In 1936, in front of 110,000 spectators at the Olympic Stadium in Germany, Jesse Owens blew away the competition in the 100-meter final to claim the title of "World's Fastest Man." He won the gold medal in front of Germany's brutal dictator, Adolf Hitler, defying the Nazi leader's racist ideology. Owens won three more gold medals at the Olympics and returned to the United States a hero. Author Jeff Burlingame explores the life of one of the greatest...

The day Walter White was buried in 1955 the New York Times called him "the nearest approach to a national leader of American Negroes since Booker T. Washington." For more than two decades, White, as secretary of the NAACP, was perhaps the nation's most visible and most powerful African-American leader. He won passage of a federal anti-lynching law, hosted one of the premier salons of the Harlem Renaissance, created the legal strategy that led to Brown...

From the time of his famous Atlanta address in 1895 until his death in 1915, Booker T. Washington was the preeminent African-American educator and race leader. But to historians and biographers of the last hundred years, Washington has often been described as an enigma, a man who rose to prominence because he offered a compromise with the white South: he was willing to trade civil rights for economic and educational advancement. Thus, one historian...

The long-awaited, untold, inside story of the rise of the legendary actor, singer, scholar, and activist. The first volume of this major biography breaks new ground. The greatest scholar-athlete-performing artist in U.S. history, Paul Robeson was one of the most compelling figures of the twentieth century. Now his son, Paul Robeson Jr., traces the dramatic arc of his rise to fame, painting a definitive picture of Paul Robeson's formative years....

Describes the life and accomplishments of Benjamin Banneker in the fields of science and architecture, as well as his impact as one of the pioneers in promoting equality.

A biography of President George W. Bush's National Security Advisor.

A biography of the Hall of Fame baseball player who broke Babe Ruth's career home run record.

Recounts the history of African Americans in California during the Gold Rush while focusing on the life and work of Mifflin Gibbs.