June 13, 2023

How Mapping the Black Experience Will Shape Society for a Better Future

Olive Vassell and Natasha A. Kelly

“If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go.” With these words, writer James Baldwin captured the essence of the power of remembrance and commemoration: practices that unite and empower us, providing opportunities...

March 3, 2023

Married Women’s Property Rights and Enslavement in the Pre–Civil War South

Sara Chatfield

When we think about women’s history, the suffrage movement is often one of the first topics that comes to mind. But individual states, largely before women had the right to vote, enacted reforms that significantly expanded the economic rights of...

February 15, 2023

Q&A: Dr. Amy Yeboah Quarkume and Dr. Frank Guridy on Black Lives in the Diaspora: Past / Present / Future

A Howard-Columbia Intellectual Partnership

In February 2021, Columbia University Press announced a new partnership with Howard University’s College of Arts and Sciences and Columbia University’s African American and African Diaspora Studies Department—the Black Lives in the Diaspora: Past / Present / Future series. Building on Columbia University...

February 8, 2023

The Struggle and Resistance of Black Women Beneficiaries of Social Welfare

Gladys L. Mitchell-Walthour

On September 27, 2022, Renée Graham, a Boston Globe columnist, published a piece entitled “Brett Favre, Welfare Queen: The Same People Who Denounce Welfare Don’t Seem Outraged Over the Former Quarterback’s Alleged Misappropriation of Antipoverty Funds.” Her bold title was...

February 1, 2023

Why Historically Black Colleges and Universities Are Vital and Valuable to the U.S. Higher Education System

James V. Koch and Omari H. Swinton

Are Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) “vital and valuable” to contemporary America? Absolutely. HBCUs capably fill a niche in higher education (and in society) that the typical American college or university either ignores or downplays. Many Americans, especially those...

November 15, 2022

Q&A: Reed Brody on To Catch a Dictator

What does it take to make a dictator answer for his crimes? Hissène Habré, the former despot of Chad, terrorized, tortured, and killed on a horrific scale while enjoying full American and Western support. After his overthrow, his victims and...

October 24, 2022

How Should We Approach Black Literature and Art Now?

John Brooks

In the United States, there’s a tendency to assume that Black literature and art are valuable primarily because they’re pedagogical, as if Black creative expression exists first and foremost to educate racist whites. This approach may be well meaning, but...

June 19, 2022

Seneca Village and Fair Compensation

What the Archives Reveal

Sara Cedar Miller

“This book is incomplete without finding those documents. They have to exist!” This became my constant lament to the guardians of New York City’s archives and especially to the ever-patient and all-knowing archivist Ken Cobb, the assistant commissioner of the...

June 17, 2022

Robert G. O’Meally in Conversation with Justin Liang About Antagonistic Cooperation

From the collages of Romare Bearden and the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, to the fiction of Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison, to the music of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, in Antagonistic Cooperation: Jazz, Collage, Fiction, and the Shaping of...

June 15, 2022

The Role of Narrative and Narrative Activism in Social Movements

Michele Moody-Adams

It has often been said that “those who tell the stories rule the world.” Versions of this claim can be found in sources as varied as Plato’s dialogues, traditional Hopi wisdom, and a recent work such as Narrative Economics (2019)...

February 24, 2022

Revised Excerpt from the Epilogue of The Sexual Politics of Black Churches

Josef Sorett

The Sexual Politics of Black Churches began as an idea that grew from an event organized in response to a set of public debates over ten years ago. Surprisingly, what the book presents to readers is no less relevant today,...

February 21, 2022

The Innovative Mindset of Marie Van Brittan Brown

Lorraine H. Marchand

When we think of great innovators, the faces are usually the same—typically, white males, such as Edison, Tesla, Jobs, Musk. . . But history teaches us that while African Americans and women are historically underrepresented among the ranks of innovators and inventors,...