"This book, I suspect, will detonate over certain corners in America.... Darkology is a major and thrilling work of American history." ―Dwight Garner, New York Times Book Review
As Heard on NPR's Fresh Air: "Quite enlightening." ―Terry Gross
"Tremendous.... Barnes has corralled the chaos, contradiction, and surprise of American social reality; evaded mythology; and made... the ‘unwritten’ legible.... [A] painfully necessary autopsy of the nation’s soul." ―Walton Muyumba, Boston Globe
Named one of the Best Books of the Month by the New York Times, TIME, and Kirkus Reviews

A groundbreaking history, decades in the making, that chronicles how blackface dominated American society culturally, financially, and racially for nearly two centuries.

Never before has the disturbing story of blackface and its piercing reflection of American society been so comprehensively told. With Darkology, Princeton historian Rhae Lynn Barnes meticulously unravels the complex, subterranean, and all-too-often expunged history of “Darkology”―the insidious study, commodification, and dehumanization of Black life, through which performers caricatured the enslaved and formerly enslaved for their supposed subservience and happy demeanor.

Given the extraordinary research reflected inDarkology, it’s not surprising that Barnes spent twenty years tracking down “fading photographs, old movies, bureaucratic detritus, moldy scripts, and living witnesses, assembling an impressive archive that allowed her to demonstrate the astonishingly broad reach of blackface minstrelsy” (Laurel Thatcher Ulrich). Painstakingly piecing together these scattered shards of evidence, Barnes reveals the shocking extent to which blackface took center stage in every era of American history.

This was not a fringe activity. By 1830, as political resistance to slavery grew, blackface exploded from a niche performance into a venomous national export. Within a decade, hardly a theater in the countrydidn’tput on minstrel shows. Following the Civil War, this grotesque entertainment soared, seeping from professional theaters into everyday amateur shows, print, and advertisements. It was everywhere: Elks Clubs, religious institutions, battlefields, universities, and schools. It wasn’t justinthe Jim Crow era; itdefinedit. The very name “Jim Crow” derives from minstrelsy’s founding character.

Darkologydismantles the myth that blackface was a fleeting, post–Civil War phenomenon. Even in eras known for liberal progressivism, it flourished. Barnes unearths the startling fact that four-term president Franklin D. Roosevelt was a devotee who died hours before a blackface show he had commissioned at Warm Springs. It permeated U.S. military bases and was even used in World War II Japanese American concentration camps and German POW camps as a bizarre tool of “Americanization.”

After WWII, the tide began to turn as Black veterans and mothers in places like suburban California protested the practice in schools. Still, blackface performances proved resilient, surfacing as late as 1969 at the University of Vermont. Even as the Civil Rights movement fought for equality, blackface remained present in American politics and white supremacist organizing through the Nixon and Ford administrations, its legacy still percolating in variable forms today.

By tracing minstrelsy’s evolution through oral histories, material culture, and a wide range of multimedia sources, Barnes’s “masterpiece” (David Blight) forces us to reckon with the myriad ways the American Dream wore blackface. Recasting this American story with “vivid and engaging storytelling” (Howard French),Darkologyis a landmark work that peers beneath the boulders deliberately obscuring our past―illuminating a path toward a more just and equal society in America’s future. 72 illustrations

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Liveright

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 24, 2026

• Author: Rhae Lynn Barnes

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 528 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1631496344

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1631496349

The first full and definitive narrative of one of the most shocking and largely unknown events of racial injustice in US history: the execution of nineteen Black soldiers in Texas

On the sweltering, rainy night of August 23, 1917, one of the most consequential events affecting America’s long legacy of racism and injustice began in Houston, Texas. Inflamed by a rumor that a white mob was arming to attack them, and after weeks of police harassment, more than 100 African American soldiers of the 3rd Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, took their weapons without authorization and, led by a sergeant, marched into the largely Black San Felipe district of the city. Violent confrontations with police and civilians ensued and nineteen lives were lost.

The Army moved quickly to court-martial 118 soldiers on charges of mutiny and murder, even though a majority of the soldiers involved had never fired their weapons. Inadequately defended en masse by a single officer who was not a lawyer and had no experience in capital cases, in three trials undermined by perjured testimony and clear racial bias, and confronted by an all-white tribunal committed to a rapid judgment, 110 Black soldiers were found guilty—despite the fact that no mutiny had, in fact, taken place. In the predawn darkness of December 11, thirteen of them were hanged at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio—hastily and in secret, without any chance to appeal. News of the largest mass execution in the Army’s history outraged the country and inspired preventive legislation; and yet six more Black soldiers were executed in early 1918 and the rest were sentenced to life in prison.

The Houston Incident, as it became known, has remained largely untold, a deep stain on the Army’s record and pride. Award-winning historian and Army veteran John A. Haymond has spent six years researching the events surrounding the Incident and leading the efforts that ultimately led, in November 2023, to the largest act of retroactive clemency in the Army’s history when the verdicts were overturned and honorable discharges awarded to all the soldiers involved. His dramatic chronicle of what transpired—situated amongst the rampant racism in Texas and the country—is a crucially important and harrowing reminder of our racially violent past, offering the promise that justice, even posthumously, can prevail.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grove Press

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 14, 2026

• Author: John A. Haymond

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 400 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0802167594

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0802167590

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • Award-winning author and journalist Wil Haygood explores how the Vietnam War became a mirror for the struggle of Black Americans—fighting for freedom abroad while demanding equality at home—and a powerful lens through which to understand the racial and political divides that continue to shape American life.

"With this book, Wil Haygood has become the preeminent chronicler of the Black experience in America.” —Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Laureate for The Making of the Atomic Bomb

"In these masterful pages, Haygood reframes both the Vietnam War and the United States’ unfinished struggle for equality."—Mitchell Zuckoff, New York Times bestselling author of 13 Hours and Lost in Shangri-La

Drawing on the lives of soldiers and officers, doctors and nurses, journalists and activists, artists and politicians, Haygood illuminates a generation caught between two battles: one on the front lines in Vietnam and another for justice and dignity in America.

Among those at the heart of the story are Air Force pilot Fred Cherry, the first Black officer captured by the North Vietnamese and a hero to millions back home; Dr. Elbert Nelson, a doctor who came to Vietnam after watching TV footage of the Watts riots in Los Angeles and soon found himself amid rising Black soldier protests overseas; Wallace Terry, a groundbreaking Black reporter determined to expose the dynamics of race and war to the American public and Philippa Schuyler, a biracial concert pianist who traveled to Vietnam to rescue mixed-race orphans, many fathered by Black soldiers, and died trying to bring them to safety.

Surrounding their experiences are the cultural and political forces of the era, including Martin Luther King Jr., Marvin Gaye, Berry Gordy, and Lyndon Johnson, whose voices and actions shaped a decade of turbulence and transformation.

The War Within a War is both sweeping history and intimate revelation, capturing the tragedies and triumphs, the honor and hypocrisies, the courage and cowardice that shaped an era and whose repercussions resonate today.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Knopf

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 10, 2026

• Author: Wil Haygood

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 384 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0593537696

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593537695

Dear Black Girl
You teach the world
The power of creativity
Just by being yourself

Celebrate the creativity, bravery, dreams, and laughter of Black girls with this purposeful, powerful text from poet and author Mahogany L. Browne. With lush, bright illustrations from artist Sawyer Cloud, this picture book is perfect for honoring big milestones and finding joy in everyday moments―a heartwarming and jubilant love letter to Black girls everywhere.

• ublisher ‏ : ‎ Roaring Brook Press

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 5, 2026

• Author: Mahogany L. Browne

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 32 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250268044

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250268044

Explores the intersection of racial thought and reproductive science and policy across the British Empire.

In Generating Difference, Andrew Wells traces the entwined histories of race, sex, and reproduction in Britain and its empire during the long eighteenth century. Challenging the assumption that the concept of race evolved in the modern era solely through new forms of biological science, Wells argues that older ideas of lineage, sexual reproduction, and bodily difference remained central to how race was understood, categorized, and enforced well into the nineteenth century.

From the pages of Enlightenment science to colonial policy in the Caribbean, South Asia, and the Pacific, Wells shows how reproductive sex served as a primary framework for defining human differences. Concepts of identity were written onto bodies—especially those marked as non-white or non-male—through perceived differences in anatomy, fertility, and sexuality, albeit never unproblematically. Whether in debates about slavery, interracial relationships, embryology, or population policy, the reproductive body became the crucible in which ideas about race and sex were forged and maintained.

Offering a global scope beyond the Atlantic, including South Asia and the Pacific, and drawing from a wide range of sources—from satire to scientific treatises—Generating Difference brings the scholarship of race and sexuality into direct and compelling conversation. Wells uncovers how deeply reproduction structured imperial ideologies and how the policing of bodies helped naturalize hierarchy, control, and exclusion. At its core, the book reconsiders what made difference "visible" in a period before the dominance of the idea of racial biology.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Johns Hopkins University Press

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 13, 2026

• Author: Andrew Wells

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 390 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1421453606

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1421453606

An illustrated history that celebrates the legacy of Black actors, films, and filmmakers from the silent era through today and explores the deeply embedded racism of the film industry, from the award-winning author of The Black Panther Party

In Black Film, Eisner Award-winning author David F. Walker presents an immersive dive into the crucial history of Black actors, films, and filmmakers. Following closely behind the very first moving picture captured by Eadward Muybridge in 1872, Thomas Edison's thirty-second "actualities" from the late 1890s, including A Watermelon Contest and Dancing Darkey Boy, are among the first short films to depict Black people. These can be considered the earliest examples of how the film industry would go on to exploit, appropriate, and shape the narrative of Black people for the duration of its development.

Divided by decade, each section of the book covers an important era and milestone for Black film, highlighting both difficulties and triumphs through time. For example:

• The harmful popularization of blackface and minstrel shows (1890-1914)

• The emergence of racist feature-length movies such as Birth of a Nation after the advancement of sound in film, countered by the success of pioneering Black filmmakers such as Oscar Michaeux and brothers George and Noble Johnson (1915-1928)

• The rise of trailblazing actors such as Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge (1950-1959)

• The roots of Blaxploitation as a subgenre and how Black people ultimately saved Hollywood during trying times (1970-1979)

• The exciting crossover of hip-hop music into film (1980-1989)

• The box office success of Marvel's The Black Panther, Moonlight's history-making Best Picture win, and more.

With gorgeous illustrations, film stills, and rare pieces of ephemera, Black Film celebrates the glowing contributions of Black actors and filmmakers, without shying away from discussing the racism that is rooted in Hollywood—an important reality to address in order to make progress.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ten Speed Press

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 24, 2026

• Author: David F. Walker

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 208 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 198486016X

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1984860163

SIX STARRED REVIEWS!

Award-winning creators Anne Wynter and Micha Archer share a mother-daughter tale about delighting in small pleasures throughout the city. Perfect for fans of Oge Mora and Sophie Blackall.

Anne Wynter perfectly captures the hurry and hustle of a busy day. But when plans change and a girl and her mother slow down to savor small pleasures, the real celebration begins.

Dazzling, kaleidoscopic cut paper artwork from Caldecott Honor ar

tist Micha Archer highlights each special moment in this sweet tribute to time spent together.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Clarion Books

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 24, 2026

• Author: Anne Wynter

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 40 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0063238292

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0063238299

Publishers Weekly • Best Books of 2025 [Nonfiction]
Foreign Policy • Most Anticipated Books of 2025

“Howard French’s The Second Emancipation stands the second half of the last century on its geopolitical head.” ―David Levering Lewis, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

From the acclaimed author of Born in Blackness comes an extraordinary account of Africa’s liberation from colonial oppression, a work that fundamentally reshapes our understanding of modern history.

The Second Emancipation, the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa’s pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild’s contention that French is a “modern-day Copernicus.” The title―referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom―positions this liberation at the center of a “movement of global Blackness,” with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), at its head.

That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is “typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa’s enormous role in the birth of the modern world.” Determined to re-create Nkrumah’s life as “an epic twentieth-century story,”The Second Emancipationbegins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana’s Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French’s consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah’s early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu―including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him “one of the greatest political leaders of our century”―and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.

Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana’s first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah’s radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.

In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom,The Second Emancipationbecomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Liveright

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 6, 2026

• Author: Howard W. French

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 512 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1324099372

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1324099376

• Find the power to be your authentic self in Christ and take hold of the life you have been longing for.

  Are you tired of "just making it" day after day? Learn how to give voice to your changing needs and acknowledge your growth. The Power in Surrender teaches you to refuse the burden of bearing it all alone, allowing you to release the power within you.

  In a world that constantly bombards us with expectations and distractions, it's easy to lose sight of who we truly are. We're often overwhelmed by other people's projections of how we should feel, act, or respond. But imagine harnessing the power to be your authentic self, free from judgment and full of courage.

  The Power in Surrender by Sarah Jakes Roberts, New York Times bestselling author of Woman Evolve and Power Moves, will inspire you with 100 ways to seize courage, conquer doubt, and yield to God's plan. When your life is filled with noise, you need to find the strength to be unapologetically you. With her signature warmth and wisdom Sarah Jakes Roberts helps you strip away external pressures and reconnect with your true self in Christ. A life where you are free to live, love, and grow without judgment or fear is waiting for you, if you will only step into it!

  You will learn principles to activate the most powerful version of yourself and be guided in presenting your authentic self to the world. The Power in Surrender will help you:

  • Seize Courage: Learn to face life's challenges with bravery and faith, guided by Sarah's empowering words.

  • Conquer Doubt: Overcome your uncertainties and insecurities by tapping into the principles of truth and humility.

  • Yield to God's Plan: Discover the freedom that comes from surrendering to God's love and purpose for your life.

  • Unleash Authentic Power: Understand the strength that lies in being yourself, without the need for external validation.

  Take hold of the life you have been dreaming of—the one filled with purpose and courage that flows from being your true self in Christ—and let these 100 encouraging and uplifting devotions propel you to become your authentic self.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thomas Nelson

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 3, 2026

• Author: Sarah Jakes Roberts

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 224 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1400236924

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400236923

You may not have all the answers, but you can Know.

The world is loud, uncertain, and unsettled--and almost everyone feels it. Concerns about the future loom while anxiety rates continue to climb across the globe. Confusion and overwhelm have become a quiet epidemic in our homes and our minds.

In Knowing, bestselling author Touré Roberts offers a path out of the noise and into a deep internal clarity. Drawing from his own transformative journey, from his experience as an entrepreneur, pastor, and counselor, and from the findings of science, Roberts shows how reconnecting with the deep awareness within you can restore confidence, direction, and peace.

This book will help you:

• Break free from confusion, hesitation, and second-guessing

• Recognize how trauma and stress distort your perception--and how to clear the fog

• Make grounded, confident decisions even in chaotic times

• Rebuild inner trust and regain an assurance of direction

You don't have to escape uncertainty. You don't have to predict the future. But you can learn to perceive what truly matters and move forward with a steady confidence that nothing in the world can shake. Knowing is your invitation to discover how.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Zondervan

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 28, 2026

• Author: Toure’ Roberts

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 224 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0310371120

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0310371120

A social activist, journalist, public theologian, and international speaker who has become a powerful and brilliant voice of her generation offers a bold path to liberation and healing for people of African descent struggling in the shadows of the American Dream.

The United States is at a critical juncture in its history. Not since the 1960s has the nation been so racially divided. White supremacy remains America’s Achilles’ heel—a moral failure that haunts us and holds us back from being the great nation we profess. For centuries, people of African descent have endured unimaginable hatred and discrimination which has manifested in pain and trauma passed from generation to generation. To break free from this historical cycle of suffering and be truly free at last, Black and brown people must reimagine ourselves, our communities, this country, and our relationship to Africa.

Weaving storytelling, socioeconomic analysis, and cultural criticism with the spiritual and political threads of liberation theology and Pan Africanism, Imagine Freedom empowers us to begin the difficult but necessary work of decolonizing our minds and overcoming the lies we have been told about ourselves for centuries. Sobering and inspiring, filled with despair and hope, Rahiel Tesfamariam dares us to see the world through a larger historical and global lens— to understand how our quests for freedom and healing are intrinsically connected to our past, present, and future. By widening our vision, we discover new ways of imagining self, community, nation, and world, and most importantly, a new way to achieve the freedom that has been too long denied.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Amistad

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 3, 2026

• Author: Rahiel Tesfamariam

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 304 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0063253097

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0063253094

The star of classic television series, including The Jeffersons and 227, reveals her difficult journey from a tempestuous childhood to becoming a confident Hollywood powerbroker and groundbreaker who paved the way for today’s superstar talents.

Marla Gibbs has been a Hollywood icon for generations of fans. Now, at ninety-three, she chronicles her climb from a difficult youth in which she yearned for safety and love, to the high-stakes world of Hollywood where she became a confident powerbroker learning to work behind the scenes for fair pay, access, and more creative control for herself and her colleagues.

Told in her forthright voice, It's Never Too Late illuminates Gibbs' daring move to Los Angeles to rebuild her life after an abusive marriage, how she became an actor, and how she eventually learned to balance acting with show running. She was a “Boss Bae” decades before the term would become entertainment industry shorthand for a power flex. While developing 227 her lawyer won her “all rights, courtesies and privileges of an executive producer without the credit.” Though the authority she wielded behind the scenes created deep tensions on and off the set, her hard-luck young life had prepared her to succeed even as her tenacity was put to the test. Her experiences laid the groundwork for powerbrokers like Shonda Rhimes and Issa Rae.

An inspiring personal portrait of triumph and Hollywood that reminds us we can leave the past behind, It’s Never Too Late is the true tale of a remarkable life and a wise guidebook for aspiring artists, entrepreneurs, and entertainment fans.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Amistad

• Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 24, 2026

• Author: Marla Gibbs

• Language ‏ : ‎ English

• Print length ‏ : ‎ 288 pages

• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0063356635

• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0063356634