Race Relations

In the 1940s, as the world was at war, a remarkable jazz band performed on the American home front. This all-female band, originating from a boarding school in the heart of Mississippi, found its way to the most famous ballrooms in the country, offering solace during the hard years of the war. They dared to be an interracial group despite the cruelties of Jim Crow laws, and they dared to assert their talents though they were women in a "man's" profession. Told in thought-provoking poems and arresting images, this unusual look at our nation's history is deep and inspiring.

A guidebook to help instill a positive self-image and self-respect in black children and to prepare them to deal with racism, written by practicing clinical psychologists and parents.

Larry Mungin spent his life preparing to succeed in the white world. He looked away from racial inequality and hostility, believing that he'd succeed if he worked hard and played by the rules. He rose from a Queens housing project to Harvard College and Law School, and went on to the world of corporate law. But just when he should have been considered for partnership at his mostly white law firm, he sued for racial discrimination. Paul M. Barrett, Mungin's roommate at Harvard, takes readers through this fascinating case while challenging them to re-think their ideas about race.

Williams tells the story of his very unusual youth. Of mixed-race parentage, he was raised as a white in Virginia and as a black in Ohio. We experience with him his pain, his struggles, and his triumphs.

"An award-winning Washington Post reporter explores the twisted path she traveled to find her place as a confident black female in a world that values whiteness and maleness. Here is a rich and insightful story of a life lived on the edge by a woman formerly preoccupied with pleasing everyone but herself."

"In Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball, a descendant of Elias, has written a nonfiction American saga like no other. Part history, part journey of discovery, this is the story of black and white families who lived side by side for five generations -- and a tale of everyday Americans confronting their vexed inheritance together. Using the copious plantation records of his family, supplemented by both black and white oral tradition, Ball uncovers the story of the people who lived on his ancestors' lands -- the violence and opulence, the slave uprisings and escapes, the dynastic struggles, and the mulatto children of Ball slaveholders and 'Ball slaves.' He identifies and travels to a prison in Africa from which his family once bought workers. Most remarkably of all, Ball also locates and visits some of the nearly 12,000 descendants of Ball slaves and reveals how slavery lives on in black and white memory and experience."

This profile of the Hairstons, a large family of planters and slaves, traces this black, white, and interracial family through the Civil War and beyond.

In 1970, a young black veteran walked into a store, and was killed. This book tells the story of the event and the events it spawned as well as how it affected both the local community and the larger community of the United States.

In 1909, Ovington, W.E.B. Du Bois and 50 others founded the NAACP. This memoir chronicles her life, the politics of her era, the prejudice that civil rights workers faced, and what drew her - a white woman - to the struggle.