Cultural Literature

In the nation's so-called heartland, racism is sometimes subtler than in other parts of the country but just as insidious. When Black communities across America went up in flames in the 1960s, Midwest cities, where racial inequity was endemic, were among...

A vivid firsthand record of the struggle for legal equality and dignity in the face of segregation and racial terror from 1919 to 1976 W.E.B. Du Bois famously identified "the problem of the color-line" as the defining issue in American life. The powerful...

The Black Pack: Comedy, Race & Resistance is the first book to chronicle the untold history behind the iconic collaborations between a legendary group of comedians--Eddie Murphy, Paul Mooney, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Robert Townsend, and Arsenio Hall--who...

Most know Marvelous MarvinHagler from his epic battles against Thomas Hearns and John Mugabi and hiscontroversial split-decision loss to Sugar Ray Leonard. But it is his escapefrom riot-torn Newark in the late 1960s, the unbreakable bond he built with...

Reveals the role of amateur Black football and basketball in Virginia before integration as a form of resistance to white supremacy In Playing for Power, Marvin T. Chiles offers a fascinating account of amateur sports in Jim Crow Virginia, revealing how,...

After a decade restoring the Camptown Cemetery in Brenham, Texas, the state's oldest established Black graveyard, Charles Swenson researched the names he found there, developing a narrative of the freedom colony. The cemetery becomes not just a place...

At a time when America faces escalating racial tensions, the re-emergence of white nationalist movements, and growing threats to democracy, Ralph Remington's Penetrating Whiteness is an urgently needed clarion call. This powerful and timely collection of...

For readers of Kiese Laymon's Heavy and Hanif Abdurraqib's A Little Devil in America, a beautiful, painful, and soaring tribute to everything that Black men are and can be Growing up in the Bronx, Jo?l Leon was taught that being soft, being vulnerable,...

From convicted felon to Olympic representative, Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr., better known as Snoop Dogg, has navigated a life of extraordinary highs and lows. From co-hosting "Martha & Snoop's Potluck Dinner Party" to becoming a pop culture icon, Snoop's...