This collection ranges from an early 1961 interview in which King describes his reasons for joining the ministry (after considering medicine), to a 1964 conversation with Robert Penn Warren, to his last interview, which was conducted on stage at the convention of the Rabbinical Assembly, just ten days before King's assassination.

A classic work of feminist scholarship, Ain't I a Woman has become a must-read for all those interested in the nature of black womanhood. Examining the impact of sexism on black women during slavery, the devaluation of black womanhood, black male sexism, racism among feminists, and the black woman's involvement with feminism, hooks attempts to move us beyond racist and sexist assumptions.

This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. Hailed at the time, Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880 has justly been called a classic.

Time on Two Crosses showcases the extraordinary career of this black gay civil rights pioneer. Spanning five decades, the book combines classic texts ranging in topic from Gandhi’s impact on African Americans, white supremacists in Congress, the antiwar movement, and the assassination of Malcolm X, with never-before published selections on the call for gay rights, Louis Farrakhan, affirmative action, AIDS, and women’s rights. Also included are twenty-five photos from the Rustin estate.

A collection of speeches and essays by Audre Lorde

This intensely personal and political autobiography belies the fearsome image of JoAnne Chesimard long projected by the media and the state. With wit and candor, Assata Shakur recounts the experiences that led her to a life of activism and portrays the strengths, weaknesses, and eventual demise of Black and White revolutionary groups at the hand of government officials.

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today. "[Fanon] demonstrates how insidiously the problem of race, of color, connects with a whole range of words and images." -- Robert Coles, The New York Times Book Review

In the late 1960s, internationally renowned activist Fannie Lou Hamer purchased 40 acres of land in the Mississippi Delta, launching the Freedom Farms Cooperative (FFC). A community-based rural & economic development project, FFC would grow to over 600 acres, offering a means for local sharecroppers, tenant farmers, & domestic workers to pursue community wellness, self-reliance, & political resistance. Life on the cooperative farm presented an alternative to the second wave of northern migration by African Americans - an opportunity to stay in the South, live off the land, & create a healthy community based upon building an alternative food system as a cooperative & collective effort. 'Freedom Farmers' expands the historical narrative of the black freedom struggle to embrace the work, roles, & contributions of southern black farmers & the organizations they formed. This book reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces like Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York City, and New Orleans.

Cultural historian Jane Rhodes examines the extraordinary staying power of the Panthers in the American imagination by probing their relationship to the media. Rhodes argues that once the media and pop culture latched onto the small, militant group, the Panthers became adept at exploiting and manipulating this coverage--through pamphlets, buttons, posters, ubiquitous press appearances, and photo ops--pioneering a sophisticated version of mass media activism.

This Fiftieth Anniversary edition of Harry Edwards's classic of activist scholarship arrives even as a new generation engages with the issues he explored. Edwards's new introduction and afterword revisit the revolts by athletes like Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos. At the same time, he engages with the struggles of a present still rife with racism, double-standards, and economic injustice. Again relating the rebellion of black athletes to a larger spirit of revolt among black citizens, Edwards moves his story forward to our era of protests, boycotts, and the dramatic politicization of athletes by Black Lives Matter.

Meredith L. Roman's Opposing Jim Crow examines the period between 1928 and 1937, when the promotion of antiracism by party and trade union officials in Moscow became a priority policy. Soviet leaders stood to gain considerable propagandistic value at home and abroad by drawing attention to U.S. racism, their actions simultaneously directed attention to the routine violation of human rights that African Americans suffered as citizens of the United States. Soviet policy also challenged the prevailing white supremacist notion that blacks were biologically inferior and thus unworthy of equality with whites. African Americans of various political and socioeconomic backgrounds became indispensable contributors to Soviet antiracism and helped officials in Moscow challenge the United States'claim to be the world's beacon of democracy and freedom.

Less than three months before he was assassinated, Malcolm X spoke at the Oxford Union-the most prestigious student debating organization in the United Kingdom. The Oxford Union regularly welcomed heads of state and stars of screen and served as the training ground for the politically ambitious offspring of Britain's ""better classes."" Malcolm X, by contrast, was the global icon of race militancy. For many, he personified revolution and danger. Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the debate, this book brings to life the dramatic events surrounding the visit, showing why Oxford invited Malcolm

Harlem's Lafargue Mental Hygiene Clinic was founded in 1946 as both a practical response to the need for low-cost psychotherapy and counseling for black residents (many of whom were recent migrants to the city) and a model for nationwide efforts to address racial disparities in the provision of mental health care in the United States. The result of a collaboration among the psychiatrist and social critic Dr. Fredric Wertham, the writer Richard Wright, and the clergyman Rev. Shelton Hale Bishop, the clinic emerged in the context of a widespread American concern with the mental health of its citizens. It proved to be more radical than any other contemporary therapeutic institution, however, by incorporating the psychosocial significance of antiblack racism and class oppression into its approach to diagnosis and therapy.

African American scholar-activist Joy James offers a stimulating and iconoclastic account of a world in which the United States functions as the political-police center. Resisting State Violence is a clear-sighted and uncompromising guidebook for those who want to understand the forces that hinder social change, and to effectively move beyond them.

McKay’s 1937 autobiography, A Long Way from Home, illustrates the complexity of his relationship to the Harlem Renaissance. Published in his late forties, it was the first of several books he wrote in the last decade of his life.

Portraying C. L. R. James as a leading figure in the independence movement in the West Indies and in the black and working-class movements in both Britain and the United States, this volume provides an extensive introduction to James's life and thought before presenting two critical works that illustrate the tremendous breadth and depth of his worldview. Both long-out-of-print pamphlets display James's contributions to Marxist and revolutionary theory as he documents and elaborates on the aspects of working-class activity that constitute the revolution in today's world. Fully encapsulating James's thoughts on democracy and workers' emancipation, these essential works represent the principal themes that run through James's life: implacable hostility toward all "condescending saviors" of the working class and an underlying faith in the power of ordinary people to build a new world.

Best known as the man who organized the Great March on Washington in 1963, Bayard Rustin was a vital force in the civil rights movement from the 1940s through the 1980s. Rustins's activism embraced the wide range of crucial issues of his time: communism, international pacifism, and race relations. Daniel Levine has written the first scholarly biography that examines Rustin's public as well as private persona in light of his struggles as a gay black man and as an activist who followed his own principles and convictions. The result is a rich portrait of a complex, indomitable advocate for justice in American society.

A collection of Jackson's letters from prison, Soledad Brother is an outspoken condemnation of the racism of white America and a powerful appraisal of the prison system that failed to break his spirit but eventually took his life. Jackson's letters make palpable the intense feelings of anger and rebellion that filled black men in America's prisons in the 1960s. But even removed from the social and political firestorms of the 1960s, Jackson's story still resonates for its portrait of a man taking a stand even while locked down.