The Great Migration, the mass exodus of blacks from the rural South to the urban North and West in the twentieth century, shaped American culture and life in ways still evident today. The authors trace the ideas that inspired African Americans to abandon the South for freedom and opportunity elsewhere. Black Southerners fled the Low Country of South Carolina, the mines and mills of Birmingham, Alabama, the farms of the Mississippi Delta, and the urban wards of Houston, Texas, for new opportunities in New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

The Black Arts Movement (BAM) encompassed a group of artists, musicians, novelists, and playwrights whose work combined innovative approaches to literature, film, music, visual arts, and theatre. With a heightened consciousness of black agency and autonomy--along with the radical politics of the civil rights movement, the Black Muslims, and the Black Panthers--these figures represented a collective effort to defy the status quo of American life and culture.

Conjuring Freedom: Music and Masculinity in the Civil War's "Gospel Army" analyzes the songs of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers, a regiment of Black soldiers who met nightly in the performance of the ring shout. In this study, acknowledging the importance of conjure as a religious, political, and epistemological practice, Johari Jabir demonstrates how the musical performance allowed troop members to embody new identities in relation to national citizenship, militarism, and masculinity in more inclusive ways.

Follow Bebop the cat on a journey through American music history. Every record takes Bebop to a different colorful sonic world. An award-wining Poet Laureate wrote a unique visual poem, Black Music Is. It is a celebration of vinyl, African-American icons, and modern-day musicians.