Washoe County Library System

An account of the previously unheralded but pivotal contributions of NASA's African-American women mathematicians to America's space program describes how they were segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws in spite of their groundbreaking successes.

"Sitting in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture is a rough cotton bag, called "Ashley's Sack," embroidered with just a handful of words that evoke a sweeping family story of loss and of love passed down through generations. In 1850s South Carolina, just before nine-year-old Ashley was sold, her mother, Rose, gave her a sack filled with just a few things as a token of her love. Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter,...

Profiles notable African American women in various fields from Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Tubman, and Ida B. Wells to Condoleeza Rice, Beyoncé, and the founders of Black Lives Matter.

"A chapter book biography of Florence Griffith Joyner, part of the She Persisted series. Florence Griffith Joyner, aka Flo Jo, who overcame many challenges to be considered the fastest woman of all time."--

"Leaving Breezy Street is the account of a woman who had to make the best out of tough situations and limited options. A testimony on how the cycle of abuse can be perpetuated-but also broken. Proof of the transformation power of love between biological and chosen family. This is the raw truth of what American life can be like for so many people"--

"In this follow-up to their New York Times bestselling graphic biography of Muhammad Ali, the acclaimed French writer and artist duo tell the story of Black activist, professor, and prison abolitionist Angela Davis"-- "In this follow-up to their New York Times bestselling graphic biography of Muhammad Ali, the acclaimed French writer and artist duo tell the story of Black activist, professor, and prison abolitionist Angela Davis. In Ms Davis, the...

"Fat Off, Fat On: A Big Bitch Manifesto is cultural critic Clarkisha Kent's memoir of navigating the world as a fat, Black, queer woman"-- "In this disarming and candid memoir, cultural critic Clarkisha Kent unpacks the kind of compounded problems you face when you’re a fat, Black, queer woman in a society obsessed with heteronormativity. There was no easy way for Kent to navigate personal discovery and self-love. As a dark-skinned, first-generation...

"The life story of Coretta Scott King--wife of Martin Luther King Jr., founder of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and singular twentieth-century American civil rights activist--as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to one of her closest friends Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising black parents in the Deep South, Coretta Scott had always felt called to a special purpose. One of the first black scholarship students...