Civil Rights Biography

Arrested in 1962 as South Africa's apartheid regime intensified its brutal campaign against political opponents, 44-year-old lawyer and African National Congress activist Nelson Mandela had no idea that he would spend the next 27 years in jail. During his 10,052 days of incarceration, Mandela wrote hundreds of letters to unyielding prison authorities, fellow activists, government officials, and, most memorably, his courageous wife, Winnie, and his five children. Now, 255 of these letters, a majority of which were previously unpublished, provide the most intimate portrait of Mandela since Long Walk to Freedom.

Famously known as the text that Martin Luther King Jr. sought inspiration from in the days leading up to the Montgomery bus boycott, Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited helped shape the civil rights movement and changed our nation’s history forever. In this classic theological...

A USA TODAY Bestseller! Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Public Library “Duncan’s story is so incredible it strains belief. It is so heartwarming and hopeful that it will stay with you for a long time.” —John Grisham "This brilliantly told story—at once maddening and...

In the era of Black Lives Matter, Frantz Fanon's shadow looms larger than ever. He was the intellectual activist of the postcolonial era, and his writings about race, revolution, and the psychology of power continue to shape radical movements across the world. In this searching biography, Adam Shatz tells the story of Fanon's stunning journey, which has all the twists of a Cold War-era thriller.

The unbelievable true story of how one man stole tens of thousands of priceless artifacts and human remains from around the world—and the FBI’s massive undertaking to set things right. In The Grave Robber, Tim Carpenter, former FBI Lead Investigator on the Art Crime Team, recounts one of the...

From writer, award-winning placemaker and urbanist, Jay Pitter, this is a profoundly beautiful and essential text that asserts, with intimacy and insight, our collective responsibility to protect and enhance each other’s public joy. When Jay Pitter was growing up in a poorly designed...

Dennis Banks, an American Indian of the Ojibwa Tribe and a founder of the American Indian Movement, is one of the most influential Indian leaders of our time. In Ojibwa Warrior, written with acclaimed writer and photographer Richard Erdoes, Banks tells his own story for the first time and also traces the rise of the American Indian Movement (AIM).

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography The forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history—until now. “This is the kind of history I wish...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a “deeply layered and insightful” (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out of the archives...

A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR The first major biography of one of our most influential judges—an activist lawyer who became the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary—that provides an eye-opening account of the twin struggles for gender equality and civil rights in the 20th...

A literary treasure of over one hundred unpublished letters from National Book Award-winning author Flannery O'Connor and her circle of extraordinary friends. Flannery O’Connor is a master of twentieth-century American fiction, joining, since her untimely death in 1964, the likes of Hawthorne...

From National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize­–winning author Alice Walker and edited by critic and writer Valerie Boyd, comes an unprecedented compilation of Walker’s fifty years of journals drawing an intimate portrait of her development over five decades as an artist, human rights and...

Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) was an orator of Black Nationalism, and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. He advanced a Pan-African philosophy which inspired a global movement, known as Garveyism. This book, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (1923) was compiled by his wife, Amy Euphemia Jacques Garvey, mainly from his speeches. Promoting unity between Africans and the African diaspora, he campaigned for an end to European colonial rule in Africa and encouraged the political unification of the continent.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “A powerful study of how to bear witness in a moment when America is being called to do the same.”—Time James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America to confront its lies about race. What can we learn from his...

On February 18, 1965, an overflowing crowd packed the Cambridge Union in Cambridge, England, to witness a historic televised debate between James Baldwin, the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, and William F. Buckley Jr., a fierce critic of the movement and America's most influential conservative intellectual. The topic was "the American dream is at the expense of the American Negro", and no one who has seen the debate can soon forget it. Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is upon Us is the first book to tell the full story of the event.

From the man who coined the term "net neutrality," author of The Master Switch and The Attention Merchants, comes a warning about the dangers of excessive corporate and industrial concentration for our economic and political future. We live in an age of extreme corporate concentration, in...

Relive the moments when African Americans fought for equal rights, and made history. Even though slavery had ended in the 1860s, African Americans were still suffering under the weight of segregation a hundred years later. They couldn't go to the same schools, eat at the same restaurants, or...

The life story of the most controversial, volatile, misunderstood provision of the Bill of Rights. At a time of increasing gun violence in America, Waldman's book provoked a wide range of discussion. This book looks at history to provide some surprising, illuminating answers. The Amendment was written to calm public fear that the new national government would crush the state militias made up of all (white) adult men - who were required to own a gun to serve. Waldman recounts the raucous public debate that has surrounded the amendment from its inception to the present.

June 28, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, which is considered the most significant event in the gay liberation movement, and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library's archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first accounts, diaries, periodic literature, and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots.

This "compulsively readable memoir...brings to light an issue that has been too long ignored...An immensely important book" (Emily Oster, New York Times bestselling author of Expecting Better and Cribsheet). A story of a mother’s fierce love for her exceptional child and her courageous journey...