African Politics

Home is, in effect, the ideological autobiography of LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka. The two dozen essays that constitute this book were written during a five-year span - a turbulent and critical period for African Americans and Whites. The Cuban Revolution, the Birmingham bombings, Robert Williams’s Monroe Defense movement, the Harlem riots, the assassination of Malcolm X...each changed the way Jones/Baraka looked at America. This progressive change is recorded with honesty, anger, and passion in his writings.

What precisely is affirmative action, and why is it fiercely championed by some and just as fiercely denounced by others? Does it signify a boon or a stigma? Or is it simply reverse discrimination? What are its benefits and costs to American society? What are the exact indicia determining who should or should not be accorded affirmative action? When should affirmative action end, if it must? Randall Kennedy gives us a concise and deeply personal overview of the policy, refusing to shy away from the myriad complexities of an issue that continues to bedevil American race relations.

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.

The 1018 presents the African Love/Wisdom System of the Laws of One—The works of Army Special Forces Veteran Obalajii Khephren Rust. What was a chance meeting during the Vietnam war sent Obalajii Khephren Rust on a 40-year journey in search of metaphysical principles that underlie everyday life. Over the course of 40 years Obalajii Khephren Rust produced thousands of pages of handwritten 'fact-sheets' on the 11 areas of human activity: economics, education, war, sex, politics, labor, entertainment, law, metaphysics, religion and energetics.

Al apuntar a hombres negros por medio de la Guerra contra las Drogas y diezmando las comunidades de gente de color, el sistema de justicia criminal de Estados Unidos funciona como un sistema contemporaneo de control racial - al relegar a millones de personas a un estatus de segunda clase - incluso mientras este se adhiere al principio de ceguera para los colores.

Most historians attribute the shortcomings of the civil rights era to a conservative backlash or to the fracturing of the liberal establishment in the late 1960s, but the civil rights movement also faced resistance from a liberal "frontlash," from antiredistributive allies who, before it ever took off, constrained what the movement could demand and how it could demand it. Telling the stories of Ruth Benedict, Kenneth Clark, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and others, Darda reveals how Americans learned to wait on time for racial change and the enduring harm of trust in the clock.

The African American Guide to the Bible makes the case for the relevance of the Bible from the perspective of people of color. It presents a comprehensive biblical view of topics of interest to African Americans and clarifies racial issues for White people.

Curtis J. Austin chronicles how violence brought about the founding of the Black Panther Party in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, dominated its policies, and finally destroyed the party as one member after another - Eldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton, Alex Rackley - left the party, was killed, or was imprisoned.

The deliberate devaluation of Blacks and their communities has had very real, far-reaching, and negative economic and social effects. An enduring white supremacist myth claims brutal conditions in Black communities are mainly the result of Black people's collective choices and moral failings. But there is nothing wrong with Black people that ending racism can't solve. Noted educator, journalist, and scholar Andre Perry takes listeners on a tour of six Black-majority cities whose assets and strengths are undervalued.

Told through his perspective as an activist, acclaimed commentator Solomon Jones tells the stories of real people whose lives and deaths pushed the Black Lives Matter movement forward. He explains how each act of violence was incited by specific instances of structural racism, and details concrete and actionable strategies to address crimes committed by our “justice” system. These stories and strategies are a critical resource for social justice activists looking to further their anti-racist education.

Reniqua Allen tells the stories of Black millennials searching for a better future in spite of racist policies that have closed off traditional versions of success. Many watched their parents and grandparents play by the rules, only to sink deeper and deeper into debt. They witnessed their elders fight to escape cycles of oppression for more promising prospects, largely to no avail. Today, in this post-Obama era, they face a critical turning point. Interweaving her own experience, Allen shares surprising stories of hope and ingenuity.

In this powerful and timely book, civil rights historian and political analyst Juan Williams denounces Donald Trump for intentionally twisting history to fuel racial tensions for his political advantage. In Williams's lifetime, crusaders for civil rights have braved hatred, violence, and imprisonment. Remarkably, all this progress suddenly seems to have been forgotten - or worse, undone. The stirring history of hard-fought and heroic battles for voting rights, integrated schools, and more is under direct threat from an administration dedicated to restricting these basic freedoms.

More than 50 years ago, an assassin's bullet robbed us of one of the most eloquent voices for 20th-century human rights and justice. Drawing on a new generation of scholarship about the civil rights era, To the Promised Land goes beyond the iconic view of King as an advocate of racial harmony to explore his profound commitment to the poor and working class, and his call for "nonviolent resistance" to all forms of oppression, including economic injustice.

Lucia Kay McBath knew deep down that a bullet could one day take her son. After all, she had watched the news of countless unarmed Black men unjustly gunned down. Standing Our Ground is McBath’s memoir of raising, loving, and losing her son to gun violence, and the story of how she transformed her pain into activism. Seventeen-year-old Jordan Davis was shot by a man who thought the music playing on his car stereo was too loud. McBath presents an emotional account of her fervent fight for justice, and her awakening to a cause that will drive the rest of her days.

In the black liberation movement, imprisonment emerged as a key rhetorical, theoretical, and media resource. Imprisoned activists developed tactics and ideology to counter white supremacy. Lisa M. Corrigan underscores how imprisonment - a site for both political and personal transformation - shaped movement leaders by influencing their political analysis and organizational strategies. Prison became the critical space for the transformation from civil rights to Black Power, especially as southern civil rights activists faced setbacks.

The African American population in the United States has always been seen as a single entity: a "Black America" with unified interests and needs. In his groundbreaking book Disintegration, longtime Washington Post journalist Eugene Robinson argues that, through decades of desegregation, affirmative action, and immigration, the concept of Black America has shattered.

In the tumultuous year after Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, 29-year-old Pete O'Neal became inspired by reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X and founded the Kansas City branch of the Black Panther Party (BPP). The same year, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declared the BPP was the "greatest threat to the internal security of the country." Arrested in 1969 and convicted for transporting a shotgun across state lines, O'Neal was free on bail pending his appeal when Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the BPP, was assassinated by the police

What does it mean to be an American? The story of the African American past demonstrates the difficulty of answering this seemingly simple question. This book illuminates the US's core paradoxes, inviting profound questions about what it means to be an American, a citizen, and a human being. This book considers how, for centuries, African Americans have fought for what the black feminist intellectual Anna Julia Cooper called "the cause of freedom." It begins in Jamestown in 1619, when the first shipment of enslaved Africans arrived in that settlement.

Leading climate justice activist Vanessa Nakate brings her fierce, fearless spirit, new perspective, and superstar bona fides to the biggest issue of our time. In A Bigger Picture, her first book, she shares her story as a young Ugandan woman who sees that her community bears disproportionate consequences to the climate crisis. At the same time, she sees that activists from African nations and the global south are not being heard in the same way as activists from white nations are heard.

On the morning of July 16, 1964, a white police officer in New York City shot and killed a black teenager, James Powell. Two nights later, a peaceful demonstration in Harlem degenerated into violent protests. During the next week, thousands of rioters looted stores from Brooklyn to Rochester and pelted police with bottles and rocks. Michael W. Flamm draws on personal interviews and delves into the archives to move briskly from the streets of New York, where black activists like Bayard Rustin tried in vain to restore peace, to the corridors of the White House.