OUR BOOKS
The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present
America's Children: Picturing Childhood from Exploration to the Present
OneHistory's Founders
Kathleen Thompson and Hilary Mac Austin are the authors of three 'print documentaries, The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present (Indiana University Press, 1999), Children of the Depression (Indiana University Press, 2001), and America's Children (W. W. Norton, 2003). ---See the covers and links to the right.
One-History co-founder Hilary Mac Austin, with JimThe Face of Our Past was an enormous success and garnered rave reviews from publications as diverse as The Chronicle of Higher Education to USA Today . We traveled around the country to Historically Black Colleges and Universities giving slide shows about the book. Then we received the ultimate recommendation. The book was featured on Oprah !
Thus began our exploration into the world of historic images. The next two books, Children of the Depression and America's Children: Images of Childhood from Exploration to the Present, used the same format as The Face of Our Past . They also received excellent reviews and were welcomed by professionals in the field of Childhood History, one which is quite new.
During this same period we decided to create an organization devoted to the many voices of American history. We founded OneHistory in 2001 and incorporated in 2003. For more about our experience, read on...
Kathleen Thompson has been a writer for forty years. She is the author of the feminist classic Against Rape , co-written with Andra Medea, as well as an expose of the diet industry, Feeding on Dreams , co-written with Dianne Epstein. Thompson is also an award-winning playwright and the author of literally hundreds of children's books, including volumes for both the Hispanic Biographies series and the Portraits of America series both published by Raintree. In addition she has worked in the field of educational publishing for many years and was a founder of the educational development house Sense and Nonsense.
In addition she has contributed entries to a number of reference books including Girlhood in America (ABC-CLIO, 2001), and the Encyclopedia of African American Folklore (Greenwood Publishing, 2006).
Thompson began working in the field of African American history as a major contributor to the groundbreaking reference work, Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (Carlson Publishing, 1992). She went on to be associate editor of multi-volume reference for young people Encyclopedia of Black Women (Facts on File, 1994).
In 1998, Thompson collaborated with the eminent scholar Darlene Clark Hine, co-writing A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America (Broadway Books, 1998), the first narrative history of black women. More recently, she was on the Board of Senior Editors of the second edition of Black Women in America (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Hilary Mac Austin came into the field of history and writing after years in theater. She wrote a number of entries and chronologies for Encyclopedia of Black Women (Facts on File, 1994). She then served as a photo researcher for Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia (Routledge, 1997). Next, Austin served as the photographic editor for Thompson and Hine's A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America (Broadway Books, 1998).
Since then she has contributed entries to the Encyclopedia of African American Folklore (Greenwood Publishing, 2006), and the Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass (Oxford University Press, 2007). She also served as the photo editor for the second edition of Black Women in America (Oxford University Press, 2005) and the Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896-The Present (Oxford University Press, 2009), and has researched and designed three photo-essays for the Oxford African American Studies Center web-site on “The Modern Civil Rights Movement,” “Emancipation and the Meaning of Juneteenth,” and “African-American Women in Literature.”
Hilary Mac Austin, Lavinia Prescott Ferguson, and Kathleen Thompson doing research at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Chicago
