African American Memoris

Born into slavery on a Maryland plantation, John Thompson spent the first twenty-five years of his life in bondage before escaping to the North. His fear of recapture drove him to a soul-searching new chapter of his life. He joined the crew of the Milwood, a whaling vessel on which Thompson would spend more than two years working and traveling the world. In this unique slave narrative, Thompson not only explores the brutal realities of the antebellum South but also provides a transcendent spiritual accounting of his own internal life.

When John Brown decided to raid the federal armory in Harper's Ferry as the starting point of his intended liberation effort in the South, some closest to him thought it was unnecessary and dangerous. Frederick Douglass, a pioneering abolitionist, refused Brown's invitation to join him in Virginia, believing that the raid on the armory was a suicide mission. Yet in front of Douglass, "Emperor" Shields Green, a fugitive from South Carolina, accepted John Brown's invitation. When the raid failed, Emperor was captured with the rest of Brown's surviving men and hanged on December 16, 1859.

George M. Johnson, activist and bestselling author ofAll Boys Aren't Blue, returns with a striking memoir that celebrates Black boyhood and brotherhood in all its glory. This is the vibrant story of George, Garrett, Rall, and Rasul -- four children raised by Nanny, their fiercely devoted...

Born into bondage in 1818, Elizabeth Keckley was able to purchase her freedom only after years of saving. She then went on to build a thriving business as a seamstress, eventually becoming modiste to Mary Todd Lincoln herself. In this dressmaking role, Keckley was a close confidante of Mary Todd, and her 1868 memoir recounted her incredible rise while also providing revelatory insights into everyday life among the Lincolns.

The first biography of Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a trailblazing Black feminist activist whose work made children, race, and welfare rights central to the women’s movement. Dorothy Pitman Hughes was a transformative community organizer in New York City in the 1970s who shared the stage with Gloria...

"The audio version adds to the authenticity even more as she narrates her own words, bringing the listener into her world." -- School Library Journal, starred review This program includes a foreword read by Angela Davis Patrisse Cullors' and asha bandele's instant New York Times bestseller, When...

Includes an audiobook-exclusive interview with Darryl! For anyone ready to move their life forward, from tragedy, personal failure, unfair circumstances, or just a sense of being stuck, baseball legend and bestselling author Darryl Strawberry offers transformational practices and the tangible...

Part memoir and part cultural critique, Darkly: Blackness and America's Gothic Soul explores American culture's inevitable gothicity in the traces left from chattel slavery. The persistence of white supremacy and the ubiquity of Black deaths feed a national culture of terror and a perpetual undercurrent of mourning.

In The Warrior Code, entrepreneur, philanthropist, reality star, and retired gunnery sergeant Tee Marie Hanible serves up 11 principles to awaken your inner badass and thrive in the face of adversity. With insightful honesty and wisdom and set against the backdrop of Tee’s life, The Warrior Code will help you understand that things can beat us back from realizing our true potential...but the key is finding the way to realize one’s own innate strength.

In this inspiring and provocative memoir about a young black man, Caylin Moore tells the against-all-odds story of his rise from racial injustice and cruel poverty in gang-ridden Los Angeles to academic success at the University of Oxford, with hope as his compass. A Dream to Big is for readers...

It's never too late to do the impossible. Meet Ida Keeling, a 104-year-old mother, activist, and world record-holding runner. Her fierce independence and deep faith carried her through the Depression and the civil rights movement--but her greatest trials were yet to come. Miss Ida, as she is...

Allow God to heal the broken record of your soul, so you can step into your calling, speak up for what's right, and dance your own story of God's grace. What does the soundtrack in your head sound like? The hurtful words of others and the failures of your past often determine what record you...

In this powerful and passionate memoir - his final work - Cone describes the obstacles he overcame to find his voice, to respond to the signs of the times, and to offer a voice for those - like the parents who raised him in Bearden, Arkansas, in the era of lynching and Jim Crow - who had no voice. Recounting lessons learned both from critics and students, and the ongoing challenge of his models King, Malcolm X, and James Baldwin, he describes his efforts to use theology as a tool in the struggle against oppression and for a better world.

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.

The unforgettable true story of one man’s escape from the school-to-prison pipeline, how he reinvented himself as a pastor and education reform advocate, and what his journey can teach us about turning the collateral damage in the lives of our youth into hope. “A heart-wrenching and...

In 1831 Virginia, Nat Turner led a band of Southampton County slaves in a rebellion that killed 55 whites, mostly women and children. After more than two months in hiding, Turner was captured, and quickly convicted and executed. In the Matter of Nat Turner penetrates the historical caricature of Turner as befuddled mystic and self-styled Baptist preacher to recover the haunting persona of this legendary American slave rebel.

In January of 1950, Mary Church Terrell, an 86-year-old charter member of the NAACP, headed into Thompson’s Restaurant, just a few blocks from the White House, and requested to be served. She and her companions were informed by the manager that they could not eat in his establishment, because they were “colored.” Terrell, a former suffragette and one of the country’s first college-educated African-American women, took the matter to court. Three years later, the Supreme Court vindicated her outrage: District of Columbia v. John R. Thompson Co., Inc. was decided in 1953.

In Delta Epiphany: Robert F. Kennedy in Mississippi, Ellen B. Meacham tells the story of Kennedy's visit to the Mississippi Delta, while also examining the forces of history, economics, and politics that shaped the lives of the children he met in Mississippi in 1967 and the decades that followed.

As star players for the 1955 World Champion Brooklyn Dodgers, and prior to that as the first black players to be candidates to break professional baseball's color barrier, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella would seem to be natural allies. But the two men were divided by a rivalry going far beyond the personality differences and petty jealousies of competitive teammates. Behind the bitterness were deep and differing beliefs about the fight for civil rights.

On the heels of the cult television hit Friday Night Lights, The New York Times best-selling author of The Junction Boys pens the story of Texas high school football integration, and the three men who put together a championship team.