Celebrate Black History Month!

African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song is by Kevin Young, editor. Across a turbulent history, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative response to them. One of the great American art forms, African American poetry encompasses many kinds of verse: formal, experimental, vernacular, lyric, and protest. The anthology opens with moving testaments to the power of poetry as a means of self-assertion, as enslaved people voice their passionate resistance to slavery. This volume captures the power and beauty of this diverse tradition and its challenge to American poetry and culture. The volume also features biographies of each poet and notes that illuminate cultural references and allusions to historical events. --(adapted from jacket.)

And Still I Rise: Black America Since MLK is by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Kevin M. Burke. The companion book to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s PBS series, And Still I Rise--a timeline and chronicle of the past fifty years of black history in the U.S. in more than 350 photos" -- "Beginning with the assassination of Malcolm X in February 1965, And Still I Rise: From Black Power to the White House explores the last half-century of the African American experience. More than fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the birth of Black Power, the United States has both a Black president and Black CEOs running Fortune 500 companies-- and a large Black underclass beset by persistent poverty, inadequate education, and an epidemic of incarceration. Harvard professor and scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. raises disturbing and vital questions about this dichotomy. How did the African American community end up encompassing such profound contradictions? And what will "the Black community" mean tomorrow? Gates takes readers through the major historical events and untold stories of the sixty years that have irrevocably shaped both the African American experience and the nation as a whole, from the explosive social and political changes of the 1960s, into the 1970s and 1980s-- eras characterized by both prosperity and neglect-- through the turn of the century to today, taking measure of such racial flashpoints as the Tawana Brawley case, O.J. Simpson's murder trial, the murders of Amadou Diallo and Trayvon Martin, and debates around the NYPD's "stop and frisk" policies. Even as it surveys the political and social evolution of black America, And Still I Rise is also a celebration of the accomplishments of black artists, musicians, writers, comedians, and thinkers who have helped to define American popular culture and to change our world. 

George Washington Carver: A Life is by Christine Vella. Nearly every American can cite at least one of the accomplishments of George Washington Carver. The many tributes honoring his contributions to scientific advancement and black history include a national monument bearing his name, a U.S.-minted coin featuring his likeness, and induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Born into slavery, Carver earned a master's degree at Iowa State Agricultural College and went on to become that university's first black faculty member. A keen painter who chose agricultural studies over art, he focused the majority of his research on peanuts and sweet potatoes. His scientific breakthroughs with the crops both of which would replenish the cotton-leached soil of the South helped spare multitudes of sharecroppers from poverty. Despite Carver's lifelong difficulties with systemic racial prejudice, when he died in 1943, millions of Americans mourned the passing of one of the nation's most honored and well-known scientists. Scores of children's books celebrate the contributions of this prolific botanist, but no biographer has fully examined both his personal life and career until now. 

The Man Called Brown Condor: the Forgotten History of an African American Fighter Pilot is by Thomas E. Simmons. The forgotten true story of American war hero John Charles Robinson, a.k.a. The Brown Condor of Ethiopia, and the commander of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Corps during the brutal Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935. Simmons brings to life Robinson's success in becoming a pilot, his expertise in building and assembling his own working aircraft, his influence on the establishment of a school of aviation at Tuskegee Institute. More than a biography of a black pilot who became a US hero, this book provides insight on racial conditions in the first half of the twentieth century and illustrates the political intrigue within a League of Nations afraid to face the rise of Fascism.