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 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....

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....

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....

A heartfelt, and riveting biography of the short life of a talented young man who escapes the slums of Newark for Yale University only to succumb to the dangers of the streets....

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....

A powerful critique, We Have Never Been Woke reveals that only by challenging this elite’s self-serving narratives can we hope to address social and economic inequality effectively.

A blueprint. A bible. What Sun Tzu’s Art of War was to ancient China, Pimp is to the streets....

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

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

Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is a genre-defying collection of essays that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives....

In the early 1990s, Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory and his brother, Terry "Southwest T", rose up from the slums of Detroit to build one of the largest cocaine empires in American history: the Black Mafia Family....

Black Americans have long been shackled to the Democrats. Seeing no viable alternative, they have watched liberal politicians take the Black vote for granted without pledging anything in return. In Blackout, Owens argues this automatic allegiance is both illogical and unearned....

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....

The black experience in America - starting from its origins in western Africa up to 1961 - is examined in this seminal study from a prominent African American figure....

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....

From the governor of Maryland, the true story of two kids with the same name: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison.

This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. Hailed at the time....

What is feminism?

In this short, accessible primer, Bell Hooks explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. With her....

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.

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....

Clear-eyed, impassioned, and ultimately hopeful, We Refuse offers a fundamental corrective to the historical record, a love letter to Black resilience, and a path toward liberation.

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.

The classic, New York Times best-selling book on the psychology of racism that shows us how to talk about race in America. Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups....

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

In 1992, the deadliest year in Chicago’s history, seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot and killed in front of his elementary school inside the public housing complex Cabrini-Green. What happened to Dantrell led to a truce among Chicago’s gangs, but it also ignited a national panic about poverty and violence in America’s cities. Dantrell’s name would soon be used to demolish all of Chicago’s high-rise public housing, displacing tens of thousands of low-income families.

In the years immediately after the Civil War, tens of thousands of former slaves deposited millions of dollars into the Freedman's Bank. African Americans envisioned this new bank as a launching pad for economic growth and self-determination. But only nine years after it opened, their trust was betrayed and the Freedman's Bank collapsed. Fully informed by new archival findings, historian Justene Hill Edwards unearths a major turning point in American history in this comprehensive account of the Freedman's Bank and its depositors

What do the struggles of the past teach us about the urgent challenges in our own time? Resist chronicles the inspiring story of young Black activists who have fought tirelessly at the helm for justice over the last century, from the 1920s to the Trayvon generation—how they reshaped America, left an indelible mark on history, and pave the way for the crucial work that must be done today.

The story of the driver is the story of Atlantic slavery. Starting in the seventeenth-century Caribbean, enslavers developed the driving system to solve their fundamental problem: how to extract labor from captive workers who had every reason to resist. In this system, enslaved Black drivers were tasked with supervising and punishing other enslaved laborers. In The Driver’s Story, Randy M. Browne illuminates the predicament and harrowing struggles of these men—and sometimes women—at the heart of the plantation world.

Rising to accept a prestigious award, Jody Lulich wondered what to say. Describe how caring for helpless, voiceless animals in his own shame and pain provided a lifeline, a chance to heal himself as well? Lulich tells his story in In the Company of Grace, a memoir about finding courage in compassion and strength in healing-and power in finally confronting the darkness of his youth.

Outdoor journalist James Edward Mills's book The Adventure Gap is a groundbreaking volume that is equal parts adventure story, history, and inspiration as it chronicles the first American all-Black summit attempt on Denali in 2013. Mills uses this momentous expedition as a jumping-off point to explore diversity in the outdoors, from Mathew Henson who stood at the North Pole in 1909 to contemporary adventurers such as polar explorer Barbara Hillary and rock climber Kai Lightner.

Through the lens of Sammy Davis Jr.'s six-decade career in show business—from vaudeville to Vegas to Broadway, Hollywood, and network TV—Dancing Down the Barricades examines the workings of race in American culture. The title phrase holds two contradictory meanings regarding Davis's cultural politics: Did he dance the barricades down, as he liked to think, or did he simply dance down them, as his more radical critics would have it?

What are the politics of nature? Who owns it, where is it, what role does it play in our lives? Does it need to be tamed? Are we ourselves natural? In A Darker Wilderness, a constellation of luminary writers reflect on the significance of nature in their lived experience and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks in the United States. Each of these essays engages with a single archival object, whether directly or obliquely, exploring stories spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles, traveling from roots to space and finding rich Blackness everywhere.

The empires of the ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, Greeks, Romans, and Chinese were underpinned by slavery, where one person could be owned by another, and their obedience and labor were forced by the threat of violence or even death. Some of these people were prisoners captured during wars, some were sold into slavery to pay debts, while others were born into slavery. In many ancient empires, slaves accounted for anything from one-third to half of the total population.

When people say the word slave, most think of unpaid, uneducated workers with little to no professional skills. However, this is not the case, and that word "slave" erases the genius of those who were in bondage. In the United States of America, African Americans were in bondage for centuries, and despite being in bondage and known as "slave", these men and women, as well as their descendants, contributed remarkably to the foundation and success of the country by doing the same jobs we "professionals" do today, from those in healthcare to designers and more except they didn't get paid. Your...

The Gangs of New York is a tour through a now unrecognizable New York City - one of abysmal poverty and habitual violence cobbled, as Luc Sante has written, "from legend, memory, police records, the self-aggrandizements of aging crooks, popular journalism, and solid historical research." Asbury presents the definitive work on this subject, an illumination of the gangs of old New York that ultimately gave rise to the modern Mafia and its depiction in Martin Scorsese's Oscar-nominated masterpiece, The Gangs of New York.

Black Flora is the first book to feature profiles of contemporary Black experts innovating in the world of flowers. Author and longtime gardener, Teresa Speight, offers a beautiful intersection of flowers and community. This book is a homecoming, one that unearths the floral legacies of the past and present, while providing a source of inspiration for younger generations of plant-lovers seeking examples of successful Black floral artists and entrepreneurs.

In Rebirth of a Nation, Goza exposes lesser-known aspects of racism in American history and how Black people have consistently been depicted as responsible for their own oppression to justify slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration and gross inequality. Goza’s iconoclastic and incisive account exposes how revered figures like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln embedded white supremacy deep into our nation’s consciousness—and how Ronald Reagan manipulated this ideology so that society cheered as he advanced a set of policies that wounded our nation and intensified Black America’s suffering.

Addict, thief, pimp, pusher, player—and most notably, groundbreaking writer. Donald Goines was all of these. As a kid, Donald Goines was the product of a middle-class family. After high school, he joined the Air Force—and discovered the heroin that would rule the remainder of his life. On the streets, he turned to writing when he was straight enough to keep at it. He used the language of the streets and he wrote of its people. Goines's success was immediate and exciting. But eventually those same streets claimed him.

After winning Olympic medals for Britain in 1920, Harry Edward (1898-1973) decided to try his luck in America. The country he found was full of thrilling opportunity and pervasive racism. Immensely capable and energetic, Harry rubbed shoulders with kings and presidents, was influential in the revival of Black theatre during the Harlem Renaissance, and became a passionate humanitarian and advocate for child welfare.