Black & African American

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.

Already a major international bestseller, Zeinab Badawi’s sweeping and much-needed survey of African history traces the continent’s extraordinary legacy from prehistory to the present from the African perspective.

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....

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....

With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, Dr. King demanded an end to global suffering....

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....

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....

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

Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world....

In this highly anticipated follow-up to Eyes on the Prize, bestselling author Juan Williams turns his attention to the rise of a new 21st-century civil rights movement.

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.

This definitive box set includes all the landmark speeches of the great orator and American leader Martin Luther King, Jr....

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....

Dr. King's best-selling account of the civil rights movement in Birmingham during the spring and summer of 1963....

Much of America did not know the radical King - and too few know today - but the FBI and US government did. They called him "the most dangerous man in America"....

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

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.

The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk....

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.

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.

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.

Author and entrepreneur Dennis Kimbro combines bestselling author Napoleon Hill's law of success with his own vast knowledge of business....

A self-care guidebook full of activities for Black men everywhere pursuing joy, creating connections, confronting racism, and working through intergenerational trauma: This is your guide to wellness and self-discovery.

For too long, Africa’s history has been dominated by western narratives of slavery and colonialism, or simply ignored. Now, Zeinab Badawi sets the record straight. In this fascinating book, Badawi guides us through Africa’s spectacular history—from the very origins of our species, through ancient civilizations and medieval empires with remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence.

In 1974, the Supreme Court issued a momentous decision: In the case of Milliken v. Bradley, the justices brought a halt to school desegregation across the North, and to the civil rights movement’s struggle for a truly equal education for all. How did this come about, and why? In The Containment, the esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools—and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution.

A 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist and former Wall Street Journal writer exhaustively examines his family’s legacy of post-enslavement trauma and resilience, in this riveting memoir. I Am Nobody’s Slave tells the story of one Black family's pursuit of the American Dream through the impacts of systemic racism and racial violence. This book examines how trauma from enslavement and Jim Crow shaped their outlook on thriving in America, influenced each generation, and how they succeeded despite these challenges.

Amid the ongoing reckoning over America’s history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly dot the country’s landscape, while schools and street signs continue to bear the names of segregationists. With poignant, lyrical prose, cultural commentator Irvin Weathersby confronts the inescapable specter of white supremacy in our open spaces and contemplates what it means to bear witness to sites of lasting racial trauma.

Historian Bennett Parten provides a groundbreaking account of Sherman’s March to the Sea—the critical Civil War campaign that destroyed the Confederacy—told for the first time from the perspective of the tens of thousands of enslaved people who fled to the Union lines and transformed Sherman’s march into the biggest liberation event in American history.

Licensed mental health therapist, somatic healer, and eating disorder specialist Alishia McCullough understands that for far too many Black women, racial trauma’s seismic impact has disrupted their most essential relationship: the one they have with their bodies—and by extension, with their food. African Americans are disproportionately impacted by disordered eating behaviors, yet their experiences are frequently neglected by doctors and mental health experts.

Omo Moses deftly interweaves his own life story with excerpts from both his great-grandfather's sermons and the writings of his father, the civil rights activist Bob Moses. The result is a powerful chorus of voices that spans 3 generations of an African American family, all shining a light on the Black experience, all calling fiercely for racial justice. This book is at once a coming-of-age story, a multigenerational family memoir, an epic father-son road trip, a searing account of the Black male experience, and a work that powerfully revives Rev. Moses’s demand for liberation.

In Black Psychedelic Revolution, Dr. Nicholas Powers charts how psychedelics can heal racial pain passed on through generations. He shows how this medicine unlocks a return to one’s self, facilitating an embodied experience of safety, peace, and being-here-now otherwise disrupted by whiteness—and he explores how psychedelics can catalyze individual wellness even as they transcend it. Drugs taken with therapy can heal. But drugs taken with a social movement can heal a nation.

Bass Reeves was a man who forged his own destiny and wrote his own life story as he went along. Born into slavery, Reeves rose above all challenges to become one of the most legendary lawmen of the American West. As a deputy US marshal, he held himself to a personal code of conduct that went beyond the badge he wore. For Bass, the line between right and wrong was clear, and he never hesitated to enforce the law—even when it meant pursuing his own friends or family. Justice wasn’t just his duty; it was his calling.

Diving deep into the unseen and unheard, Neely uses personal interviews, court records, media reports, and analytical data to understand how and why Black women are disproportionately more likely to die from homicide in comparison to their white counterpoints. Sounding an urgent alarm, No Human Involved contends that it is time for Black women’s lives to matter not only to their families and communities, but especially to those commissioned to protect them.