African American Science

Learn about the bomb blast that rocked the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on Sunday morning, September 15, 1963, killing four young girls.

Rex M. Ellis weaves the strands of African folklore, early American history, and contemporary interpretations into the rich quilt that is the African-American experience. His stories spin a thread from the Windward Coast of West Africa to the shores of Jamestown and beyond. He uses storytelling as both a historical teaching tool and a method for dealing with controversial subjects.

A prominent conservative scholar traces the post-1960s divisions between the Right and the Left, taking aim at liberals' victimization of African Americans and their failure to offer a viable way forward for American society. The United States today is hopelessly polarized; the political Right and Left have hardened into rigid and deeply antagonistic camps, preventing any sort of progress.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Stony the Road and one of our most important voices on the African-American experience, a powerful new history of the Black church in America as the Black community's abiding rock and its fortress.

The events of the past decade have forced us to reckon with who we are and who we want to be. We have been invested in a set of beliefs about our American identity: our exceptionalism, the inevitable rightness of our path, and the promise that hard work and determination will carry us to freedom. But in Stakes Is High, Mychal Denzel Smith confronts the shortcomings of these stories - and with the American Dream itself - and calls on us to live up to the principles we profess but fail to realize.

There is a vampire war brewing in the underworld and at the center of it all is Damali Richards, spoken word artist and Vampire Huntress. But she is not just any Vampire Huntress, she is the millenium Neteru: a woman so potentially powerful that the vampire world is about to invoke a bloody battle that threatens to spill over onto her streets in order to possess her. It's just a matter of who will get to her first.

The second edition of this pathbreaking, widely taught book offers five new chapters, on breastfeeding and Black infant health; Black birthing during COVID; Black doulas rethinking birthing practices; the recent buildup of a US national movement; and expanding the global movement for sexual and reproductive wellbeing. Other chapters are updated throughout. Birthing Justice puts black women's voices at the center of the debate on what should be done to fix the broken maternal care system.

In the vibrant tapestry of humanity, "Nature Knows No Color-Line" unravels the threads of shared ancestry across continents and time. This groundbreaking work challenges rigid racial lines, exposing the myths of purity and celebrating the interconnectedness of our roots. Prepare to embark on a captivating journey through history, anthropology, and genetics, where evidence whispers a powerful truth: skin may differ, but beneath it all, we bloom from the same soil.

At Canaan's Edge concludes America in the King Years, a three-volume history that will endure as a masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy. Pulitzer Prize-winner and best-selling author Taylor Branch makes clear in this magisterial account of the civil rights movement that Martin Luther King, Jr., earned a place next to James Madison and Abraham Lincoln in the pantheon of American history.

On the surface, Riverview High School looks like the post-racial ideal. Serving an enviably affluent, diverse, and liberal district, the school is well-funded, its teachers are well-trained, and many of its students are high achieving. Yet Riverview has not escaped the same unrelenting question that plagues schools throughout America: why is it that even when all of the circumstances seem right, black and Latino students continue to lag behind their peers?

America's great promise of equality has always rung hollow in the ears of African Americans. But today the situation has grown even more dire. From the murders of black youth by the police to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act to the disaster visited upon poor and middle-class black families by the Great Recession, it is clear that black America faces an emergency - at the very moment the election of the first black president has prompted many to believe we've solved America's race problem.

The New Negro Movement of the 1920s marked a shift in the pursuit of African American equality. African American soldiers were returning home from World War I, and after fighting for freedoms abroad, they were inspired to continue that fight on their own soil. The “old” ways had focused on passively accepting social policies, but the “new” ways would harness their collective voices in defining their own identity. The intellectual and artistic movement of the Harlem Renaissance stirred a tremendous wave of social change.

In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America.

Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call “racecraft.” And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed.

The recent Hollywood film Hidden Figures presents a portrait of how African American women shaped the US effort in aerospace during the height of Jim Crow. In Storming the Heavens, Gerald Horne presents the necessary back story to this account and goes further to detail the earlier struggle of African Americans to gain the right to fly.

New York Times best-selling, award-winning author, actor, and motivational speaker Hill Harper invites listeners to join the conversation about the breakdown of the African-American family. The black community of past generations found strength in families, but today’s black children have less than a one in three chance of being raised in a two-parent household. Harper’s search for answers to this phenomenon is an enlightening and empowering journey.

A provocative look at what it means to be Black today. This audiobook includes excerpts from over 100 interviews with Rev. Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, Skip Gates, Melissa Harris-Perry, Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley, Glenn Ligon, Malcolm Gladwell, Paul Mooney, NY Gov. David Paterson, Harold Ford, Jr., Soledad O'Brien, Kamala Harris, Chuck D, Questlove, and others.

David Falkner, noted author of five previous books about baseball, deftly portrays the rise to stardom of Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play on a major-league team in baseball’s modern era. As Falkner traces the development of Robinson’s natural skill and tireless dedication, he focuses on the strengths that earned Robinson a unique place on the diamond and in the struggle for civil rights. This compelling biography illuminates a critical intersection of sports and cultural history.

Thurgood Marshall brought down the separate-but-equal doctrine, integrated schools, and not only fought for human rights and human dignity but also made them impossible to deny in the courts and in the streets. In this stunning new biography, award-winning author Wil Haygood surpasses the emotional impact of his inspiring best seller The Butler to detail the life and career of one of the most transformative legal minds of the past 100 years.

Drawing from stratification economics, intersectionality, and respectability politics, The Love Jones Cohort centers on the voices and lifestyles of members of the Black middle class who are single and living alone (SALA). While much has been written about both the Black middle class and the rise of singlehood, this book represents a first foray into bridging these two concepts.