This book reveals why Aaron Henry (1922–1997) should be acknowledged, in the ranks of Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers, as a truly influential crusader.

Long before many of his contemporaries, he was ...

A pianist, arranger, and composer, William Pursell is a mainstay of the Nashville music scene. He has played jazz in Nashville’s Printer’s Alley with Chet Atkins and Harold Bradley, recorded with ...

Winner of the 2019 Humanities Book of the Year from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities

Today sharecropping is history, though during World War II and the Great Depression sharecropping was prevalent ...

Blues Book of the Year
—26th Annual Living Blues Awards

Contributions by Luther Allison, John Broven, Daniel Droixhe, David Evans, William Ferris, Jim O'Neal, Mike Rowe, Robert Sacré, Arnold Shaw, and ...

A master sailor when he was barely in his twenties, Sterling Hayden (1916-1986) became an overnight film star despite having no training in acting. After starring in two major films, he quit Hollywood ...

George T. Malvaney's life epitomizes the old maxim that "You cannot make this stuff up. " Combine a young Klansman from Mississippi, an armed coup attempt in the Caribbean, a stay in prison, and a life-changing ...

Winner, Best History, 2012 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research

When Mississippi John Hurt (1892-1966) was "rediscovered" by blues revivalists ...

In Forty Acres and a Goat, Will D. Campbell (1924–2013) picks up where the award-winning Brother to a Dragonfly leaves off, accounting his adventures during the tumultuous civil rights era. As he navigates ...

Jazz great Gerald Wilson (1918-2014), born in Shelby, Mississippi, left a global legacy of paramount significance through his progressive musical ideas and his orchestra's consistent influence on international ...

In Brother to a Dragonfly, Will D. Campbell (1924–2013) writes about his life growing up poor in Amite County, Mississippi, during the 1930s alongside his older brother, Joe. Though they grew up in ...