African American Biography

2016 Christopher Award Winner From acclaimed actor and producer Wendell Pierce, an insightful and poignant portrait of family, New Orleans and the transforming power of art. On the morning of August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina barreled into New Orleans, devastating many of the city's...

Published during a literary era marked by the ascendance of Black writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley, this thinly fictionalized account of Claude Brown’s childhood as a hardened, streetwise criminal trying to survive the toughest streets of Harlem has been heralded as the definitive account of everyday life for the first generation of African Americans raised in the Northern ghettos of the 1940s and 1950s.

In a little-noted eulogy delivered after Lincoln's assassination, Frederick Douglass called the president "emphatically the black man's president," the "first to show any respect for their rights as men." Douglass pointed not just to Lincoln's official acts and utterances, like the Emancipation Proclamation or the Second Inaugural Address, but also to the president's own personal experiences with Black people.

Staking a Claim examines the life of Jake Simmons, Jr. - the international tycoon who was the most successful African American in the history of the oil industry - and affords us a rare perspective on this question.

The Space Age began just as the struggle for civil rights forced Americans to confront the long and bitter legacy of slavery, discrimination, and violence against African Americans. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson utilized the space program as an agent for social change, using federal equal employment opportunity laws to open workplaces at NASA and NASA contractors to African Americans while creating thousands of research and technology jobs in the Deep South to ameliorate poverty.

New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An award-winning author charts the poignant global journeys of African Americans as she explores her own transatlantic family odyssey in Beyond the Shores, a powerful history of living abroad while Black. “By exploring the life of Black...

The New York Times bestselling author of Writing My Wrongs invites men everywhere on a journey of honesty and healing through this book of moving letters to his sons—one whom he is raising and the other whose childhood took place during Senghor's nineteen-year incarceration. “A visceral...

In I Wonder as I Wander, Langston Hughes vividly recalls the most dramatic and intimate moments of his life in the turbulent 1930s. His wanderlust leads him to Cuba, Haiti, Russia, Soviet Central Asia, Japan, Spain (during its Civil War), through dictatorships, wars, revolutions. He meets and...

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...

A revelatory look at the tumultuous life of a jazz legend and American cultural icon “A book written as only one artist could view another, with insight and sincere compassion.” —Sandra Cisneros, best-selling author of Woman Without Shame In the first biography of Billie Holiday in more...

Dr. Jordan B. Smith, Jr. became the first African-American to become the Color Company Commander at the United States Naval Academy (Annapolis or USNA) in 1976. The Class of 1976 African Americans set the pathway for changes, by demonstrating that Blacks and other minorities had earned the right to be in Annapolis. The incidents and events are authentic. This audiobook is about one of the Black men who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1976.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Simmons’s evocative account of her remarkable trajectory from Jim Crow Texas, where she was the youngest of twelve children in a sharecropping family, to the presidencies of Smith College and Brown University shines with tenderness and dignity.”—The New...

Designer, activist, and educator Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller is legendary for her decades of scholarship and advocacy, and as a touchstone and conscience for the design profession. In HERE: Where the Black Designers Are, Holmes-Miller documents the history of—and answers to—the question she has been asking for decades: “Where are the Black designers?” Holmes-Miller explores this essential question through the lens of her own development as a designer and leader, beginning with her own family and its rich multiethnic history.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was only 25 when he helped organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott and was soon organizing black people across the country in support of the right to vote, desegregation, and other basic civil rights. Maintaining nonviolent and peaceful tactics even when his life was...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER Read with Jenna Book Club Pick as Featured on Today From the creator of Elle’s “Eric Reads the News,” a heartfelt and hilarious memoir-in-essays about growing up seeing the world differently, finding unexpected hope, and experiencing every awkward...

Rosa Parks was often described as a sweet and reticent elderly woman whose tired feet caused her to defy segregation on Montgomery’s city buses, and whose supposedly solitary, spontaneous act sparked the 1955 bus boycott that gave birth to the civil rights movement. The truth of who Rosa Parks...

While many film fans may not be familiar with Bill Duke's name, they most certainly recognize his face. Dating back to the 1970s, Duke has appeared in a number of popular films, including Car Wash, American Gigolo, Commando, Predator, and X-Men: The Last Stand. Fewer still might be aware of Duke's extraordinary accomplishments off-screen as a talented director, producer, entrepreneur, and humanitarian. Bill Duke is the memoir of a Hollywood original.

A raw, compelling memoir of baseball, family, fame, addiction, and recovery, by one of the most beloved baseball players of his generation How does it feel to be born with enormous gifts, in a life shadowed by tragedy? What does it mean when the gift that opens the world for us is not enough...

Inspired by the #1 New York Times bestseller She Persisted by Chelsea Clinton and Alexandra Boiger, a chapter book series about women who spoke up and rose up against the odds--including Simone Biles! Simone Biles was raised by her grandparents and had to overcome many hardships as a child...

Help your little one dream big with a Little Golden Book biography about President Barack Obama! The perfect introduction to nonfiction for young readers—as well as fans of all ages! This Little Golden Book about Barack Obama--the 44th President of the United States and the country's first...