"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." Thus speaks W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls Of Black Folk, one of the most prophetic and influental works in American literature. In this eloquent collection of essays, first published in 1903, Du Bois dares as no one has before to describe the magnitude of American racism and demand an end to it. He draws on his own life for illustration, from his early experiences teaching in the...

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men, bodies exploited through slavery and segregation,...

This biography examines the remarkable life of Martin Luther King Jr. using easy-to-read, compelling text. Through striking black-and-white images and rich color photographs and informative sidebars, readers will learn about King's family background, childhood, education, and inspirational work as a leader of the civil rights movement in the United States. Informative sidebars enhance and support the text. Features include a table of contents, timeline,...

Sarah M. Broom's [memoir] The Yellow House tells a hundred years of her family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America's most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother's struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina.

In the early 20th century, as racist policies of Jim Crow were instituted across the country in the wake of the Civil War, over 6 million african Americans left the rural South for greater economic and social oportunities. While this history is apparent across the Northeast and Midwest, the Great Migration has had little acknowledgement in the state of Arizona.

"Huck Finn and Jim float on their raft across a continuum of shifting seasons, feasting on a limitless supply of fish and stolen provisions, propelled by the currents of the mighty Mississippi from one adventure to the next. Launched into existence by Mark Twain in 1835, they have now been transported by Norman Lock through three vital, violent, and transformative centuries of American history. As time unfurls on the river's banks, they witness decisive...

Documents the history of slavery in America from colonial times to after the Civil War.

"An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States. When she was a little girl, Michelle Robinson's world was the South Side of Chicago, where she and her brother, Craig, shared a bedroom in their family's upstairs apartment and played catch in the park, and where her parents, Fraser and Marian Robinson, raised her to be outspoken and unafraid. But life soon look her much further afield, from the halls of Princeton,...

Encouraged by her friend Marie-Grace, Cecile finds a way to help her beloved city, New Orleans, in the aftermath of the 1853 yellow fever epidemic.

Traces the history of the United States of America from the late fifteen century to the early twenty-first, covering the Declaration of Independence, the American Civil War, the Transcontinental Railroad, the Great Depression, the election of the nation's first African-American president, and related topics.