african american men

Tells the story of a young African-American man sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit, and a teacher who tries to impart to him his learning and pride before the execution.

Author and activist Kevin Powell vividly recounts the horrific poverty of his youth and his struggles to overcome a legacy of anger.

A collection of true stories in which African-American men explain the role racial profiling plays in their daily lives and the impact it has on the black community.

Abandoned by his unknown father, neglected by his mother, Alton Carter is a product of foster homes and a boy's ranch-home. As the second of five children he endured a childhood full of violence, hunger, and isolation. But he never gave up, standing up to abusive relatives and sibling and cousin bullies. He always kept an eye out for those he encountered who might help him along the way to his goal : a normal life. And through sheer determination he got it. A former police officer he is now director of youth ministries for a methodist church.

Even Grade, a twenty-eight-year-old African-American man who grew up an orphan, and Valuable Korner, the teenage daughter of a promiscuous woman and an unknown father, meet through Even's lover Joody Two Sun, and embark on a quest for family, love, and commitment that takes them to places they never imagined they'd go.

A collection of poems exploring the experience of African American men in urban America.

"Wes Moore's remarkable bestseller The Other Wes Moore ends when Wes completes his journey from a fatherless delinquent to college graduate and heads off to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. But what happens next? Next, he had to figure out the answer to the question: What is your work? More than finding a job, he had to find the work he was meant to do. For the next decade, Wes traced a path through some of the most fascinating and high-pressure workspaces in the world: an American student at Oxford after 9/11; a combat officer in Afghanistan during the most intense years of fighting; a White House fellow during the tumult of the late Bush years; an Obama organizer during that historic campaign; a Wall Street banker at the cusp of the financial crisis; and finally, back home to Baltimore, working to revitalize that troubled city. This is the story of how one young man traced a path through the world to discover the meaning of his life -- and how after a series of misdirections and lesson-teaching mistakes, he found that meaning in service. Wes weaves the episodes and moments of decision in his own life with those of a dozen other changemakers from every walk of life who confronted the question "what is my work?" and found their own answers, to help readers see how we can each find our own path to purpose and to creating a better world"--.

Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what it means to be black in America.

"First published anonymously in 1912, James Weldon Johnson's extraordinary first book narrates the inner struggle of a gifted, light-skinned black man living on the razor's edge of the color line in Jim Crow America. The novel's pioneering realism led many early readers to take it for an actual memoir and to challenge its veracity and authorship. Republished in 1927 under Johnson's name, the book became a major inspiration for the Harlem Renaissance and one of the landmark classics of African American literature."--.