As a proud Howard University alum and book collector, this list is one of my favorites to curate. Full of rich history and heritage, Howard University is the perfect topic of book collections to add to your coffee table or home library. Here are a few Howard University Books To Add To Your Coffee Table collection today. Be sure to share images of some of your favorite images with the hashtag #blacksouthernbelle
From the 1920s through the 1970s, Howard University was home to America’s most renowned assemblage of black scholars. This book traces some of the personal and professional activities of this community of public intellectuals, demonstrating their scholar-activist nature and the myriad ways they influenced modern African American, African, and Africana policy studies.
Link to Purchase: https://amzn.to/2DuZXXE
Howard University: The First Hundred Years 1867-1967
Drawing from his own knowledge and university documents, Logan traced Howard’s chronology from 1866, when it was conceived as a theological seminary for African American ministers, to the increasingly successful, and in Logan’s words, cosmopolitan, institution of the 1960s. Logan detailed university milestones, including Howard’s founding by an act of Congress in 1867 and the election of Dr. Mordecai W. Johnson, the university’s first black president, in 1926, as well as the accomplishments of Howard graduates. More than thirty years after its first publication, Logan’s engaging account is essential for a thorough understanding of Howard, and its place in the legacy of historically black universities.
Link to Purchase: https://amzn.to/2XDn0qI
Dorothy Porter Wesley at Howard University: Building a Legacy of Black History
When Dorothy Burnett joined the library staff at Howard University in 1928, she was given a mandate to administer a library of Negro life and history. The school purchased the Arthur B. Spingarn Collection in 1946, along with other collections, and Burnett, who would later become Dorothy Porter Wesley, helped create a world-class archive known as the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center and cemented her place as an immensely important figure in the preservation of African American history. Wesley’s zeal for unearthing materials related to African American history earned her the name of Shopping Bag Lady.” Join author, historian and former Howard University librarian Janet Sims-Wood as she charts the award-winning and distinguished career of an iconic archivist.”
Link to Purchase: https://amzn.to/2XAOLjK
We Are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Student Protest of 1989
We Are Worth Fighting For is the first history of the 1989 Howard University protest. The three-day occupation of the university’s Administration Building was a continuation of the student movements of the sixties and a unique challenge to the politics of the eighties. Upset at the university’s appointment of the Republican strategist Lee Atwater to the Board of Trustees, students forced the issue by shutting down the operations of the university. The protest, inspired in part by the emergence of “conscious” hip hop, helped to build support for the idea of student governance and drew upon a resurgent black nationalist ethos. At the center of this story is a student organization known as Black Nia F.O.R.C.E. Co-founded by Ras Baraka, the group was at the forefront of organizing the student mobilization at Howard during the spring of 1989 and thereafter. We Are Worth Fighting For explores how black student activists—young men and women— helped shape and resist the rightward shift and neoliberal foundations of American politics. This history adds to the literature on Black campus activism, Black Power studies, and the emerging histories of African American life in the 1980s.
Link to Purchase: https://amzn.to/2Dv0IzY
Howard University in the World Wars: Men and Women Serving the Nation
Despite African Americans’ lack of political, social and economic equality in the United States, the students of Howard University answered the call to service in both world wars. Howard supported its men and women in the quest to serve their nation. The university started an army training program during the First World War, and Howard faculty, staff and students pushed the War Department to begin an officer training school for African Americans. The university organized a Reserve Officer Training program in the interwar years, the first at an HBCU. Many of the famed Tuskegee Airmen of World War II were trained first at Howard. Based on a collection of letters sent by Howard students and alumni to the university, historian and archivist Lopez D. Matthews illuminates their wartime experiences.
Link to Purchase: https://amzn.to/2Du8WYZ
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