African American Politics

Beginning with his final departure from Neverland, Untouchable takes listeners through Jackson's final four years, as he shuttled from California to the Middle East, Ireland, Asia, the East Coast, and Las Vegas, planning to recapture his wealth and reputation with a comeback album and a series of 50 mega-concerts, for which he was rehearsing until the day before his death. Sullivan has never-before-reported information about Jackson's business dealings and the pedophilia allegations that irreparably marked his reputation, and he had exclusive access to inner-circle figures.

This is a love story like no other: Elinor Powell was an African-American nurse in the US military during World War II; Frederick Albert was a soldier in Hitler’s army, captured by the Allies and shipped to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Arizona desert. Like most other black nurses, Eleanor pulled a second-class assignment, in a dusty, sun-baked - and segregated - Western town. Brought together by unlikely circumstances and racist assumptions, Elinor and Frederick should have been bitter enemies; but instead, at the height of World War II, they fell in love.

Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till's lynching. Before then, she had "known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was…the fear of being killed just because I was black." In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life.

Africa is a vast continent whose waters, fertile lands, minerals, and diverse wildlife nurtured humankind since ancient times until European colonization and exploitation caused immeasurable suffering and loss. To understand how Africa developed, thrived, suffered, and emerged into the rich tapestry of peoples that it is today, take a trip back to the ancient River Nile and the East African coast.

Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved, found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism and efforts to defend the rights of labor.

LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD A “vivid and frank” (NPR) account of the crack cocaine era and a community’s ultimate resilience, told through a cast of characters whose lives illuminate the dramatic rise and fall of the epidemic “A master class in disrupting a stubborn...

When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than one percent of the United States' total wealth. More than 150 years later, that number has barely budged. The Color of Money pursues the persistence of this racial wealth gap by focusing on the generators of wealth in the black community: black banks. The catch-22 of black banking is that the very institutions needed to help communities escape the deep poverty caused by discrimination and segregation inevitably became victims of that same poverty.

From the former secretary of state and bestselling author -- a sweeping look at the global struggle for democracy and why America must continue to support the cause of human freedom. "This heartfelt and at times very moving book shows why democracy proponents are so committed to their work...

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.

In the early '80s, the music industry wrote off hip-hop as a passing fad. Few could or would have predicted that the improvised raps and raw beats busting out of New York City's urban underclass would one day become a multimillion-dollar business and one of music's most lucrative genres. Among those few were two visionaries: Russell Simmons, a young black man from Hollis, Queens, and Rick Rubin, a Jewish kid from Long Island.

"Racism is a heart disease," writes Ruth King, "and it's curable." Exploring a crucial topic seldom addressed in meditation instruction, this revered teacher takes to her pen to shine a compassionate, provocative, and practical light into a deeply neglected and world-changing domain profoundly relevant to all of us.

Pulitzer Prize Finalist New York Times Book Review Top 100 Books of 2024 Explore the “comprehensive and compelling” (Jon Meacham) biography of civil rights leader John Lewis, celebrated as “the conscience of Congress,” through a narrative that weaves together exclusive interviews...

The Underground Railroad was the passage to freedom for many slaves, but it was rife with dangers. There were dedicated conductors and safe houses, but also arduous nights in the mountains and days in threatening towns. For those who made it to Midnight (the code name given to Detroit), the Detroit River became a River Jordan and Canada became their land of Canaan - the Promised Land where they could live freely in black settlements under the protection of British law.

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.

Mississippi, 1955: 14-year-old Emmett Till was murdered by a white mob after making flirtatious remarks to a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. Till's attackers were never convicted, but his lynching became one of the most notorious hate crimes in American history. It launched protests across the country, helped the NAACP gain thousands of members, and inspired famous activists like Rosa Parks to stand up and fight for equal rights for the first time.

The history of African-Americans has been complicated and controversial. While some will fight against racism, others deny the severity of it throughout the ages. Whether or not the issue is as serious as it used to be, is a separate topic for debate. In this guide, you will not listen much about opinions but about facts. Society has come a long way since the inauguration of slavery and suppression of the minority in the United States.

From leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., to lesser-known figures such as Barbara Rose Johns and Jim Zwerg, each man and woman made the decision that something had to be done to stop discrimination. These moving accounts of the first decade of the civil rights movement are a tribute to the people, black and white, who took part in the fight for justice and the struggle they endured.

Twelve Years a Slave is the true story of Solomon Northup: born a free black man in New York State, and sold into slavery after being tricked in 1841. Unable to convince anyone he is not a slave, Solomon spent 12 years in bondage, before finally being set free. Northup’s memoir, recounting details of the slave markets and the harsh life on plantations, was used in the struggle to abolish slavery in the United States.

"African Americans – A Dying Race" delves into the concept of miscegenation and its impact on African American heritage and identity. The book highlights historical examples, such as the Afro-Argentines in Buenos Aires and Afro-Mexicans, showing how blending of genes and cultures has led to the near disappearance of distinct African populations in these regions.

For bell hooks, the best cultural criticism sees no need to separate politics from the pleasure of reading. Yearning collects together some of hooks's classic and early pieces of cultural criticism from the '80s. Addressing topics like pedagogy, postmodernism, and politics, hooks examines a variety of cultural artifacts, from Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing and Wim Wenders's film Wings of Desire to the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison.