African American Biography

Kendrick “Perk” Perkins is known for his blunt, opinionated, “carry the hell on” commentary on ESPN’s most popular shows. As a fourteen-year NBA player and starting center for the 2008 NBA champion Boston Celtics, Perk earned a reputation as an enforcer, a fierce defender, and a great teammate. Now, In The Education of Kendrick Perkins, he opens a different side of himself: a powerful and intimate memoir that goes beyond basketball to discuss the reality of being Black in America.

In Long Road to Hard Truth: The 100 Year Mission to Create the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Robert L. Wilkins tells the story of how his curiosity about why there wasn't a national museum dedicated to African American history and culture became an obsession - eventually leading him to quit his job as an attorney when his wife was seven months pregnant with their second child, and make it his mission to help the museum become a reality.

Born into bondage in 1818, Elizabeth Keckley was able to purchase her freedom only after years of saving. She then went on to build a thriving business as a seamstress, eventually becoming modiste to Mary Todd Lincoln herself. In this dressmaking role, Keckley was a close confidante of Mary Todd, and her 1868 memoir recounted her incredible rise while also providing revelatory insights into everyday life among the Lincolns.

When Betsey Stockton was a child, she was "given, as a slave" to the household of Rev. Ashbel Green, a prominent pastor and later the president of what is now Princeton University. Although she never went to school, she devoured the books in Green's library. After being emancipated, she used that education to benefit other people of color, first in Hawai'i as a missionary, then Philadelphia, and, for the last three decades of her life, Princeton—a college town with a genteel veneer that never fully hid its racial hostility.

Shaquille O'Neal discovered his love of basketball while spending time in an afterschool program called the Boys & Girls Club of America. Standing over six feet tall by the time he turned 11 years old, Shaq—as he is affectionately known—continued to practice the game and stunned the country with his phenomenal skills. From leading his high-school team to its first-ever state title to becoming the first pick in the 1992 NBA draft and going on to win four NBA championships, Shaq proved that he could dominate almost any player.

Terrie had made it: She had launched her own public relations company with such clients as Eddie Murphy and Johnnie Cochran. Yet she was in constant pain, waking up in terror, overeating in search of relief. For 30 years she kept on her game face of success, exhausting herself daily to satisfy her clients' needs while neglecting her own. When she finally collapsed, she had no clue what was wrong or if there was a way out.

Staking a Claim examines the life of Jake Simmons, Jr. - the international tycoon who was the most successful African American in the history of the oil industry - and affords us a rare perspective on this question.

After following her mother to the US at a young age to pursue economic opportunities, one woman must come to terms with the ways in which systematic racism and resultant trauma keep the American Dream inaccessible to Black people. In the early '90s, young Tiffanie Drayton and her siblings left Trinidad and Tobago to join their mother in New Jersey, where she'd been making her way as a domestic worker, eager to give her children a shot at the American Dream. At first, life in the US was idyllic.

MaVynee loved going to the beach. But in the days of Jim Crow, she couldn't just go to any beach - most of the beaches in Jacksonville were for Whites only. Knowing something must be done, her grandfather bought a beach that African American families could enjoy without being reminded they were second-class citizens; he called it American Beach. Artists like Zora Neale Hurston and Ray Charles vacationed on its sunny shores. It's here that MaVynee was first inspired to sing, propelling her to later become a widely acclaimed opera singer who routinely performed on an international stage.

The number one sports series for kids takes listeners on the court and behind the scenes with beloved NBA icon Kobe Bryant in this inspiring biography.

Still I Rise takes its title from a work by Maya Angelou, and it resonates with the same spirit of an unconquerable soul, a woman who is captain of her fate. This book embodies the strength of character of the inspiring women profiled within. Each chapter outlines the fall and rise of great women heroes who smashed all obstacles rather than let all obstacles smash them. Still I Rise offers hope to those undergoing their own Sisyphean struggles. Intrepid women heroes are the antithesis of the traditional damsels in distress; rather than waiting for the prince, they took salvation into their own hands.

First published in 1997, 

Little X chronicles the multigenerational experience of Tate's family, who broke from the traditional Black church in the 1950s to join the radical Nation of Islam, then struggled to remain intact through disillusionment, shifting loyalties, and forays into Orthodox Islam. 

Little X offers a rare glimpse into the everyday experience of the Nation of Islam and into a little-understood part of America's history and heritage.

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the 100 or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.

Brilliant scientist and witty conversationalist, best-selling author and architect of the great surveys that mapped the West after the Civil War, Clarence King was named by John Hay "the best and brightest of his generation". But King hid a secret from his Gilded Age cohorts and prominent family in Newport: for 13 years he lived a double life - as the celebrated White explorer, geologist, and writer Clarence King and as a Black Pullman porter and steelworker named James Todd.

World War II was raging, with thousands of American soldiers fighting overseas against the injustices brought on by Hitler. Back on the home front, the injustice of discrimination against African Americans was playing out as much on Main Street as in the military. Enlisted black men were segregated from white soldiers and regularly relegated to service duties. At Fort Benning, Georgia, First Sergeant Walter Morris’s men served as guards at The Parachute School while the white soldiers prepared to be paratroopers.

Nothing casts a more sinister shadow over our nation's history than the gruesome lynchings that happened between 1882 and 1937, claiming 4,680 victims. Often, in a show of racist violence, the lynchers tortured their victims before murdering them. Most killers were never brought to justice; some were instead celebrated as heroes, their victims' bodies displayed or even cut up and distributed as trophies.

Stokely Carmichael, the charismatic and controversial Black activist, stepped onto the pages of history when he called for "Black Power" during a speech one humid Mississippi night in 1966. Carmichael’s life changed that day, and so did America’s struggle for civil rights. "Black Power" became the slogan of an era, provoking a national reckoning on race and democracy. In Stokely, preeminent civil rights scholar Peniel E. Joseph presents a groundbreaking biography of Carmichael.

On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a 23-year-old Black veteran, walked into a crossroads store owned by Robert Teel and came out running. Teel and two of his sons chased and beat Marrow, then killed him in public as he pleaded for his life. Like many small Southern towns, Oxford had barely been touched by the civil rights movement. But in the wake of the killing, young African Americans took to the streets. While lawyers battled in the courthouse, the Klan raged in the shadows and Black Vietnam veterans torched the town’s tobacco warehouses.

This audio adaptation focuses primarily on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the key moments that defined his rise to the forefront of the civil rights movement. From Rosa Parks' monumental arrest in Montgomery to King's imprisonment in Birmingham and his triumphant march on Washington, Taylor Branch provides an unsurpassed portrait of King's rise to greatness.

Whether you voted for Barack Obama or not, it is hard to ignore the skill and passion with which he delivers his message; he possesses the ability to communicate powerfully and effectively. With a polished speaking style, a command of eloquent and uplifting rhetoric, the ability to inspire the enthusiasm of young voters, and the sophisticated use of the Internet as a campaign tool, Obama was very much a 21st-century candidate.