African American Biography

Among these biographies, listeners will find aviators and artists, politicians and pop stars, athletes and activists. The exceptional men featured include artist Aaron Douglas, civil rights leader John Lewis, dancer Alvin Ailey, filmmaker Oscar Micheaux, musician Prince, photographer Gordon Parks, tennis champion Arthur Ashe, and writer James Baldwin.

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee are legendary stars of the American stage, television, and film, cherished not merely for their gifts as actors but also for their lifelong commitment to human rights, family values, and community. Now, in a joint memoir that celebrates half a century of successful marriage, they look back on the extraordinary careers that earned each a Presidential Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

Paul Robeson’s bass-baritone voice captivated audiences, especially when singing the spirituals he had heard at church and folk songs he had gathered from many countries. But Robeson was more than an interpreter of song. He was passionate about the injustices found in the United States and throughout the world and refused to keep quiet. As a stage and film actor, he fought against stereotypical roles and racism. Labeled a communist during the height of the Cold War, Robeson was stripped of his U.S. passport and found himself unable to earn a living. But Robeson never gave up or gave in.

In Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader, author Troy Jackson chronicles King's emergence and effectiveness as a civil rights leader by examining his relationship with the people of Montgomery, Alabama. Using the sharp lens of Montgomery's struggle for racial equality to investigate King's burgeoning leadership, Jackson explores King's ability to connect with the educated and the unlettered, professionals and the working class.

Muhammad Ali, in the late 1960s, was young, successful, brash, and hugely admired - but with some reservations. He was bombastic and cocky in a way that captured the imagination of America but also drew its detractors. He was a bold young African American in an era when few people were as outspoken. He renounced his name - Cassius Clay - as being his 'slave name' and joined the Nation of Islam, renaming himself Muhammad Ali. And finally, in 1966, after being drafted, he refused to join the military for religious and conscientious reasons.

In a feat of remarkable research and timely reclamation, Eric K. Washington uncovers the nearly forgotten life of James H. Williams (1878-1948), the chief porter of Grand Central Terminal's Red Caps - a multitude of Harlem-based Black men whom he organized into the essential labor force of America's most august railroad station. Washington reveals that despite the highly racialized and often exploitative nature of the work, the Red Cap was a highly coveted job for college-bound Black men determined to join New York's bourgeoning middle class.

Maggie Comer was a poor, uneducated mother of five who believed that the only way her children were going to make something of themselves in the world was through education. Fighting obstacles such as racism, oppression, poverty, hardship, and World War II, Maggie made certain her childrenhad the opportunity to live the American Dream she never could.

On December 10, 1953, tragedy was visited on a family when Nathaniel Allen was murdered on the Sampit River by his White employer, who lured him into the meeting under the false promise of reconciliation. Allen's death was recorded as an accidental drowning, a deliberate cover-up of the bullet hole seen by more than one witness. Three generations later, Phil Allen Jr. revisits this harrowing story and recounts the "baton of bitterness" that this murder passed down in his family.

Caliph Washington's life was never supposed to matter. As a Black teenager from the vice-ridden city of Bessemer, Alabama, Washington was wrongfully convicted of killing an Alabama policeman in 1957. Sentenced to death, he came within minutes of the electric chair - nearly a dozen times. A Kafka-esque legal odyssey in which Washington's original conviction was overturned three times before he was finally released in 1972, his story is the kind that pervades the history of American justice.

Staking a Claim examines the life of Jake Simmons, Jr. - the international tycoon who was the most successful African American in the history of the oil industry - and affords us a rare perspective on this question.

In the 1800's, the old American West was a desirable destination for emancipated or escaped slaves. After the Civil War, many Blacks believed the West offered more opportunity, and less discrimination. In this short, 45 minute eBook, you will read 11 stories of Blacks who discovered the West was a place for them to not only survive, but thrive. You may have heard of some, such as Bessie Coleman, (cover photo) the first African American to earn a pilots license. Or, Justina Ford, a doctor in Denver, Colorado. Many are recently discovered gems, such as lawyer John Dennis Posten, who had a ...

In 1955, Rosa Parks, an African-American seamstress, had no idea she was changing history when, fed up and tired, she refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a bus in segregated Alabama. Today, she is immortalized for the defiance that sent her to jail and triggered a bus boycott that catapulted Martin Luther King, Jr. into the national spotlight. Who was she, before and after her historic act, and how did that act sound the death knell for Jim Crow?

Jacqueline Jackson promised her son, Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., that she would write him every day during his incarceration in federal prison to serve his 30-month sentence. This book is an inspiring and moving selection of the letters she wrote him. Together, they comprise a powerful act of love - nurturing and ministering to her son's heart, health, and mind and maintaining his essential connection with home.

Born to interracial American parents in Sweden, Jason Diakité grew up between worlds - part Swedish, American, black, white, Cherokee, Slovak, and German, riding a delicate cultural and racial divide. It was a no-man’s-land that left him in constant search of self. Even after his hip-hop career took off, Jason fought to unify a complex system of family roots that branched across continents, ethnicities, classes, colors, and eras to find a sense of belonging.

Carefully researched and expertly told, this Newbery Honor and Sibert Medal-winning book is a moving account of the life of a talented and determined artist who left her mark on musical and social history. Through her story, Newbery Medal-winning author Russell Freedman illuminates the social and political climate of the day and an important chapter in American history. Notes, bibliography, discography, index.

Traces the progression of the civil rights movement and its effect on history through biographical sketches of four prominent and influential African Americans: Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X.

In this powerful essay, the mother of Trayvon Martin shares her grief, reflections, anger, and hope in the wake of a single unforgivable moment that catalyzed the Black Lives Matter movement.

Did you know that NASA uses mathematics for space travel? Meet Katherine Johnson, one of the first African-American and female mathematicians who worked for NASA. Learn about her life growing up in segregated America and her journey to pursue her education and dreams. Her mathematical calculations helped American astronauts to go to space, land on the moon, and return to earth safely in 1969!

World-renowned poet and Professor of African American Studies at U.C., Berkeley, June Jordan writes a deeply personal memoir of her formative years. June recalls her childhood experiences and reveals the duality of her parents’ influence on her stellar achievement as a poet. The first 12 years in Harlem were both peaceful and tumultuous for June, as she was raised the daughter of dirt-poor West Indian immigrants.

Written in the tradition of works by Joan Didion, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Eve Ensler, this “profoundly insightful and brilliantly inciting” (Dominique Morisseau, Obie Award-winning playwright) exploration of the soul of the United States - the past, the present, and the future Kevin Powell wants for us all, through the lens and lives of three major figures: his mother, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.