African American Studies

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....

Belly of the Beast explores the intersections of Blackness, gender, fatness, health, and the violence of policing....

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....

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

Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights is a genre-defying collection of essays that record the small joys that occurred in one year, from birthday to birthday, and that we often overlook in our busy lives....

Freedom Flyers brings to life the legacy of a determined, visionary cadre of African American airmen who proved their capabilities and patriotism beyond question....

Can't get enough of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird? Wondering if you missed something important in one of the chapters? Dive a little deeper into her world....

Jay-Z: Made in America is the fruit of Michael Eric Dyson’s decade of teaching the work of one of the greatest poets this nation has produced, as gifted a wordsmith as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost and Rita Dove....

Being a true modern gentleman and a genuine class act is increasingly rare. It is also more important now than ever before. What worked for the rat pack and the brat pack won’t work for you, and truth be told, it won’t work for anyone because that is old school....

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....

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....

Dr. King's best-selling account of the civil rights movement in Birmingham during the spring and summer of 1963....

In This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, civil rights scholar Charles E. Cobb Jr., describes the vital role that armed self-defense played in the survival and liberation of black communities in America during the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1960s.

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....

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....

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

In this bold and provocative book, historian Gregory Smithers investigates how African Americans have narrated, remembered, and represented slave-breeding practices....

Writer John Howard Griffin decided to perform an experiment in order to learn from the inside out how one race could withstand the second class citizenship imposed on it by another race....

Discover hope as you see redemption even in the darkest circumstances. Ronald Olivier shares his dramatic and powerful story of how a young man sentenced to life without parole miraculously found faith, forgiveness, redemption, and restoration.

On April 23, 1967, Prisoner #416J, an inmate at the notorious Missouri State Penitentiary, escaped in a breadbox....

Linguists have been studying Black English as a speech variety for years, arguing to the public that it is different from Standard English, not a degradation of it. Yet false assumptions and controversies still swirl around what it means to speak and sound "Black"....

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

Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which renowned cultural critic Bell Hooks moves from place to place, only to end where she began—her old Kentucky home....

Joan Morgan offers a provocative and powerful look into the life of the modern Black woman....

"My name is 'J' and I'm awkward--and Black. Someone once told me those were the two worst things anyone could be."....

Slaves to Fashion is a cultural history of the black dandy, from his emergence in Enlightenment England to his contemporary incarnations in the cosmopolitan art world. Interpreting performances and representations of black dandyism in particular cultural settings and literary and visual texts, Monica L. Miller emphasizes the importance of sartorial style to black identity formation in the Atlantic diaspora.

Smith tells the joyful story of the musicians, the radio DJs, the record labels, and the live venues where jazz not only survived but thrived in the 1960s. In an era marked by turmoil and struggle, popular jazz offered a powerful outlet for joy, resilience, pride, and triumph.

This monumental biography by David Levering Lewis—eight years in the research and writing—treats the early and middle phases of a long and intense career: a crucial fifty-year period that demonstrates how W.E.B. Du Bois changed forever the way Americans think about themselves. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois—the premier architect of the civil rights movement in America—was a towering and controversial personality, a fiercely proud individual blessed with the language of the poet and the impatience of the agitator.

In Emotional Politics — Logical Failure, Damon K. Jones delivers a searing indictment of the emotional manipulation, political tribalism, and intellectual stagnation that have come to define modern Black political behavior. This isn’t just a critique—it’s a challenge. A demand for strategic maturity. A blueprint for real power.

Blackdom, New Mexico, was a township that lasted about 30 years. In this book, Timothy E. Nelson situates the township’s story where it belongs: along the settlement continuum in Mexico’s Northern Frontier. Dr. Nelson illuminates the set of conscious efforts that helped Black pioneers develop Blackdom Township into a frontier boomtown.