Carved out of fertile farmland along the border of the Carolinas in 1787, Robeson County is North Carolina's largest county, spanning 948 square miles. The county is called “The State of Robeson” not only because of its size, but because of its fierce independence and self-reliance. Unique in its equally balanced tri-racial population, Robeson County has residents that are Native American, African American, and white. Over the centuries, these people have worked together to create a culturally diverse community.

The history of Robeson County reaches farther back than its creation in 1787 and reflects the impressive story of North Carolina. Carved out of the fertile farmlands on the border between North and South Carolina, Robeson is the Tarheel State's largest county at 948 square miles. It has been called "The State of Robeson" not only because of its size but also because of the fierce independence and self-reliance of its people. The county is unique in its almost equally balanced tri-racial population. The residents-Native American, African American, and white-have worked together over the centuries to create a culturally diverse community. Agriculture and textiles abound in the county's past, as well as transportation innovations, like the largest wartime glider air base ever built. Indeed, Robeson County's citizens have served in every American conflict from the Revolutionary War on, including its own internal war-the Lowery War-which lasted 10 years.

The best way to learn history is to visualize it! Since 1998, Josh MacPhee has commissioned and produced over one hundred posters by over eighty artists that pay tribute to revolution, racial justice, women's rights, queer liberation, labor struggles, and creative activism and organizing. Celebrate People's History! presents these essential moments—acts of resistance and great events in an often hidden history of human and civil rights struggles—as a visual tour through decades and across continents, from the perspective of some of the most interesting and socially engaged artists working today. Celebrate People's History includes artwork by Cristy Road, Swoon, Nicole Schulman, Christopher Cardinale, Sabrina Jones, Eric Drooker, Klutch, Carrie Moyer, Laura Whitehorn, Dan Berger, Ricardo Levins Morales, Chris Stain, and more.

In 1891, when coal companies in eastern Tennessee brought in cheap convict labor to take over their jobs, workers responded by storming the stockades, freeing the prisoners, and loading them onto freight trains. Over the next year, tactics escalated to include burning company property and looting company stores. This was one of the largest insurrections in US working-class history. It happened at the same time as the widely publicized northern labor war in Homestead, Pennsylvania. And it was largely ignored, then and now. Dixie Be Damned engages seven similarly "hidden" insurrectionary episodes in Southern history to demonstrate the region's long arc of revolt. Countering images of the South as pacified and conservative, this adventurous retelling presents history in the rough. Not the image of the South many expect, this is the South of maroon rebellion, wildcat strikes, and Robert F. Williams's book Negroes with Guns, a South where the dispossessed refuse to quietly suffer their fate. This is people's history at its best: slave revolts, multiracial banditry, labor battles, prison uprisings, urban riots, and more. Neal Shirley grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and now lives in Durham, NC, where he is involved in several anti-prison initiatives and runs a small publishing project called the North Carolina Piece Corps. Saralee Stafford was born in the Piedmont of North Carolina. Her recent political work has focused on connecting the struggles of street organizations with those of anarchists in the area. She teaches gender-related health in Durham, North Carolina.

Wilson, North Carolina was formed in 1849 when the villages of Toisnot and Hickory Grove merged together. Named for Mexican War hero Gen. Louis D. Wilson, the new town came to be known for agriculture and education. The Wilson of today holds fast to its roots, offering antique shops laden with treasures from all walks of life and nationally recognized historic districts brimming with remarkable structures, significant styles of architecture, and numerous locations to taste the famed Eastern North Carolina style of barbecue. Historic Wilson in Vintage Postcards is a priceless collection of images that depict, among other views, the Wilson Depot from the late 1800s, local businesses, street scenes, churches, cotton and tobacco, and residential areas. The volume also affords readers postcards of Nash Street when it was considered "one of the most beautiful streets in America," tobacco scenes when Wilson was "the world's largest tobacco market," and the infamous 1911 trial of the Lewis West gang.

In the lively neighborhood of Fort Greene in downtown Brooklyn, Native Americans and early Dutch and British settlers were largely agrarian. Over time, the neighborhood sprouted into an energetic enclave in which multiple ethnicities thrive today. From the East River's Wallabout Bay, a navy yard grew into a mass of floating arsenals, including the USS Missouri, aboard which the Japanese surrendered in World War II. Mole holes were dug out beneath Fort Greene to serve as transit ways to greater New York. The 20th century brought a variety of arts, such as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, featuring the likes of Enrico Caruso, Isadora Duncan, Paul Robeson, and Rudolph Nureyev. Popular arts equally flourished as vaudeville merged into cinema and jazz and rock ricocheted out of the Fox and Paramount.