Born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817-c. 1869) escaped enslavement and would become a leading figure in the struggle for Black freedom, citizenship, and equality. He was extolled by his contemporary Frederick Douglass for his "depth of thought, fluency of speech, readiness of wit, logical exactness." Until now, his story has been largely untold. Ward, a newspaper editor, Congregational minister, and advocate for the temperance...

New York Times­ best-selling author Cornel West is one of America’s most provocative and admired public intellectuals. Whether in the classroom, the streets, the prisons, or the church, Dr. West’s penetrating brilliance has been a bright beacon shining through the darkness for decades.

Yet, as he points out in this new memoir, "I’ve never taken the time to focus on the inner dynamics of the dark precincts...

"When President Theodore Roosevelt welcomed the country's most visible Black man, Booker T. Washington, into his circle of counselors in 1901, the two confronted a shocking and violent wave of racist outrage. In the previous decade, Jim Crow laws had legalized discrimination in the South, eroding social and economic gains for former slaves. Lynching was on the rise, and Black Americans faced new barriers to voting. Slavery had been abolished, but...

"Euro-African-American activist Pauli Murray was a feminist lawyer who played pivotal roles in both the modern civil rights and women's movements, and later become the first woman ordained a priest by the Episcopal Church. Born in 1910 and identified as female, she believed from childhood that she was male. Jane Crow is her definitive biography, exploring how she engaged the arguments used to challenge race discrimination to battle gender discrimination...

"People who believe a problem can be solved tend to get busy solving it," William Raspberry wrote in the Washington Post in July 1994. "Hugh B. Price is a believer." This comment on Price's inaugural keynote address as head of the National Urban League proved prescient. During his tenure as president and CEO from 1994 to 2003, Price conceived and launched its Campaign for African-American Achievement, spearheaded pressure on the federal government...

"Growing up, he [Thomas Sowell] never got the chance to know his mother and father. And he often had no money for new shoes, or even for bus fare. When Thomas Sowell left home at age seventeen, all he had in the world fit into a single suitcase. While he looked for work, he often had nothing to eat save for some stale bread and a little jelly. But Sowell refused to give in to despair or self-pity. He was determined to make his life better--and to...