African American Studies

The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society.   Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America...

An "unsparing, erudite, and incisive" (Jelani Cobb) reframing of the past and present of Black resistance--both nonviolent and violent--to white supremacy Black resistance to white supremacy is often reduced to a simple binary, between Dr. Martin Luther...

White fear has shaped our democracy and society from the beginning--and today, it's more intense and visible than ever. To neutralize it, we must first understand it. White fear is not new. It enabled the rise of Donald Trump. It's behind the recent...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Tarana Burke and Dr. Brené Brown bring together a dynamic group of Black writers, organizers, artists, academics, and cultural figures to discuss the topics the two have dedicated their lives to understanding and teaching:...

Visiting Martin Luther King Jr. at the peak of the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. "Just for self defense," King assured him. It was not the only weapon King kept for such a purpose; one of his...

The long-awaited autobiography from Georgetown University's legendary coach, whose life on and off the basketball court threw America's unresolved struggle with racial justice into sharp relief. John Thompson was never just a basketball coach and I Came...

Beyond Respectability charts the development of African American women as public intellectuals and the evolution of their thought from the end of the 1800s through the Black Power era of the 1970s. Eschewing the Great Race Man paradigm so prominent...

New York Times Best Seller A Skimm Reads Pick From the best-selling author of Americanah and We Should All Be Feminists comes a powerful new statement about feminism today--written as a letter to a friend. A few years ago,...

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten...

Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X--all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates,...

bell hooks assures her readers that the crisis affecting the black male spirit must--and can--be addressed. In this taboo-breaking book she names the strategies that can ensure black males live fully and well.

Of the books authored by Martin R. Delany (1812-1885), "The Origin of Races and Color" is perhaps the most obscure. Out-of-print until now, it has been available to the public only through select libraries. At the time of its publication in 1879, this...