New Books in African American Studies

Police Against the Movement: The Sabotage of the Civil Rights Struggle and the Activists Who Fought Back (Princeton UP, 2025) shatters one of the most pernicious myths about the 1960s: thast the civil rights movement endured police violence without fighting it. Instead, as Joshua Clark Davis shows, activists from the Congress of Racial Equality and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee confronted police abuses head-on, staging sit-ins at precinct stations, picketing outside department headquarters, and blocking city streets to protest officer misdeeds. In return, organizers found themselves the targets of overwhelming political repression in the form of police surveillance, infiltration by undercover officers, and retaliatory prosecutions aimed at discrediting and derailing their movement. The history of the civil rights era abounds with accounts of physical brutality by county sheriffs and tales of political intrigue and constitutional violations by FBI agents. Turning our attention to municipal officials in cities and towns across the US—North, South, East, and West—Davis reveals how local police bombarded civil rights organizers with an array of insidious weapons. More than just physical violence, these economic, legal, and reputational attacks were designed to project the illusion of color-blind law enforcement. The civil rights struggle against police abuses is largely overlooked today, the victim of a willful campaign by local law enforcement to erase their record of repression. By placing activism against state violence at the center of the civil rights story, Police Against the Movement offers critical insight into the power of political resistance in the face of government attacks on protest. Guest: Joshua Clark Davis Blackmer (he/him) is an associate professor of U.S. history at the University of Baltimore. Davis is also the author of an earlier book, From Head Shops to Whole Foods, which examines organic food stores, feminist enterprises, Black bookstores and other businesses that emerged from movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s. His research has earned awards from the Fulbright Program, the Silvers Foundation, and the NEH Public Scholars Program, and he has written for The Atlantic, The Nation, Slate, Jacobin, and The Washington Post, and that work has been featured in The New York Times and CNN among other venues. Host: Michael Stauch (he/him) is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

During the Civil War, the U.S. federal government abolished slavery without reimbursing enslavers, diminishing the white South’s wealth by nearly 50 percent. After the Confederacy’s defeat, white Southerners demanded federal compensation for the financial value of formerly enslaved people and fought for other policies that would recognize abolition’s costs during Reconstruction. As Amanda Laury Kleintop shows in Counting the Cost of Freedom: The Fight Over Compensated Emancipation After the Civil War (University of North Carolina Press, 2025), their persistence eventually led to the creation of Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which abolished the right to profit from property in people. Surprisingly, former Confederates responded by using Lost Cause history-making to obscure the fact that they had demanded financial redress in the first place. The largely successful efforts of white Southerners to erase this history continues to generate false understandings today. Kleintop draws from an impressive array of archival sources to uncover this lost history. In doing so, she demonstrates how this legal battle also undermined efforts by formerly enslaved people to receive reparations for themselves and their descendants—a debate that persists in today’s national dialogue. Amanda Laury Kleintop is assistant professor of history at Elon University. Ryan Tripp is an adjunct for universities and California community colleges. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Every year, hundreds of international student athletes arrive in the U.S. chasing their basketball dreams — many on F-1 student visas. But for some their journey turns into exploitation. Basketball Trafficking: Stolen Black Panamanian Dreams (Duke University Press, 2025) uncovers how dreams are sold, manipulated, and in some cases stolen — especially for young Black athletes from the Global South. This book offers a powerful call to action for educators, institutions, and sport leaders to safeguard the next generation of hoopers. Rooted in his own experience as a distinguished former Division 1 college athlete and an alumnus of a Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), Javier has a unique perspective on the significance of sports in cultural and social movements. He procured his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from Florida A&M University, followed by a PhD from The University of Texas at Austin, where he delved into the intersections of race, culture, and athletics. Javier’s expertise has led him to prominent roles, including serving as a Fellow at Harvard’s AfroLatin American Research Initiative, a University of Pennsylvania & University of Birmingham (UK) Immigration Fellow, and a Postdoctoral Associate and Professor at Duke University. His scholarly work has been recognized with accolades, such as the Harvard ALARI Best Dissertation on an Afro-Latin American topic in 2020 and a Preservation Merit Award from Preservation Austin. Javier has been featured in numerous media outlets such as TEDx, The Travel Channel, Discovery Channel, Vice Sports, ESPN, and CNN, marking him as a distinctive voice in his arena. His dedication to shining a light on the unsung heroes who have transformed sports into a stage for empowerment and social change remains unwavering. A committed traveler and cultural enthusiast, Javier continues to connect and promote these remarkable stories of resilience and triumph wherever his journey takes him. You can find Javier online, on Instagram, and at LinkedIn. Find Host Sullivan Summer online, on Instagram, or on Substack, where she and Javier continue their conversation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Drawing upon interviews, correspondence, and nearly 2000 pages of never-before-used prison records, Malcolm Before X is the definitive examination of the prison years of civil rights icon Malcolm X. The book was a Kirkus Nonfiction Book of the Year for 2024, a Spectator best book of the year, and a finalist for the 2025 ASALH book prize. In February 1946, when 20-year-old Malcolm Little was sentenced to eight to ten years in a maximum-security prison, he was a petty criminal and street hustler in Boston. By the time he was paroled in August 1952, he had transformed into a voracious reader, joined the Black Muslims, and was poised to become Malcolm X, one of the most prominent and important intellectuals of the civil rights era. While scholars and commentators have exhaustively detailed, analyzed, and debated Malcolm X’s post-prison life, they have not explored these six and a half transformative years in any depth. Paying particular attention to his time in prison, Patrick Parr’s Malcolm Before X provides a comprehensive and groundbreaking examination of the first twenty-seven years of Malcolm X’s life (1925–1965). Parr traces Malcolm’s African lineage, explores his complicated childhood in the Midwest, and follows him as he moves east to live with his sister Ella in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood, where he is convicted of burglary and sentenced. Parr utilizes a trove of previously overlooked documents that include prison files and prison newspapers to immerse the reader into the unique cultures—at times brutal and at times instructional—of Charlestown State Prison, the Concord Reformatory, and the Norfolk Prison Colony. It was at these institutions that Malcolm devoured books, composed poetry, boxed, debated, and joined the Nation of Islam, changing the course of his life and setting the stage for a decade of antiracist activism that would fundamentally reshape American culture. In this meticulously researched and beautifully written biography, the inspiring story of how Malcolm Little became Malcolm X is finally told. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In the world of Black radical politics, the name Audley Moore commands unquestioned respect. Across the nine decades of her life, Queen Mother Moore distinguished herself as a leading progenitor of Black Nationalism, the founder of the modern reparations movement, and, from her Philadelphia and Harlem homes, a mentor to some of America's most influential Black activists.And yet, she is far less remembered than many of her peers and protégés—Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Muhammad Ahmad, to name just a few—and the ephemera of her life are either lost or plundered. In Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore (Pantheon, 2025), celebrated writer and historian Ashley D. Farmer restores Moore's faded portrait, delivering the first ever definitive account of her life and enduring legacy.Deeply researched and richly detailed, Queen Mother is more than just the biography of an American icon. It's a narrative history of 20th-century Black radicalism, told through the lens of the woman whose grit and determination sustained the movement. Omari Averette-Phillips is a PhD candidate in History & African American Studies at UC-Davis. He can be reached at okaverettephillips@ucdavis.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

The views expressed by the guest are their own and do not reflect those of the New Books Network or its hosts. This episode contains some content that listeners may find controversial. A home cook's guide to one of America's most diverse - and delicious - cuisines, from James Beard Award-winning author and culinary historian Michael W. Twitty 'Our cuisine, with its grits and black-eyed peas, crab cakes, red rice, and endless variations on the staple foods of the region, casts a spell that, if you're lucky, gets passed down with snapping string beans at the table and chewing cane on the back porch.' - Michael W. Twitty In the introduction to this groundbreaking recipe collection, acclaimed historian Michael W. Twitty declares, 'No one state or area can give you the breadth of the Southern story or fully set the Southern table.' To answer this, Recipes from the American South journeys from the Louisiana Bayou to the Chesapeake Bay, showcasing more than 260 of the region's most beloved dishes. Across more than 400 pages, Twitty explores the broad culinary sweep that Southern history and its many cultures represent. Recipes for breads and biscuits, mains and sides, stews, sauces, and sweets feature insightful headnotes and clear, step-by-step instructions. Home cooks will discover both iconic dishes and lesser-known specialties: Chicken and Dumplings, She-crab Soup, Red Eye Gravy, Benne Seed Wafers, Hummingbird Cake, and Mint Juleps appear alongside Shrimp Pilau, Chorizo Dirty Rice, Sumac Lemonade, and Cajun Pig's Ears Pastry. A masterful storyteller, Twitty enriches his extensive recipe collection with lyrical, deeply researched essays that celebrate the region's "multicultural gumbo" of influences from immigrants from across the globe. Vibrant food photography adds further color to the fascinating narrative. Expansive, authoritative, and beautifully designed, Recipes from the American South is a classic cookbook in the making. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Unleashing Black Power: Grassroots Organizing in Harlem and the Advent of the Long, Hot Summers (UVA Press, 2025) explores the local dynamics, national connections, and global context of the Black freedom movement in Harlem from 1954 to 1964, illuminating how activists, organizers, and ordinary people mounted their resistance to systemic racism in the Jim Crow North. The richness of Black radical thought and action in this period made Harlem a key battleground in the national civil rights movement, transformed local Black grassroots politics, and facilitated the rise of Black Power in New York City. At the same time, the city’s attempts to clamp down on activists revealed the repressive nature of Northern liberalism and heralded the expansion of the carceral state. Peter Blackmer argues that this decade of confrontations between Black communities and white state power caused Harlem residents and activists to seek “new means” for achieving freedom within a city, state, and nation determined to deny it. Tracing the dual evolution of Black radicalism and white resistance, Unleashing Black Power offers a new framework for analyzing the epochal urban uprisings in the 1960s. Guest: Peter Blackmer (he/him) is an associate professor of Africology and African American Studies at Eastern Michigan University and his research and teaching explore the ways in which Black-led grassroots organizing campaigns for self-determination in the 20th and 21st Century United States have shaped local and national politics through struggles for civil rights, human rights, and political power in American cities. Host: Michael Stauch (he/him) is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight (UP of Mississippi, 2021) is a celebration of jazz and the men and women who created and transformed it. In the twenty-one conversations contained in this engaging and highly accessible book, we hear from the musicians themselves, in their own words, direct and unfiltered. Peter Zimmerman’s interviewing technique is straightforward. He turns on a recording device, poses questions, and allows his subjects to improvise, similar to the way the musicians do at concerts and in recording sessions. Topics range from their early days, their struggles and victories, to the impact the music has had on their own lives. The interviews have been carefully edited for sense and clarity, without changing any of the musicians’ actual words.Peter Zimmerman tirelessly sought virtuosi whose lives span the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The reader is rewarded with an intimate look into the past century’s extraordinary period of creative productivity. The oldest two interview subjects were born in 1920 and all are professional musicians who worked in jazz for at least five decades, with a few enjoying careers as long as seventy-five years. These voices reflect some seventeen hundred years of accumulated experience yielding a chronicle of incredible depth and scope.The focus on musicians who are now emeritus figures is deliberate. Some of them are now in their nineties; six have passed since 2012, when Zimmerman began researching The Jazz Masters. Five of them have already received the NEA’s prestigious Jazz Masters award: Sonny Rollins, Clark Terry, Yusef Lateef, Jimmy Owens, and most recently, Dick Hyman. More undoubtedly will one day, and the balance are likewise of compelling interest. Artists such as David Amram, Charles Davis, Clifford Jordan, Valery Ponomarev, and Sandy Stewart, to name a few, open their hearts and memories and reveal who they are as people.This book is a labor of love celebrating the vibrant style of music that Dizzy Gillespie once described as “our native art form.” Zimmerman’s deeply knowledgeable, unabashed passion for jazz brings out the best in the musicians. Filled with personal recollections and detailed accounts of their careers and everyday lives, this highly readable, lively work succeeds in capturing their stories for present and future generations. An important addition to the literature of music, The Jazz Masters goes a long way toward “setting the record straight.”Adam Bobeck is a PhD candidate in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Leipzig. His PhD is entitled “Object-Oriented Azadari: Shi’i Muslim Rituals and Ontology”. For more about his work, see www.adambobeck.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In the first major biography of Baldwin in more than a decade, James Baldwin: Living in Fire (Pluto Press, 2019), Bill V. Mullen celebrates the personal and political life of the great African-American writer who changed the face of Western politics and culture. As a lifelong anti-imperialist, black queer advocate, and feminist, Baldwin (1924-1987) was a passionate chronicler of the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, the U.S. war against Vietnam, Palestinian liberation struggle, and the rise of LGBTQ rights. Mullen explores how Baldwin's life and work channel the long history of African-American freedom struggles, and explains how Baldwin both predicted and has become a symbol of the global Black Lives Matter movement.Bill V. Mullen is Professor of English and American Studies at Purdue University. His specializations are American Literature and Studies, African American Studies, Cultural Studies, Working-Class Studies, Critical Race Theory and Marxist Theory.Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube Channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

In At the Vanguard of Vinyl, Darren Mueller examines how the advent of the long-playing record (LP) in 1948 revolutionized the recording and production of jazz in the 1950s. The LP’s increased fidelity and playback capacity allowed lengthy compositions and extended improvisations to fit onto a single record, ushering in a period of artistic exploration. Despite these innovations, LP production became another site of negotiating the uneven power relations of a heavily segregated music industry. Exploring how musicians, producers, and other industry professionals navigated these dynamics, Mueller contends that the practice of making LPs significantly changed how jazz was created, heard, and understood in the 1950s and beyond. By attending to the details of audio production, he reveals how Black musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Charles Mingus worked to redefine prevailing notions of race and cultural difference within the United States. Mueller demonstrates that the LP emerges as a medium of sound and culture that maps onto the more expansive sonic terrain of Black modernity in the 1950s. Nathan Smith is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at Yale University nathan.smith@yale.edu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies