Introduces the life of Crispus Attucks, a former slave who died in the Boston Massacre, a fight between the British and American colonists that occurred before the American Revolution.

A black woman recalls the anguish of her childhood in Arkansas and her adolescence in northern slums.

Frederick Douglass's life was so incredible that it took him three autobiographies to tell the whole story. His life as a slave and his daring escape are just two chapters. He was also a famous abolitionist and women's rights supporter. This biography uses Douglass's own writings in describing the key events in his life. Primary source materials shed light on key issues of the Civil War era and beyond. Historical photographs, sidebars, and fact boxes...

From the first African explorers to the first black president, this illustrated history is an excellent resource and "an epic work" (School Library Journal). Discovering Black America is an unprecedented account of more than 400 years of African American history set against a background of American and global events. It begins with a black sailor aboard the Niña with Christopher Columbus and continues through the colonial period, slavery, the...

"[I]n New York ... Barack Obama learns that his father--a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man--has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey--first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother's family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father's life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance"--Container....

Describes the life, dancing, and choreography of Alvin Ailey, who created his own modern dance company to explore the black experience.

Profiles thirty-five prominent men in African American history, including James Armistead Lafayette, Thurgood Marshall, Alvin Ailey, and Leland Melvin.

Examines the life of the famous civil rights leader, Martin Luther King Jr., from his early family life and experiences in education to his history-shaping speeches and the international responses to his assassination.