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Written in the Waters A Memoir of History, Home, and Belonging [electronic resource] : by Roberts, Tara.aut; CloudLibrary;
This searing memoir by a National Geographic explorer recounts one woman's epic journey to trace the global slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean—and find her place in the world. For fans of adventurous women’s memoirs like Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love, Cheryl Strayed's Wild, and Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped. When Tara Roberts first caught sight of a photograph at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History depicting the underwater archaeology group Diving With a Purpose, it called out to her. Here were Black women and men strapping on masks, fins, and tanks to explore Atlantic Ocean waters along the coastlines of Africa, North America, and Central America, seeking the wrecks of slave ships long lost in time. Inspired, Roberts joined them—and started on a path of discovery more challenging and personal than she could ever have imagined. In this lush and lyrical memoir, she tells a story of exploration and reckoning that takes her from her home in Washington, D.C., to an exotic array of locales: Thailand and Sri Lanka, Mozambique, South Africa, Senegal, Benin, Costa Rica, and St. Croix. The journey connects her with other divers, scholars, and archaeologists, offering a unique way of understanding the 12.5 million souls carried away from their African homeland to enslavement on other continents. But for Roberts, the journey is also intensely personal. Inspired by the descendants of those who lost their lives during the Middle Passage, she decides to plumb her own family history and life as a Black woman to help make sense of her own identity. Complex and unflinchingly authentic, this deeply moving narrative heralds an important new voice in literature that will open minds and hearts everywhere.General adult.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Adventurers & Explorers; African American Studies; Personal Memoirs; Women;
© 2025., National Geographic,
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The gangs of Zion : a Black cop's crusade in Mormon country / by Stallworth, Ron,author.; Quintero, Sofia,author.;
"New York Times bestselling author of Black Klansman, Ron Stallworth, returns with another firsthand account of trailblazing police work in the most unlikely place for a Black cop in the '90s. Determined to pursue his passion for undercover work wherever it leads, Ron Stallworth finally lands in Salt Lake City, Utah. Once again, he's an outsider -- not only as a Black man on a mostly white police force but also as an unapologetic nonbeliever in a state dominated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. But soon after his first drug bust in the Beehive, Stallworth makes a startling discovery -- Bloods and Crips are infiltrating Mormon Country, threatening to turn the deeply conservative community into a hotbed of crime. Kids are bombing homes while carrying pocket versions of the Book of Mormon, yet his fellow cops are in denial that gangs are wreaking havoc in their Christian town. Now Stallworth has a new mission. Whether facing off with skinheads at a downtown bar or schooling white Crips blasting "F*ck tha Police," he is intent on stemming the tide of gangs into the state. But those he expected to be his allies either have their heads in the sand or their own agendas -- from the racist Mormon legislator to the community activist exploiting a fatal gang incident to spread paranoia over an imaginary race war. As he butts heads with these so-called leaders, Stallworth also realizes that gangsta rap has the key to the g-code. He becomes obsessed with -- even defensive of -- the music he once loathed and puts himself on the front lines of America's culture war. Now he's spitting uncensored lyrics before Congress and taking the stand in the 1993 murder case that puts hip-hop on trial. But the more Stallworth speaks truth to power, the more determined the gatekeepers in Utah are to silence him, and not even twenty-three years of police work could prepare him for how low they would stoop"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; True crime stories.; Stallworth, Ron.; African American police; Gangs; Police; Racism;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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How the word is passed : a reckoning with the history of slavery across America / by Smith, Clint,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.Clint Smith's revealing, contemporary portrait of America as a slave owning nation. Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Smith leads the reader through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks - those that are honest about the past and those that are not - that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nations collective history, and ourselves. It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation-turned-maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers. A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, this book illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted. Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, here is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be.
Subjects: African Americans.; History.; Discrimination.; Ethnology; Minorities; African Americans;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Never saw me coming : how I outsmarted the FBI and the entire banking system - and pocketed $40 million / by Smith, Tanya,author.;
A riveting true story of an unsuspecting woman who creates an ingeniously clever white-collar scheme that manipulates the Federal banking system out of millions -- who eventually loses everything that is most important to her. In Never Saw Me Coming, Tanya Smith shares her deeply personal and remarkable story of how she went from a precocious young girl to a money-grabbing, computer-savvy wiz. It starts out as a keen interest in technology and innocently acquiring phone numbers to Michael Jackson, as well as other celebrities, and moves to her successfully stealing and depositing $5,000 into her grandmother's banking account. By the time she is 18, the risk taker has confiscated millions in cash. The FBI is hot on her tail and hauls her in for an interview, demanding Smith let them know who she's working for, "as these are not the kind of crimes Black people are smart enough to commit." Their words, indicating that intelligence was determined by race, severely offended Smith. Up for the challenge, she proves the FBI wrong and over time steals $40 million dollars, while securing diamonds, gold bars, and other commodities. Her lifestyle attracts the wrong kind of people, even those who set out to kill her. Law enforcement persisted, ultimately dubbing Smith "one of the single biggest threats to the entire United States banking system." She receives an outrageous prison sentence -- the longest for a white-collar offense -- and is eventually released by mounting her own brilliant defense. Complete with unexpected twists and turns, Never Saw Me Coming is a gripping caper that reminds never to underestimate a woman.
Subjects: Biographies.; Case studies.; True crime stories.; Personal narratives.; Smith, Tanya.; African American criminals; Commercial crimes; Corporations; Female offenders; Fraud; Swindlers and swindling;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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A Boston (R)Evolution. by McWilliams, Daphne,film director.; PBS (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Originally produced by PBS in 2024.A racially complex American city confronts its past and future. When a Black female city councilor, once bussed as a child to hostile neighborhoods, is catapulted to Acting Mayor, she breaks 200 years of white male mayorship. Boston's old-school politics are further challenged when the top candidates in the historic 2021 mayoral race are all non-white women.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Political science.; Social sciences.; Enthnology.; Americans.; Foreign study.; Gender identity.; Documentary films.; Women's studies.; Current affairs.; African Americans.; Businesswomen.; United States.; African American leadership.; Massachusetts.;
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Truevine : two brothers, a kidnapping, and a mother's quest : a true story of the Jim Crow South / by Macy, Beth,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Subjects: Biographies.; True crime stories.; Muse, George.; Muse, Willie.; Circus performers; African American entertainers; Albinos and albinism; Kidnapping;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Jump : my secret journey from the streets to the boardroom / by Miller, Larry(Larry G.),author.; Lacy, Laila,author.;
In 'Jump', one of the most successful Black businessmen in the country, who has led Nikes Jordan Brand from a $200M sneaker company to a $4B global apparel juggernaut, tells the remarkable story of his rise from gangland violence to the pinnacles of international business. #OwnVoices.
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Miller, Larry (Larry G.); Nike (Firm); Portland Trail Blazers (Basketball team); African American businesspeople; African American executives; Businesspeople; Executives; Juvenile delinquents;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Beauty of Blackness. by Moore, Kiana,film director.; Johnson, Tiffany,film director.; Vox Media (Firm),dst; Kanopy (Firm),dst;
Originally produced by Vox Media in 2022.In 1973, Eunice Johnson, the founder of Ebony and Jet, launched Fashion Fair - the first national cosmetics brand created exclusively for Black women. A revolution for its time, the brand would grow to become an iconic symbol of representation. This film chronicles Fashion Fair’s checkered past, and follows its new leadership in real time as they reinvent the brand amidst our present social upheaval and intensified competition.Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Enthnology.; Social sciences.; History, Modern.; Gender identity.; Documentary films.; Ethnicity.; Women's studies.; History.; African Americans.; United States--History.; Beauty, Personal.;
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Hell put to shame : the 1921 Murder Farm massacre and the horror of America's second slavery / by Swift, Earl,1958-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1921, a small boy made a grim discovery as he played on a riverbank in the cotton country of rural Georgia: the bodies of two drowned men, bound together with wire and chain and weighted with a hundred-pound sack of rocks. Within days a third body turned up in another nearby river, and in the weeks that followed, eight others. And with them a deeper horror: all eleven had been kept in virtual slavery before their deaths. In fact, as America was shocked to learn, the dead were among thousands of Black men enslaved throughout the South in conditions nearly as dire as those before the Civil War. Hell Put to Shame tells the forgotten story of that mass killing and of the revelations about peonage, or debt slavery, that it placed before a public self-satisfied that involuntary servitude had ended at Appomattox more than fifty years before. By turns police procedural, courtroom drama, and political exposé, Hell Put to Shame also reintroduces readers to three Americans who spearheaded the prosecution of John S. Williams, the wealthy plantation owner behind the murders, at a time when white people rarely faced punishment for violence against their Black neighbors. The remarkable polymath James Weldon Johnson, newly appointed the first Black leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, marshaled the organization into a full-on war against peonage. Johnson's lieutenant, Walter F. White, a light-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed Black man, conducted undercover work at the scene of lynchings and other Jim Crow atrocities, helping to throw a light on such violence and to hasten its end. And Georgia governor Hugh M. Dorsey won the statehouse as a hero of white supremacists -- then redeemed himself in spectacular fashion with the "Murder Farm" affair. The result is a story that remains fresh and relevant a century later, as the nation continues to wrestle with seemingly intractable challenges in matters of race and justice. And the 1921 case at its heart argues that the forces that so roil society today have been with us for generations.
Subjects: Case studies.; Manning, Clyde.; Williams, John S.; African Americans; Murder; Peonage; Plantation workers; Trials (Murder);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Leaving Neverland [videorecording] / by Reed, Dan,television director,television producer.; HBO Home Entertainment (Firm),film distributor.; Home Box Office (Firm),publisher.;
Film editor, Jules Cornell ; cinematography, Dan Reed ; composer, Chad Hobson.Interviewees, Wade Robson, "Jimmy" Safechuck, and family members.Originally produced by HBO in 2019.The two-part documentary LEAVING NEVERLAND explores the separate but parallel experiences of two young boys, James "Jimmy" Safechuck, at age ten, and Wade Robson, at age seven, both of whom were befriended by Michael Jackson. They and their families were invited into his wondrous world, entranced by the singer's fairy-tale existence as his career reached its peak. Through gut-wrenching interviews with Safechuck, now 37, and Robson, now 41, as well as their mothers, wives and siblings, LEAVING NEVERLAND crafts a portrait of sustained abuse, exploring the complicated feelings that led both men to confront their experiences after both had a young son of their own.E.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1.
Subjects: Nonfiction television programs.; Biographical television programs.; Documentary television programs.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Jackson, Michael, 1958-2009.; Robson, Wade.; Safechuck, James.; Adult child sexual abuse victims; Adult child sexual abuse victims; African American singers; Child sexual abuse; Sexually abused children; Rock musicians;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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