Elaine Brown

Elaine Brown (born March 2, 1943) is an American prison activist, writer, singer, and former Black Panther Party chairman who is based in Oakland, California. Brown briefly ran for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2008. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and is a founder of Mothers Advocating Juvenile Justice.

When Newton fled to Cuba in 1974 in the face of murder charges, he appointed Brown to lead the Party. The first woman to do so, Elaine Brown chaired the Black Panther Party from 1974 until 1977. In her 1992 memoir A Taste of Power, she wrote about the experience:
"A woman in the Black Power movement was considered, at best, irrelevant. A woman asserting herself was a pariah. If a black woman assumed a role of leadership,

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bell hooks

bell hooks (deliberately in lower-case; born Gloria Jean Watkins) was an African-American author, feminist, and social activist. Her writing focused on the interconnectivity of race, class, and gender and their ability to produce and perpetuate systems of oppression and domination. She published over thirty books and numerous scholarly and mainstream articles, appeared in several documentary films and participated in various public lectures. Primarily through a postmodern female perspective, she addressed race, class, and gender in education, art, history, sexuality, mass media and feminism.
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W.E.B. Du Bois

In 1868, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (pronounced 'doo-boyz') was born in Massachusetts. He attended Fisk College in Nashville, then earned his BA in 1890 and his MS in 1891 from Harvard. Du Bois studied at the University of Berlin, then earned his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1894. He taught economics and history at Atlanta University from 1897-1910. The Souls of Black Folk (1903) made his name, in which he urged black Americans to stand up for their educational and economic rights. Du Bois was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and edited the NAACP's official journal, "Crisis," from 1910 to 1934. Du Bois turned "Crisis" into the foremost black literary journal. The black nationalist ex
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Sam Greenlee

Elder Sam Greenlee is an African American writer of novels, screeplays, stage plays, and poems. He has been a social activist since the age of 15.

His first well known and most controversal novel was The Spook Who Sat by the Door published in 1968. He also co-wrote the screeplay adaption of the novel. The film was released in 1973. In 1990 Greenlee was the Illinois poet laureate.
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Tananarive Due

TANANARIVE DUE (tah-nah-nah-REEVE doo) is the award-winning author of The Wishing Pool & Other Stories and the upcoming The Reformatory ("A masterpiece"--Library Journal). She and her husband, Steven Barnes, co-wrote the Black Horror graphic novel The Keeper, illustrated by Marco Finnegan. Due and Barnes co-host a podcast, "Lifewriting: Write for Your Life!"

A leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freed
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Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer (December 26, 1894 – March 30, 1967) was an American poet and novelist and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance and modernism. His first book Cane, published in 1923, is considered by many to be his most significant. Of mixed race and majority European ancestry, Toomer struggled to identify as "an American" and resisted efforts to classify him as a black writer.

He continued to write poetry, short stories and essays. After his second marriage in 1934, he moved from New York to Doylestown, Pennsylvania, where he became a member of the Religious Society of Friends (also known as Quakers) and retired from public life. His papers are held by the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale University.

(from Wikipedia)
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Toni Cade Bambara

Toni Cade Bambara, born Miltona Mirkin Cade (March 25, 1939 – December 9, 1995) was an African-American author, documentary film-maker, social activist and college professor.

Toni Cade Bambara was born in New York City to parents Walter and Helen (Henderson) Cade. She grew up in Harlem, Bedford Stuyvesant (Brooklyn), Queens and New Jersey. In 1970 she changed her name to include the name of a West African ethnic group, Bambara.

Bambara graduated from Queens College with a B.A. in Theater Arts/English Literature in 1959, then studied mime at the Ecole de Mime Etienne Decroux in Paris, France. She also became interested in dance before completing her master's degree in American studies at City College, New York (from 1962), while serving as pro
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James Weldon Johnson

James Weldon Johnson was an American author, politician, diplomat, critic, journalist, poet, anthologist, educator, lawyer, songwriter, and early civil rights activist. Johnson is remembered best for his writing, which includes novels, poems, and collections of folklore. He was also one of the first African-American professors at New York University. Later in life he was a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University.
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Mary Crow Dog

Born Mary Ellen Moore-Richard in 1954 on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota, she was a member of the Sicangu Oyate, also known as the Burnt Thighs Nation or Brulé Band of Lakota. She was raised primarily by her grandparents while her mother studied in nursing school and was working.

Brave Bird was the author of two memoirs, Lakota Woman (1990) and Ohitika Woman (1993). Richard Erdoes, a long-time friend, helped edit the books. Lakota Woman was published under the name Mary Crow Dog and won the 1991 American Book Award. It describes her life until 1977. Ohitika Woman, published under the name Mary Brave Bird, continues her life story.

Her books describe the conditions of the Lakota Indian and her experience growing up on the Rosebu
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Eldridge Cleaver

Leroy Eldridge Cleaver, better known as Eldridge Cleaver, was a writer and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party.

In 1958 he was put in jail for rape. There he was given a copy of The Communist Manifesto. When he got released he joined the Black Panther Party. He then joined the Oakland-based Black Panther Party, serving as Minister of Information, or spokesperson.

His book Soul On Ice is a collection of essays. In the most controversial part of the book, Cleaver acknowledges committing acts of rape, stating that he initially raped black women in the ghetto "for practice" and then embarked on the serial rape of white women. He described these crimes as politically inspired.

Later in life he converted to Morm
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Huey P. Newton

Huey Percy Newton was co-founder and leader of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, a civil rights organization that began in October 1966.
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Bobby Seale

Robert George Seale is an American political activist. Seale is widely known for co-founding the Black Panther Party with fellow activist Huey P. Newton.
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Assata Shakur

Assata Olugbala Shakur was a Black civil rights activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and Black Liberation Army (BLA).

Between 1971 and 1973, Shakur was accused of several crimes, none of which had sufficient evidence to back them. However, knowing that she would not be able to prove her innocence, she escaped prison and fled to Cuba where she resided in political asylum. She is listed on the FBI Most Wanted Terrorist list.

For more information, do your own extensive research, bearing in mind that America is still very racist, bigoted, and micro-aggressive; therefore, not all sources are trustworthy. One of her most famous quotes is: “No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going
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Jennifer Lauck

The international bestseller of Blackbird, Still Waters, Show Me the Way, Found and The Summer of '72, author of Flight School on Substack and teacher @ The Blackbird Studio for Writers.
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Carter G. Woodson

Convinced that the role of his own people in American history and in the history of other cultures was being ignored or misrepresented among scholars, Woodson realized the need for research into the neglected past of African Americans. Along with William D. Hartgrove, George Cleveland Hall, Alexander L. Jackson, and James E. Stamps, he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History on September 9, 1915, in Chicago. That was the year Woodson published The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. His other books followed: A Century of Negro Migration (1918) and The History of the Negro Church (1927). His work The Negro in Our History has been reprinted in numerous editions and was revised by Charles H. Wesley after Woodson's dea
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George L. Jackson

George Lester Jackson was an African-American left-wing activist, Marxist, author, a member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family. Jackson achieved fame as one of the Soledad Brothers and was later shot to death by guards in San Quentin Prison.
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Robert Franklin Williams

Robert Franklin Williams was a civil rights leader, author, and key figure in promoting both integration and armed Black self-defense in the United States.

After a stint in the army during WWII, Williams returned to his hometown in Monroe, North Carolina where he built a uniquely militant NAACP chapter and attracted international attention to racist hypocrisy. When eventually forced by the KKK and an FBI dragnet to flee the U.S. with his family in 1961, he found safe harbor in revolutionary Cuba, where he produced Radio Free Dixie, a program of politics and music broadcast to America.

In 1965, he and his wife left Cuba to settle in China where he was well received. He lived comfortably there and associated with higher functionaries of the Ch
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David Walker

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

David Walker was an American abolitionist, writer, and anti-slavery activist. Though his father was enslaved, his mother was free; therefore, he was free as well (partus sequitur ventrem). In 1829, while living in Boston, Massachusetts, with the assistance of the African Grand Lodge (later named Prince Hall Grand Lodge, Jurisdiction of Massachusetts), he published An Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, a call for black unity and self-help in the fight against the oppressive and unjust slavery. Walker exerted a radicalizing influence on the abolitionist movements of his day and inspired future black leaders and activists.
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Anne Michaud

Anne Michaud is the politics editor for Crain's NY Business and a former reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She previously wrote a nationally syndicated op-ed column for Newsday and was twice named "Columnist of the Year," by the New York News Publishers Association and the New York State Associated Press Association. She has won more than 25 writing and reporting awards.

"Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Nine Political Wives" (Ogunquit Press, March 2017) has won multiple national book honors, including in the categories of Women’s Issues and Current Events. A second edition, updated to include Donald and Melania Trump, was published in 2021, along with an e-book, "American Czarina." Details available at annemicha
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Angela Y. Davis

Angela Yvonne Davis is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a nationally prominent activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement despite never being an official member of the party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the former director of the university's Feminist Studies department.

Her research interests are in feminism, Afr
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Max Nowaz

Having completed several Creative Writing courses, including at Birkbeck and Faber, I took up writing seriously in 2012.
My first novel ‘The Arbitrator’ was published in July 2016 and 'Get Rich or Get Lucky' was published in January 2017. Both books enjoyed surprising success and great reviews. Updated versions of Get Rich or Get Lucky and The Arbitrator (with two new chapters) along with e-books were published on Amazon in 2019.
My two new novels 'The Polymorph' and 'The Three Witches and The Master' are now ready and hopefully will be published in 2022.
l have also written two plays, one of which, 'Cheating Death' has been successfully produced on stage in February/March 2019 at The Cockpit Theatre, London. It ran for three weeks and enjoy
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Aimee Cabo Nikolov

Aimee Cabo Nikolov is a Cuban American who has lived most of her life in Miami. She is a speaker, trained nurse and the president and owner of IMIC, Inc, a medical research company in Palmetto Bay.
Aimee is also the host of "The Cure with Aimee Cabo", a nationally syndicated live radio show, and later a podcast. https://godisthecure.com

She lives with her husband, Dr. Boris Nikolov, and two of her children, Sean and Michelle. This is her first book. The book won several awards - Pinnacle, NYC Big book award, Feathered Quill Gold/1st place.
The Second book is inspired by her work at the radio show and is a compilation of Christian poems based on popular songs.
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Jennifer Lauck

The international bestseller of Blackbird, Still Waters, Show Me the Way, Found and The Summer of '72, author of Flight School on Substack and teacher @ The Blackbird Studio for Writers.
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Michele Wallace

Michele Faith Wallace (born January 4, 1952) is a black feminist author, cultural critic, and daughter of artist Faith Ringgold. She is best known for her 1979 book Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman. Wallace's writings on literature, art, film, and popular culture have been widely published and have made her a leader of African-American intellectuals. She is a Professor of English at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY).

(from Wikipedia)
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Sam Greenlee

Elder Sam Greenlee is an African American writer of novels, screeplays, stage plays, and poems. He has been a social activist since the age of 15.

His first well known and most controversal novel was The Spook Who Sat by the Door published in 1968. He also co-wrote the screeplay adaption of the novel. The film was released in 1973. In 1990 Greenlee was the Illinois poet laureate.
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Lucille Clifton

Lucille Clifton was an American poet, writer, and educator from New York. Common topics in her poetry include the celebration of her African American heritage, and feminist themes, with particular emphasis on the female body.

She was the first person in her family to finish high school and attend college. She started Howard University on scholarship as a drama major but lost the scholarship two years later.

Thus began her writing career.

Good Times, her first book of poems, was published in 1969. She has since been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and has been honored as Maryland's Poet Laureate.

Ms. Clifton's foray into writing for children began with Some of the Days of Everett Anderson, published in 1970.

In 1976, Generation
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Mary Crow Dog

Born Mary Ellen Moore-Richard in 1954 on the Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota, she was a member of the Sicangu Oyate, also known as the Burnt Thighs Nation or Brulé Band of Lakota. She was raised primarily by her grandparents while her mother studied in nursing school and was working.

Brave Bird was the author of two memoirs, Lakota Woman (1990) and Ohitika Woman (1993). Richard Erdoes, a long-time friend, helped edit the books. Lakota Woman was published under the name Mary Crow Dog and won the 1991 American Book Award. It describes her life until 1977. Ohitika Woman, published under the name Mary Brave Bird, continues her life story.

Her books describe the conditions of the Lakota Indian and her experience growing up on the Rosebu
Buy books on Amazon
Bobby Seale

Robert George Seale is an American political activist. Seale is widely known for co-founding the Black Panther Party with fellow activist Huey P. Newton.
Buy books on Amazon
Eldridge Cleaver

Leroy Eldridge Cleaver, better known as Eldridge Cleaver, was a writer and political activist who became an early leader of the Black Panther Party.

In 1958 he was put in jail for rape. There he was given a copy of The Communist Manifesto. When he got released he joined the Black Panther Party. He then joined the Oakland-based Black Panther Party, serving as Minister of Information, or spokesperson.

His book Soul On Ice is a collection of essays. In the most controversial part of the book, Cleaver acknowledges committing acts of rape, stating that he initially raped black women in the ghetto "for practice" and then embarked on the serial rape of white women. He described these crimes as politically inspired.

Later in life he converted to Morm
Buy books on Amazon
Shirley Graham du Bois

One of six children, and the only daughter among them, of an African Methodist Episcopal minister. She moved around often, graduating from Lewis and Clark HS in Spokane, WA in 1915, studied music composition at the Sorbonne in Paris in the 1920s and received her BA at Oberlin College in the 1930s. She had two husbands, including author and activist W.E.B. du Bois. She and du Bois emigrated to Ghana in the 1960s but, after his death, a military coup forced her to move to Cairo, Egypt. In addition to her literature, she also composed a number of musical scores including an opera that premiered in Cleveland, OH, attracting 10,000 people on its opening night.

Married to W.E.B. Du Bois

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