African Studies

As a conductor for the Underground Railroad - the covert resistance network created to aid and protect slaves seeking freedom - William Still helped as many as 800 people escape enslavement. He also meticulously collected the letters, biographical sketches, arrival memos, and ransom notes of the escapees. The Underground Railroad Records is an archive of primary documents that trace the narrative arc of the greatest, most successful campaign of civil disobedience in American history.

In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother's decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother's fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother's racial lineage, tracing her family back to 18th-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage.

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.

Dancer, award-winning choreographer, show producer, stand-up comedienne, TV/film actress, and author, Norma Miller shares her touching historical memoir of Harlem's legendary Savoy Ballroom and the phenomenal music and dance craze that "spread the power of Swing across the world like Wildfire". It was a time when the music was Swing, and Harlem was king.

Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today.

This riveting historical narrative reconstructs the armed resistance of Black activists, their challenge of racist terrorism, and their fight for human rights.

The New Negro Movement of the 1920s marked a shift in the pursuit of African American equality. African American soldiers were returning home from World War I, and after fighting for freedoms abroad, they were inspired to continue that fight on their own soil. The “old” ways had focused on passively accepting social policies, but the “new” ways would harness their collective voices in defining their own identity. The intellectual and artistic movement of the Harlem Renaissance stirred a tremendous wave of social change.

In April 2014, Rubin "Hurricane" Carter died after a long battle with cancer. David McCallum was exonerated and freed two months later, after serving 29 years in prison. This is the story of how Carter and his friend and coauthor Ken Klonsky worked for 10 years to help free the wrongfully convicted McCallum, along with a group of committed friends and professionals.

A rebellious boy's journey through the wilds of urban America and the shrapnel of a self-destructing family - this is the riveting story of a generation told through one dazzlingly poetic new voice. MK Asante was born in Zimbabwe to American parents: a mother who led the new nation's dance company and a father who would soon become a revered pioneer in Black studies. But things fell apart, and a decade later MK was in America, a teenager lost in a fog of drugs, sex, and violence on the streets of North Philadelphia.

How does a white kid from the New York suburbs, harmonica in hand, end up earning himself a busker's spot on the Harlem sidewalks next to Mr. Satan, a Mississippi-born legend? How did an interracial blues duo fare on the streets of New York during a turbulent, fractious time marked by racially-motivated murders in Howard Beach, Bensonhurst, and Crown Heights?

Bayard Rustin (1912 to1987), the famed openly gay African American organizer, taught Martin Luther King Jr. strategies of nonviolence during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, thereby launching the birth of the civil rights movement in 1955. Widely acclaimed as a founding father of modern black protest, in 1963 Rustin reached his pinnacle of notoriety as organizer of the March on Washington.

Hebrews? Africans? Or Does It Matter? Revised Edition delves into the intricate intersection of history, culture, and spirituality specifically concerning the descendants of the formerly enslaved people in America but also throughout the diaspora. This people’s history can never be told truthfully without being labeled “controversial.” The listener will understand why this powerful history is also referred to as “The World’s Best Kept Secret.”

A powerful documentary that brings light to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in Nashville, TN and initial modeling of non-violent protest that transformed a nation.

In this thought-provoking book, the author delves into the complex and intricate factors that have shaped the American psyche throughout history through the lens of the Black American experience. A key emphasis of the book is the importance of understanding the constitution's impact on American society, particularly as it pertains to systemic and institutional issues of injustice that persist today.

Globally, Black people are among the most affected by the climate crisis, despite contributing very little to it. For a long time, the crisis was portrayed as yet another injustice for Black people to care about, on top of the day-to-day oppression they face. In Black Climates, Selina Nwulu reframes the crisis to encompass our disconnection from each other and the world around us. She argues that the root of climate change lies in historical colonial violence and ongoing exploitation, making it inherently racist.

This audiobook is an empowering call to journey home to a new way of looking after yourself. A new way thatis, in fact, the old way. Globally, Africans and Diasporans are rediscovering that, even while navigating an oppressive and often unsafe world, we are called to make space for healing, not just for ourselves but also for loved ones, Ancestors and descendants. Our path to liberation includes a commitment to nurturing our personal and community growth by making wellness a priority.

Regardless of how wealthy or poor their parents are, all black boys must confront and surmount the "achievement gap": a divide that shows up not only in our sons' test scores, but in their social and emotional development, their physical well-being, and their outlook on life. As children, they score as high on cognitive tests as their peers, but at some point, the gap emerges. Why? This is the question Joe Brewster, M.D., and Michele Stephenson asked when their own son, Idris, began struggling in a new school.

Countless Black Americans descended from slavery are related to the enslavers who bought and sold their ancestors. Among them is Dionne Ford, whose great grandmother was the last of six children born to a Louisiana cotton broker and the enslaved woman he received as a wedding gift. What shapes does this kind of intergenerational trauma take? In this book, which move between her inner life and deep research, Ford tells us.

Black literature is perhaps the most powerful, polarizing force in the modern American zeitgeist. Today—as Black novels draw authoritarian ire, as Black memoirs shape public debates, as Black polemics inspire protest petitions—it’s more important than ever to highlight the places that center these stories: Black bookstores. Traversing teeming metropolises and tiny towns, Prose to the People explores a these spaces, chronicling these Black bookstore's past and present lives.

Gathering a wide range of traditional African myths, this compelling new collection offers tales of heroes battling mighty serpents and monstrous birds, brutal family conflict and vengeance and desperate migrations across vast and alien lands. From impassioned descriptions of animal-creators to dramatic stories of communities forced to flee monstrous crocodiles, all the narratives found here concern origins - whether of the universe, peoples or families.