New York: Random House, (1998) dj. Hardcover first edition - In this book, Bray uses her personal history to "defend America's much-maligned welfare system. A smart black girl from the Chicago slums didn't have much chance of going to Yale or becoming an editor at the New York Times Book Review before Aid to Families with Dependent Children helped Rosemary's selfless mother make ends meet and keep Rosemary in school. Bray's account of her progress is both inspiring and despairing, as she criticizes the welfare 'reforms' that closed to others doors that were opened for her." Praise from Alice Walker, James McBride and others. xvii, 282 pp. ISBN: 0-679425551.

New York: Vintage International, (2013.). First edition - A Vintage Original. Novel set in 1832, the year before slavery is abolished in South Africa. Philida is the mother of four children by Francois Brink, the son of her master, and when Francois is going to marry a white woman, and Philida is about to be sold, she decides to risk her whole life by lodging a complaint against Francois. Based on the real story of a slave woman determined to take control of her own life, for better or for worse. Finalist for the Man Booker Award. 310 pp. Advance Readers Copy sticker on back cover.

New York: Simon & Schuster, (1970). A study based on a nationwide survey by Newsweek Magazine, one which the results posted in the author's 1963 book 'The Negro Revolution in America.' This looks at the internal dissension within the Civil Rights movement, the rising white backlash and how much progress has been made and how much still needs to be made - questions we are still debating 50 years later. Includes the questionnaires used in the polling as well as detailed results. Index. 285 pages.

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963. dj. Hardcover - A study based on a nationwide survey by Newsweek Magazine, which attempts to answer the questions what Negroes want, why and how they are fighting, whom they support, and what whites think of them and their demands. Index. 249 pages.

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963. dj. Hardcover - A study based on a nationwide survey by Newsweek Magazine, which attempts to answer the questions what Negroes want, why and how they are fighting, whom they support, and what whites think of them and their demands. Index. 249 pages.

New York: HarperCollins, 1996. dj. Hardcover first edition - African American author's second novel, set in the 1970's during the era of the fight for civil rights. ISBN: 0-06-017277-0.

New York: HarperCollins, (1994.) dj. Hardcover first edition - African American author's first novel, the story of 3 sisters who live in the same city - Washington, D. C. - but in very different worlds. ISBN: 0-06-0171162.

New York: Harper Collins, (1999.) dj. Hardcover first edition - Set during the days of slavery and afterwards, this is a multi-generational novel of the lives of three African American women, born and raised as house slaves at Montpelier, the Virginia plantation of James Madison and his wife Dolley. Based on the life of the author's great-great grandmother. 348 pp. ISBN: 0-06-0172789.

New York: HarperCollins, 1994. dj. Hardcover first edition - African American author's first novel, the story of 3 sisters who live in the same city - Washington, D. C. - but in very different worlds. ISBN: 0-06-0171162.

New York: HarperCollins, (1994.) dj. SIGNED hardcover - INSCRIBED on the half title page "to Joe, Live your dreams" and dated in 1996. African American author's first novel, the story of 3 sisters who live in the same city - Washington, D. C. - but in very different worlds. ISBN: 0-06-0171162.

New York: HarperCollins, 1996. dj. Hardcover first edition - African American author's second novel, set in the 1970's during the era of the fight for civil rights. ISBN: 0-06-017277-0.

Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, (1965.) dj. Hardcover first edition - Anthology of original source documents compiled from the writings of African-American activists from 1895 through 1965, including Monroe Trotter, Bayard Rustin, W.E.B. DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Marcus Garvey, Angelo Herndon, Dr. Martin Luther King, Thurgood Marshall, John Lewis, and many others. Information on the founding and aims of the various protest movements: The Niagara Movement, NAACP, CORE, SNCC, SCLC, etc. The first book publication of some of the documents. A title in The American Heritage Series under the general editorship of Leonard W. Levy and Alfred Young. Index. xliii, 444 pp.

Chicago: The Black Position Press. (1980.). SIGNED first edition - Very uncommon first publication of this slim chapbook containing 'Three Preachments' - the title poem, a poem 'To Those of My Sisters Who Kept Their Naturals' and a prose piece 'Requiem Before Revival.' INSCRIBED on the first page by Brooks. 15 pp.

Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1990. BrooksÕ development as a poet from childhood to 1978. Written by Kent, a literature professor who spent over 10 years interviewing Brooks and her family. Published after KentÕs death with an afterword by D.H. Melham outlining BrooksÕ career to 1988. 264pp plus notes, index. ISBN: 0-8131-08276.

New York: Kensington, (2000). SIGNED hardcover first edition - Covers Christmas, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, New Year's, Mardi Gras as well as birthdays and family get-togethers, with contributions of memories or recipes from more than 50 African-American women, including Myrna Williams, Patricia Russell McCloud, Mrs. Denzel Washington, Myrlie Evers-Williams, Synthia Saint James and many others. SIGNED on the title page. Illustrated with both full color and black and white photographs. List of resources, bibliography and index. Square format. 244 pp. ISBN: 1-55972532X.

Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, (1993.) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A memoir of a Southern childhood (in the small farming village of Bolson, North Carolina) by this African American novelist, and of his struggle to free himself from his family's violent history. Warmly INSCRIBED by the author "Thanks for the inspiration for this book." and dated in 1994. 222 pp. ISBN: 0-88001-2935.

Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, (1993.) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - A memoir of a Southern childhood (in the small farming village of Bolson, North Carolina) by this African American novelist, and of his struggle to free himself from his family's violent history. SIGNED by the author. 222 pp. ISBN: 0-88001-2935.

New York: Stein & Day, (1976.) dj. Hardcover first edition - The story of a group of teenagers who have been squatting for two years in an abandoned tenement in Harlem. A moving picture of some of the forgotten members of our society, including their battles with the drug addicts who infest the neighborhood, by the author of the acclaimed 'Manchild in the Promised Land.' His second book. 224 pp. In a first issue dust jacket. ISBN: 0-8012-18377.

New York: Macmillan, (1965.) dj. Hardcover - Although this autobiography of growing up poor and Black in Harlem is now a classic at the time it was written, when Brown was still a young writer, just barely out of Harlem, it was a revolutionary and enlightening book. His goal was to "talk about the first Northern urban generation of Negroes... to talk about the experience of a misplaced generation, of a misplaced people in an extremely complex, confused society." . 415 pp.

New York: Signet, (c. 1965.). Classic autobiography of growing up poor and Black in Harlem. 429 pp. ISBN: 0-451-126459.

London: Allison & Busby, (1970) dj. Hardcover first edition - Political autobiography by this black revolutionary - who became the 5th head of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee, from 1967-68, when he was just 23 years old. A galvanizing figure, he converted to Islam while serving a prison term and after his release in 1976, he became a respected Muslim spiritual leader and community activist in Atlanta, preaching against drugs and gambling. Nevertheless, in 2002, in a case with many unanswered questions, he was convicted of murdering a sheriff's deputy and wounding another, and has been serving a life sentence ever since. Index.117 pp. ISBN: 0-85031-0245.

New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, (1980) dj. Hardcover first edition - Biography written for young adults of this militant American abolitionist, active in the anti-slavery struggle in "Bleeding Kansas" and whose raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in 1859 - with an armed band of 16 white and 5 Black abolitionists - was only briefly successful. Brown took this action in the hope that escaped slaves would join his rebellion, forming an army of emancipation but instead his arrest and execution for treason made him a martyr to the antislavery cause. Illustrated with photographs and vintage drawings, includes a list of books for further reading, and an index. xi, 180 pp. ISBN: 0-690040237.

New York: Ballantine, (1995) dj. SIGNED hardcover first edition - Author's second novel (third book) one which follows the lives of four generations of African-American women from the end of the Civil War to the early 21st century as it explores the hidden effects of slavery. INSCRIBED on the front endpaper, and uncommon thus. Review copy with publisher's material laid in. 290 pp. ISBN: 0-345378571.

Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, (1994.). Originally published in 1985, this remains the most important study of the life and legacy of Sterling A. Brown, an African-American poet and scholar whose literary work presaged future generations of black authors and scholars. Leopold Senghor called him "an original militant of Negritude, a precursor of our movement" and in their foreword, John W. Blassingame and Henry Gates, Jr, describe his book of poetry "Southern Road" as the book which ended the Harlem Renaissance and moved black writing into the modernist lyrical mode. Notes, bibliography, index. xii, 245 pp. ISBN: 0-8139-15317.

New York: Grove Press, (1968). First edition - A book of aphorisms which take on the stereotypes of what being Black in the US is like. Published at the height of the civil rights movement, perhaps the saddest thing about this book is how much is still true now, fifty years later. " Black is being accused of causing trouble but always winding up as the casualties . .. Black is when folks say you've got to earn the rights the Constitution guaranteed you already had" and more. Each is printed in white lettering on black paper with an illustration by Ann Weisman on the facing page. Unpaginated.

New York: Cane Hill Press, (1994.). First edition - The author's second novel (he has also written screenplays, edited anthologies) - from the back cover: 'The story of Jim Crow, a remarkable black dancer, born in slavery, who performs in minstrel shows, South & North, during the furious times of pre- & post-Civil War America. His experiences, onstage and off, are a mix of applause with mob violence, of love & loss, played against the grim laughter of a black nation within a nation finding its way to an ever-elusive promised freedom. Touching, harrowing, inspiring, this is a unique novel of pride and courage. Cover praise from Russell Banks, among others - he called this 'a scary book, and mordantly funny, too'. 224 pp. ISBN: 0-943433-118.

London: Louisiana State University Press, (1992.). Study of post-reconstruction and turn-of-the century black writing, with an emphasis on how race, racism and their consciousness of race, affected their writing - including not only the prominent and well-known writers like Laurence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Charles Chesnutt, but also such less known and minor writers like Daniel Webster Davis, Sutton Griggs, Ruth Todd and others. Photographs. 272 pp. with index. ISBN: 0-8071-18060.

Santa Fe, New Mexico: Pennywhistle Press, 1993. SIGNED first edition - A Pennywhistle chapbooks. A colllection of poems, many political and very moving, by this writer and activist who has been called the 'singing voice of the South African Liberation Movement.' With an Introduction by Lamont B. Steptoe. INSCRIBED on the title page, and dated in the year of publication. 32 pp. ISBN: 0-938631-098.

New York: Hill & Wang, (1973.) dj. Hardcover first edition - "Collected poems of South African jail and exile" by this exiled political activist and sportsman, jwho was jailed for his activities there, and whose books were banned in South Africa for over 20 years. 176 pp. Dust jacket design by Judith Turner. ISBN: 0-435-90115X.