New Books in African American Studies

Fake news, outright political lies, a shamelessly partisan press, and the collapse of truth, civility, and shared facts, Dr. Philip Kadish argues, are nothing new. The Great White Hoax: Two Centuries of Selling Racism in America (The New Press, 2025), a masterpiece of historical and literary sleuthing, reveals that the era of Fox News and Donald Trump is simply a return to form. We have been here before. In a book that brilliantly puts our current era into historical context, The Great White Hoax uncovers a centuries-long tradition of white supremacist hoaxes, perpetrated on the American public by a succession of political hucksters and opportunists, all of them willfully using racial frauds as tools for political and social advantage. In the antebellum era, slavery’s defenders used bogus science to “prove” the inferiority of African American people; during the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln’s enemies circulated a sham pamphlet accusing him of promoting a dilution of the white race through “miscegenation” (a racist term invented by the pamphlet’s authors). From these murky beginnings, Dr. Philip Kadish draws a direct thread to D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, Henry Ford’s adaptation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Madison Grant’s embrace of eugenics (which directly influenced Adolf Hitler), Alabama Governor George Wallace’s race-baiting, and Roger Ailes’s creation of Fox News. The Great White Hoax reveals white supremacy as today’s real “fake news”—and exposes the cast of villains, past and present, who have kept American racism alive. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 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 decades after the end of slavery, African Americans were committed to southern state mental hospitals at higher rates as white psychiatrists listed “religious excitement” among the most frequent causes of insanity for Black patients. At the same time, American popular culture and political discourse framed African American modes of spiritual power as fetishism and superstition, cast embodied worship as excessive or fanatical, and labeled new religious movements “cults,” unworthy of respect. As Judith Weisenfeld argues in Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery’s Wake (NYU Press, 2025), psychiatrists’ notions of race and religion became inextricably intertwined in the decades after the end of slavery and into the twentieth century, and had profound impacts on the diagnosis, care, and treatment of Black patients. This book charts how racialized medical understandings of mental normalcy pathologized a range of Black religious beliefs, spiritual sensibilities, practices, and social organizations and framed them as manifestations of innate racial traits. Importantly, these characterizations were marshaled to help to limit the possibilities for Black self-determination, with white psychiatrists’ theories about African American religion and mental health being used to promote claims of Black people’s unfitness for freedom. Drawing on extensive archival research, Black Religion in the Madhouse is the first book to expose how racist views of Black religion in slavery’s wake shaped the rise of psychiatry as an established and powerful profession. Judith Weisenfeld is the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion and associated faculty in the Department of African American Studies and the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. This episode’s host, Jacob Barrett, is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Religion and Culture track. For more information, visit his website thereluctantamericanist.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

The New York Times-bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois and The Age of Phillis makes her nonfiction debut with this personal and thought-provoking work that explores the journeys and possibilities of Black women throughout American history and in contemporary times. Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is at a crossroads. Traditional African/Black American cultures present the crossroads as a place of simultaneous difficulty and possibility. In contemporary times, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase “intersectionality” to explain the unique position of Black women in America. In many ways, they are at a third crossroads: attempting to fit into notions of femininity and respectability primarily assigned to White women, while inventing improvisational strategies to combat oppression. In Misbehaving at the Crossroads: Essays and Writings (Harper, 2025), Jeffers explores the emotional and historical tensions in Black women’s public lives and her own private life. She charts voyages of Black girlhood to womanhood and the currents buffeting these journeys, including the difficulties of racially gendered oppression, the challenges of documenting Black women’s ancestry; the adultification of Black girls; the irony of Black female respectability politics; the origins of Womanism/Black feminism; and resistance to White supremacy and patriarchy. As Jeffers shows with empathy and wisdom, naming difficult historical truths represents both Blues and transcendence, a crossroads that speaks. Necessary and sharply observed, provocative and humane, and full of the insight and brilliance that has characterized her poetry and fiction, Misbehaving at the Crossroads illustrates the life of one extraordinary Black woman—and her extraordinary foremothers. Find author Honorée Fannone Jeffers at her website, Instagram, Bluesky, and Substack. Host Sullivan Summer can be found at her website, Instagram, and Substack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

At the height of the Civil War, on May 12, 1862, Robert Smalls—an enslaved harbor pilot in Charleston, South Carolina—carried out one of the most courageous and cunning acts in American history. He disguised himself as a captain and, in the dead of night, commandeered the ship he worked on and sailed it to freedom. By the time Confederate soldiers realized what was happening, it was too late: Smalls, along with seven other enslaved crew members and their families, had run the blockade. Smalls’ heroism, and material aid for the Union, made national headlines and influenced Lincoln’s decision to accept Black soldiers into the Union Army. He later captained the very boat he took and, after the war, became a Congressman.DEFIANT: The Story of Robert Smalls (Stranger Comics, 2025) seeks to elevate Smalls to his rightful place in the national consciousness. The graphic novel—written by Rob Edwards (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Academy-Award nominated The Princess and the Frog) and drawn by comic book artists Nikolas Draper-Ivey (Black Panther soundtrack cover, Static: Shadows Of Dakota) and Ray-Anthony Height (Marvel Comics’ Star Wars: Doctor Aphra)—details Smalls’ childhood, his efforts to buy his freedom, and finally, the extraordinary events of that night in Charleston Harbor over 150 years ago. Omari Averette-Phillips is a PhD candidate in History and African American Studies at UC Davis. He can be reached at omariaverette@gmail.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

Ten beautifully illustrated essays tell the stories of handcrafted objects and their makers, providing inspiration and insight into Black history and craftsmanship. Black artisans have long been central to American art and design, creating innovative and highly desired work against immense odds. Atlanta-based chairmaker and scholar Robell Awake explores the stories behind ten cornerstones of Black craft, from the celebrated wooden chairs of Richard Poynor, an enslaved craftsman who began a dynasty of Tennessee chairmakers, to the enslaved potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, to Ann Lowe, the couture dressmaker who made Jacqueline Kennedy's wedding dress, A Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects (Princeton Architectural Press, 2025) illuminates the work of generations of Black craftspeople, foregrounding their enduring contributions to American craft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

From Black clubwomen to members of preservation organizations, African American women have made commemoration a central part of Black life and culture. Alexandria Russell illuminates the process of memorialization while placing African American women at the center of memorials they brought into being and others constructed in their honor. Their often undocumented and unheralded work reveals the importance of the memorializers and public memory crafters in establishing a culture of recognition. Forced to strategize with limited resources, the women operated with a resourcefulness and savvy that had to meet challenges raised by racism, gender and class discrimination, and specific regional difficulties. Yet their efforts from the 1890s to the 2020s shaped and honed practices that became indispensable to the everyday life and culture of Black Americans. Intersectional and original, Black Women Legacies: Public History Sites Seen and Unseen (Illinois University Press, 2024) explores the memorialization of African American women and its distinctive impact on physical and cultural landscapes throughout the United States. Dr. Alexandria Russell is the Executive Director of the Boston Women’s Heritage Trail and a WEB Du Bois Research Institute Non-Residential Fellow at Harvard’s Hutchins Center for African & African American Research. You can find the host, Sullivan Summer, online, on Instagram, and at Substack, where she and Dr. Russell 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

Rob Franklin, Great Black Hope (Summit Books, 2025) Born and raised in Atlanta, Rob Franklin is a writer of fiction, criticism, and poetry, and a cofounder of Art for Black Lives. A Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and finalist for the New England Review Emerging Writer prize, he has published work in New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus among others. Franklin holds a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from NYU’s Creative Writing program. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts. Book Recommendations: Katie Kitamura, Audition Josh Duboff, Early Thirties Alexis Okeowo, Blessings and Disasters Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-american-studies

Their Accomplices Wore Robes: How the Supreme Court Chained Black America to the Bottom of a Racial Caste System (Doubleday, 2025) takes readers from the Civil War era to the present and describes how the Supreme Court, even more than the presidency or Congress, aligned with the enemies of Black progress to undermine the promise of the Constitution’s Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments.The Reconstruction Amendments, which sought to abolish slavery, establish equal protection under the law, and protect voting rights, converted the Constitution into a potent anti-caste document. But in the years since, the Supreme Court has refused to allow the amendments to fulfill that promise. Time and again, when petitioned to make the nation’s founding conceit, that all men are created equal, real for Black Americans, the nine black robes have chosen white supremacy over racial fairness. Their Accomplices Wore Robes brings to life dozens of cases and their rich casts of characters to explain how America arrived at this point and how society might arrive somewhere better, even as today’s federal courts lurch rightward. Brando Simeo Starkey is a writer and scholar. A graduate of Harvard Law School and a member of the New York Bar, he taught law at Villanova Law School and wrote for several years for ESPN’s The Undefeated (now Andscape). Born and raised in Cincinnati, he lives in Southern California with his wife and two sons. You can find him online at The Braveverse, and on his YouTube channel of the same name. You can find the host, Sullivan Summer, online, on Instagram, and at Substack, where she and Brando 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

The Human Toll: Taxation and Slavery in Colonial America (NYU Press, 2025) by Anthony C. Infanti documents how the American colonies used tax law to dehumanize enslaved persons, taxing them alongside valuable commodities upon their forced arrival and then as wealth-generating assets in the hands of slaveholders. Dr. Infanti examines how taxation also proved to be an important component for subjugating and controlling enslaved persons, both through its shaping of the composition of new arrivals to the colonies and through its funding of financial compensation to slaveholders for the destruction of their “property” to ensure their cooperation in the administration of capital punishment. The variety of tax mechanisms chosen to fund slaveholder compensation payments conveyed messages about who was thought to benefit from—and, therefore, who should shoulder the burden of—slaveholder compensation while opening a revealing window into these colonial societies.While the story of colonial tax law is intrinsically linked to advancing slavery and racism, Infanti reveals how several colonies used the power of taxation as a means of curtailing the slave trade. Though often self-interested, these efforts show how taxation can be used not only in the service of evil but also to correct societal injustices. Providing a fascinating account of slavery’s economic entrenchment through the history of American tax law, The Human Toll urges us to consider the lessons that fiscal history holds for those working in the reparations movement today. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts. 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 1849, the Mary Ann Shadd Cary had not yet become one of the first Black woman newspaper editors in North America. She was decades away from being admitted to Howard University’s Law School and becoming the first Black woman to so enroll in the United States. She had not yet begun to lobby for women’s right to vote, and she had not yet emigrated to Canada, where she would rise to prominence as a formidable abolitionist and emigrationist. Though many years would pass before she made a name for herself as a gifted writer, editor, lecturer, educator, lawyer, and suffragist, in 1849, Mary Ann Shadd Cary was already certain of one thing: “We should do more, and talk less.” Mary Ann Shadd Cary: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Black Radical Feminist (Oxford Univeristy Press, 2023) includes letters, newspaper articles, organizational records, and never-before-published handwritten notes and essay drafts that illustrate how Shadd Cary participated in major Africana philosophical debates during the nineteenth century. Racial uplift, women’s rights, emigration, citizenship and economic self-determination for Black people in general and Black women in particular, were all subjects of Shadd Cary’s writings and activism throughout her lifetime, shaping Black radical theory and praxis. She is one of many nineteenth-century Black women theorists whose intellectual contributions are often overlooked. By interrogating Shadd Cary’s Black radical ethic of care, this book reveals the philosophies that have shaped Black women's centuries-long struggle for rights and freedom. Nneka D. Dennie is Assistant Professor of History, core faculty in Africana Studies, and affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington and Lee University. She is also co-founder and president of the Black Women’s Studies Association. Dr. Dennie’s research examines Black feminism and Black intellectual thought with an emphasis on nineteenth-century African American women thinkers. Her work has been published in Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International; Feminist Studies; Atlantic Studies: Global Currents; The Routledge Companion to Black Women's Social and Cultural Histories; The Oxford Handbook of W.E.B. Du Bois, and more. You can find the host, Sullivan Summer, online, on Instagram, and at Substack, where she and Dr. Dennie 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