Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

"An new historical anthology from transatlantic slavery to the Reconstruction curated by the Schomburg Center, that makes the case for focusing on the histories of Black people as agents and architects of their own lives and ultimate liberation, with a foreword by Kevin Young. This is the first Penguin Classics anthology published in partnership with the Schomburg Center, a world-renowned cultural institution documenting black life in America and...

African Americans, more than any other populations in the Americas, have been shaped by migrations. Their culture and history are the products of black peoples' various movements, coerced and voluntary, that started, in the Western Hemisphere, five hundred years ago. Theirs is the story of men and women forced out of Africa; of enslaved people moved from the coastal southeast to the Deep South; of fugitives walking to freedom across the country and...

Examination of a little known aspect of American history, when newly freed slaves throughout the South formed 'benevolent societies' to respond to abject hunger, illness and the fear of a pauper's grave. "The Fair Hope Benevolent Society" in Uniontown, Alabama, provides an unprecedented look at the complex and morally ambiguous juxtaposition of the Society with the worldly pleasures of what has become known as the annual "Foot Wash" celebration.