African American Science

Nate Shaw's father was born into slavery. Nate was born into a bondage that was only a little gentler. At the age of nine, he was picking cotton and plowing behind a mule. At the age of 47, he faced down a crowd of White deputies who had come to confiscate a neighbor's livestock. His defiance cost him 12 years in prison.This triumphant autobiography, All God's Dangers, assembled from the 84-year-old Shaw's oral reminiscences, is the plainspoken story of an "over average" man who witnessed momentous changes in the lives of Southern people, Black and White....

Before the Civil War, colonization schemes and black laws threatened to deport former slaves born in the United States. Birthright Citizens recovers the story of how African American activists remade national belonging through battles in legislatures, conventions, and courthouses.

In Wicked Flesh, Jessica Marie Johnson explores the nature of complicated intimate and kinship ties and how they were used by Black women to construct freedom in the Atlantic world. Johnson draws on archival documents scattered in institutions across three continents, written in multiple languages and largely from the perspective of colonial officials and slave-owning men, to recreate Black women's experiences from coastal Senegal to French Saint-Domingue to Spanish Cuba to the swampy outposts of the Gulf Coast.

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” writes Du Bois, in one of the most prophetic works in all of American literature. First published in 1903, this collection of 15 essays dared to describe the racism that prevailed at that time in America—and to demand an end to it. Du Bois’ writing draws on his early experiences, from teaching in the hills of Tennessee, to the death of his infant son, to his historic break with the conciliatory position of Booker T. Washington.

In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America.

This volume will revise the way we look at the modern populations of Latin America and North America by providing a totally new view of the history of Native-American and African-American peoples throughout the hemisphere. Africans and Native Americans explores key issues relating to the evolution of racial terminology and European colonialists' perceptions of color, analyzing the development of color classification systems and the specific evolution of key terms such as black, mulatto, and mestizo, which no longer carry their original meanings.

Here is an unapologetic look into the factors that have caused so many Blacks to think and act in the negative way they do towards themselves and others. This timely body of work is from a man well versed in the American educational system, as well as educational systems throughout the world.

Muhammad Ali, never afraid to express himself loudly and boldly, stays true to form in Ali in Me, an eight-part audio series that explores his life and legacy, guided by his own words through never-before-heard audio recordings. Hosted by Muhammad’s widow, Lonnie Ali, and his close friend, award-winning broadcaster John Ramsey, Ali in Me goes beyond the boxing ring to delve deeply into the extraordinary life and lasting contributions The Champ made to individuals around the world.

Black American History for Dummies reveals the terrors and struggles and celebrates the triumphs of Black Americans. This handy book goes way beyond what you may have studied in school, digging into the complexities and the intrigues that make up Black America. From slavery and the Civil Rights movement to Black Wall Street, Juneteenth, redlining, and Black Lives Matter, this book offers an accessible resource for understanding the facts and events critical to Black history in America.

As usual, death will always bring family back together. And with death, there are almost always secrets. Anika and Ebony find themselves on a journey that takes them from mourning to discovering that it’s “their time” with an ensemble of family and friends: a loving, sweet Geechee grandma, frenemies, and a not-so-endearing family. From Ravenwood’s own King of Rap and his wifey the Mouth of the South to a love that will never die, Bloodstone’s Jinx will have you questioning your own existence.

From leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., to lesser-known figures such as Barbara Rose Johns and Jim Zwerg, each man and woman made the decision that something had to be done to stop discrimination. These moving accounts of the first decade of the civil rights movement are a tribute to the people, black and white, who took part in the fight for justice and the struggle they endured.

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.—and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.

On October 20, 1973, in San Francisco, a White couple strolling down Telegraph Hill was set upon and butchered by four young Black men. Thus began a reign of terror that lasted six months and left 15 Whites dead and the entire city in a state of panic. The perpetrators wanted nothing less than a race war.

Late on the evening of October 16, 1859, John Brown and his band of 18 raiders descended on Harpers Ferry at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. In an ill-fated attempt to incite a slave insurrection, they seized the federal arsenal, took hostages, and retreated to a fire engine house. The raiders were routed, and several were captured. Soon after, they were tried, convicted, and hanged. Among Brown's raiders were five African Americans whose lives and deaths have long been overshadowed by their martyred leader and, even today, are little remembered.

In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore.

A provocative, lively deep dive into the meaning of America's first Black president and first Black presidency, from "one of the most graceful and lucid intellectuals writing on race and politics today" (

Vanity Fair).

The story of the Confederate States of America, the proslavery, antidemocratic nation created by white Southern slaveholders to protect their property, has been told many times in heroic and martial narratives. Now, however, Stephanie McCurry tells a very different tale of the Confederate experience. Confederate Reckoning is the startling story of this epic political battle in which women and slaves helped to decide the fate of the Confederacy and the outcome of the Civil War.

Autobiography of Hall of Fame basketball star Clyde Drexler, one of basketball history's most dynamic players. Through his fifteen-year career as an NBA player, Clyde Drexler played with elegance and flair, leadership and poise, integrity and an ability to come through in the clutch. He led the Portland Trail Blazers to the NBA Finals twice and helped the Houston Rockets win the NBA championship in 1995. A ten-time All-Star, a member of the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, and now a member of basketball’s Hall of Fame, Drexler reached the top of his profession without revealing many of his inner thoughts on himself or the game.

In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum. Now, in The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama calls for a different brand of politics: a politics for those weary of bitter partisanship and alienated by the "endless clash of armies" we see in Congress and on the campaign trail; a politics rooted in the faith, inclusiveness, and nobility of spirit at the heart of "our improbable experiment in democracy".

In 1992, the deadliest year in Chicago’s history, seven-year-old Dantrell Davis was shot and killed in front of his elementary school inside the public housing complex Cabrini-Green. What happened to Dantrell led to a truce among Chicago’s gangs, but it also ignited a national panic about poverty and violence in America’s cities. Dantrell’s name would soon be used to demolish all of Chicago’s high-rise public housing, displacing tens of thousands of low-income families.