“Too long have others spoken for us,” wrote the publishers of the nation’s first Black-owned newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, in 1826. Despite brief historical periods in which African American writers have flourished, that lament remains just as true today, 198 years later.

DRUM was founded in an attempt to right—or perhaps re-write—a wrong and restore the authentic Black voice that is largely absent from today’s public discourse.

This is not a matter of vanity, for the historical record is clear that the free expression of radical Black politics is the engine for modernity in these divided states. From Reconstruction to the New Deal, the civil rights movement to the protests against the Vietnam War, the African in America has time and again played a central role in expanding democracy.

Our focus at DRUM is on combining narrative nonfiction — or what might more colloquially be called “storytelling” — with Black scholarship to inform our collective decision-making in what is shaping up to be a critical moment in the nation’s history.

At DRUM we take our inspiration from the canon of diasporic African writers — from William Edward Burghardt Du Bois to Claudia Jones, Eric Williams to Ida B. Wells, Oliver Cromwell Cox to Frantz Fanon — whose works would surely struggle to find a publisher in today’s book publishing landscape.

Something is lost when African American writers can’t find a publisher for their work. Much as men cannot tell stories of women as fully as women, whites cannot tell stories of Black life with as much intimacy and clarity as African Americans themselves.

Our ultimate objective at DRUM is to help speak a new world into existence by shining a light on America’s failures, not to scold the nation but to improve it. We invite African Americans with nonfiction narratives—especially those who have felt the sting of rejection from white-controlled publishing houses—to reach out to us with their ideas, proposals or manuscripts.

At DRUM, Black stories MATTER!