Documents the story of how scientists took cells from an unsuspecting descendant of freed slaves and created a human cell line that has been kept alive indefinitely, enabling discoveries in such areas as cancer research, in vitro fertilization, and gene mapping.
Young Lensinda Martin is a protegee of a crusading Black journalist and activist in mid-18th century southwestern Ontario. One night, a neighbouring farmer summons Lensinda after a slave hunter is shot dead on his land by an old woman recently arrived via the Underground Railroad. When the old woman, whose name is Cash, refuses to flee before the authorities arrive, the farmer urges Lensinda to gather testimony from her before Cash is condemned. But...
In Inhuman Bondage, Davis sums up a lifetime of insight, beginning with the dramatic Amistad case. He looks at slavery in the American South, describing black slaveholding planters; the rise of the Cotton Kingdom; the daily life of ordinary slaves; the highly destructive internal, long-distance slave trade; the sexual exploitation of slaves; the emergence of an African-American culture; and much more. A definitive history by a writer deeply immersed...
"The Notorious B.I.G. was one of the most charismatic and talented artists of the 1990s. Born Christopher Wallace and raised in Clinton Hill/Bed Stuy, Brooklyn, Biggie lived an almost archetypal rap life: young trouble, drug dealing, guns, prison, a giant hit record, the wealth and international super-stardom that came with it, then an early violent death. Biggie released his first record, Ready to Die, in 1994, when he was only 22. Less than three...
"'My parents were slaves in New York State. My master's sons-in-law ... came into the garden where my sister and I were playing among the currant bushes, tied their handkerchiefs over our mouths, carried us to a vessel, put us in the hold, and sailed up the river. I know not how far nor how long--it was dark there all the time.' These words, recorded by Benjamin Drew in 1855, provide Sophia Burthen's account of her arrival as an enslaved person into...
"The Jazz Masters: Setting the Record Straight features twenty-one conversations with musicians who have had at least fifty years of professional experience, and several as many as seventy-five. In all, these voices reflect some seventeen hundred years' worth of paying dues. Appealing to casual fans and jazz aficionados alike, these interviews have been carefully, but minimally edited by Peter Zimmerman for sense and clarity, without changing any...
Twelve-year-old Charlie's dad just died, the share crops are dry, the most fearsome man in South Carolina has come to collect a debt. To pay him back, Charlie agrees to help him catch thieves. But then Charlie discovers he's chasing escaped slaves.
The Newbery Honor-winning author of Genesis Begins Again offers a picture book rendering of Zora Neale Hurston's childhood to illuminate the rich natural-world and cultural experiences that shaped her education and career as a storyteller.
"Told through twelve short biographies, this book celebrates just some of the many Black women--each of whom has been largely underrepresented until now--who were instrumental to the nation's fight for civil rights and the contributions they made in driving the Movement forward"--
A revelatory biography of the first Black woman to stand for Vice President charts how the daughter of two immigrants in segregated California became one of the most effective power players in the United States.
Selected by The Atlantic as one of THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS. ("You have to read them.") From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then...
More than 35 years after its release, Kindred continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day. Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler's mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum...
"The first full biography in decades, "King" mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times"--
"Let Us Descend is a reimagining of American slavery, as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching. Searching, harrowing, replete with transcendent love, the novel is a journey from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader's guide through this hellscape. As she struggles through the miles-long...
In 1959 Virginia, Sarah, a black student who is one of the first to attend a newly integrated school, forces Linda, a white integration opponent's daughter, to confront harsh truths when they work together on a school project.
A girl walks home from school. She's tall for her age. She's wearing her winter coat. Her headphones are in. She's hurrying. She never makes it home. In the aftermath, while law enforcement tries to justify the response, one fact remains: a police officer has shot and killed an unarmed thirteen-year-old girl. The community is thrown into upheaval, leading to unrest, a growing movement to protest the senseless taking of black lives, and the arrival...
Decades before Elvis Presley was dubbed the King of Rock and Roll, before Billy Haley played 'Rock Around the Clock,' and before the Beatles revolutionized popular music, there was Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a Black guitar player from Cotton Plant, Arkansas.