In this examination of the American school system, a career education expert determines how existing policies have kept inner-city youth at a disadvantageciting, among other issues, the achievement gap between black and white studentsand lays the groundwork for future improvements.
Gwendolyn Brooks
In Montgomery
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Composed of three sections, this collection features the final poems of the late poet laureate of Illinois. The first section, ""In Montgomery,"" is a verbal description of a visit made by the poet and a highly talented photographer for Ebony Magazine, Moneeta Sleet. This is followed by a section of poetic character sketches. The final section is based upon a well known building located in the Black ghetto of Chicago's south side.
Haki R. Madhubuti
Tough Notes
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From the author of the best-selling Black Men, Obsolete, Single, Dangerous?: The Afrikan American Family in Transition, Claiming Earth: Race, Rage, Redemption, and Heartlove: Wedding and Love Poems, comes this profound series of letters, notes, and written conversations to young boys and men. In this moving text, Haki R. Madhubuti, poet, publisher, editor, educator, and institution builder, hopes to guide young men in search of direction to make good choices and wise, informed decisions on the road to a healthy life. Madhubuti writes as a caring father and resourceful teacher, with the insight of one who has benefited from his elders.
Rev. Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.
In His Image
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More than forty stunning etchings depict scenes from the Bible from an African perspective in this collection of inspiring passages from the Old and New Testaments. The drawings by late Italian American print-maker Letterio Calapai illustrate favorite Bible stories such as David and Goliath, Noah and the flood, Daniel and the lions, and the battle of Jericho, and depict favorite heroes such as Moses, Job, Sampson, and King Solomon as Africans. Each drawing is accompanied by powerful passages from the scriptures. With a Foreword by Dr. Jeremiah Wright and an Afterword by Dr. Frank M. Reid, two of today’s most well known Black theologians, In His Image is a gift quality book to treasure for decades to come.
Diane D. Turner
Our Grandpop is A Montford Point Marine!
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Thomas Strickland Turner Sr. was born May 16, 1925 to Edward Daniel Turner and Maude Butler Turner. His struggles against racial discrimination and segregation began when he was a child. He and four of his eight siblings, Constance, Barbara, Leroy and Francis were among the African American students who were barred from attending the New Easttown Elementary School in Pennsylvania during 1932 because of their color. The discriminatory practices to institute segregation erupted into a fight for equal education for all students. Those involved in the struggle against segregation included local African American parents, the NAACP and Philadelphia lawyer, Raymond Pace Alexander. At that time, Mr. Turner’s uncle Oscar Burwell Cobb was the president of the Main Line branch of the NAACP. They won the battle and Black children were granted the right to enter and attend the new Easttown School.
Lily Golden
My Long Journey Home (Hardcover)
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The daughter of Oliver Golden, an African American expatriate and agrarian activist of the early 1900's, and Bertha Bialek, youngest daughter of Polish American emigres of Jewish descent, Lily Golden has a special place in history. In this account of her experience, Golden provides a connection between the contemporary and historical relationships of America to Russia. Golden offers a distinctly different and refreshing point of view of the lives and experiences of Russia in her often alluring and romantic, sometimes bitterly painful, yet always vivid and intimate details of her life as a dark-skinned Russian surviving in and struggling against turbulent changes. She brings her tale of a sometimes charmed sometimes challenged existence full circle in her descriptions of her ultimate contact with distant relatives in the United States. Lily Golden allows the reader access into her lifelong revelation that family and community ties are boundless by time and geography.
Dolores E. Cross
Breaking Through the Wall (Hardcover)
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The autobiography of Dolores Cross's journey from the housing projects of Newark, New Jersey, to her appointment as president of Morris Brown College. She tells of her journey out of poverty, through the tumult of the 60s and the civil rights movement
Derrick Bell
Afrolantica Legacies
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Derrick Bell is perhaps best known for the principled stand he took at Harvard in 1990 when he quit his tenured position on the law-school faculty to protest the school's failure to grant tenure to a black woman. Now a visiting professor at New York Law School, Bell is still deeply interested in issues of race relations and has chosen to explore the subject fictionally in ""Afrolantica Legacies."" In a nutshell, the story goes like this: a mysterious land mass suddenly appears in the Atlantic Ocean, a fabulous island on which only black people can survive. American blacks set sail to the island to begin a new life, only to see it sink again before they can reach the shore. On the return trip to America, the passengers draw up a list of principles called the Afrolantica Legacies, defining how they want to reposition themselves in American society. The book uses a fictional setting to outline some remedies for the problem of race relations between African Americans and white people in our society.
Gwendolyn Brooks
Report from Part Two (Hardcover)
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Musings and notes about the life, the family, and travels of Gwendolyn Brooks that is a reprise of a prior book, ""Report from Part One,"" published by Broadside Press in 1972. Brooks was the Consultant in Poetry for the Library of Congress from 1985 to 1986. This volume includes her introductions of visiting writers during that period.
Joyce Ann Joyce
Warriors, Conjurers and Priests (Hardcover)
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In Warriors, Conjurers and Priests: Defining African-centered Literary Criticism, Joyce Ann Joyce brilliantly merges her vision of African American literary criticism with her understanding of the politics of higher education. Collected together, these essays depict the literary critic as a shaman and literary conjurer, steeped in the spirituality and history of Black culture. Her analysis offers perceptive readings of major Black literary figures of the 20th century - including Gwendolyn Brooks, Sonia Sanchez, James Baldwin, Ann Petry, Terry McMillan, Ishmael Reed and others. Professor Joyce demonstrates extensive research, while illustrating the interconnectedness of fiction and poetry to historical, political and cultural reality. At the same time, she provides balanced critiques rather than one-sidedness posing as universality. Most importantly, hers is a voice that recognizes the heterogeneity of the Black community and, in hopes of heightening understanding, does not fear discussing the strengths and weaknesses of diverse views.
Joyce Ann Joyce
Ijala (Hardcover)
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A landmark critical approach to the study of African American poetry, this seminal work sanctions the view that the voices of the Black Arts Movement are valid areas of scholarly inquiry.
Herb Boyd
Harlem Renaissance Redux
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There has been a surfeit of books on the storied Harlem Renaissance, but Herb Boyd has given this historical era a fresh reprise. While the usual decade or more of turn of events and characters are present, Boyd's connects the period with other cultural and political developments. He shows how the Harlem Renaissance is ineluctably bound with the Garvey movement, particularly with a coterie of writers who shared their genius with Garvey's Negro World publication along with their contributions in such breakthrough books and political organs as Alain Locke's The New Negro, the Crisis, The Messenger, and Opportunity magazine.
Christopher Benson
Special Interest
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""Deliciously rife with power, sleaze, and treachery.""
Nora Brooks Blakely
Seasons (Hardcover)
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Seasons: A Gwendolyn Brooks Experience captures her life and work in a new book filled with thematic collections of her poetry and prose; photos; memories from family, friends, peers and mentees and gripping illustrations from the award-winning artist, Jan Spivey Gilchrist. Now more than ever the words of Gwendolyn Brooks demonstrate their continued relevance in the 21st century. The national centennial celebration is one part of a resurgence of appreciation for her powerful work and the impact she had on 20th century literature as well as the Black Arts Movement.
Bill Ayers
Race Course
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White supremacy and its troubling endurance in American life is debated in these personal essays by two veteran political activists. Arguing that white supremacy has been the dominant political system in the United States since its earliest days--and that it is still very much with us--the discussion points to unexamined bigotry in the criminal justice system, election processes, war policy, and education. The book draws upon the authors' own confrontations with authorities during the Vietnam era, reasserts their belief that racism and war are interwoven issues, and offers personal stories about their lives today as parents, teachers, and reformers.
W. D. Wright
Crisis of the Black Intellectual (Hardcover)
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A reexamination of Harold Cruse's classic ""Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, "" published in 1967 at the height of the civil-rights movement and now required reading in African American studies courses, this polemic pays tribute to the earlier book's importance and takes to task the current generation of black scholars for failing to meet Cruse's rigorous standards for public commentary. Detailing the evolution of black-intellectual discourse since the 1960s, this assessment points to a lack of ongoing discussion about the role of intellectuals--black or white--in our society and insists that the experience of black Americans is so complex it deserves the closest and most honest scrutiny possible from black writers and academics. Instead, the book is sad to report, today's scholars are often caught up in media battles such as those described in the chapters ""Three of a Kind: Black Conservatives, Black Liberals, and Black Radicals"" and ""Why Black Female Intellectuals Tend to Shout.""
