Essential Reads

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...

In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation--that is, through individual...

How wonderful it is to [be] taught by a free teacher, a spiritual teacher, a member of our family who truly loves the family, an architect of tranforming processes, a defender of African people, a beacon, a Son of Africa, a divine spirit manisfesting our...

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions. "As we go about our daily...

A tenth-anniversary edition of the iconic bestseller--"one of the most influential books of the past 20 years," according to the Chronicle of Higher Education--with a new preface by the author Seldom does a book have the impact of Michelle...

A transformative journey of physical and ancestral healing from a renowned herbalist, natural health expert, and dedicated healer of women's bodies and women's souls "Just when I thought I was all alone, I found myself walking with a group of...

“The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong.” Considered Woodson’s seminal work, this text explores his thesis that African Americans were being culturally indoctrinated, rather...

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.

With a Foreword by Edwidge Danticat and an Afterword by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. One of the most important works of twentieth-century American literature, Zora Neale Hurston's beloved 1937 classic, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is an enduring...

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...

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...

Woodson's classic work of criticism explores how the education received by blacks has failed to give them an appreciation of themselves as a race and their contributions to history. Woodson puts forward a program that calls for the educated to learn...