African Studies

The gripping story of 200 freed Mississippi slaves who sailed to Liberia to build a new colony - where the colonists' repression of the native tribes would beget a tragic cycle of violence. When a wealthy Mississippi cotton planter named Isaac Ross died in 1836, his will decreed that his plantation, Prospect Hill, should be liquidated and the proceeds from the sale be used to pay for his slaves' passage to the newly established colony of Liberia in western Africa.

In Diversity, Inc., award-winning journalist Pamela Newkirk shines a bright light on the diversity industry, asking the tough questions about what has been effective - and why progress has been so slow. Newkirk highlights the rare success stories, sharing valuable lessons about how other industries can match those gains. But as she argues, despite decades of hand-wringing, costly initiatives, and uncomfortable conversations, organizations have, apart from a few exceptions, fallen far short of their goals.

The Third Option is a plea on behalf of a brokenhearted God who, scripture teaches, is frustrated with those of us who claim to believe in him but are really “faking the faith”. McPherson argues that we must rise above the issues that divide us and be part of something bigger. The Third Option challenges both believers and seekers to fully embrace God’s goodness and power. McPherson believes that instead of choosing one of two sides, there is a third option - one that’s proven to bring people together, mend relationships, and promote genuine peace in communities.

In The Team That Changed Baseball: Roberto Clemente and the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates, veteran baseball writer Bruce Markusen tells the story of one of the most likable and significant teams in the history of professional sports. In addition to the fact that they fielded the first all-minority lineup in major league history, the 1971 Pirates are noteworthy for the team's inspiring individual performances.

National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping-off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time.

This cultural biography tells the enthralling story of the high-achieving Black elites who thrived in the nation's capital during Reconstruction. Daniel Murray (1851-1925), an assistant librarian at the Library of Congress, was a prominent member of this glorious class. Murray's life was reflective of those who were well-off at the time. This social circle included African American educators, ministers, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, US senators and representatives, and other government officials.

In an awesome meeting of minds, cultural theorists Stuart Hall and bell hooks met for a series of wide-ranging conversations on what Hall sums up as "life, love, death, sex." From the trivial to the profound, across boundaries of age, sexualities and genders, hooks and Hall dissect topics and themes of continual contemporary relevance, including feminism, home and homecoming, class, black masculinity, family, politics, relationships, and teaching.

On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stepped out onto the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, and into his killer's line of fire. One shot ended Dr. King's life and forever changed the course of American history—setting into motion a massive cover-up that has withstood a quarter-century of scrutiny. After 18 years of intensive investigation, William F. Pepper has torn away the veil of subterfuge that has hidden the truth surrounding King's death—proving the innocence of convicted assassin James Earl Ray.

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.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow is one of the great works of Southern history. Indeed, the book actually helped shape that history. Published in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education ordered schools desegregated, Strange Career was cited so often to counter arguments for segregation that Martin Luther King, Jr. called it "the historical Bible of the civil rights movement." The book offers a clear and illuminating analysis of the history of Jim Crow laws, presenting evidence that segregation in the South dated only to the 1890s.

The night of May 25, 2020 changed America. George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, was killed during an arrest in Minneapolis when a White cop suffocated him. The video of that night’s events went viral, sparking the largest protests in the nation’s history and the sort of social unrest we have not seen since the '60s. While Floyd’s death was certainly the catalyst (heightened by the fact that it occurred during a pandemic whose victims were disproportionately of color), it was in truth the fuse that lit an ever-filling powder keg.

Inner-city Black America is often stereotyped as a place of random violence; in fact, violence in the inner city is regulated through an informal but well-known code of the street. How you dress, talk, and behave can have life-or-death consequences, with young people particularly at risk. The most powerful force counteracting this code and its reign of terror is the strong, loving, decent family, and we meet many heroic figures in the course of this narrative.

Sarah Vaughan, a pivotal figure in the formation of bebop, influenced a broad array of singers who followed in her wake, yet the breadth and depth of her impact - not just as an artist but also as an African American woman - remain overlooked. Drawing from a wealth of sources as well as on exclusive interviews with Vaughan's friends and former colleagues, Queen of Bebop unravels the many myths and misunderstandings that have surrounded Vaughan.

Award-winning civil rights historian Ray Arsenault describes the dramatic story behind Marian Anderson’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial - an early milestone in civil rights history - on the 70th anniversary of her performance. On Easter Sunday 1939, the brilliant vocalist Marian Anderson sang before a throng of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington - an electrifying moment and an underappreciated milestone in civil rights history.

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.

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.

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.

America after the Civil War was a land of shattered promises and entrenched hatreds. In the explosive South, danger took many forms: white extremists loyal to a defeated world terrorized former slaves, while in the halls of government, bitter and byzantine political warfare raged between Republicans and Democrats.

A 2006 report commissioned by Brown University revealed that institution's complex and contested involvement in slavery - setting off a controversy that leapt from the ivory tower to make headlines across the country. But Brown's troubling past was far from unique. In Ebony and Ivy, Craig Steven Wilder, a rising star in the profession of history, lays bare uncomfortable truths about race, slavery, and the American academy.

Regardless of how wealthy or poor their parents are, all black boys must confront and surmount the "achievement gap": a divide that shows up not only in our sons' test scores, but in their social and emotional development, their physical well-being, and their outlook on life. As children, they score as high on cognitive tests as their peers, but at some point, the gap emerges. Why? This is the question Joe Brewster, M.D., and Michele Stephenson asked when their own son, Idris, began struggling in a new school.