Want some soul food? J’Way Cafe finally opens this weekend! Come get your pulled pork and sweet potato pie in our basement cafe during our regular store hours – Saturday, Feb 6 10AM – 9PM & Sunday 12 Noon – 6PM.
February is Black History Month, and our store is stocked with resources about the African-American experience adults, kids and teachers can appreciate. Check out our Black History Month Book List to learn more about the people and events that have shaped our country.
The Boston Black Theater Collective will stage its first reading here at the store with a series of short vignettes by award-winning playwright Ed Bullins and his company Roxbury Crossroads Theatre. This event takes place Tuesday, Feb. 16 at 6PM. It is sponsored by The Trotter Institute and The Color of Film Collaborative, in association with StageSource and The Greater Boston Theatre Alliance.
Store Highlights
“From the first Black amateur players before the Civil War through to the last barnstorming Negro League teams in the 1960s, Black Baseball: A History of African-Americans & the National Game is the complete and utterly fascinating history of segregated baseball in the United States. Thanks to photographs of the major players and many first-hand accounts, baseball fans will get the full story of this tumultuous time, behind the scenes and out in the ballparks. Every detail is revealed, starting with that sad day in 1911 when the governing body of the National Association of Baseball Players voted unanimously to bar any club that signed an African-American. Meet the many players, including George Stovey, Sol White, and Welday Walker, who blazed the way for Jackie Robinson to integrate major league baseball in 1947. Feel the frustration felt by the players when they were denied hotel rooms and restaurant service while on the road. Every image and tale also conveys the joy of the game and the pride these men felt in playing professional baseball.”
“First published in December 1853, Clotel, or The President’s Daughter was written amid then unconfirmed rumors that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with one of his slaves. The story begins with the auction of his mistress, here called Currer, and their two daughters, Clotel and Althesa. The Virginian who buys Clotel falls in love with her, gets her pregnant, seems to promise marriage—then sells her. Escaping from the slave dealer, Clotel returns to Virginia disguised as a white man in order to rescue her daughter, Mary, a slave in her father’s house. A fast-paced and harrowing tale of slavery and freedom, of the hypocrisies of a nation founded on democratic principles, Clotel is more than a sensationalist novel. It is a founding text of the African American novelistic tradition, a brilliantly composed and richly detailed exploration of human relations in a new world in which race is a cultural construct.”
“When the Supreme Court decision to desegregate public schools was handed down in 1954, the course of American history was forever changed. Linda Brown, You Are Not Alone: The Brown v. Board of Education Decision is a collection of personal reflections, stories, and poems from ten of today’s most accomplished writers for children, all young people themselves at the time of the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Included are Michael Cart, Jean Craighead George, Eloise Greenfield, Lois Lowry, Katherine Paterson, Ishmael Reed, Jerry Spinelli, Quincy Troupe, Joyce Carol Thomas, and Leona Nicholas Welch. With a compelling introduction by editor Joyce Carol Thomas and stunning pastel artwork by Curtis E. James, this collection celebrates the hard-earned promise of equality in education.” Grades 6-12
