BLACK EXCELLENCE of Scholarship.

Talking about issues, tweeting about them does not make one a scholar. Study begins the process of becoming one in your own right, thinking deepens the progression towards understanding the levels of our society and our place in it. - Dawn Wolf, Keeper of Stories  

Amistad
The Original Black Elite demonstrates the crushing power of Jim Crow by telling the story of Daniel Murray, a black man who, along with a cohort of outstanding contemporaries, achieved wealth and status in the post-Civil War era - until their assimilation into the white upper class was stymied by the rise of segregation.





















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The New Press
It's always a good time to read The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander's chilling analysis of how black men are disproportionately targeted and more heavily punished by the criminal justice system - and the oppressive consequences for the black community.

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Simon and Schuster
In a new history of the Emmett Till case, Timothy B. Tyson recounts the horrific story of a young boy who was brutally lynched after a white woman (falsely) alleged that he made lewd comments to her. The Blood of Emmett Till weaves this infamous event, and its aftermath, into a broader story of white supremacist violence and rhetoric that extends into the present day.

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Broadway Books
If you somehow missed this book about a black woman's DNA being exploited for decades of research - catch up fast. This year it's becoming a movie starring Oprah.

William Morrow
The women profiled in Hidden Figures - which is already a major motion picture - made meaningful, intentional contributions to the science of American space exploration, only to be largely ignored by history.

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Dover
First published in 1872, black abolitionist William Still's contemporaneous accounts of the Underground Railroad offer a peephole into the experiences of people escaping slavery. The account is drawn directly from his interviews of the hundreds of people he aided in escape.

Tribeca Books
First published in 1933, The Mis-education of the Negro examines how the educational system itself worked against black children, teaching them not to seek out ambitious life paths.