Sister Outsider presents essential writings of black poet and feminist writer Audre Lorde, an influential voice in 20th century literature. In this varied collection of essays, Lorde takes on sexism, racism, ageism, homophobia, and class, and propounds social difference as a vehicle for action and change. Her prose is incisive, unflinching, and lyrical, offering a message of struggle but also of hope. This commemorative edition is, in Lorde's own...

In 2014, protesters ringed the White House, chanting, "How many black kids will you kill? Michael Brown, Emmett Till!" Why did demonstrators invoke the name of a black boy murdered six decades before? In 1955, white men in the Mississippi Delta lynched a fourteen-year-old from Chicago named Emmett Till. His murder was part of a wave of white terrorism in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared public school segregation unconstitutional....

The humor of African-American life is inextricably tied to the humor on the African-American stage, its character shaped by the contradictions of being Black and Bewildered and Bothered in the New World. It is a humor that breathes sanity and humanity in the midst of profound circumstances. To find logic in this existence is at the heart of the African-American comic odyssey. Writers who understand the mythic comic paradigm articulate the rage, the...

"During the height of the Cold War, passionate idealists across the U.S. and Africa came together to fight for Black self-determination and the antiracist remaking of society. Beginning with the 1957 Ghanaian independence celebration, the optimism and challenges of African independence leaders were publicized to African Americans through community-based newspapers and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Inspired by African independence--and...

""The self-described black feminist lesbian mother poet used a mixture of prose, theory, poetry, and experience to interrogate oppressions and uplift marginalized communities. She was one of the first black feminists to target heteronormativity, and to encourage black feminists to expand their understanding of erotic pleasure. She amplified anti-oppression, even as breast cancer ravaged her ailing body." -- Evette Dionne, Bustle Magazine Winner of...

"October 2016 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party. Photojournalist Bryan Shih, who has been interviewing and taking portraits of the surviving Panthers around the country for years, has partnered with Yohuru Williams, dean and history professor at Fairfield University, to deliver the definitive celebration of the Black Panthers. Part oral history, part scrapbook, this is a beautifully produced book of forty-five...

At a time when "Friday night lights" shone only on white high school football games, African American teams across Texas burned up the gridiron on Wednesday and Thursday nights. The segregated high schools in the Prairie View Interscholastic League (the African American counterpart of the University Interscholastic League, which excluded black schools from membership until 1967) created an exciting brand of football that produced hundreds of outstanding...

"From the introduction of the game of basketball to Black communities on a wide scale in 1904 to the racial integration of the NBA in 1950, dozens of African American teams were founded and flourished. This period, known as the Black Fives Era (teams at the time were often called “fives”), was a time of pioneering players and managers. They battled discrimination and marginalization and created culturally rich, socially meaningful events. But...

"In this book, Jessica Ingram presents photographs of landscapes that, to unaware passersby, look like nearly any other place in the Deep South: a fenced-in backyard, a dirt road covered with overgrowth, a field grooved with muddy tire prints. However, these seemingly ordinary places hold pivotal, often tragic, stories of the civil rights movement, though rarely is there a plaque with dates or names or any manmade indication of their importance. Most...

"Jackie Robinson heroically broke the color barrier in 1947. But how--and, in practice, when--did the integration of the sport actually occur? Bill Madden shows that baseball's famous "black experiment" did not truly succeed until the coming of age of Willie Mays and the emergence of some star players--Larry Doby, Hank Aaron, and Ernie Banks--in 1954. And as a relevant backdrop off the field, it was in May of that year that the US Supreme Court unanimously...