Articles treat individual black publications and each of the historically black colleges. There are entries highlighting the participation of blacks in all the major Christian denominations and Islam. Such entries as Black Business Community , Black Identity , Jim Crow , Kwanza , and Passing treat topics unique to African Americans. Entries on more general topics, such as Birth Control , Banking , Class and Society , Suburbanization , and Television , highlight black perspectives. The nine-page entry Advertising , for example, describes the history of advertising to African Americans and the use of African Americans in advertising aimed at whites.
Entries are here for laws, court cases, and for labor unions.
Coverage of the arts is extensive. Two-thirds of the entries are biographies treating such important historical figures as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass and such contemporary people as Marian Wright Edelman and Colin Powell. Contributors to high culture such as Amiri Baraka and Jessye Norman are covered along with pop-culture icons like Bill Cosby and Chubby Checker. Lead editor Salzman is professor of American culture at Columbia University. The other general editors are David Lionel Smith, from Williams College, and Cornel West, a noted author from Harvard.