Books like The classic slave narratives by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Between the World and Me is a memoir‑essay in letter form, where Ta‑Nehisi Coates addresses his teenage son about the history, violence, and ongoing reality of being Black in America.

Booker T. Washington tells his own story, from birth into slavery to becoming a powerful educator and founder of the Tuskegee Industrial Institute.

A chilling memoir detailing Solomon Northup's harrowing experience as a captive on a Louisiana plantation for twelve years, from 1841 to 1853.

A pioneering black entrepreneur becomes Wall Street’s first African‑American millionaire before the Civil War, marrying a white woman, investing in railroads, and outmaneuvering his era’s financiers.

A sweeping overview of the 20th‑century Black experience in America, profiling a hundred leaders from W.E.B. Du Bois to Oprah Winfrey and illustrating how their achievements in music, literature, sports, politics, and culture shaped the nation.

Reconstruction of the lives of 110 enslaved Africans from Benin and Nigeria who arrived in Alabama's Clotilda in 1860, their journey through the slave trade, and their post‑emancipation community known as African Town.

"In grocery store aisles and kitchens across the country, smiling images of 'Aunt Jemima' and other historical and fictional black cooks can be found on various food products and in advertising. Although these images are sanitized and romanticized in American popular culture, they represent the untold stories of enslaved men and women who had a significant impact on the nation's culinary and hospitality traditions even as they were forced to prepare food for their oppressors. Kelley Fanto Deetz draws upon archaeological evidence, cookbooks, plantation records, and folklore to present a nuanced study of the lives of enslaved plantation cooks from colonial times through emancipation and beyond. She reveals how these men and women were literally 'bound to the fire' as they lived and worked in the sweltering and often fetid conditions of plantation house kitchens. These highly skilled cooks drew upon skills and ingredients brought with them from their African homelands to create complex, labor-intensive dishes such as oyster stew, gumbo, and fried fish. However, their white owners overwhelmingly received the credit for their creations. Focusing on enslaved cooks at Virginia plantations including Thomas Jefferson's Monticello and George Washington's Mount Vernon, Deetz restores these forgotten figures to their rightful place in American and Southern history. Bound to the Fire not only uncovers their rich and complex stories and illuminates their role in plantation culture, but it celebrates their living legacy with the recipes that they created and passed down to future generations"--Provided by publisher.