tells a multigenerational, multiracial story that invites us into the process of American history making itself. Learn more about the book below and browse all of our new books this month here. Tangled Journeys: One Family’s Story and the Making of American History… Continue Reading New This Week: September 17th
It’s Tuesday and you know what that means: new books! Today’s new books include a book that explores the University of Georgia’s long history of racism and the struggle to overcome it and a new book in our envisioning Cuba series. Check them out below and browse all of our new books this month here. Confronting Jim Crow: Race, Memory, and the… Continue Reading New This Week: August 27th
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