March 15, 2021
On February 28, 2021, The Washington Post ran the feature, “Denied a teaching job for being ‘too Black’ she started her own school—and a movement” by Jess McHugh. The piece illuminates how Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879–1961) fought tirelessly for Black women of every shade to win the right to an education, fair wages, suffrage and a place […]
March 5, 2021
For Women’s History Month, the University of Notre Dame Press is proud to feature works on the excellent contributions of a diverse group of women. Academics, artists, political leaders, matrons—they are all here, manifesting in various ways the feminine genius. “It is thus my hope, dear sisters, that you will reflect carefully on what it […]
March 3, 2021
William C. Kashatus holds a doctorate in history education from the University of Pennsylvania. He curated Just Over the Line: Chester County and the Underground Railroad, recognized by The Journal of American History as a “first rate exhibit and model of outreach to the local community” and winner of the American Association of Historical Societies and […]
February 26, 2021
When Catholic churches were built in the New World in the sixteenth century, they were furnished with rich textiles known in Spanish as “church clothing.” These textile ornaments covered churches’ altars, stairs, floors, and walls. Vestments clothed priests and church attendants, and garments clothed statues of saints. The value attached to these textiles, their constant […]
January 29, 2021
In celebration of Black History Month, and in order to share Black voices and the history of civil rights, segregation, and the continued fight for equality more widely, the University of Notre Dame Press has put together a page of some of our most important books in African American studies and African American Intellectual History. […]
January 25, 2021
Distinguished historian and civil rights activist Howard Ball has written extensively about civil rights and civil liberties. In Taking the Fight South, Ball’s candid and beautifully written memoir, he focuses on six years, from 1976 to 1982, when he and his Jewish family moved from the Bronx to Starkville, Mississippi, where he taught in the political science […]
January 18, 2021
Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 18, 2021, is the 26th anniversary of the day of service that celebrates the civil rights leader’s life and legacy. While designated as a national day of service to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities, it is also used as a day to examine King’s work […]
January 13, 2021
William Still: The Underground Railroad and the Angel at Philadelphia (April 2020) is the first major biography of the free black abolitionist William Still, who coordinated the Eastern Line of the Underground Railroad and was a pillar of the Railroad as a whole. This monumental work details Still’s life story beginning with his parents’ escape from […]
Distinguished historian and civil rights activist Howard Ball has written dozens of books during his career, including the landmark biography of Thurgood Marshall, A Defiant Life, and the critically acclaimed Murder in Mississippi, chronicling the Mississippi Burning killings. In Taking the Fight South (February 2021), arguably his most personal book, Ball focuses on six years, from 1976 to […]
July 20, 2020
Published in 1944, What the Negro Wants was a direct and emphatic call for the end of segregation and racial discrimination that set the agenda for the Civil Rights Movement to come. With essays by fourteen prominent African American intellectuals, including Langston Hughes, Sterling Brown, Mary McLeod Bethune, A. Philip Randolph, W. E. B. Du […]
