AFRICAN AMERICAN from Downtown Brown Books, ABAA

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. A children's picture-book about the late, great tennis player and his six-year-old daughter, written by his wife. Illustrated with black-and-white photographs showing their father-daughter relationship. First edition (first printing with a numberline ending in 1). A fine copy in a fine dust jacket. This copy is inscribed on… Read more about this item

New York: Viking, 1983. First Edition. Hardcover. Near fine/Near fine. The acclaimed writer's first book, a comic novel about a baseball player, an elephant, and a 9 year old runaway who adopts them both. Everett is finally gaining a wider readership because of the award-winning film American Fiction made from his novel, Erasure, a farce about… Read more about this item

New York: The Dial Press, 1972. First Edition. Hardcover. Good/Good. A memoir of the author's childhood, of the Civil Rights movement, and living abroad in a kind of exile. First edition (first printing). A good copy in a good, price-clipped dust jacket. There is some wear and spotting to the cloth; the jacket has tears, some light chipping… Read more about this item

New York: John Day Company, 1934. Hardcover. Very good. Bright Ambush won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1935, when Wurdemann was only 24 years old, making her the youngest recipient of the award. [xvi], 76, [4] pages. First edition (first printing). A very good copy in the publisher's green cloth; lacking the uncommon dust jacket. This… Read more about this item

Glasgow: David Russell, 1844. First Edition. Pamphlet. Very good. Reports on the business and activities of the Glasgow Emancipation Society and provides the text of remarks given by various speakers at the annual meeting. The Society aimed to abolish slavery worldwide. 47, [1] pages. Uncommon. Spine perished, else very good in the original string-bound printed wrappers. Pages… Read more about this item

London: Harper Voyager in Association with Goldsboro Books, 2019. First British edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. One of 250 signed and numbered copies of the UK edition of this debut fantasy novel that incorporates elements of voodoo and African American folklore. Bound with black-dyed page edges. First UK edition (first printing). A fine copy in a fine dust jacket.… Read more about this item

London: William Tweedie, 1860. First Edition. Hardcover. The first book on the Underground Railroad, published only in England while the fabled escape route for enslaved Americans was still active. William Mitchell was the son of an enslaved man and a Native American woman in North Carolina. According to the introduction by W. H. Bonner, a British abolitionist who encouraged… Read more about this item

New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine. A novel. One of 500 numbered copies signed by Alice Walker. 416 pages. First edition (first printing). A fine copy in the publisher's undyed cotton-covered slipcase. No dust jacket, as issued. This copy is still sealed in the original shrinkwrap.

New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine. A novel. This is one of 250 numbered copies signed by Walker. First edition (first printing). A fine copy in a fine slipcase (no dust jacket, as issued). Signed and numbered by Walker on the limitation page.

New York: Robert O. Ballou, 1934. Second Printing. Hardcover. Very good. An account of African American life on Lang Syne, one of the largest plantations in South Carolina, written by the novelist Julia Peterkin and photographed by New York heiress Doris Ullman. "Ullman's soft-focus photos-rendered as tactile as charcoal drawings in the superb gravure reproductions here-straddle… Read more about this item

New York: World Publishing Company, 1971. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. The memoirs of the brother of the assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers. xii, 196 pages. First edition (stated first printing). Some spotting to the front board, else very good in a very good dust jacket with shallow chipping to the top of the spine.… Read more about this item

London: Archibald Constable & Co, 1905. First British edition. Hardcover. Very good. The first British edition (two years after the American) of one of the Library of Congress's 88 Books that Shaped America: "'Few books make history and fewer still become foundational texts for the movements and struggles of an entire people. The Souls of Black Folk occupies… Read more about this item

Brooklyn: Black Photographers Annual, 1974. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. The second of four volumes seeking to define "a new Blackness, real and strong as our history, pushing consciousness toward a new place" through photography (quoted from the first volume). At the time Joe Crawford started this series, African American photographers had been almost completely left out of… Read more about this item

Detroit: Randall, Photographer, 1881. Ephemera. Very good. A full-length cabinet card portrait of Sojourner Truth with the caption, "I sell the shadow to support the substance." This is one of Truth's last portraits, taken when she was in her eighties and purchased in bulk to sell at events, hence the caption. During the Civil War, Truth took the… Read more about this item

Cambalache, Arecibo, Puerto Rico: Padrón de Esclavos, Isla de Puerto Rico, 1868. Ephemera. Near Fine. A registration document for a 29-year-old enslaved woman who lived on the north coast of Puerto Rico. In 1867, in response to the American Civil War and abolitionist movements in the Spanish colonies, the Spanish crown began to limit the trade in… Read more about this item

St. Louis: Amerika Print, 1919. First Edition. Pamphlet. Good. An offprint from the Fortnightly Review, in which the leading Mexican American historian of his time argues that Native Americans and African slaves were treated better in Spanish America than in the United States. His view of the enslaved people is best expressed by quoting his summary of the… Read more about this item

Brownsville, OR: Story Line Press, 1994. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author's verse-play set among enslaved people on a plantation in antebellum South Carolina. Dove also served as the US Poet Laureate. This is one of 224 numbered copies, signed by the author on the title page. 140 pages. First edition (first printing). A fine… Read more about this item

Paris: Julliard, 1960. First French Edition. Paperback. Very good. A French translation of Wright's last novel, a grim story of a Black mortician trying to navigate life in Jim Crow Mississippi. With an interview with Wright by Maurice Nadeau and a portrait of him by Monique Métrot. Issued as Les lettres nouvelles no. 3. 459 pages. First… Read more about this item

New York: DAW Books, 2015. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. A prequel to Who Fears Death, about a genetically engineered woman named Phoenix who gradually realizes that her home is really a prison. Okorafor distinct Africanfuturism style draws upon her Nigerian heritage and her American upbringing. First edition (first printing with a numberline ending in 1). A fine… Read more about this item

Berkeley: Image Comics, 2013. First Edition. Hardcover. Fine. A volume collecting Chew comics nos. 1 to 20, with extras at the end. The story follows detective Tony Chu, who gets psychic emanations from all foods except canned beets-it's a hard-boiled satire of foodie culture. The artist, Rob Guillory is one of the too-small number of Black comic creators. … Read more about this item