African American Studies

In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum....

In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement....

Revelations about U.S. policies and practices of torture and abuse have captured headlines ever since the breaking of the Abu Ghraib prison story in April 2004. Since then, a debate has raged regarding what is and what is not acceptable behavior for the world's leading democracy....

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) gives a firsthand account of his life from birth through his time spent in slavery, his escape to freedom in 1838, and his transition from bondage to liberty.

A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life....

In Teaching Critical Thinking, renowned cultural critic and progressive educator Bell Hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today.

Your DEIJ efforts are stagnating because you continue to center whiteness. Creating a truly anti-racist organization requires learning how to identify and rectify the systemic, and often unconscious, centering of white culture and values in the workplace....

A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today's racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that listeners of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide....

This memoir written by writer, orator, and former slave Frederick Douglass describes, in gripping detail, the circumstances of his upbringing, his brutal treatment at the hands of slave-owners, and his narrow escape from Maryland to freedom....

Feminist Theory embodies the hope that feminists can find a common language to spread the word and create a mass, global feminist movement.

With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, Dr. King demanded an end to global suffering....

What is feminism?

In this short, accessible primer, Bell Hooks explores the nature of feminism and its positive promise to eliminate sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. With her....

Author and entrepreneur Dennis Kimbro combines best-selling author Napoleon Hill's law of success with his own vast knowledge of business....

The remarkable woman at heart of the smash New York Times best seller and Oscar-winning film Hidden Figures tells the full story of her life, including what it took to work at NASA, help land the first man on the moon, and live through a century of turmoil and change....

Prioritize your well-being with these 150 self-care exercises designed specifically to help Black women revitalize their outlook on life, improve their mental health, eliminate stress, and self-advocate....

In the early 1990s, Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory and his brother, Terry "Southwest T", rose up from the slums of Detroit to build one of the largest cocaine empires in American history: the Black Mafia Family....

Ten years ago, Bell Hooks astonished readers/listeners with Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Now comes Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope - a powerful, visionary work that will enrich our teaching and our lives.

Best-selling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the social fabric....

Black Americans have long been shackled to the Democrats. Seeing no viable alternative, they have watched liberal politicians take the Black vote for granted without pledging anything in return. In Blackout, Owens argues this automatic allegiance is both illogical and unearned....

Imagination: A Manifesto offers visionary examples and tactics to push beyond the constraints of what we think, and are told, is possible. This book is for anyone who is ready to take to heart Toni Morrison's instruction: "Dream a little before you think."

In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history.....

Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world....

Exposes the new generation of Whiteness thriving at the expense and borrowed ingenuity of Black people - and explores how this intensifies racial inequality....

Scholars of US and transatlantic slavery have largely ignored or dismissed accusations that Black Americans were cannibalized. Vincent Woodard takes the enslaved person's claims of human consumption seriously....

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....

Harriet Beecher Stowe was appalled by slavery, and she took one of the few options open to nineteenth-century women who wanted to affect public opinion: she wrote a novel, a huge, enthralling narrative that claimed the heart, soul, and politics of millions of her contemporaries. Uncle Tom's Cabin paints pictures of three plantations, each worse than the other, where even the best plantation leaves a slave at the mercy of fate or debt. Her questions remain penetrating even today: "Can man ever be trusted with wholly irresponsible power?"

Licensed mental health therapist, somatic healer, and eating disorder specialist Alishia McCullough understands that for far too many Black women, racial trauma’s seismic impact has disrupted their most essential relationship: the one they have with their bodies—and by extension, with their food. African Americans are disproportionately impacted by disordered eating behaviors, yet their experiences are frequently neglected by doctors and mental health experts.

Award-winning historian Amrita Chakrabarti Myers has recovered the riveting, troubling, and complicated story of Julia Ann Chinn (ca. 1796–1833), the enslaved wife of Richard Mentor Johnson, owner of Blue Spring Farm, veteran of the War of 1812, and US vice president under Martin Van Buren. Johnson never freed Chinn, but during his frequent absences from his estate, he delegated to her the management of his property, including Choctaw Academy, a boarding school for Indigenous men and boys on the grounds of the estate.

For forty years, hundreds of African American men in Tuskegee, Alabama, believed they were receiving medical care from trusted doctors. Instead, they were subjects of one of the most infamous and morally reprehensible experiments in American history. Under the guise of "free medical treatment," these men were deliberately left untreated for syphilis, even as a cure became widely available. Their suffering, exploited in the name of science, shattered lives and left an indelible scar on American medicine.

Omo Moses deftly interweaves his own life story with excerpts from both his great-grandfather's sermons and the writings of his father, the civil rights activist Bob Moses. The result is a powerful chorus of voices that spans 3 generations of an African American family, all shining a light on the Black experience, all calling fiercely for racial justice. This book is at once a coming-of-age story, a multigenerational family memoir, an epic father-son road trip, a searing account of the Black male experience, and a work that powerfully revives Rev. Moses’s demand for liberation.