Mills Panoram and Soundies
In the 1940s, these short films set to music transgressed Hollywood’s racial mythology to create space for Black artists to experiment—and have fun.
The Scholars Charting Black Music’s Timeline: Douglas Henry Daniels & Paul Austerlitz
Daniels and Austerlitz tell the story of jazz, from its origins in the blues, gospel, and funk to its impact on music around the world.
Pantheon of Superheroes
The groundbreaking team at Milestone Comics infused Static, Hardware and their other creations with Afrocentric dynamism, paving the way for T’Challa’s mainstream success.
The Living Newspaper Speaks
Scripted from front-page news, the Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspaper plays were part entertainment, part protest, and entirely educational.
The Scholars Who Charted Black Music’s Timeline: Tony Bolden
Tony Bolden explores the spiritual principles that inform the foundation of Afrofuturist music.
The Scholars Who Charted Black Music’s Timeline
Portia K. Maultsby documents the course of African American music, tracing the histories of the sounds alongside the histories of the people who made them.
The Combahee River Collective Statement: Annotated
The Black feminist collective's 1977 statement has been a bedrock document for academics, organizers and theorists for 45 years.
Julia C. Collins & the Black Elite of the Gilded Age
HBO's The Gilded Age has done its homework on Black History, creating a character based upon real life wealthy Black women of the time.
Elizabeth Keckley’s Memoir Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four in the White House
Keckley’s decision to write about her employers from the viewpoint of a household laborer--she was seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln--enraged audiences.
Remembering Emmett Till in Song
The murder of Emmett Till has been memorialized in song by such artists as Langston Hughes and Bob Dylan.