African American Politics

Activists, pundits, politicians, and the press frequently proclaim today's digitally mediated racial justice activism the new civil rights movement. As Charlton D. McIlwain shows in this book, the story of racial justice movement organizing online is much longer and varied than most people know. Beginning with the simultaneous rise of civil rights and computer revolutions in the 1960s, McIlwain, for the first time, chronicles the long relationship between African Americans, computing technology, and the Internet.

In 1983 Chicago elected Harold Washington as the city's first black mayor. This is the story of Washington's improbable victory over Jane Byrne, heir to the late Richard J. Daley's political empire, and over Daley's eldest son. It's the story of a coalition outside the party's mainstream coming to power and ruling in the country's most political of cities. In Fire on the Prairie, Gary Rivlin reveals the personalities and philosophies of those who were at the center of events, from black separatists such as Lu Palmer to community organizers such as Jesse Jackson....

From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series The Get Down, Hip Hop America is the definitive account of the society-altering collision between Black youth culture and the mass media.

Servants of Allah presents a history of African Muslims, following them from West Africa to the Americas. Although many assume that what Muslim faith they brought with them to the Americas was quickly absorbed into the new Christian milieu, as Sylviane A. Diouf demonstrates in this meticulously researched, groundbreaking volume, Islam flourished during slavery on a large scale.

At a time when most of the public discourse was dominated by men, Anna Julia Cooper’s writings offered a blistering rebuke to that status quo. The essays and speeches collected here anticipated the debates about racism, sexism, and intersectionality that we are still having today. Cooper argues in particular for the importance of Black women’s participation in identifying and combating the structures of oppression that surrounded them - and that made life so much more difficult for many other groups as well.

Buck O'Neil once described him as "Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and Tris Speaker rolled into one". Among experts, he is regarded as the best player in Negro Leagues history. During his prime, he became a legend in Cuba and one of Black America's most popular figures. Yet even among serious sports fans, Oscar Charleston is virtually unknown today.

Acclaimed archeologist and historian Karolyn Smardz Frost painstakingly resurrects Thornton and Lucie Blackburn's perilous 1830s journey from Kentucky slavery to Canadian freedom.

The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass was Douglass' third autobiography. In it he was able to go into greater detail about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery, as he and his family were no longer in any danger from the reception of his work. In this engrossing narrative he recounts early years of abuse; his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist campaigns, and his crusade for full civil rights for former slaves.

Emmett Till offers the first truly comprehensive account of the 1955 murder and its aftermath. It tells the story of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago brutally lynched for a harmless flirtation at a country store in the Mississippi Delta. His death and the acquittal of his killers by an all-white jury set off a firestorm of protests that reverberated all over the world and spurred on the civil rights movement.

Bestselling author and conservative icon Dr. Ben Carson lays out a hopeful and inspiring road map for how America can come together. External physical characteristics that are genetically encoded are things over which no individual has control. But rather than appreciating the gift of...

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.

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...

Named a BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, VOGUE, TIME MAGAZINE, NPR and THE ROOT "[A] cutting take on race and class...part dark comedy, part surreal morality tale. Disturbing and delicious." —People "You’ll gulp Senna’s novel in a single sitting—but then mull over...

Black women face a hidden mental health crisis of anxiety and depression. To be a Black woman in America is to know that you cannot protect your children or guarantee their safety, that your value is consistently questioned, and that even being "twice as good" is often not good enough. Consequently, Black women disproportionately experience anxiety and depression. Studies now conclusively connect racism and mental health - and physical health. Time to take care of your emotional health. Because you deserve to be emotionally healthy for yourself and those you love.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The History of White People and Old in Art School, a finalist for the NBCC Award, comes a comprehensive new collection of essays spanning art, politics, and the legacy of racism that shapes American history as we know it. Throughout her prolific...

According to the Washington Post, no one who cares about contemporary African-American cultures can ignore Bell Hooks's electrifying feminist explorations. Targeting cultural icons as diverse as Madonna and Spike Lee, Outlaw Culture presents a collection of essays that pulls no punches. As Hooks herself notes, interrogations of popular culture can be a "powerful site for intervention, challenge and change." And intervene, challenge, and change is what hooks does best.

In the early 20th century, most African Americans still lived in the South, disenfranchised, impoverished, terrorized by white violence, and denied the basic rights of citizenship. As the Democrats swept into the White House on a wave of black defectors from the Party of Lincoln, a group of...

In this startling group memoir, four friends - Black and White, gay and straight, immigrant and American-born - use Toni Morrison’s novels as a springboard for intimate and revealing conversations about the problems of everyday racism and living whole in times of uncertainty. Tackling everything from first love and Soul Train to police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement, the authors take up what it means to read challenging literature collaboratively and to learn in public as an act of individual reckoning and social resistance.

Booker T. Washington’s 1901 autobiography can be read as a redemption story echoing many similar voices of its time. Starting from the humiliation he experienced as a slave, he ponders the meaning of identity in a situation that seeks to dehumanize. He furthers his story by expanding on his difficulties in obtaining an education and the need for change in our minds as well as societal structures.

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.