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From the best-selling author of Deacon King Kong (an Oprah Book Club pick) and The Color of Water comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade - and who must pass as a girl to survive. Henry Shackleford is a young slave living in the Kansas Territory in 1856 - a battleground between anti - and pro-slavery forces - when legendary abolitionist John Brown arrives. When an argument between Brown and Henry's master turns violent, Henry is forced to leave town.

On February 17, 2022, Brittney Griner arrived in Moscow ready to spend the WNBA offseason playing for the Russian women’s basketball team where she had been the centerpiece of previous championship seasons. Instead, a security checkpoint became her gateway to hell when she was arrested for mistakenly carrying under one gram of medically prescribed hash oil. Brittney’s world was violently upended in a crisis she has never spoken in detail about publicly—until now.

Throughout her childhood, Safiya Sinclair’s father, a volatile reggae musician and a militant adherent to a strict sect of Rastafari, was obsessed with the ever-present threat of the corrupting evils of the Western world outside their home, and worried that womanhood would make Safiya and her sisters morally weak and impure. For him, a woman’s highest virtue was her obedience.

Growing up Black in rural North Carolina, Ray McMillian’s life is already mapped out. But Ray has a gift and a dream—he’s determined to become a world-class professional violinist, and nothing will stand in his way. Not his mother, who wants him to stop making such a racket; not the fact that he can’t afford a violin suitable to his talents; not even the racism inherent in the world of classical music.

Amber Iman’s powerful concert melds her onstage work in shows such as Shuffle Along and Soul Doctor with her work offstage as a founding member of the Broadway Advocacy Coalition and Black Women on Broadway. Using personal stories and songs, she takes the audience on a journey through love, rejection, race, artistry, and heartbreak in a performance that challenges, encourages, and uplifts, reminding us that we have the capacity to move forward from any setback.

Amber & Lacey are joined by multi-talented actress and entrepreneur Cassandra Freeman and it's impossible not to fall head over heels in love with her. There are many laugh out loud moments celebrating life’s simple pleasures, like drinking every beverage out of a wine glass, embarrassing your kids and belting out Whitney Houston classics. In "Can You Stand It" Cassandra loves an app that empowers her son, Lacey shares her latest dating hack, and Amber, well, she's still madly in love with The Cheesecake Factory. --- Want advice answered on the show? Write to Amber&Lacey: ...

Now a writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers and host of The Amber Ruffin Show, Amber Ruffin lives in New York, where she is no one's first Black friend and everyone is, as she puts it, "stark raving normal". But Amber's sister Lacey? She's still living in their home state of Nebraska, and trust us, you'll never believe what happened to Lacey.

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, Southern Black community and running away at age 16, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: Their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her Black daughter in the same Southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for White, and her White husband knows nothing of her past.

This is the story of how a nerdy, homeschooled kid in the church choir named John Stephens became the Grammy-winning, platinum-selling, genre-pushing pop star we know as John Legend. For a long time, he led a double life—excelling as a star student while his home life was in shambles, working in corporate America as a financial consultant while moonlighting as a musician in nightclubs, always straddling a line between the person he was and the person he wanted to be. These are his Words + Music.

Hip-hop pioneer Chuck D, the legendary lyricist and cofounder of Public Enemy, takes listeners on an extraordinary journey through politically and socially conscious music. Part history lesson and part memoir, Songs That Shook the Planet spans genres and decades to call out the brave artists who continue to inspire necessary change in the world.