Baratunde Thurston shares stories of his politically inspired Nigerian name, the heroics of his hippie mother, the murder of his drug-abusing father, and other revelatory details about being Black.

Presents an account of fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin, an African-American girl who refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks, and covers her role in a crucial civil rights case.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century.

Rufus, a gifted African-American musician, Leona, the woman who loves him, his sister Ida, and her lover Vivaldo, struggle with issues of love, hate, gender, and racism in Greenwich Village, Harlem, France, and other locales in the early part of the twentieth century.

"Up From Slavery" is an autobiography of Booker T. Washington's life and work, which has been the source of inspiration for all Americans. Washington reveals his inner most thoughts as he transitions from ex-slave to teacher and founder of one of the most important schools for African Americans in the south, The Tuskegee Industrial Institute.

For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him--most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear. What were they afraid of? ... Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings.

MK Asante describes growing up on the streets of North Philadelphia and how he educated himself in unconventional ways.

The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama recounts his experiences as a lawyer working to assist those desperately in need, reflecting on his pursuit of the ideal of compassion in American justice.

Malcolm X, the Black Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells his life story to veteran writer and journalist Alex Haley.

Solomon Northup tells about being kidnapped and sold into slavery in the South after having been a free citizen in New York during the mid-1800s.

An autobiography of lawyer and American First Lady Michelle Obama.

The autobiography of an African-American writer, recounting his early years and the harrowing experiences he encountered drifting from Natchez to Chicago to Brooklyn.

A comprehensive history of anti-black racism focuses on the lives of five major players in American history, including Cotton Mather and Thomas Jefferson, and highlights the debates that took place between assimilationists and segregationists and between racists and antiracists

Baldwin's friend of twenty-five years writes about the man who struggled out of Harlem to create a series of works exposing racism in America and the world.