Arcadia Public Library

Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, Northup published...

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father--a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man--has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey₇first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration...

This hardcover edition of the modern classic, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X, is the result of a unique collaboration between Alex Haley and Malcolm X, whose voice and philosophy resonate from every page, just as his experience and his intelligence continue to speak to millions on the greatest issue of our day: the ongoing African-American struggle for social and economic equality.

Describes the life of the sharecroppers' son who became an Olympic legend and challenged Hitler's dream of Aryan superiority.

Examines the personal life, college years, and professional career of NBA basketball star Latrell Sprewell, who now plays for the New York Knicks.

A biography of one of America's greatest track and field athletes, the winner of four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games.

An introduction to the life Martin Luther King, Jr. Including how he organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott and African American people across the country in support of the right to vote, desegregation, and other basic civil rights.