Black History Month RRPL

He was the wittiest, the prettiest, the strongest, the bravest, and, of course, the greatest (as he told us himself). Muhammad Ali was one of the twentieth century’s most fantastic figures and arguably the most famous man on the planet. “I am America,” he once declared. “I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me—black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own. Get used to me.” He was...

Music Is History combines Questlove's deep musical expertise with his curiosity about history, examining America over the past fifty years.

Monumental in scope and vividly detailed, Chocolate City tells the tumultuous, four-century story of race and democracy in our nation's capital. Emblematic of the ongoing tensions between America's expansive democratic promises and its enduring racial realities, Washington often has served as a national battleground for contentious issues, including slavery, segregation, civil rights, the drug war, and gentrification. But D.C. is more than just a...

"According to conventional wisdom, American women's campaign for the vote began with the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The movement was led by storied figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. But this women's movement was an overwhelmingly white one, and it secured the constitutional right to vote for white women, not for all women. In Vanguard, acclaimed historian...

Collects selected letters of Thurgood Marshall, who was at the forefront of the civil-rights movement and went on to become the first African-American justice of the Supreme Court, covering the period from 1935 to 1947.

The remarkable celebration of the life and legacy of civil rights advocate and Supreme Court pioneer Thurgood Marshall, the first African American appointed to the nation's highest judicial bench. Filmed before a live audience at the Kennedy Center's Eisenhower Theater, this compelling one-man play written by Peabody Award and Emmy Award winner George Stevens, Jr. and directed by Emmy Award winner Michael Stevens stars the Emmy Award and Tony Award-winning...

In The longest fight, the longtime Washington Post correspondent William Gildea tells the story of the longest boxing match of the twentieth century-- between Joe Gans, the first African American boxing champion, and "Battling" Nelson, a vicious and dirty brawler-- which would stretch to forty-two rounds and last two hours and forty-eight minutes. An new rail line brought spectators from around the country, dozens of reporters came to file blow-by-blow...