African Art

When The Flip Wilson Show debuted in 1970, Black faces were still rare on television, Black hosts nonexistent. So how did Clerow “Flip” Wilson go from Jersey City grade-school dropout to national celebrity, heralded on the cover of Time as “TV’s first black superstar”? Flip is a candid, entertaining biography of a consummate comedian who changed the face of American popular culture.

At once the most lucrative, popular, and culturally oppositional musical force in the United States, hip-hop demands the kind of interpretation Imani Perry provides here: criticism engaged with this vibrant musical form on its own terms. A scholar and a fan, Perry considers the art, politics, and culture of hip-hop through an analysis of song lyrics, the words of the prophets of the hood.

In the 1920s and 1930s, as radio took over the pop music business, record companies were forced to leave their studios in major cities in search of new styles and markets. Ranging the mountains, prairies, rural villages, and urban ghettos of America, they discovered a wealth of unexpected talent - farmers, laborers, and ethnic minorities playing styles that blended the intertwining strands of Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

When photographer Adraint Bereal graduated from the University of Texas, he self-published an impressive volume of portraits, personal statements, and interviews that explored UT's campus culture and offered an intimate look at the lives of Black students matriculating within a majority white space. Bereal's work was inspired by his first photo exhibition at the George Washington Carver Museum in Austin, entitled 1.7, that unearthed the experiences of the 925 Black men that made up just 1.7% of UT's total 52,000 student body.

They were best friends. They were collaborators, literary gadflies, and champions of the common people. They were the leading lights of the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston, the author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Langston Hughes, the author of "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and "Let America Be America Again", first met in 1925, at a great gathering of black and white literati, and they fascinated each other.

Three simple words that provided Kathryn Johnson, a reporter for The Associated Press' Atlanta bureau, unprecedented access to the grieving widow in the days following her husband's death. Johnson was on her way to a movie date when word came from Memphis that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. She immediately headed for the King home where, despite resistance from authorities on the scene, she was the only reporter allowed inside.

In this startling group memoir, four friends - Black and White, gay and straight, immigrant and American-born - use Toni Morrison’s novels as a springboard for intimate and revealing conversations about the problems of everyday racism and living whole in times of uncertainty. Tackling everything from first love and Soul Train to police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement, the authors take up what it means to read challenging literature collaboratively and to learn in public as an act of individual reckoning and social resistance.

In her senior year of college, asha bandele and a group of other writers went to a prison to read their works for a Black History Month program. There, she met Rashid, a man who was serving 20 to life for murder, a man who spoke softly and wisely, a man who would become asha’s soul mate. This is her account of a relationship that has thrived despite terrific odds.

"Sometimes I wish I was a little girl again, because bruised knees heal faster than broken hearts.” When you are young sometimes life doesn't always go as you plan it. For Taliyah, life wasn't always easy or hard but she wrote her own life story. From smiles to heart break as a teen, Taliyah went through it all. Having one high sweetheart isn't as easy as it looks.

This is the inspiring life and legacy of vocal artist and civil rights icon Paul Robeson - one of the most important public figures in the 20th century - adapted for young adults by the acclaimed Robeson biographer. Featuring a foreword by multiple award-winning author Jason Reynolds, Paul Robeson: No One Can Silence Me will introduce listeners in middle and high school to the inspiring and complicated life of one of America’s most fascinating figures, whose story of artistry, heroism, conviction, and conflict is newly relevant today.

We've heard the name "Condoleezza Rice" over and over again as the spokesperson for President George W. Bush in matters of national security and foreign affairs. She presented a balanced, firm, unafraid presence to the country after the terrible events of September 11, 2001, as she spoke to the media and the public on behalf of the President. And, when the President has something to say about our friends and foes overseas, "Condi," as she is known to her friends, is usually standing in the background.

The First 60 Years: The History of Afro-American Musical Theater and Entertainment chronicles the contributions made by Black Americans to the entertainment industry in America from 1871 through 1930. This book describes, among other subjects, the types of traveling circuses performers worked on and the types of material performed there. This book also chronicles the history and the beginnings of Black Vaudeville in America, the creation of the blues, and the beginnings of Black theatrical entrepreneurship that took place in America during its most racist times.

World-renowned poet and Professor of African American Studies at U.C., Berkeley, June Jordan writes a deeply personal memoir of her formative years. June recalls her childhood experiences and reveals the duality of her parents’ influence on her stellar achievement as a poet. The first 12 years in Harlem were both peaceful and tumultuous for June, as she was raised the daughter of dirt-poor West Indian immigrants.

Through the telling of events from his own life, Wes Moore (author of the best-selling adult title The Other Wes Moore) explores the issues that separate success and failure. He also counterpoints his story with another man, someone who shared the same name, was almost the same age, grew up fatherless in a similar Baltimore neighborhood, but is serving a life sentence for murder. Compelled to write to the other Wes, the author was surprised to receive a reply. And so began a friendship, as letters turned into visits and the two men got to know one another.

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.

Sassy is the new hire on the call center floor. A sexy, young tender with a curvy shape to match her style, Sassy quickly becomes a mouthwatering temptation for all who look her way. She seemingly has the perfect distraction with her boyfriend, John, working on the same floor. But as John tries to fan off anyone who dares stare too long, Sassy appears to have different motives in mind with the mysteriously intriguing HoLLyRod...who just so happens to be a master in the art of cheating.

A tale from the best-selling African Fable series, a handsome creature named Rhino, with tightly fitting, glossy skin and perfectly symmetrical horns on the sides of his head, takes pleasure in making fun of all the other African animals. His never-ending hurtful remarks finally get the better of the other creatures, who decide to teach him a lesson. What happens next leaves Rhino very sorry for being so rude and vain.

If you want to understand the Black experience in the US, you must understand hip-hop, and Psalms of My People is your guide. Treating hip-hop like sacred scripture, lenny duncan traces its history—the artists, their lyrics, and the cultural context—to reveal its role as a conduit to tell the modern story of Black liberation in this country, following the bloody trail from the end of the Civil Rights Era through the day George Floyd was sacrificed on the streets of america.

Solomon Stein has dreams of success in the music industry. At the breakout of his music career, he is bought into the fold of Detroit-based, One By One Records (IXI), the hottest hip-hop label in the country. But the deeper Sal gets into the world of IXI, he realizes everything that glitters isn't gold. Pushy corporate reps who want to steal his house, his growing feelings for a mysterious industry executive, and obscure messages hidden in plain sight are making it impossible to know what to believe.

After Baz Luhrmann’s movie, Elvis, hit theaters in the summer of 2022, audiences and critics alike couldn't help but question the Black origins of Elvis Presley’s music and style, reigniting a debate that has been circling for decades. In Before Elvis: The African American Musicians Who Made the King​, author Preston Lauterbach answers these questions definitively, based on new research and extensive, previously unpublished interviews with the artists who blazed the way and the people who knew them.