Black & African American

From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot comes a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans....

In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history....

A self-care guidebook full of activities for Black men everywhere pursuing joy, creating connections, confronting racism, and working through intergenerational trauma....

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history....

In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement....

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine....

The Color of Water touches listeners of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son....

There’s Always This Year is a poignant, personal reflection on basketball, life, and home—from the author of the National Book Award finalist A Little Devil in America....

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files....

Prioritize your well-being with these 150 self-care exercises designed specifically to help Black women revitalize their outlook on life, improve their mental health, eliminate stress, and self-advocate....

James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil-rights movement with his eloquent manifesto....

A moving combination of memoir, psychology, and practical tools, this book offers Black men guidance and support for reclaiming mental well-being and finding whole, full-hearted living....

Dear Black Girls is a necessary and meaningful exploration of what it means to be a Black woman in America today—and a rallying cry to lift up women and girls everywhere....

In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum....

An unapologetic look into the factors that have caused so many Blacks to think and act in the negative way they do towards themselves and others....

An engaging look at Black life that offers insightful commentary on the intricate history of the African American people....

Some Americans cling desperately to the myth that we are living in a post-racial society....

In this unprecedented deep dive into inner-city gang life, Mark Bowden takes listeners inside a Baltimore gang, offers an in-depth portrait of its notorious leader, and chronicles the 2016 FBI investigation that landed eight gang members in prison....

The phenomenal true story of the Black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space....

The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his. In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship....

An unapologetic exploration of the Black mental health crisis - and a comprehensive road map to getting the care you deserve in an unequal system....

Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s legendary Harvard introductory course in African American Studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race, is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way....

In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation's preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics.

Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the listener on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks—those that are honest about the past and those that are not—that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's history.

A major literary event: a never-before-published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God that brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade....

Wings of Determination: The Willa Brown Story is a powerful and inspiring screenplay that chronicles the life and legacy of Willa Beatrice Brown, a pioneering African American aviator, educator, and civil rights advocate. Set against the backdrop of a segregated America, this screenplay vividly brings to life Brown's relentless pursuit of equality and justice in both the skies and on the ground. From her early years breaking racial and gender barriers in aviation to her crucial role in training the celebrated Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, Willa Brown's story is one of resilience, ...

This unique 2-in-1 book compilation combines the impactful narratives of two essential works: Black American History and Crime in Black America. Each standalone book is a treasure trove of insights and revelations, shedding light on critical aspects of the Black experience in America. In Black American History, the listener is taken on a journey through the depths of slavery, the injustices of Jim Crow, and the pervasive effects of police misconduct.

Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisolm rose from being the child of immigrants to running for the highest office in the land. She was both the first African American woman elected to the US Congress and the first African American woman of a major political party to make a serious run for president of the United States. These achievements were not in spite of her background but rather because of it. She persevered by being steadfast in her political convictions and unwilling to compromise on the issues she believed in.

Delve into the remarkable life of First Sergeant Robert Pinn in "First Sergeant Robert Pinn: Valor Beyond Battlefields — The Untold Story of a Civil War Hero and Civil Rights Pioneer." This compelling biography charts the journey of an extraordinary individual who was born into bondage, fought courageously in the Civil War, and emerged as a steadfast advocate for civil rights and veterans. From the shackles of slavery in Stark County, Ohio, to the hallowed grounds of freedom, Pinn's early life was marked by a relentless pursuit of liberty. His decision to join the Union Army as part of ...

Dive into the extraordinary life of Frederick Douglass with the compelling biography, "Frederick Douglass: Voice of Freedom." This book offers an in-depth exploration of Douglass's journey from a life in chains to becoming one of the most influential figures in American history. Through meticulously researched narratives and vivid storytelling, the biography covers major aspects of his life and legacy. Escape from Slavery: The book opens with a dramatic recounting of Douglass's brave escape from slavery, setting the stage for his transformation into a national leader for abolition. ...

"Booker T. Washington: From Slavery to Statesman" is a compelling biography that explores the profound journey of one of the most influential African American leaders in post-Civil War America. This detailed narrative captures Washington's rise from the shackles of slavery to his pivotal role as an educator and public figure. The book begins with Washington's early years of hardship and resilience, born into slavery in Virginia. It vividly details his emancipation and the transformative effects of the newfound freedom that fueled his lifelong quest for education. Readers will follow ...

Representations of Blackness have always been integral to our understanding of of the modern world. In Black Meme, Legacy Russell, author of Glitch Feminism, explores the construct, culture, and material of the "meme" as mapped to Black visual culture from 1900 to present day. Mining archival and contemporary media Russell explores the impact of Blackness, Black life, and death on contemporary conceptions of viral culture, borne in the age of the internet.

The stories of thirteen Black Minor League baseball players during the post-Jackie Robinson era, from the 1960s to the mid-1970s, who were figuratively and literally left behind even as both baseball and the country claimed a newfound racial progressiveness.

In the early nineteenth century, as slavery gradually ended in the North, a village in New York State invented a new form of unfreedom: the profit-driven prison. Uniting incarceration and capitalism, the village of Auburn built a prison that enclosed industrial factories. There, “slaves of the state” were leased to private companies. The prisoners earned no wages, yet they manufactured furniture, animal harnesses, carpets, and combs, which consumers bought throughout the North. Then one young man challenged the system.

When the American Civil War finally drew to an end in 1865, victory for the North seemed to herald a new beginning for African Americans. Emancipation for thousands of former slaves appeared, for the first time, to offer people the chance of full and equal participation in American society. That dream didn't last for long, particularly in the Southern states where new Jim Crow laws prevented African Americans from exercising fundamental rights, including the right to vote.

At the height of the Civil Rights movement, Lydia Abarca was a Black prima ballerina with a major international dance company—the Dance Theatre of Harlem, a troupe of women and men who became each other’s chosen family. She performed in some of ballet’s most iconic works with other trailblazing ballerinas, including the young women who became her closest friends—founding Dance Theatre of Harlem members Gayle McKinney-Griffith and Sheila Rohan, as well as first-generation dancers Karlya Shelton and Marcia Sells. The Swans of Harlem is a riveting account of these five accomplished women.

George Harrison met Muhammad Ali in 1964, when both men were on the cusp of worldwide fame. We Shook Up the World is the story of these two larger-than-life figures at a momentous time. A unique blend of biography and cultural history, this book goes to the very heart of the zeitgeist that each man inhabited and reinvented in profound and enduring ways.

Reluctant Race Men traces a history of the disparate challenges Black American reformers lodged against race across the long nineteenth century. It factors their opposition into the nation's history of race and reconstructs a reform tradition largely ignored in accounts of Black activism. Black-controlled newspapers, societies, churches, and conventions provided the principal loci and resources for questioning race. In these contexts, people of African descent generated a lexicon for refuting race, debated its logic, and, ultimately, reinterpreted it.

Thirty years have passed since Cornel West's book Race Matters rose to the top of the bestseller lists in 1993. Yet his book remains as relevant as ever to American culture-even more so, if one considers its influence on contemporary racial justice movements such as Black Lives Matter, prison justice, and the fight for police reform. Prophetic Leadership and Visionary Hope looks back to the original 1993 text and forward into the future of racial understanding and healing in our current century.

Harlem 1969; it's the height of the Civil Rights era and the community is still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King. Arthur Mitchell, the first Black principal dancer at the New York City Ballet, takes his protest to the stage and establishes the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Here begins the story of the five extraordinary women at the heart of this book. This is a book about ballet, the enduring allure of ballet for young girls, and about how these pioneers broke into a world that was closed to them and changed ideas of what a classical dancer could be.