Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003. dj. Hardcover first edition - A book which attempts to uncover the truth behind the legend of Stack Lee and the incident that led to murder in 1895. Brown tracks the legend through variants of the song "from early ragtime versions of the '20s, to Mississippi John Hurt's rendition in the '30s, to John Lomax's 1940s prison versions, to interpretations by Lloyd Price, James Brown, and Wilson Pickett, right up to the hip-hop renderings of the '90s. Drawing upon the works of James Baldwin, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison, he describes the powerful influence of a legend bigger than literature, one whose transformation reflects changing views of black musical forms, and African Americans' altered attitudes toward black male identity, gender, and police brutality." Notes, bibliography, index. viii, 296 pp. ISBN: 0-674010566.

Frankfurt, Germany: Verlag Moritz Diesterweg (1977). First edition - A short story by this Black Panther leader and activist which was originally published in 1969 in Playboy Magazine. The story of a gang leader in Southern California who steals a powerful flashlight from a car and relishes the sense of power it gives him - although he also feels it is the beginning of a new direction in his life. This separate publication is a small pamphlet with the text in English, a title in the Diesterwegs Neusprachliche Bibliothek. Includes an introduction and annotations. "File copy, Joan Daves" stamped on front cover and title page. An interesting association copy with "File copy, Joan Daves" stamped on front cover and title page. Joan Daves (1919-1997) who escaped from the Nazi regime in the 1930s, later became an editor at Harper and was perhaps best known as Martin Luther King's literary agent. 65 pp. Ê

Urbana and Chicago: University of Chicago Press, (1972) dj. Hardcover first edition - A book about a "largely ignored form of twentieth-century slavery. It is 'the record of an American failure, the inability of federal, state, and local law-enforcement officers to end peonage.' In a series of case studies and histories, Daniel re-creates the neglected and frightening world of peonage. . Peonage grew out of labor settlements following emancipation, when employers forbade croppers to leave plantations because of debt (often less than $30). At the turn of the century the federal government acknowledged that the 'labyrinth of local customs and laws' binding men in debt was peonage. They outlawed debt servitude and slowly moved against it, but with no large success. . . Daniel holds that peonage persists for many reasons: the corruption and apathy of law-enforcement, racist traditions in the South, and the impotence of the Justice Department in prosecuting this violation of federal law. He draws extensively on complaints and trial transcripts from the peonage records of the Justice Department." Illustrated with photographs. Footnotes, index. xii, 209 pp. ISBN: 0-252002067.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A definitive analysis of slave resistance and escape, one which shows that, contrary to popular belief, slaves frequently rebelled against their masters and ran away from their plantations whenever they could. Based on original documents including "planters' records, petitions to county courts and state legislatures, and local newspapers, this book shows how slaves resisted, when, where, and how they escaped, where they fled to, how long they remained in hiding, and how they survived away from the plantation. Of equal importance, it examines the reactions of the white slaveholding class, revealing how they marshaled considerable effort to prevent runaways, meted out severe punishments, and established patrols to hunt down escaped slaves." SIGNED on the title page by author Loren Schweninger with the words "best wishes," Illustrated, charts, extensive notes, bibliography, index. xvii, 455 pp. ISBN: 0-195084497.

New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A definitive analysis of slave resistance and escape, one which shows that, contrary to popular belief, slaves frequently rebelled against their masters and ran away from their plantations whenever they could. Based on original documents including "planters' records, petitions to county courts and state legislatures, and local newspapers, this book shows how slaves resisted, when, where, and how they escaped, where they fled to, how long they remained in hiding, and how they survived away from the plantation. Of equal importance, it examines the reactions of the white slaveholding class, revealing how they marshaled considerable effort to prevent runaways, meted out severe punishments, and established patrols to hunt down escaped slaves." INSCRIBED by Franklin on the half title page. Illustrated, charts, extensive notes, bibliography, index. xvii, 455 pp. ISBN: 0-195084497.

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (2009). First edition - An account written for young adults of the role of teenager Claudette Colvin in sparking the Montgomery bus boycott - " On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South. Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, [this is the] first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history." Winner of the 2009 National Book Award for Young People's Literature. a 2010 Newbery Honor Book, and more. Illustrated throughout with photographs. Bibliography, notes. Slightly oversized square format. 122 pp.

New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, (2005). SIGNED hardcover first edition - An account of a New Orleans murder trial and of justice gone wrong. "In a New Orleans supermarket parking lot in the fall of 1984 ,two disparate lives become inextricably bound for the next fourteen years. The first, the life of Delores Dye, a white housewife and grandmother. The second, a young black man with a gun in hand. Moments following their maybe not so chance encounter, Mrs. Dye lay dead on the sunbaked macadam, and the killer had made off with her purse, her groceries, and her car. Four days later, following a tip, authorities arrested a known drug dealer and father of five named Curtis Kyles. Kyles would then be tried for Mrs. Dye's murder an unprecedented five times, though he maintained his innocence throughout each trial. Convicted and sentenced to death in his second trial, he would spend fourteen years on death row. . . But the case slowly yielded a deeper drama: That police and prosecutors may have been complicit in the vengeance that framed Kyles cuts to the heart of a system of justice for Southern blacks in the era since lynch mobs were shamed into obsolescence." INSCRIBED by the author on the title page "for --- esteemed and much loved comrade in arms." Nominated for the Edgar Award. Photographs. 343 pp. ISBN: 0-374138257.

Boston: Houghton Mifflin, n.d. (ca 1880). Hardcover - Foreword on ' Fisk University's Great Necessity' dated 1880. Author's note stating that this was ".in part an abridgement of the two Jubilee Histories which were written by the Rev. G.D. Pike, one giving an account of the first campaign in America and the other of the first visit to Great Britain. But the interval between the two narratives is here bridged over, and the story is brought down to the return of the Jubilee Singers from Germany. The personal histories have been more fully written out and a large number of new songs have been added." The Jubilee singers were a small group of former slaves who embarked on their tour to raise funds for Fisk University. Illustrated, including an Albertype frontispiece photograph of the Jubilee singers - with an accompanying caption printed on the tissue guard.. Includes 128 songs. vii, 265 pp. Previous owner's name with the notation "bought when the Jubilee Singers were in Mansfield in 1880."

Philadelphia: Temple University Press, (2002). First edition - A book which takes a "new look at the invention of whiteness and how the inextricable links between race and class were formed in the seventeenth century and consolidated by custom, social relations, and eventually naturalized by the structures that organize our lives and our work. Arguing that, unlike in Europe, where class formed around the nation-state, race deeply informed how class is defined in this country and, conversely, our unique relationship to class in this country helped in some ways to invent race as a distinction in social relations. Martinot begins tracing this development in the slave plantations in 1600s colonial life. He examines how the social structures encoded there lead to a concrete development of racialization. He then takes us up to the present day, where forms of those structures still inhabit our public and economic institutions." A title in the Labor In Crisis series. Notes, index.xii, 240 pp. Review copy with publisher's materials laid in. ISBN: 1-566399823.