UGA Press Titles to Celebrate Black History Month |

To honor Black History Month, we are highlighting recent titles that feature Black authors, history, sociology, politics, culinary arts, music, and more. Lists like these will inevitably leave out many of the important and worthy books we’ve published through the years, which is why the spotlight here is on recent titles. We are extremely proud of these books and think they speak to the spirit of Black History Month—we hope you’ll agree. Featured titles are available in our Black History Month sale for 30% off and free shipping with the promo code 08BLKHSTRY – links are included below!

“It is no longer true that the radicalism of Dr. King is ignored . . . but no book so thoroughly shows how his radicalism, and changes in it, developed through study and, especially, through participation in a social movement confronting the deadly serious problems of racial capitalism. Prophet of Discontent is a significant contribution to the study of both King and the movement.” —David Roediger, author of The Production of Difference
“A history of the Black student activists who challenged inequality in Georgia’s schools. . . . A fresh investigation of systemic racism.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Building Beloved Communities brings Smith to life, revealing an impressive, accessible individual whose story illuminates important trends over the past eighty years and whose approach to his ministry, social justice, and life offers much to ponder for those seeking to lead more meaningful and consequential lives.” —James Ralph, author of Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement
The first book devoted to the wide-ranging international lives of African Americans in the nineteenth century
“Rodriguez shows that the value of public housing lay not only in its use as a form of safe and affordable shelter for low-income households, but also in its role as a vehicle for political organization and radical social and economic change. ” —Hilary Wilson, Progressive City
“Through honest and insightful reflections, Art Dunning takes the reader on a journey from the segregated Alabama Black Belt to over thirty countries to leading the first non-court-ordered consolidation of an HBCU and a historically white college. As we all navigate America’s reckoning with systemic racism, this is a must read!” —Malcolm Portera, emeritus chancellor, University of Alabama System
“Andrew Feiler’s photographs and stories bring us into the heart of the passion for education in black communities: the passion of teachers who taught multiple grades and dozens of students in a single classroom; the passion of parents and neighbors who helped to raise the money to build our schools and then each year continued to reach deep to purchase school supplies; the passion of students like me who craved learning, worked hard, and read as many books as we could put our hands on.” —Congressman John Lewis
“An American Color is a brilliant tour de force of research and consummate scholarship. . . . Andrew N. Wegmann’s ability to wend a pathway through bodies of law and literature in French, Spanish, and English traditions is superb.” —Larry Tise, coeditor of New Voyages to Carolina: Reinterpreting North Carolina History
“Has any art been more neglected by historians than the culinary? Here Robert F. Moss honors the forgotten men and women, black and white, who made hospitality a profession and gave southern cuisine a glorious international reputation.” —David S. Shields, author of Southern Provisions: The Creation and Revival of a Cuisine
“This brilliant compilation reminds us yet again of OutKast’s famous statement that ‘the South has something to say.’ It speaks volumes and is loud and clear in amplifying and clarifying the message and meaning of this legendary group through revealing analysis across this superb body of essays. The thematic threads running through it-Afrofuturism, Atlanta as a Black Mecca and musical epicenter, film, and funk-are quite engaging and do an outstanding job of putting OutKast in critical perspective while explaining the profound cultural impact and significance of the group and why its legacy is exceptional, important, and lasting.” —Riché Richardson, associate professor of African American literature in the Africana Studies and Research Center at Cornell University, author of Emancipation’s Daughters
“If ever there was a book for these challenging times, The Quiet Trailblazer is it. Filled with the kind of history that is mostly missing from our schools, and that is being challenged in some instances today, Mary Frances Early’s book should put to rest any doubts about the importance of Black history. And while there are lessons that are racial in nature, there are also lessons that transcend race. I am so proud, as well as humbled, that we walked along many of the same paths and not only survived but prospered to tell a story that Mary Frances describes as her ‘life-affirming journey’ that resulted in ‘personal growth and self-discovery.'” —Charlayne Hunter-Gault, American civil rights activist, journalist, and former foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, CNN, and PBS
“Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is undoubtedly the most widely read survey of American history of the past forty years. Cohen and Murrow offer a candid, fair-minded assessment of its strengths and weaknesses. Citing the words of both teachers and students, they explain why it has been so influential and how it has affected the teaching of history in schools, across the country, and among the public at large. This is a welcome exception to the politicized polemics that too often frame discussions of Zinn’s book.” —Eric Foner, author of The Second Founding
“Illuminates a subject that has been buried in whitewashed stereotypes. . . . SEEN/UNSEEN has an immediacy and a freshness that makes compelling reading.” —Pete McCommons, Flagpole Magazine
“Medical Bondage builds on several decades’ worth of excellent scholarship on the experiences of enslaved women, health, and medicine under American slavery, a literature that has explored white medicine’s commodification, exploitation, and racialization of the enslaved, as well as the autonomy, creativity, and resilience of black healers and sufferer. . . Indeed, the author’s brave, provocative, and tireless promotion of this troubling history is to be admired and respected.” —Stephen C. Kenny, The Journal of African American History
“Rethinking Rufus illuminates new dimensions of how sexual violence operated during slavery by incorporating the perspectives of Black men. . . . Foster’s gendered analysis of sexual violence opens up new avenues for further research on the interrelatedness between masculinity, reproduction, and slave labor. Rethinking Rufus is a great contribution to the fields of Early American History, Gender Studies, and African American Studies.” —Kevin C. Quinn, Black Perspectives
“Given this volume’s readability and timeliness, I envision the essays helping to bring the history of education nearer to the center of historical study. Well balanced in terms of geographical emphasis, temporal coverage, attention to blacks and whites (and women and men), and linkage of past and present, they contribute to the larger project of developing a new master narrative that reaches beyond the masters.” —Michael David Cohen, The American Historical Review
“A gifted historian . . . McLaurin is both scrupulous and imaginative in his interpretation of the evidence. . . . Without ever moralizing, McLaurin conveys the raw horror and ‘psychic costs’ of a legal and thoroughly American institution that condoned the rape, sexual abuse, and hanging of a girl known only as Celia.” —New York Review of Books