Biography

In this book, Mark Johnson asks readers to consider, "if most of the best black basketball players in the early 50's from all around the country could not fully participate in the NBA, where do you think they played?" This book is the heart wrenching...

Cemeteries have stories to tell, voices to unearth-and lessons from the past that we can draw upon to better shape the future. If These Stones Could Talk brings fresh light to a forgotten corner of American history that begins in a small cemetery in...

An eloquently told personal account of an era of enormous cultural and political change, which reveals Harry Belafonte as not only one of America's greatest entertainers, but also one of our most profoundly influential activists. Harry Belafonte spent...

A riveting memoir by the former CEO of Black Entertainment Television Networks (BET) about the tricky entertainment business, navigating her own #MeToo story, and balancing motherhood as a high-powered Black woman executive. As an incredible...

A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy--from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education,...

A moving family biography in which the poet traces her family history back through Jim Crow, the slave trade, and all the way to the women of the Dahomey people in West Africa. Buffalo, New York. A father's funeral. Memory. In Generations, Lucille...

"Porsha Williams is one of today's most recognizable faces in pop culture and a remarkable voice in the television and podcast communities. In The Pursuit of Porsha, she takes readers on a deeply personal journey filled with tragedy, triumphs, humor, and...

A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making--from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE - NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK...

"Anyone who has ever wondered what it really means to be black will find the answer in this book."--MINNEAPOLIS TRIBUNE To Be Young, Gifted and Black is a special kind of autobiography, in a very special voice. Both the story and the voice belong to a...

This "landmark" (Ibram X. Kendi) dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King transforms our understanding of the twentieth century's most iconic African American leaders. To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent...

Now a Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer, Self Made (formerly titled On Her Own Ground) is the first full-scale biography of "one of the great success stories of American history" (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Madam C.J. Walker--the legendary African...

For the first time in a deluxe boxed set, the definitive edition of Richard Wright's landmark works in the form in which he intended them to be read. Here, in authoritative texts based on the author's original typescripts and proofs, is the Library of...