African American Families

In 1950, before Montgomery, Alabama, knew Martin Luther King Jr., before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat to a White passenger, before the city's famous bus boycott, a Negro man named Hilliard Brooks was shot and killed by a White police officer in a confrontation after he tried to board a city bus. Thomas Gray, who had played football with Hilliard when they were kids, was outraged by the unjustifiable shooting. Gray protested, eventually staging a major downtown march to register voters and standing up to police brutality.

A Black descendant of Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings’ family explores America’s racial reckoning through the prism of her ancestors - both the enslaver and the enslaved.

Rylan Douglas, a calf roper and assistant CFO for Henderson Ranch and Farms, finds himself in a predicament. He’s fallen in love with a woman eight years his junior. That wouldn’t be a problem if they were older. While she’s an adult, he’s still hesitant about pursuing her. He doesn’t want anyone to think he’s taking advantage of her, especially since she’s extremely trusting of him. Her intellectual disability makes her even more vulnerable. However, he can’t seem to move on because he knows his heart belongs to her.

Anissa Dent is experiencing heartbreak like none she’s ever felt. Her husband of nearly twenty years has fallen victim to crack cocaine after a devastating loss. All her efforts to help him have failed, and to protect herself and her sons, she divorces him and has him removed from their home. That doesn’t stop him from popping in and out of their lives with promises of getting clean. Anissa desperately wants to move on in her life, but her love for what once was is holding her back. However, attending a family barbeque with her son proves to be the restart she desperately needs.

Joe Massengale grew up a poor African-American boy in Depression-era Texas, never imagining that he would one day be a successful businessman, race-horse owner, and father. In this book, Massengale distills his success into six learned principles: confidence, fortitude, persistence, pride, fearlessness, and focus.

Award-winning author Ernest Hill—who Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler called “one of our finest writers”—has drawn favorable comparisons to Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison with his powerful novels. Hill’s Family Ties tells the story of D’Ray Reid, who has put prison behind him and wants to repair his broken relationship with his mother. But when D’Ray comes home, lies and legal troubles haunt his every move.

In the finale, everyone is battling their own demons. Messiah may have done something that could end her relationship with her daughter and husband. Has she gone too far, or like usual Messiah, did she know what she was doing? Staten is stuck on trying to handle loving Liberty, even after she ended things, be a father to he and Chanel’s daughter, and be there for a pregnant Maliah as well. Can he juggle it all, while trying to be there for his big brother too?

From the time Brooke Green was seven years old, she has lived with the pain of losing her mother. Her father has done the best job he could in raising her, but a piece of her always felt empty. On the day of her father's funeral, her grandmother breaks the shocking news: Her mother, Sarah, is very much alive. She abandoned her family because she claimed she wasn't fit for motherhood. After doing some research, Brooke discovers her mother is living in Atlanta, enjoying a great career...and a brand-new family.

It has been a year since Jillian Novak ended their affair - a year that left Dr. Aidan Westmoreland determined to win back his lover. He knows they shouldn't have to keep their relationship a secret, and he'll follow her around the world to prove it. Fourteen days on a cruise ship - just Aidan, Jillian, and the deep blue sea - and a passion that won't be denied.

Her dream of studying dance at Juilliard is within reach, but Olivia Dawson turns down the opportunity, choosing instead to stay with her ailing mother in the Houston projects where they barely make ends meet. Lorraine Dawson is Olivia' s whole world, and now Olivia insists on being there for her. But when Lorraine learns Olivia is sacrificing college for her sake, her heartache triggers a series of shattering events that results in Olivia discovering her father, a man she was told had died years ago. But he is alive and well - and he' s the powerful CEO of one of the country' s richest corporations.

Mixing business with pleasure leads to a passionate night. Harper Bennett’s motto is work hard, play hard. Lately, she’s forgotten the latter and has focused her time as part-owner, along with her brothers, of the hottest nightclub in Atlanta. When an intriguing client enters, Harper forgoes her promise to never date a man that doesn’t live in the same city and she finds herself playing hard to get with Hunter Arrington. The passion that has ignited between them can’t be extinguished, and she dreads the day he has to leave.

No Justice is the harrowing story of Robbie Tolan, who early on one New Year's Eve morning, found himself being rushed to the hospital. A White police officer had shot him in the chest after mistakenly accusing him of stealing his own car...while in his own driveway.

Carole and Jeffery Boston Weatherford’s ancestors are among the founders of Maryland. Their family history there extends more than three hundred years, but as with the genealogical searches of many African Americans with roots in slavery, their family tree can only be traced back five generations before going dark. And so from scraps of history, Carole and Jeffery have conjured the voices of their kin, creating an often painful but ultimately empowering story of who their people were in a breathtaking book that is at once deeply personal yet all too universal.

Throughout his life, Cleveland Robeson has shouldered life's challenges and traumas without asking for help. Whether it is because of his age, his gender, or because he is black, he has survived by putting his head down, plowing ahead, and never acknowledging the well-being of his mental health. But when he suggests therapy for his wife, what follows could change their marriage and his life.

Walking Gentry Home tells the story of Alora Young’s ancestors, from the unnamed women forgotten by the historical record but brought to life through Young’s imagination; to Amy, the first of Young’s foremothers to arrive in Tennessee, buried in an unmarked grave, unlike the white man who enslaved her and fathered her child; through Young’s great-grandmother Gentry, unhappily married at fourteen; to her own mother, the teenage beauty queen rejected by her white neighbors.

Long before she was one of the Little Rock Nine, Melba Pattillo Beals was a warrior. Frustrated by the laws that kept African Americans separate but very much unequal to whites, she had questions: Why couldn't she drink from a whites-only fountain? Why couldn't she feel safe beyond home - or even within the walls of church? Adults all told her: Hold your tongue. Be patient. Know your place. But Beals had the heart of a fighter - and the knowledge that her true place was a free one.

Otis, Willie, and Hibernia are three children with a lot in common: they've all lost a loved one, they each have secret dreams, and they won't stop fighting for what they want. And they're also a lot like their hero, famed boxer Joe Louis. Throughout this moving novel, their lives gradually converge to form friendship, family, and love. Their trials and triumphs echo those of Joe Louis, as he fights to become the first African-American heavyweight boxing champion.

Maggie Comer was a poor, uneducated mother of five who believed that the only way her children were going to make something of themselves in the world was through education. Fighting obstacles such as racism, oppression, poverty, hardship, and World War II, Maggie made certain her childrenhad the opportunity to live the American Dream she never could.

In this novel of family and redemption, a mother struggles to save her eighteen-year-old daughter from the devastating consequences of mental illness by forcing her to deal with her bipolar disorder. New York Times best-selling author Bebe Moore Campbell draws on her own powerful emotions and African-American roots, showcasing her best writing yet.

In Embracing Your Past to Empower Your Future, descendants of four prominent Black families whose ancestors were enslaved tell listeners what life was like for those ancestors, and how their experiences shaped and influenced future generations. Their experiences had a profound impact on each of these families—and the wisdom, traditions, and values that have been passed down from generation to generation. The authors worked with family historians, gathered volumes of historical documents, and worked with historians from Montpelier, Mount Vernon, and Africatown to ensure its accuracy.