Carter Godwin Woodson (1875-1950) was an African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of Black History Month. He is considered the first to conduct a scholarly effort to popularize the value of Black History.

This anthology contains seventeen essays covering eighteenth-century agrarian unrest, the Revolutionary War, politics in the Jackson era, feminism and the women's movements, slavery from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, strikes and labor struggles, land use and regional planning issues, Blacks in Newark, the current political state of New Jersey, and more. The contributors are Michal R. Belknap, Patricia U. Bonomi, Lyle W. Dorsett, John P. Dwyer, Jim Fisher, Charles E. Funnell, Steve Golin, Bradley M. Gottfried, Paul E. Johnson, David L. Kirp, Mark Edward Lender, Maxine N. Lurie, Richard P. McCormick, Mary R. Murrin, Larry A. Rosenthal, Amy Shapiro, Warren E. Stickle III, Lorraine E. Williams, Giles R. Wright