A welcome departure from the grim accounts in the Arsenault volume comes via Hokum: An Anthology of African-American Humor. Novelist Paul Beatty, whose own works The White Boy Shuffle and Tuff are satiric triumphs, personally selected this compendium of routines, speeches, folktales, poetry, snippets from theater and film, even some rap lyrics. Some are delivered in pristine English, others in wildly profane fashion, but together they illuminate the wealth of the black comedic tradition. Though few readers would associate Dr. W.E.

B. Dubois or Sojourner Truth with hilarity, their contributions are just as funny as those of Hattie Gossett or Wanda Coleman. Not quite a history of black comedy, Hokum serves more as a reference guide through various eras, showing how humor and comedy have changed over the years, and how laughter and wit have sometimes been as effective in the fight against racism as marches and votes.

Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and other publications.

Raymond Arsenault’s Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice covers a shorter, more specific time frame. The Freedom Riders were a courageous, racially integrated group of volunteers who traveled together on buses from Washington, D.C., to the heart of Dixie. They openly defied segregation laws and bore the brunt of vicious attacks, including firebombings and physical assaults that occurred in full view of the police. The sheer brutality that was presented on the front pages of major metropolitan newspapers shocked the Kennedy administration into finally protecting the Freedom Riders. Arsenault’s book goes into exacting detail about rides, destination points and vicious acts of retribution during the pivotal year of 1961. It outlines a story of supreme courage against unspeakable cruelty and disgusting bigotry, and presents the Freedom Riders as one group that probably hasn’t gotten the recognition it deserves for its crucial role in the civil rights movement.

Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paper and other publications.

Noted historian Nell Irvin Painter goes back even further than the days of the covered wagon with Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings: 1619 to the Present. Painter blends striking visual depictions with extensive analysis, covering everything from the extent of the African slave trade in North and South America to slavery in the U.S., Reconstruction, and the emergence and development of black culture, politics, economics and community life. She blends candid photos, stills and action shots of key community leaders and hard-working regular folks by artists ranging from Romare Bearden to Kara Walker, and her descriptive portraits are equally diverse, including familiar figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X and lesser-known names such as Olaudah Equiano (one of the first African slaves able to record his own account of captivity). Exhaustive yet easily understood and digested,Creating Black Americans supplies plenty of knowledge without ever becoming pedantic or dry.

Ron Wynn writes for the Nashville City Paperand other publications.