African American Studies

A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today's racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that listeners of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide....

"My name is 'J' and I'm awkward--and Black. Someone once told me those were the two worst things anyone could be."....

In this searing classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement....

This memoir written by writer, orator, and former slave Frederick Douglass describes, in gripping detail, the circumstances of his upbringing, his brutal treatment at the hands of slave-owners, and his narrow escape from Maryland to freedom....

In the early 1990s, Demetrius "Big Meech" Flenory and his brother, Terry "Southwest T", rose up from the slums of Detroit to build one of the largest cocaine empires in American history: the Black Mafia Family....

Feminist Theory embodies the hope that feminists can find a common language to spread the word and create a mass, global feminist movement.

Urban Apologetics examines the legitimate issues that Black communities have with Western Christianity and shows how the gospel of Jesus Christ—rather than popular, socioreligious alternatives—restores our identity....

In July 2004, Barack Obama electrified the Democratic National Convention with an address that spoke to Americans across the political spectrum....

For top blogger, Ty Alexander, the grieving process is one that she lives with day-to-day. Learning from the pain of losing her mother, Alexander connects with her listeners on a deeply emotional level in this debut audiobook....

Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world....

The cross and the lynching tree are the two most emotionally charged symbols in the history of the African American community. In this powerful work, theologian James H. Cone explores these symbols and their interconnection in the history and souls of black folk....

Black Americans have long been shackled to the Democrats. Seeing no viable alternative, they have watched liberal politicians take the Black vote for granted without pledging anything in return. In Blackout, Owens argues this automatic allegiance is both illogical and unearned....

An approachable guide to being an informed, compassionate, and socially conscious person today - from discussions of race, gender, and sexual orientation to disability, class, and beyond - from critically acclaimed historian, educator, and author Blair Imani....

In a long overdue contribution to geography and social theory, Katherine McKittrick offers a new and powerful interpretation of Black women's geographic thought. In Canada, the Caribbean, and the United States, Black women inhabit diasporic locations marked by the legacy of violence....

In this unprecedented deep dive into inner-city gang life, Mark Bowden takes listeners inside a Baltimore gang, offers an in-depth portrait of its notorious leader, and chronicles the 2016 FBI investigation that landed eight gang members in prison....

With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, Dr. King demanded an end to global suffering....

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) gives a firsthand account of his life from birth through his time spent in slavery, his escape to freedom in 1838, and his transition from bondage to liberty.

This definitive box set includes all the landmark speeches of the great orator and American leader Martin Luther King, Jr....

Best-selling author and acclaimed linguist John McWhorter argues that an illiberal neoracism, disguised as antiracism, is hurting Black communities and weakening the social fabric....

Beginning with his final departure from Neverland, Untouchable takes listeners through Jackson's final four years....

Dr. King's best-selling account of the civil rights movement in Birmingham during the spring and summer of 1963....

Ten years ago, Bell Hooks astonished readers/listeners with Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Now comes Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope - a powerful, visionary work that will enrich our teaching and our lives.

Writer John Howard Griffin decided to perform an experiment in order to learn from the inside out how one race could withstand the second class citizenship imposed on it by another race....

A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life....

This classic treatise on race contains Dr. West's most incisive essays on the issues relevant to black Americans....

Lifting as They Climb is a love letter of freedom and self-expression from six Black women Buddhist teachers, conveyed through the voice of author Toni Pressley-Sanon, one of the innumerable people who have benefitted from their wisdom. She explores their remarkable lives and undertakes deep readings of their work, weaving them into the broader tapestry of the African diaspora and the historical struggle for Black liberation.

A refreshing, insightful, sacrilegious take on African American history, Crazy as Hell explores the site of America's greatest contradictions. The notables of this book are the runaways and the rebels, the badass and funky, the activists and the inmates—from Harriet Tubman, Nina Simone, and Muhammad Ali to B'rer Rabbit, Single Mamas, and Wakandans—but are they crazy as hell, or do they simply defy the expectations designated for being Black in America?

Kendra Allen’s first collection of essays—at its core—is a bunch of mad stories about things she never learned to let go of. Unifying personal narrative and cultural commentary, this collection grapples with the lessons that have been stored between parent and daughter. These parental relationships expose the conditioning that subconsciously informed her ideas on social issues such as colorism, feminism, war-induced PTSD, homophobia, marriage, and “the n-word,” among other things.

In Black Psychedelic Revolution, Dr. Nicholas Powers charts how psychedelics can heal racial pain passed on through generations. He shows how this medicine unlocks a return to one’s self, facilitating an embodied experience of safety, peace, and being-here-now otherwise disrupted by whiteness—and he explores how psychedelics can catalyze individual wellness even as they transcend it. Drugs taken with therapy can heal. But drugs taken with a social movement can heal a nation.

Diving deep into the unseen and unheard, Neely uses personal interviews, court records, media reports, and analytical data to understand how and why Black women are disproportionately more likely to die from homicide in comparison to their white counterpoints. Sounding an urgent alarm, No Human Involved contends that it is time for Black women’s lives to matter not only to their families and communities, but especially to those commissioned to protect them.

While the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, white southerners established a system of apprenticeship after the Civil War that entrapped Black children and their families, leading to undue hardships for generations to come. In Slavery After Slavery, historian Mary Frances Berry traces the stories behind individual cases from southern supreme courts to demonstrate how formerly enslaved families and their descendants were systemically injured through white supremacist practices, perpetuated by the legal system.

Step into a bold exploration of politics, culture, and identity that challenges the status quo. In Trump & the Brotherhood, author and Marine Corps veteran Semper-Fi Sista takes you on a riveting journey through the unexpected connections between Donald Trump and a rising tide of entrepreneurial-minded men across America—Black, Latino, Asian, and beyond.

For forty years, hundreds of African American men in Tuskegee, Alabama, believed they were receiving medical care from trusted doctors. Instead, they were subjects of one of the most infamous and morally reprehensible experiments in American history. Under the guise of "free medical treatment," these men were deliberately left untreated for syphilis, even as a cure became widely available. Their suffering, exploited in the name of science, shattered lives and left an indelible scar on American medicine.

Award-winning historian Amrita Chakrabarti Myers has recovered the riveting, troubling, and complicated story of Julia Ann Chinn (ca. 1796–1833), the enslaved wife of Richard Mentor Johnson, owner of Blue Spring Farm, veteran of the War of 1812, and US vice president under Martin Van Buren. Johnson never freed Chinn, but during his frequent absences from his estate, he delegated to her the management of his property, including Choctaw Academy, a boarding school for Indigenous men and boys on the grounds of the estate.

Licensed mental health therapist, somatic healer, and eating disorder specialist Alishia McCullough understands that for far too many Black women, racial trauma’s seismic impact has disrupted their most essential relationship: the one they have with their bodies—and by extension, with their food. African Americans are disproportionately impacted by disordered eating behaviors, yet their experiences are frequently neglected by doctors and mental health experts.