The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement. They were alternately known as "waste people," "offals," "rubbish," "lazy lubbers," and "crackers." By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called "clay eaters" and "sandhillers," known for prematurely-aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular literature...

"Bestselling author Ellis Cose's groundbreaking latest work interrogates pivotal decisions from enslavement to the New Deal to the handling of Covid that established the United States discriminatory practices for centuries to come. Numerous racialized decisions have solidified America's, and people of color's, fate at different points in history. The first were race-based slavery and the removal of Indigenous peoples from their land. More have proliferated...

Herbert Powyss lives in an estate in the Welsh Marches, with enough time and income to pursue a gentleman's fashionable investigations and experiments in botany. But he longs to make his mark in the field of science--something consequential enough to present to the Royal Society in London. He hits on a radical experiment in isolation: For seven years a subject will inhabit three rooms in the basement of the manor house, fitted out with rugs, books,...

Racism has persisted throughout history - but so have antiracist efforts to dismantle it. Through deep research and a gripping narrative that illuminates the lives of 5 key American figures, preeminent historian Dr. Ibram X. Kendi reveals how understanding and improving the word cannot happen without identifying and facing the racist forces that shape it.Stamped from the Beginning explores, with vivid clarity and dimensionality, the living history...

"The story of Reconstruction is often told from the perspective of the politicians, generals, and journalists whose accounts claim an outsized place in collective memory. But this pivotal era looked very different to African Americans in the South transitioning from bondage to freedom after 1865. They were besieged by a campaign of white supremacist violence that persisted through the 1880s and beyond. For too long, their lived experiences have been...