It was edited by Virginia Newell, Joella Gipson, L. Waldo Rich, and Beauregard Stubblefield, with a foreword by Wade Ellis, and published in 1980 by Dorrance & Company.
[2][3][4] It provides brief biographies and photographs of 62 black mathematicians,[5] all long-established at the time of publication (having doctorates prior to 1973).
[6] It also reproduces several letters by Lee Lorch documenting racist behavior in mathematical societies,[3] such as exclusion from conferences and their associated social gatherings.
[2] As well as two of the editors (Gipson and Stubblefield), the authors whose works are reproduced in the book include Albert Turner Bharucha-Reid, David Blackwell, Lillian K. Bradley, Marjorie Lee Browne, Edward M. Carroll, William Schieffelin Claytor, Vivienne Malone-Mayes, Clarence F. Stephens, Walter Richard Talbot, and J. Ernest Wilkins Jr.[3][6] Black Mathematicians and Their Works was the first book to collect the works of black mathematicians,[3][4] and 40 years after its publication it remained the only such book.
[6] Edray Herber Goins has named this book as his "mathematical comfort food", writing:[3] Whenever I question whether black folk are making progress in these United States, I think of the articles in this volume, and those pioneers who continued to do math in the face of blatant racism.