Ocean State Libraries

When the dead body of a former mistress is discovered in a colleague's office, Clay Robinette, a happily married and happily tenured black professor has to hustle to "unmask the killer before he becomes the prime suspect."--Jacket.

New York Times­ best-selling author Cornel West is one of America’s most provocative and admired public intellectuals. Whether in the classroom, the streets, the prisons, or the church, Dr. West’s penetrating brilliance has been a bright beacon shining through the darkness for decades.

Yet, as he points out in this new memoir, "I’ve never taken the time to focus on the inner dynamics of the dark precincts...

"A tiny, fastidiously dressed man emerged from Black Philadelphia around the turn of the century to mentor a generation of young artists including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jacob Lawrence and call them the New Negro--the creative African Americans whose art, literature, music, and drama would inspire Black people to greatness. In The New Negro : The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father...

Melvin B. Tolson is a professor at Wiley College in Texas. Wiley is a small African-American college. In 1935, Tolson inspired students to form the school's first debate team. Tolson turns a group of underdog students into a historically elite debate team which goes on to challenge Harvard in the national championship. Inspired by a true story.

With Crabcakes, James Alan McPherson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Elbow Room, marks his reentry into the literary world after a twenty-year absence. McPherson revisits in Crabcakes the years since he first left Georgia as a young man, retracing memories of people and relationships in moments of startling and searing introspection. His meditations on the past - his migration from the deep South of his birth to his travels as a waiter on the...

"In this highly engaging book, fashionista and pop culture expert Tanisha C. Ford investigates Afros and dashikis, go-go boots and hotpants of the sixties, hip hop's baggy jeans and bamboo earrings, and the #BlackLivesMatter-inspired hoodies of today. The history of these garments is deeply intertwined with Ford's story as a black girl coming of age in a Midwestern rust belt city. She experimented with the Jheri curl; discovered how wearing the wrong...