A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin is a "supplement" book published to document Harriet Beecher Stowe's bestselling book and anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. An instant classic, Uncle Tom's Cabin (which was first published in 1852) had a profound impact on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the United States. Stowe's novel, which was highly controversial at the time, provoked a firestorm of competing and contradictory responses among...

This anthology edited by the American writer, philosopher, and patron of the arts Alain Locke brings together some of the most influential pieces of African American works from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Featuring the voices of Zora Neale Thurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Langston Hughes, Locke included commentary on the emergence of the New Negro Movement, also known as the Harlem Renaissance. The New Negro is considered to...

Originally published in 1930 and now back in print with an introduction by Zadie Smith, Black Manhattan traces the Black experience in New York City from its origins in the seventeenth century, through the Revolutionary and Civil War periods, to the triumphant achievements of the Harlem Renaissance. Written by one of the leading Black scholars and activists of the first half of the twentieth century, this timeless book also illuminates Black literature,...

“The Freedmen's Book”, written by Lydia Maria Child, is an important socio-cultural phenomenon of the nineteenth century. It is a text that exemplifies the rich intellectual and discursive history of the African American experience within a predominantly white society. This work provides valuable insight into the struggles experienced by freedmen during this period and offers readers an understanding of how African American culture adapted to...