Biography

In this joyous essay collection edited by NPR's Ayesha Rascoe, celebrities and other alumni provide testimonials about their experience attending historically Black college universities-which shaped their lives and made them who they are today. With a...

One of The New York Times's 100 Notable Books of 2024One of the Washington Post's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of 2024 Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography Named a best book of 2024 by The New Yorker Vulture Foreign Affairs ...

Recounting a life--and language--by an esteemed scholar of African American rhetoric. In this powerful coming-of-age memoir, author, scholar, and language scholar Keith Gilyard presents a testament to the transformative power of language. From his...

Notable Quotations from Frederick DouglassThis pocket-sized hardcover book contains dozens of quotations from abolitionist, orator, social reformer and statesman Frederick Douglass. "No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at...

A "tour de force" (Harry Belafonte) now finally in paperback An electrifying and traumatic encounter in the sixties crystallized the fraught conflict between conscience and politics - between morality and power - in addressing race. In 1963 Attorney...

2014 NAACP Image Award Winner: Outstanding Literary Work - Biography / Auto Biography 2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013 The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "Simmons's evocative account of her remarkable trajectory from Jim Crow Texas, where she was the youngest of twelve children in a sharecropping family, to the presidencies of Smith College and Brown University shines with...

In this insightful new volume, Jack Chambers explores Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington's music thematically, collating motifs, memes, and predilections that caught Ellington's attention and inspired his restless muse. In presenting Ellington's work in...

"This Maileresque combination of personal reflection, boxing analysis, and sports biography is a must read for fight fans...." Booklist, Starred ReviewAn intimate portrait of Joe Frazier, whose ferocious rivalry with Muhammad Ali made them both boxing...

When Ernie Banks passed away in 2015, he was regarded as one of the most beloved men in baseball history. Making his start as a shortstop with the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues as a teenager, Banks went on to become the first African American...

The first full-length biography of civil rights hero and congressman John Lewis A New Yorker "Best Book of 2024" Selection "The perfect book, at the right time."--Michael Henry Adams, The Guardian For six decades John Robert Lewis (1940-2020) was a...

The rise and fall of one of America's first Black sports celebrities "Deeply and impressively researched. . . . Ms. Mooney pieces together a narrative with an arc so tight and clean that it's a wonder it actually happened. . . . It reads, in other...