African American Historical Fiction

Long before moving away from The Bottom, the poor black district of Beaumont, Arkansas, David and Mary Green yearn to escape the rural south and find a better life. The family steals away in the night, seeking a new beginning in St. Louis, Missouri. Even though St. Louis is more than they hoped for, their son, Otto, succumbs to the draw of the streets; he's lured into the dangerous world of bootlegging alcohol at the height of Prohibition.

This story takes place in 1912, with the narrator being a young girl named Heattie. Her memories take her to the times when the Sisterhood, one who is her grandmother, would sit on the front porch and tell stories, past and present. Even though the stories are being told on the front porch, Heattie's life gets caught between the stories and the mysteries of real life. In the midst of the stories and the mysteries, Heattie and her best friend, Luceen, have several adventures while trying to solve certain mysteries of lost identities.

If you loved Detroit and the Motown sound, you will love Graylin Brown! A heartwarming and triumphant story of an African American soul singer who was cut down in his prime by a debilitating disease. The fictional story spans from 1965 Detroit, Michigan to Hollywood, California in the early 90s. After the onset of the disease in 1965, he went into a nine-year remission. He did the best he could as he struggled with the possibility of a relapse

Leo Love, and his only son, Michael, navigate their way through the cultural limitations and divisions that afflict American life. Starting from the 1950s and into the new millennium, their lives at times, cross with the lives of some of history's greatest icons. Joining their intellects and talent together, they become beacons for the doomsday clock. As champions for human rights, they wage war on ignorance through love and wisdom.

This book contextualizes the history of the Mormon migration with other events in American and particularly African American history. Few are aware that several black Mormon converts played important parts in the beginnings of Civil Rights issues from 1930 onward. Any listeners who want to broaden their understanding of African American history in the days from the American Revolution until just before the Civil War will find this book unique and full of information unavailable elsewhere.

Author Lawrence Reid Bechtel has captured the story of Isaac Granger, a slave from Thomas Jefferson's plantation as told through the eyes of amateur historian Reverend Charles Campbell. In 1852, after much searching through the Black districts of Petersburg, Virginia, the amateur historian Charles Campbell finally located Isaac Granger, a former slave of the late Thomas Jefferson.

1978. The year I turned 10 and the year my mama killed herself. She was 35, and dying is the last thing that should have been on her mind. After the death of her mother, Sylvia Butler's father, a man she knows only from an old photo, takes her from Louisville, Kentucky to Ozark, Alabama to live with his family. But his wife resents everything about this intruder. When the wife's younger brother Charles returns from Vietnam, Sylvia thinks she has found a friend and confidante, only to be hurt again, but this time, in a manner she never could have imagined.

Neighborhood tensions reach a breaking point in the finale of New York Times best-selling author Mary Monroe's captivating series that sweeps listeners back to 1930's Alabama and into the lives of two neighboring couples whose deceitful friendships and imperfect marriages are just the beginning of their troubles...

Henry Brown came to be known as Box; he "entered the world a slave". He was put to work as a child and passed down from one generation to the next - as property. When he was an adult, his wife and children were sold away from him out of spite. Henry Brown watched as his family left bound in chains, headed to the deeper South. What more could be taken from him? But then hope - and help - came in the form of the Underground Railroad. Escape!

The Lebensborn Alliance begins 11 years after The Lebensborn Experiment ends. It is now 1956, and the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement. Former Sergeant Kapp Johnson gets enlisted as Dr. Martin Luther King's bodyguard and moves to Montgomery, Alabama. Hans has inherited millions from his uncle and buys the Vancouver Daily Times. As Managing Editor, Hans sends Adok to Montgomery to report on the bus boycott. When Adok gets involved with the local KKK and goes missing, Hans' prophecy he would one day meet Sergeant Johnson again comes true.

Frederick Douglass was a self-educated slave in the South who grew up to become an icon. He was a leader of the abolitionist movement, a celebrated writer, an esteemed speaker, and a social reformer, proving that, as he said, "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."

The story of one of America's most revered figures is brought to life by the text of award-winning author Walter Dean Myers.

At the end of a sweltering summer shaped by the tragic assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, race riots, political protests, and the birth of black power, three coeds from New York City - Zelda Livingston, Veronica Cook, and Daphne Brooks - pack into Veronica’s new Ford Fairlane convertible, bound for Atlanta and their last year at Spelman College. It is the beginning of a journey that will change their lives irrevocably.

Chima is an outcast among outcasts. He's on the verge of giving up on life entirely when he encounters the sacred Biafran lion. Gifted with an incredible power and introduced to a world beyond belief, Chima thinks his life may finally be turning around. When a rival nation kidnaps Chima's father, his world is shattered. To save his family and the Biafran people, he must learn to believe in himself and his newfound power. As he fights back against a secret weapon, he wonders if his efforts to protect his adopted home could doom them all.

Martin Rising is a stunning, poetic presentation of the final months of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life - told in a rich embroidery of visions, color, musical cadence, deep emotion, and multiple layers of meaning. Against a backdrop of the sanitation workers’ strike in Memphis, Tennessee, the book builds to its rousing crescendo as King delivers his “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech - where his life’s commitment to peaceful activism and his dream of equality ascend to their highest peak.

Born in 1860s Missouri, nobody expected George Washington Carver to succeed. Slaves were not allowed to be educated. After the Civil War, Carver enrolled in classes and proved to be a star student. He became the first black student at Iowa State Agricultural College and later its first black professor. He went on to the Tuskegee Institute where he specialized in botany (the study of plants) and developed techniques to grow crops better. His work with vegetables, especially peanuts, made him famous and changed agriculture forever.

It's 1969 when 15-year-old Huey Fairchild begins high school at Claremont Prep, one of New York City's most prestigious boys' schools. His mother had uprooted her family from their small hometown of Akersburg, Georgia, a few years earlier, leaving behind Huey's white father and the racial unrest that ran deeper than the Chattahoochee River. But for our sharp-tongued protagonist, forgetting the past is easier said than done. At Claremont, where the only other nonwhite person is the janitor, Huey quickly realizes that racism can lurk beneath even the nicest school uniform. After a momentary slip of his temper, Huey finds himself facing legal charges.

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.

Walking many miles to school in the dusty road, young Coretta knew, too well, the unfairness of life in the segregated south. A yearning for equality began to grow. Together with Martin Luther King, Jr., she gave birth to a vision and a journey - with dreams of freedom for all. This extraordinary union of poetic text by Ntozake Shange and monumental artwork by Kadir Nelson captures the movement for civil rights in the United States and honors its most elegant inspiration, Coretta Scott.

It is extremely hard to remain faithful, especially when temptation is right in front of you. This is what caused one man to yield to temptation. He had always been faithful to his wife, but just one touch from the perfect female made him lose his cool. She too was fighting her own set of demons. She was in love with a man who was still committed to another.

A powerful telling of the first African-American heavyweight champion, this story portrays how a shy, fearful young man learned to fight back and become one of history's more compelling personalities. Children will be awed and inspired by the boxer's energy and drive which is duly reflected through the rhythmic text and excellent narration.