Dramatizes the life of Jelly Roll Morton, pianist, composer, and self-proclaimed inventor of jazz

Discusses how class, race, and gender shaped women's experiences in the South

Not only one of the last of over one hundred slave narratives published separately before the Civil War, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861) is also one of the few existing narratives written by a woman. It offers a unique perspective on the complex plight of the black woman as slave and as writer. In a story that merges the conventions of the slave narrative with the techniques of the sentimental novel, Harriet Jacobs describes her efforts to fight off the advances of her master, her eventual liaison with another white man (the father of two of her children), and her ultimately successful struggle for freedom. Jacobs' account of her experiences, and her search for her own voice, prefigure the literary and ideological concerns of generations of African-American women writers to come.

The personal account of a fugitive slave's privation and sufferings and his campaigns for Negro emancipation

Examines the effect of a racially divided society on ninteenth century American writings, and discusses works by Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, and Twain

During the 1950s Troy Maxson struggles against racism and tries to preserve his feelings of pride in himself.

Examines the harsh political and economic realities that are ravaging Africa and its inhabitants, offering studies of the rare animals faced with extinction and the individuals working to preserve wild Africa

Presents a personal perspective on the American light-skinned Negro's experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

This family success story centers on Maggie Comer, an unskilled, illiterate Black woman who rose from abject poverty in the rural South to become the mother of five college-educated children