Essential Reads

In the 16th century, the beginning of African enslavement in the Americas until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and emancipation in 1865, Africans were hunted like animals, captured, sold, tortured, and raped. They experienced the worst kind...

Drawing from the great folklorists of the past while expanding African American lore with dozens of tales rarely seen before, The Annotated African American Folktales revolutionizes the canon like no other volume. Following in the tradition of such...

In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation--that is, through individual...

How wonderful it is to [be] taught by a free teacher, a spiritual teacher, a member of our family who truly loves the family, an architect of tranforming processes, a defender of African people, a beacon, a Son of Africa, a divine spirit manisfesting our...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. "As we go about our daily...

A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller--"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education--with a new preface by the author Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle...

A transformative journey of physical and ancestral healing from a renowned herbalist, natural health expert, and dedicated healer of women's bodies and women's souls "Just when I thought I was all alone, I found myself walking with a group of...

This study focuses on the exploitive nature of the word ''Negro." Tracing its origins to the African slave trade, he shows how the label "Negro" was used to separate African descendants and to confirm their supposed inferiority.

With a Foreword by Edwidge Danticat and an Afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. One of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston's beloved 1937 classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring...

This book provides advice to African American boys and men on how to survive encounters with police as well as providing ideas on how to think about interaction with police to lower the chances of escalation. Encounters with Police also provides...

Renowned American sociologist William Julius Wilson takes a look at the social transformation of inner city ghettos, offering a sharp evaluation of the convergence of race and poverty. Rejecting both conservative and liberal interpretations of life in...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize-winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South...

"His life informed us, his dreams sustain us yet."* On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial looking out over thousands of troubled Americans who had gathered in the name of civil rights and uttered his now famous...

Dr. Ben critically examines the history, beliefs, and myths that are the foundation of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. African Origins of the Major "Western Religions" first published in 1970, continues to be one of Dr. Ben's most thought-provoking...

"Medical Apartheid" is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans, from the era of slavery to today. Washington details the ways both slaves and freedmen have been used in hospitals for experiments conducted...

A classic in the black literary tradition, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is both a comment on the civil rights problems in the United States in the late 1960s and a serious attempt to focus on the issue of black militancy.  Dan Freeman, the "spook...