African American issues

Gates says white supremacy was born in the years after the Civil War, as white Southerners looked for ways to roll back the newly acquired rights of African-Americans. His new book is Stony the Road.

Filmmaker Yoruba Richen's documentary, The Green Book: Guide to Freedom, tells the story of the manual that helped African-Americans find safe places to stay, eat, shop and do business on the road.

Edugyan's latest novel, Washington Black, tells the story of a boy who escapes slavery and embarks on a voyage of scientific discovery. It has been shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker Prize.

Journalist Howard Bryant discusses the history of social protest among African-American athletes. His new book, The Heritage, traces the tradition back to Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and others.

When I was a kid, my mom told me a story about her grandfather: That he got in trouble with some white men down south, and escaped lynching by running to Chicago. That he chose his new last name "Jones," because it was the most common name in the phone book. That, for years, he would sit in his chair facing the door, shotgun on his lap, waiting for them to come for him.

In 1957, three years after the Supreme Court declared segregated schools unconstitutional, Melba Pattillo Beals was one of nine black students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Ark.

Jonathan Olshefski spent 10 years filming Christopher Rainey and his family, who run a recording studio in a working-class African-American section of North Philadelphia. Then their daughter was shot.

Ward's National Book Award-winning novel, Sing, Unburied, Sing, is set in a small town modeled after her own rural hometown. It centers on a biracial young boy confronting the South's racial legacy.

Eric Garner was the 47 year old man who died at the hands of police in 2014 after he was pushed to the ground and put into an illegal choke hold. Garner repeated the words "I can't breath" eleven times before he died. His death was captured on a cell phone and went viral. And latter spurred on the Black Lives Matter movement. Matt Taibbi set out to find out who Garner was, and how he died.

Danielle Allen's memoir centers on her cousin Michael, who was sentenced to a long prison term for carjacking when he was 15. Three years after his release, he was found shot to death in a parked car.