Essential Reads

This study focuses on the exploitive nature of the word ''Negro." Tracing its origins to the African slave trade, he shows how the label "Negro" was used to separate African descendants and to confirm their supposed inferiority.

"His life informed us, his dreams sustain us yet."* On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial looking out over thousands of troubled Americans who had gathered in the name of civil rights and uttered his now famous...

An incisive and illuminating account of how, during the Algerian Revolution, the people of Algeria changed centuries-old cultural patterns and embraced certain ancient cultural practices long derided by their colonialist oppressors as primitive, in order...

Renowned American sociologist William Julius Wilson takes a look at the social transformation of inner city ghettos, offering a sharp evaluation of the convergence of race and poverty. Rejecting both conservative and liberal interpretations of life in...

David Walker's appeal is an uncompromising African-centered discourse that attacks white injustices and advocates Black self-reliance. Its publication in 1829 intensified the debate and struggle against slavery. Walker asserted the right of Black people...

This book provides advice to African American boys and men on how to survive encounters with police as well as providing ideas on how to think about interaction with police to lower the chances of escalation. Encounters with Police also provides...

In the 16th century, the beginning of African enslavement in the Americas until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and emancipation in 1865, Africans were hunted like animals, captured, sold, tortured, and raped. They experienced the worst kind...

Drawing from the great folklorists of the past while expanding African American lore with dozens of tales rarely seen before, The Annotated African American Folktales revolutionizes the canon like no other volume. Following in the tradition of such...