The author and poet recalls the anguish of her childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in northern slums. "Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother...

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,...

Traces the parallel lives of two youths with the same name in the same community, describing how the author grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar and promising business leader while his counterpart suffered a life of violence and imprisonment.

Malcolm X, the Black Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells his life story to veteran writer and journalist Alex Haley.

The black woman whose acts of civil disobedience led to the 1956 Supreme Court order to desegregate buses in Montgomery, Alabama, explains what she did and why.

Now adapted for young adults, the #1 New York times best-selling memoir offers an intimate look at Barack Obama's early days, tracing the future 44th president's odyssey through family, race, and identity.

Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, Northup published...

You know the Super Soaker. It's one of top twenty toys of all time. And it was invented entirely by accident. Trying to create a new cooling system for refrigerators and air conditioners, impressive inventor Lonnie Johnson instead created the mechanics for the iconic toy. A love for rockets, robots, inventions, and a mind for creativity began early in Lonnie Johnson's life. Growing up in a house full of brothers and sisters, persistence and a passion...

"The CNN analyst and youngest state representative in South Carolina's history illuminates the lives of America's forgotten rural, Black working-class men and women" --

Writer John Howard Griffin decided to perform an experiment fifty years ago. In order to learn firsthand how one race could withstand the second class citizenship imposed on it by another, he dyed his white skin dark, left his family, and traveled to the South to live as a black man. What began as scientific research ended up changing his life in every way imaginable. This is an eyewitness account of discrimination and segregation that is terrifying...