Today Frederick Douglass is best known for his autobiographies; but while he was alive, he was known as a fiery orator who was always in demand. Collected here are ten of Frederick Douglass' addresses. And while it is impossible to hear Frederick Douglass speak today, these addresses still manage to instill a sense of just how powerful and intelligent Douglass was. Included here are: The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, What the Black Man Wants,...

In My Larger Education, Booker T. Washington explains how he came by his positions on race relations, by describing the people who influenced him during the founding of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute of Alabama. Washington was constantly, and often bitterly, criticized by his contemporaries for being too conciliatory to whites and not concerned enough about civil rights. It would not be until after his death that the world would find out...

Illuminates how African Muslims drew on Islam while enslaved, and how their faith ultimately played a role in the African Disapora Servants of Allah presents a history of African Muslims, following them from West Africa to the Americas. Although many assume that what Muslim faith they brought with them to the Americas was quickly absorbed into the new Christian milieu, as Sylviane A. Diouf demonstrates in this meticulously-researched, groundbreaking...

Based on a heart-rending and much discussed series in the Washington Post, this is the story of one woman and her family living in the projects in Washington, D.C. A transcendent piece of writing, it won the Pulitzer Prize and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. For four years Leon Dash of the Washington Post followed the lives of Rosa Lee Cunningham, her children, and five of her grandchildren, in an effort to understand the persistence of poverty...

In Drifted Back in Time, follow the story of nineteenth-century love as it crosses the boundaries of race and class. Emily, a young slave, is purchased by the loving Hoover family, who raise her as part of the family. But is she prepared for the expectations made upon her by both Master Hoover and Madam Hoover? Will she be able to provide a future for her children, a future that enables each to decide whether to pass for white or be true to themselves...

Nothing exposed the class and generational divide in black America more starkly than Bill Cosby's now-infamous assault on the black poor when he received an NAACP award in the spring of 2004. The comedian-cum-social critic lamented the lack of parenting, poor academic performance, sexual promiscuity, and criminal behavior among what he called the "knuckleheads" of the African-American community. Even more surprising than his comments, however, was...

At the age of nineteen, Nasir "Nas" Jones began recording tracks for his debut album -- and changed the music world forever. Released in 1994, Illmatic was hailed as an instant masterpiece and has proven one of the most influential albums in hip-hop history. With its close attention to beats and lyricism, and riveting first-person explorations of the isolation and desolation of urban poverty, Illmatic was pivotal in the evolution of the genre. ...

This book, written by one of the foremost researchers in this field, represents one of the intellectual efforts on the explanation of the inter-ethnic phenomenon. The author went into the critique of the whole phenomenon and approached his frame of meaning from the actors side. That is why the book is subtitled The peoples non-formal mechanisms. The author is phenomenological in his approach and believes that the real meaning of any event should be...

Straightforward, yet often poetic accounts of the battle for freedom, three memoirs by courageous black women vividly chronicle their struggles in the bonds of slavery, their rebellion against degrading injustice, and their determination to attain racial equality. In Narrative of Sojourner Truth, one of the most important documents on slavery ever written, a passionate African American abolitionist and champion of women's rights tells of her life...

Tracing the struggle for freedom and civil rights across two centuries, this anthology comprises speeches by Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other influential figures in the history of African-American culture and politics. The collection begins with Henry Highland Garnet's 1843 "An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America," followed by Jermain Wesley Loguen's "I Am a Fugitive Slave,"...