Cultural Literature

Cheryl Woodruff-Brooks has compiled this history of Atlantic City's racially segregated beach during its heyday from the 1920s through the 1960s and the residents who lived on the Northside near the established Missouri Avenue Beach. Included are images,...

The extraordinary true story and basis for the major motion picture BlacKkKlansman, written and directed by Spike Lee, produced by Jordan Peele, and starring John David Washington and Adam Driver.When detective Ron Stallworth, the first black detective...

For the Crunk Feminist Collective, their academic day jobs were lacking in conversations they actually wanted--relevant, real conversations about how race and gender politics intersect with pop culture and current events. To address this void, they...

The grandson of slaves, born into poverty in 1892 in the Deep South, A. G. Gaston died more than a century later with a fortune worth well over $130 million and a business empire spanning communications, real estate, and insurance. Gaston was, by any...

A deeply resonant memoir for anyone who has loved and lost, from acclaimed poet and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elizabeth Alexander. In The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her...

W. E. B. Du Bois was a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally...

Why is it that so many efforts by liberals to lift the black underclass not only fail, but often harm the intended beneficiaries?  In "Please Stop Helping Us," Jason L. Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding black...

Over the past three decades, racial prejudice in America has declined significantly and many African American families have seen a steady rise in employment and annual income. But alongside these encouraging signs, Thomas Shapiro argues in The Hidden...

Soon to be a Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer, 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 American...

WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT DU BOIS (1868-1963) was one of the greatest African American intellectuals -- a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation's history from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement...

Both an unflinching indictment of past wrongs and an impassioned call to America to educate its citizens about the history of Africa and its people, The Debt says in no uncertain terms what white America owes blacks--and what blacks owe themselves.In...

"Up from Slavery" by Booker T. Washington, "The Souls of Black Folk" by W.E.B. DuBois, and "The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man" by James Weldon Johnson--these three narratives, gathered together here, chronicle the remarkable evolution of...