Books for Black History Month: Historical Black Communities

Throughout Black History Month 2022, we’ve highlighted books on a different Black history topic each week. For our last Black History Month post in 2022, we’re focusing on the communities that African Americans fought to create for themselves.

Use code BHM22 for discount prices on these books and others before February 28.

The Archaeology of Race and Class at Timbuctoo
A Black Community in New Jersey

Christopher B. Barton

Timbuctoo was founded in 1826 by formerly enslaved migrants from Maryland. Combining collaborative archaeology, historical records, memories from community elders, and inherited accounts, this book illuminates the everyday impacts of slavery and race relations in a place that had promised freedom—and shows how archaeology can be a medium for social activism.

Available in March. Preorder now.

A Desolate Place for a Defiant People
The Archaeology of Maroons, Indigenous Americans, and Enslaved Laborers in the Great Dismal Swamp

Daniel O. Sayers

Before the Civil War, the Great Dismal Swamp of Virginia and North Carolina was a landscape of unforgiving wetlands, peat bogs, and dangerous creatures. It was also a refuge for Native Americans, African-American maroons, free African Americans, and outcast Europeans. Sayers unravels the complex social and economic systems developed by these defiant communities.

White Sand, Black Beach
Civil Rights, Public Space, and Miami’s Virginia Key

Gregory W. Bush

In May 1945, activists staged a “wade-in” at a whites-only beach in Miami, protesting the laws that denied them access to recreational waterfronts. Activist and historian Gregory Bush recounts this unique history and how it informs the current tensions between environmentalists, civil rights activists, government, and businesses as they debate the future of Miami’s public waterfront.

The Rosewood Massacre
An Archaeology and History of Intersectional Violence

Edward González-Tennant

Drawing on geospatial analysis, census data, oral history, and more, González-Tennant explores the local circumstances and broader sociopolitical power structures behind the 1923 razing of the predominantly African American town of Rosewood. In connecting these historic forms of racial violence to present-day social and racial inequality, he argues that such continuities demonstrate the need to make events like the Rosewood massacre public knowledge.

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Race, Place, and Memory
Deep Currents in Wilmington, North Carolina

Margaret M. Mulrooney

Despite the efforts of those who organized the centennial commemoration of the so-called Wilmington, NC Race Riot of 1898, a white-authored narrative of the riot’s contested origins remains. Mulrooney shows how different groups memorialize their pasts to fit specific narratives and makes a case for public history projects that recognize the history-making authority of all community members.

The Maroons of Prospect Bluff and Their Quest for Freedom in the Atlantic World

Nathaniel Millett

During the War of 1812, the British Royal Marines recruited ex-slaves, Red Sticks, and Seminoles to fight for them in the Florida panhandle. The so-called Negro Fort turned into a well-organized community that regarded itself as an independent British polity and became the largest maroon community ever to emerge in North America.