The classic account of moving from slavery to freedom, by the celebrated African-American educator and university founder. Booker T. Washington believed that every man and woman deserved a chance, regardless of their skin color. This classic work of literature, originally published in 1901, relays the story of a man born into slavery who, once freed, pursued education and racial equality. This new edition of Booker T. Washington's autobiography features...

First published in 1959, this novel tells the story of Okonkwo, the leader of an Igbo (Ibo) community who is banished for accidentally killing a clansman. The novel covers the seven years of his exile to his return, providing an inside view of the intrusion of white missionaries and colonial government into tribal Igbo society in the 1890s.

An illustrated biography of the talented African American musician who was a successful bandleader and the father of blues music

Married to a successful physician and prominently ensconced in Harlem's vibrant society of the 1920s, Irene Redfield leads a charmed existence--until she is shaken out of it by a chance encounter with a childhood friend who has been "passing for white."

Raised in rural Alabama, Rosa Parks had never known a time when racial segregation was not the law. Then, one day, Parks decided that she had endured enough. Her soft-spoken defiance on a city bus was the spark-and civil rights activism, led by the young Martin Luther King, Jr., was the fire. The Montgomery bus boycott thrust parks into the spotlight, but it is only one part of her story

Chronicles the life of the heavyweight boxing champion, from his early years to his draft resistance through his professional triumphs and losses

The day Walter White was buried in 1955 the New York Times called him "the nearest approach to a national leader of American Negroes since Booker T. Washington." For more than two decades, White, as secretary of the NAACP, was perhaps the nation's most visible and most powerful African-American leader. He won passage of a federal anti-lynching law, hosted one of the premier salons of the Harlem Renaissance, created the legal strategy that led to Brown...

The Story of an African Farm (1883) is a novel by South African political activist and writer Olive Schreiner. Her first published novel, The Story of an African Farm was a bestseller upon its release despite being criticized for its portrayal of controversial social, religious, and political themes. Part Bildungsroman, part philosophical fiction, the novel is recognized as a groundbreaking work for its exploration of feminism, atheism, and the influence...

In the twentieth century, African Americans not only helped make popular music the soundtrack of the American experience, they advanced American music as one of the preeminent shapers of the world's popular culture. Vast numbers of black American musicians deserve credit for this remarkable turn of events, but a few stand out as true giants. David Stricklin's superb new biography explores the life of one of them, Louis Armstrong. The life story of...