Black & African American

From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot, a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans. America’s backstory is a whitewashed mythology implanted in our...

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....

In this beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson presents a definitive and dramatic account of one of the great untold stories of American history: the Great Migration of six million Black citizens who fled the South for the North and West....

A New York Times bestseller and enduring classic, All About Love is the acclaimed first volume in feminist icon bell hooks' ""Love Song to the Nation"" trilogy. All About Love reveals what causes a polarized society, and how to heal the divisions that cause suffering. Here is the truth about...

In searing dispatches, Love, Me is a timely affirmation for Black women in a world that has undervalued them for centuries. Sunny Hostin praises it as "thee Black woman’s story for this era. It is both political and personal. It is both timely and, quite frankly, overdue." Will we ever get...

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

Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously....

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post NPR Marie Claire In...

Black Against Empire is the first comprehensive overview and analysis of the history and politics of the Black Panther Party. The authors analyze key political questions....

A blueprint. A bible. What Sun Tzu’s Art of War was to ancient China, Pimp is to the streets. As real as you can get without jumping in, this is the story of Iceberg Slim’s life as he saw, felt, tasted, and smelled it.

The last book written by King his final reflections after a decade of civil rights struggles In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this...

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.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the governor of Maryland, the “compassionate” (People), “startling” (Baltimore Sun), “moving” (Chicago Tribune) true story of two kids with the same name: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and...

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world....

This sweeping survey of Black history shows how Black humanity has been erased and how its recovery can save the humanity of us all....

It’s time for a black exit. Political activist and social media star Candace Owens addresses the many ways that Democrat Party policies hurt, rather than help, the African American community, and why she and many others are turning right. Black Americans have long been shackled to the...

In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. Now, in The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama calls for a different brand of politics–a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated...

Pulitzer Prize, History, 2019 The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African American of the 19th century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. As a young man, Frederick...

rst published in 1903, this collection of 15 essays dared to describe the racism that prevailed at that time in America—and to demand an end to it. The Souls of Black Folk is a classic in the literature of civil rights....

The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in Freakonomics. Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatesh managed to gain entrée into the gang, what he...

The astonishing untold history of America’s first black millionaires—former slaves who endured incredible challenges to amass and maintain their wealth for a century, from the Jacksonian period to the Roaring Twenties—self-made entrepreneurs whose unknown success mirrored that of American...

In Teaching Critical Thinking, renowned cultural critic and progressive educator Bell Hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today.

Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans....

As fast-paced as fiction, Invisible tells the true story of a woman who often found her path blocked by the social and political expectations of her time. But Eunice Carter never accepted defeat, and thanks to her grandson’s remarkable audiobook, her story is once again visible....

In This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, civil rights scholar Charles E. Cobb Jr., describes the vital role that armed self-defense played in the survival and liberation of black communities in America during the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1960s.

For readers of The Sum of Us and South to America, an essential new look at the roots of American inequality—and the seeds of its transformation Once the powerhouse of a fledgling country’s economy, the Mississippi Delta has been consigned to a narrative of destitution. It is often faulted...

ON NOVEMBER 13, 1991, the world stopped to watch a music video. Broadcast simultaneously across four major networks and viewed by an estimated 500 million people worldwide, Michael Jackson’s eleven-minute short film for "Black or White" was billed as a triumphant return—his first new visual statement in years. What audiences got instead was something far more unsettling: a dazzling global unity spectacle that ended in rage, destruction, and a prowling black panther disappearing into a dark Los Angeles alley. The backlash was immediate. The final sequence was censored. Critics were ...

Before Jackie Robinson, there were the Pythians. In the summer of 1869, a team of young Black men took the field against white opponents in Philadelphia—the first recorded interracial baseball game in American history. They called themselves the Pythians, and their captain was Octavius Valentine Catto: scholar, athlete, Civil War veteran, and the most dangerous Black man in Philadelphia. Catto and his teammates weren't just playing baseball. They were waging a campaign for equality, using athletic excellence to challenge the assumptions of a nation struggling to define itself after the ...

In the heart of New Orleans’ French Quarter, Delphine LaLaurie lived as a woman of wealth, lineage, and reputation — until a fire in April 1834 exposed what her shuttered windows had concealed. The House on Royal Street traces LaLaurie’s rise through the city’s elite, the crime that shocked a slaveholding society, and the legend that followed when she fled. A historical true crime account of power, secrecy, and the lives lost beneath a story that refused to end.

Project 2030 is more than a book—it’s a blueprint for transformation. At a time when racial wealth gaps are widening, health inequities persist, and democracy itself feels fragile, Sean T. Long and a team of visionary co-authors deliver a bold, actionable plan to move Black America from survival to power. Built on six interconnected pillars—Economic Empowerment, Educational Equity, Health Justice, Criminal Justice Reform, Political Empowerment, and Technological Equity—Project 2030 lays out the structural changes, policies, and cultural shifts necessary to build lasting progress.

They’re called “BADDIES”—fierce, unapologetic, ready to throw hands for clout. But behind the viral knockouts and pack attacks lies a brutal truth: shows like Bad Girls Club and their social media empires are adultifying, hypersexualizing, and traumatizing Black teen girls. In BADDIES, pediatrician Dr. Carletha Hughes and journalist Zondra Hughes-Ali deliver a raw, unflinching exposé that’s equal parts wake-up call and battle plan—arming parents, teachers, and communities to shield tomorrow’s Black queens from a hidden cultural war. “A must-read for anyone fighting for ...

As longtime organizer, writer, and high school teacher Jesse Hagopian argues in Teach Truth, what's at stake is the freedom to tell the truth, the ability of students to understand the world they live in, and the preservation of knowledge systems that expose injustice. By exploring the roots and reach of the censorship movement, Hagopian shows how these efforts to suppress truth serve to uphold racial capitalism and silence the histories that threaten entrenched power.

Jesse Owens remains one of the most inspiring figures in modern history—a man whose brilliance on the track became a symbol of hope, defiance, and human dignity in an era overshadowed by racism and rising extremism. Born into poverty in the Jim Crow South and shaped by the Great Migration to the industrial North, Owens rose from humble beginnings to become a global icon whose achievements transcended sport. His life is a story not only of speed and talent, but of perseverance, integrity, and the quiet strength required to challenge prejudice on the world’s biggest stage.

Physicians for the People chronicles the remarkable stories of 241 Black doctors who practiced medicine in Alabama during the Jim Crow era. Historian Jack D. Ellis reveals the ingenuity and resilience of these trailblazing doctors who defied segregation by establishing hospitals and clinics and providing vital healthcare to underserved Black communities.

The author and director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library Publishing Project gives voice to long silent African Americans from the past, allowing them to tell their own stories that shed new light on critical moments in the Black Freedom Struggle, challenging what we think we know about...