In 1908, an escaped slave turned army officer named Colonel Allen Allensworth founded a small town in California’s Central Valley where African Americans could thrive. Over the next decade some three hundred Black pioneers established a self-sufficient farming community with its own school, church, businesses, and municipal government. Although the community only flourished for a […]
African American
Biddy Mason Speaks Up
Winner of the Nautilus Book Award Building on the brilliance of Fred Korematsu Speaks Up, the newest installment in the Fighting for Justice series introduces young readers to another real-life champion for civil rights: Bridget “Biddy” Mason, an African American philanthropist, healer, and midwife who was born into slavery. When Biddy arrived in California, where […]
Hardcover, ISBN: 978159714403 Available on Aerio and at your local independent bookstore
Brother and the Dancer: A Novel
Winner of the 2012 James D. Houston Award, Keenan Norris’s first novel is a beautiful, gritty, coming-of-age tale about two young African Americans in the San Bernardino Valley—a story of exceptional power, lyricism, and depth. Erycha and Touissant live only a few miles apart in the city of Highland, but their worlds are starkly separated […]
Paperback, ISBN: 9781597142458 Available on Aerio and at your local independent bookstore
Discovering Early California Afro-Latino Presence
Although it is not generally apparent from paintings and other depictions of early California, many members of the pioneering Anza expeditions and Spanish California’s most prominent families were of mixed race—Hispanic, Indian, and African. At a time when slavery was still legal in the United States, these Afro-Latinos made major contributions to early California.
Paperback, ISBN: 9781597141451 Available on Aerio and at your local independent bookstore
Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era
In the 1940s and 50s, a jazz aficionado could find paradise in the nightclubs of San Francisco’s Fillmore District: Billie Holiday sang at the Champagne Supper Club; Chet Baker and Dexter Gordon jammed with the house band at Bop City; and T-Bone Walker rubbed shoulders with the locals at the bar of Texas Playhouse. The […]
Hardcover, ISBN: 9781597144926 Available on Aerio and at your local independent bookstore
Just Another Nigger: My Life in the Black Panther Party
Just Another Nigger is Don Cox’s revelatory, even incendiary account of his years in the Black Panther Party. He participated in many peaceful Bay Area civil rights protests but hungered for more militant action. His book tells the story of his work as the party’s field marshal in charge of gunrunning to planning armed attacks—tales […]
Hardcover, ISBN: 9781597144599 Available on Aerio and at your local independent bookstore
Maestrapeace: San Francisco’s Monumental Feminist Mural
Twenty-nineteen marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Maestrapeace, the monumental and fabulously detailed mural that adorns two sides of the Women’s Building in San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood. Weaving in myriad female figures, historical and sacred, this public art work highlights women’s accomplishments across time and continents, and envisions a world healed of injustices. This beautiful book […]
Hardcover, ISBN: 9781597144834 Available on Aerio and at your local independent bookstore
The Port Chicago Mutiny
During World War II, Port Chicago was a segregated naval munitions base on the outer shores of San Francisco Bay. Black seamen were required to load ammunition onto ships bound for the South Pacific under the watch of their white officers—an incredibly dangerous and physically challenging task. On July 17, 1944, an explosion rocked the […]
Paperback, ISBN: 9781597140287 Available on Aerio and at your local independent bookstore
Ticket to Exile
At age nineteen, A. D. Miller sat in a jail cell. His crime? He passed a white girl a note that read, “I would like to get to know you better.” For this he was accused of attempted rape. Ticket to Exile recounts Miller’s coming-of-age in Depression-era Orangeburg, South Carolina. A closet rebel who successfully […]