8 Books Published by Gale on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

A biography of the African American educator, born into slavery and illiterate until after the Civil War, who went on to teach at the predominantly African American schools Hampton Institute and Tuskegee Institute.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 changed American society in profound ways. For instance, the bill ended much racial segregation, which had existed for decades in the daily lives of Americans. This collection captures a spectrum of views, from then and now, concerning the act’s historical journey and contemporary legacy.

The term “civil rights movement” calls to mind the nation-wide effort, spearheaded by Martin Luther King Jr., during the 1950s and 1960s to end racial segregation and racial injustice in the United States. But the struggle for citizenship rights for African Americans predates King’s movement by almost two hundred years. This anthology comprises the firsthand experiences of black civil rights advocates before King.

Hailed by E. Lynn Harris as a "bold and imaginative" tale that is "sure to keep readers turning the pages," Sandra Kitt’s interracial love story presents a man and a woman whose fates are changed forever by a random act of violence. Lee Grafton is a divorced cop and the father of a teenage girl. Carol Taggart is a newly single professor. Their lives collide one night when Carol is caught in the crossfire of an undercover drug sting gone south. Shot and seriously wounded, she finds an unexpected friend in Lee… unaware that the man she’s falling for could be the shooter. Twenty years on the street do nothing to prepare Lee for the night that changes his life. Determined to make amends, the special-operations lieutenant finds himself irresistibly drawn to Carol. But Lee soon faces a new threat. With his career and heart on the line, he races to prevent Carol from becoming a victim once again. Passionate and bold, Close Encounters shatters myths about race, gender, and love.

Discusses various issues regarding racism, including racial profiling, police brutality, stereotyping, White privilege, and the need for dialogue.

Discusses the course of Japanese immigration into the United States, events leading to the relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the conditions they faced in the internment camps.

lxxxii/448 pp. 8vo, cloth. A fine copy in a fine dust wrapper.

Originally published in 1845, Les Cenelles, was the first anthology of poetry featuring the work of Black poets.

The following description is excerpted from the The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature

Les Cenelles, published in 1845 in New Orleans, was the first anthology of poetry by Americans of color. The title’s use of the word “cenelles,” meaning holly or hawthorne berries, suggests that the volume contains the collected fruit of the Creole community that produced it. Edited by poet and educator Armand Lanusse (1812–1867), the collection features the work of seventeen New Orleans poets who, like Lanusse, were well-to-do “free people of color” (gens de couleur libres), a group with a unique cultural life distinct from that of whites on the one hand and slaves on the other. Contributors range from prosperous merchants such as cigar maker Nicol Riquet and mason Auguste Populus to such locally well-known figures as Lanusse, who worked to found black educational institutions; Joanni Questy, a widely read journalist for the militant newspaper La tribune de la Nouvelle Orléans; and Victor Séjour, whose highly successful playwriting career in Paris made him antebellum Louisiana’s most distinguished writer.

Lanusse explains in the introduction that the collection is intended to defend his community and race, preserving for future readers its high level of cultural-educational achievement. Culture serves here as a means of refuting and struggling against rationales for a racially divided society.

In content and form, the eighty-four poems in Les Cenelles are modeled on French romanticism. They are self-consciously elegant, conventional poetic statements (conventionality here is an index of sophistication) ranging from the facetious to the elegiac and tragic. Principle themes are love, both disappointed and fulfilled; disillusionment and the contemplation of death (five poems concern suicide); and the vicissitudes and dignity of the poetic vocation. Considering its general emphasis on disappointment and disillusionment, the collection is not, as some commentators suggest, primarily a group of light, sentimental love poems. Love in romantic poetry is a surrogate for higher aspirations that for this racially defined community remain frustrated and unfulfilled. When love appears in positive terms, it is cultural refinement and elevation rather than simple passion that is being affirmed.