Black & African American

An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime US congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

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....

What Truth Sounds Like is a timely exploration of America's tortured racial politics that continues the conversation from Michael Eric Dyson's best seller Tears We Cannot Stop....

Rich in vivid detail and character, and steeped in the glamour and grit of professional ballet, The Swans of Harlem is the forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history—until now....

The riveting story of four men - Larry Doby, Bill Veeck, Bob Feller, and Satchel Paige - whose improbable union on the Cleveland Indians in the late 1940s would shape the immediate postwar era of Major League Baseball and beyond....

High-Risers braids personal narratives, city politics, and national history to tell the timely and epic story of Chicago's Cabrini-Green, America's most iconic public housing project....

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

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....

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....

“You cannot fix a problem you do not know you have.” So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states....

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

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....

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

In the tradition of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, a compelling 93-year history of Crownsville Hospital, one of the nation’s last segregated asylums, told by an award-winning journalist on her decade-long search for sanity in America’s mental healthcare system....

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

"My name is 'J' and I'm awkward--and Black. Someone once told me those were the two worst things anyone could be."....

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Great Speeches by Frederick Douglass" is a pivotal collection showcasing Frederick Douglass's eloquence, determination, and leadership in advocating for the abolition of slavery and civil rights.

Contrary to competing popular beliefs, police violence against African Americans has neither remained unchanged since the era of slavery nor is it a recent phenomenon disconnected from the past. In Bluecoated Terror, Jeffrey S. Adler draws on rich archival accounts to show how racialized police brutality is part of a larger system of state oppression with roots in the early twentieth-century South, particularly New Orleans.

"Blacks are 13% but commit half of the crime!" Using statistics, facts, charts, arguments never heard before, and common sense, this book factually challenges many firmly held beliefs, such as “Blacks make up 13% of the population but commit half of the violent crimes.” Offering a comprehensive examination of street crime in America's inner cities, it navigates diverse topics with clarity. Drawing from various disciplines, the author explores how mental illness, systemic racism, black apathy, drugs, family breakdown, American values, and the financial gains from illicit activities fuel ...

Dive into a frosty exploration of survival with 'Frozen Bounty', transcending readers beyond the realms of everyday living and into a world clad in ice. Seamlessly blending history, science, and survival, 'Frozen Bounty' unveils the profound skillfulness and adaptability required to subsist in the relentless Ice Age. Structured with precision, the gripping chapters draw you into the ancient era; journey through the intricacies of foraging, ice-navigating, seasonal understanding, and plant identification. Uncover the vital role of edible flora and the danger lurking within poisonous plants, ...

"Unveiling Shadows of Injustice" is a gripping exploration of the true story behind the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. This book delves into the declassified documents and eyewitness testimonies that shed light on the events leading up to the assassination, the plot itself, and the aftermath. It uncovers the key players involved, their motives, and the involvement of government agencies. The book also examines the accountability and trials that followed, the impact on the civil rights movement, and the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. It delves into the conspiracy theories ...

Through cutting social analysis, personal stories, and need-to-know advice, Dear Bi Men reclaims bi+ visibility in a culture of erasure—and unapologetically centers Blackness in a practical and deeply researched guide to navigating life, work, and relationships as a Black bi+ man.