African Wars

In March 1865, a 30-man team of mostly Black Union soldiers traveled from Jacksonville, Florida 100 miles behind enemy lines to conduct a ridiculously daring raid in remote Marion County. Then they had to return on foot to St. Augustine 80 miles from the raid site, knowing an accomplished Confederate cavalry unit would be hot on their trail. The Black raiders planned the operation, employed their own strategy, led by a Black Sergeant-Major—no White officer—and carried out the mission.

When African American servicemen went to fight in the Vietnam War, discrimination and prejudice followed them. Even in a faraway country, their military experiences were shaped by the racial environment of the home front. War is often viewed as a crucible that can transform society, but American race relations proved remarkably durable. In Race in the Crucible of War, Gerald F. Goodwin examines how Black servicemen experienced and interpreted racial issues during their time in Vietnam.

A groundbreaking new history, telling the stories of hundreds of African-American activists and officeholders who risked their lives for equality - in the face of murderous violence - in the years after the Civil War. By 1870, just five years after Confederate surrender and 13 years after the Dred Scott decision ruled blacks ineligible for citizenship, Congressional action had ended slavery and given the vote to black men. That same year, Hiram Revels and Joseph Hayne Rainey became the first African-American U.S. senator and congressman respectively.

In 1986, Ken and Julie Vaughan were living the American dream: good education, interesting career, nice home, and healthy, bright children. When God called them to teach in Africa, they turned their backs on financial and physical security to accept the challenge of living in a third world country. Through a series of God-initiated events, the Vaughans found themselves living in Cote d’Ivoire, teaching at an international boarding school. In 1997, Ken faced a bout with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. After completing treatment, Ken and Julie returned to Africa to resume the life they loved.

While on a mission helping the Mexican authorities against La Vibora, Team Reaper hears a whisper about a shipment of cocaine coming in from Nigeria. Nothing much to worry about there, or so they think. The cocaine shipment, however, has ties to ISWA terrorists. The same group that is starting to publicly execute members of a captured DEA/CIA team. And what does a South African bioengineer have to do with it all?

Twelve-year-old Ann Maria Weems works from sunup to sundown, wraps rags around her feet in the winter, and must do whatever her master or mistress orders—but she has something that many plantation slaves don't have. She has her wonderful family around her. To Ann, her teasing brothers, her older sister, and her protective and loving parents are everything. And then one day, they are gone. Separated from her family by her master and shipped off as a housemaid, Ann learns something about independence and about love before the opportunity for escape arrives.

Jarret Ruminski examines ordinary lives in Confederate-controlled Mississippi, to show how military occupation and the ravages of war tested the meaning of loyalty during America's greatest rift. This study focuses on wartime activities - such as swearing the Union oath, illegally trading with the Union army, and deserting from the Confederate army - to show how Mississippians acted on multiple loyalties to self, family, and nation. It probes the relationship between race and loyalty, to indicate how an internal war defined Mississippi's social development, well into the 20th century.

The Italians were defeated at Adwa in 1898. But by 1935, they were playing for keeps. Learn more about the devastating Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Although the Ethiopians had beaten the Italians at their own game in the 1898 Battle of Adwa, when Italian armored divisions began pouring out of Italian-controlled Eritrea in 1935, the situation seemed almost impossible to overcome.

Impassioned antislavery rhetoric made antebellum Boston famous as the nation’s hub of radical abolitionism. In fact, the city was far from a beacon of equality. In No Right to an Honest Living, historian Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small—a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Highlighting the everyday struggles of ordinary Black workers, this book shows how injustice in the workplace prevented Boston—and the United States—from securing true equality for all.

Royal children no longer desire merely the throne of their kingdom. The prize they seek is a seat on the High Council as a God. The quake of footsteps from the divine shape the fabric of the realm. These All Beings walk among mortals and their children hold the titles of king and queen. When blessed blood is threatened, lines are drawn. Aron Barre II, a newly crowned ruler, is thrusted in the middle of a conflict between the rivaling kingdoms of the Fallows. The political journey he embarks on will change the course of Caldonia forever.

The story of the intelligence war in South Africa during the Second World War is one of suspense, drama and dogged persistence. In 1939, when the Union of South Africa entered the war on Britain’s side, the German government secretly contacted the political opposition, and the leadership of the anti-war movement, the Ossewabrandwag. The Nazis’ aim was to spread sedition, undermine the Allied war effort, and - given the strategic importance of the Cape of Good Hope sea route - gain naval intelligence. Soon U-boat packs were sent to operate in South African waters, to deadly effect.

In The Black Calhouns, Gail Lumet Buckley - daughter of actress Lena Horne - delves deep into her family history, detailing the experiences of an extraordinary African American family from Civil War to civil rights. Beginning with her great-great-grandfather, Moses Calhoun, a house slave who used the rare advantage of his education to become a successful businessman in postwar Atlanta, Buckley follows her family's two branches: one that stayed in the South and the other that settled in Brooklyn.

The story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman's most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants: Edda L. Fields-Black shows how Tubman commanded a ring of spies, scouts, and pilots and participated in military expeditions behind Confederate lines. On June 2, 1863, Tubman and her crew piloted two regiments of Black US Army soldiers, the Second South Carolina Volunteers, and their white commanders up coastal South Carolina's Combahee River in three gunboats.

Denene Millner and Nick Chiles are authors of the Essence best-seller Love Don’t Live Here Anymore. In Love and War is the tale of fiery college administrator, Zaria Chance, and strong-willed teacher and basketball coach, Kenneth Roman. The two may seem to be opposites, but they can’t ignore an attraction as fierce as theirs. With a lively narration by Dion Graham and Caroline Clay, this novel will enthrall listeners with its honesty, sensuality, and playfulness

Groundbreaking, compelling, and poignant, The Slaves' War delivers an unprecedented vision of the nation's bloodiest conflict. An acclaimed historian of 19th-century and African American history, Andrew Ward gives us the first narrative of the Civil War told from the perspective of those whose destiny it decided.

One of the lesser-known stories of the Civil War is the role played by escaped slaves in the Union blockade along the Atlantic coast. From the beginning of the war, many African American refugees sought avenues of escape to the North. Due to their sheer numbers, those who reached Union forces presented a problem for the military. Fortunately, the First Confiscation Act of 1861 permitted the seizure of property used in support of the South's war effort, including slaves. Eventually regarded as contraband of war, the runaways became known as contrabands.

The Colonization and Establishment of Liberia looks at how the colony grew, the ideals behind it, what life was like there, and how a tenuous democracy lasted in the colony for over 100 years. You will learn about the settlement of Liberia like never before.

The enduring image of World War I is of men stuck in muddy trenches, and of vast armies deadlocked in a fight neither could win. It was a war of barbed wire, poison gas, and horrific losses as officers led their troops on mass charges across No Man's Land and into a hail of bullets. While these impressions are all too true, they hide the fact that trench warfare was dynamic and constantly evolving throughout the war as all armies struggled to find a way to break through the opposing lines.

Thulani Davis provides a sweeping rethinking of Reconstruction by tracing how the four million people newly freed from bondage created political organizations and connections that mobilized communities across the South. Drawing on the practices of community they developed while enslaved, freedpeople built new settlements and created a network of circuits through which they imagined, enacted, and defended freedom. This history shows that these circuits linked rural and urban organizations, labor struggles, and political culture with news, strategies, education, and mutual aid.

President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty did more than offer aid to needy Americans; in some cities, it also sparked both racial conflict and cooperation. Race and the War on Poverty examines the African American and Mexican American community organizations in Los Angeles that emerged to implement War on Poverty programs. It explores how organizers applied democratic vision and political savvy to community action, and how the ongoing African American, Chicano, and feminist movements in turn shaped the contours of the War on Poverty’s goals, programs, and cultural identity.