Cultural Literature

Although Belgium officially withdrew its military forces from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in July 1960, unofficially the former colonial ruler of this central African country maintained a political, economic, and military presence...

In December 1941 the Japanese invaded Burma. For the British, the longest land campaign of the Second World War had begun. 100,000 African soldiers were taken from Britain's colonies to fight the Japanese in the Burmese jungles. They performed heroically...

This inspiring memoir tells the story of one woman's self discovery while surviving poverty, loss, loneliness, maltreatment, and fighting to get an education.​ A generation of Nigerian children were born in Britain in the fifties and sixties,...

In this spellbinding memoir, popular CNN anchor Zain E. Asher pays tribute to her mother's strength and determination to raise four successful children in the shadow of tragedy. Awaiting the return of her husband and young son from a road trip, Obiajulu...

Although it occurred nearly a century ago, the Elaine Massacre of 1919 remains the subject of intense inquiry as historians try to answer a multitude of questions, such as why authorities in the Arkansas Delta used such overwhelming violence to put down...

Here is the black Chicago family album, of African Americans leaving the violent, racist South and "goin' to Chicago" to find the American Dream.The story of black Chicago is so rich that few know it all. It began long before the city itself. Wells, the...

Three years and 29 days prior to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, a man branded "zealot", "fanatic" and "traitor" was hanged. John Brown and his band of 21 followersseized the armory at Harper's Ferry to obtain weapons, arm the slaves, and through...

In 1959, twenty-nine-year-old Berry Gordy, who had already given up on his dream to be a champion boxer, borrowed eight hundred dollars from his family and started a record company. A run-down bungalow sandwiched between a funeral home and a beauty shop...

"An astonishingly detailed rendering of the variety and complexity of racial experience in an evolving national culture." -The New York Times Book ReviewIn the Obama era, as Americans confront the enduring significance of race and heritage, this...