African American Womens History

With echoes of Just Mercy and An American Marriage, a remarkable memoir of a woman who falls in love with an incarcerated man—a poignant story of hope and disappointment that lays bare the toll prison takes not only on those behind bars, but on their families and relationships. Ebony’s...

There’s room in a heart for more than one kind of love. Dara and Adrien Valliere are soul mates and best friends…but they’re not lovers. Their marriage may be unconventional, but it’s satisfying and loving, and they’ve never needed anything or anyone else. Until they met writer Stacia...

NAACP nominee and USA Today bestselling author Beverly Jenkins continues her beloved Blessings series with a new heartwarming novel set in Henry Adams, Kansas. Malachi “Mal” July has run into trouble in the past. With a reputation as a player, he’s now a recovering alcoholic and has made...

She just witnessed her uncle's murder, she's running for her life, and now Dr. Katelyn Lyda is face-to-face with a breathtaking man who could be her salvation. Tall, sexy, his eyes full of mysterious promises, he seems to have the answer she needs. It's too bad Sebastian Caine is one of the bad...

From the heroic lawyer who spoke out against Clarence Thomas in the historic confirmation hearings twenty years ago At the historic Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, Anita Hill spoke out courageously about workplace sexual harassment. Now she turns to the topic of home. As our country...

Award-winning author Elizabeth Byler Younts delivers a powerful novel of grief, friendship, and forgiveness filled with her signature lyricism and emotional depth. "Younts's powerful novel reverberates with love that crosses religious and racial boundaries to find the humanity that connects us...

From one of the fiercest critics writing today, Morgan Jerkins’ highly-anticipated collection of linked essays interweaves her incisive commentary on pop culture, feminism, black history, misogyny, and racism with her own experiences to confront the very real challenges of being a black woman...

New York Times bestselling author Joyce Carol Oates returns with an incendiary novel that illuminates the tragic impact of sexual violence, racism, brutality, and power on innocent lives and probes the persistence of stereotypes, the nature of revenge, the complexities of truth, and our...

From a fierce and humorous new voice comes a relevant, insightful, and riveting collection of personal essays on the richness and resilience of black girl culture—for readers of Samantha Irby, Roxane Gay, Morgan Jerkins, and Lindy West. Shayla Lawson is major. You don’t know who she is...

One of the most important African-American leaders of the 20th century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement, Ella Baker (1903-1986) was an activist whose remarkable career spanned 50 years and touched thousands of lives. A gifted grassroots organizer, Baker shunned the spotlight in favor of vital behind-the-scenes work that helped power the Black freedom struggle.

A poignant biography as told to Olive Gilbert by Isabella Bomefree - a slave who later took the name of Sojourner Truth. She recounts the harshness of life under slavery, and after winner her freedom, became a vociferous abolitionist for which she has been long remembered and revered.

A powerful document about slavery, emancipation, faith, and resilience, Narrative of Sojourner Truth chronicles the life of a nineteenth-century trailblazer in the battle for racial and gender equality. Beginning with her earliest reminiscences of her brutal childhood, Truth recounts the first thirty years of her life in bondage, including her marriage and her trials as a mother, and then describes her eventual liberation. At the heart of this extraordinary record is Truth’s spiritual epiphany.

Shortly after a dismembered torso was discovered by a pond outside Philadelphia in 1887, investigators homed in on two suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs, a married, working-class Black woman, and George Wilson, a former neighbor whom Tabbs implicated after her arrest. As details surrounding the shocking case emerged, both the crime and ensuing trial - which spanned several months - were featured in the national press. The trial brought otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violence in the Black community to public attention.

When we think of slavery, most of us think of the American South. We think of back-breaking fieldwork on plantations. We don't think of slavery in the North, nor do we think of the grueling labor of urban and domestic slaves. Rachel May's rich new book explores the far reach of slavery, from New England to the Caribbean, the role it played in the growth of mercantile America, and the bonds between the agrarian South and the industrial North in the antebellum era - all through the discovery of a remarkable quilt.

With the powers of observation and richness of plot and character, the author of The Emperor of Ocean Park returns to the New England university town of Elm Harbor, where a murder begins to crack the veneer that has hidden the racial complications of the town’s past, the secrets of a prominent...

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...

2020 Chautauqua Prize Finalist 2020 NAACP Image Award Nominee - Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction) Best-of Lists: Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 (Kirkus Reviews) · 25 Can't-Miss Books of 2019 (The Undefeated) Explores the terror, grace, and beauty of coming of age as a Black person in...

Award-winning Civil Rights advocate Mary Frances Berry sheds new light on the fight for reparations. Callie House, an ex-slave who led the fight, founded the Ex-Slave Mutual Relief, Bounty, and Pension Association in 1899. Defying conventions of race, class, and gender, Callie led the organization in an attempt to petition the government for the pension promised them as freedmen.

Without Fear tells how, during American history, Black women made human rights theirs: from worldwide travel and public advocacy in the global Black press to their work for the United Nations, they courageously and effectively moved human rights beyond an esoteric concept to an active, organizing principle.