Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men -- bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can...

The story of one African American family fighting to stay together and strong in the face of brutal racist attacks, illness, poverty, and betrayal in the Deep South of the 1930s.

Sixteen of the state's best writers answer the question "What is it like to live as a person of color in Minnesota?"

Sophie Heller and her family left Nazi Germany for a better life in Victory, Illinois. But when war fever sweeps the town, the Hellers become targets of suspicion, threats, and attacks. Sophie, working as a newspaperwoman, begins an investigation to uncover the truth. Cole Ambrose, a physically disabled local teacher, becomes her unexpected ally, and love.

History was made in 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the professional baseball race barrier to become the first African American MLB player of the modern era. 42 tells the life story of Robinson and his history-making signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers under the guidance of team executive Branch Rickey.

"The haunting story of a family of dreamers and tale-tellers looking for home in an unwelcoming world. Traces one girl's migration from war to peace, loss to loss, home to home. Firuzeh and her brother Nour are children of fire, born in an Afghanistan fractured by war. When their parents, their Atay and Abay, decide to leave, they spin fairy tales of their destination, the mythical land and opportunities of Australia. As the family journeys from Pakistan...

While on a forgettable first date together in Ohio, a black man and a black woman, are pulled over for a minor traffic infraction. The situation escalates, with sudden and tragic results, when the man kills the police officer in self-defense. Terrified and in fear for their lives, the man, a retail employee, and the woman, a criminal defense lawyer, are forced to go on the run. But the incident is captured on video and goes viral, and the couple unwittingly...

"James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the Civil Rights movement to force America to confront its lies about race. In the era of Trump, what can we learn from his struggle? "Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again." --James Baldwin We live, according to Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., in the after times, when the promise of Black Lives Matter and the attempt to...

Fifty years ago, Malcolm X told a white woman who asked what she could do for the cause, 'Nothing.' Michael Eric Dyson believes he was wrong. Now he responds to that question. If society is to make real racial progress, people must face difficult truths, including being honest about how Black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.

Racism has been written into the United States' laws and entrenched in its institutions for much of its history. Native Americans weren't granted citizenship until 1924. Before the mid-1900s, students of color were pushed into segregated schools. And many states maintained laws against interracial marriages until 1967. In the Race and American Law series, readers will look at how court cases and government actions have moved toward more equality...