Lawrence Hill Titles

Shawn Harrington returned to Marshall High School as an assistant coach years after appearing as a player in the iconic basketball documentary film Hoop Dreams. In January of 2014, Marshall’s struggling team was about to improve after the addition of a charismatic but troubled player. Everything changed, however, when two young men opened fire on Harrington’s car as he drove his daughter to school. Using his body to shield her, Harrington was struck and paralyzed. The mistaken-identity shooting was followed by a series of events that had a devastating impact on Harrington and Marshall’s basketball family. Over the next three years it became obvious that the dream of the game providing a better life had nearly dissolved. Author Rus Bradburd tells Shawn’s story with empathy and care, exploring the intertwined tragedies of gun violence, health care failure, racial assumptions, struggling educational systems, corruption in athletics—and the hope that can survive them all.

This presents the life story of African American revolutionary Shakur, previously known as JoAnne Chesimard.

On New Year’s Eve, 1939, Elmer Rogers and his wife, Marie, were preparing for bed when a shotgun blast sent buckshot deep into Elmer's rib cage. When Marie ran from the room, screaming for help, a second gunshot erupted. The eldest Rogers child grabbed his baby brother and ran while the middle child clung to the bed frame, paralyzed with terror. The intruders poured coal oil around the house and set fire to the front door before escaping. Within a matter of days, investigators identified several suspects: convicts who had been at a craps game with Rogers the night before. Also at the craps game was a young black farmer named W. D. Lyons. As anger at authorities grew, political pressure mounted to find a villain. The governor's representative settled on Lyons, who was arrested, tortured into signing a confession, and tried for the murder. The NAACP's new Legal Defense and Education Fund sent its young chief counsel, Thurgood Marshall, to take part in the trial. The NAACP desperately needed money, and Marshall was convinced that the Lyons case could be a fundraising boon for both the state and national organizations. It was. The case went on to the US Supreme Court, and the NAACP raised much-needed money from the publicity. Conviction is the story of Lyons v. Oklahoma, the oft-forgotten case that set Marshall and the NAACP on the path that led ultimately to victory in Brown v. Board of Education and the accompanying social revolution in the United States.

On October 16, 1859, John Brown and his band of eighteen raiders descended on Harpers Ferry in an ill-fated attempt to incite a slave insurrection. The raiders were routed, and several were captured. Soon after, they were tried, convicted, and hanged. Among Brown’s fighters were five African American men—John Copeland, Shields Green, Dangerfield Newby, Lewis Leary, and Osborne Perry Anderson—whose lives and deaths have long been overshadowed by their martyred leader. Only Anderson survived, later publishing the lone insider account of the event. Five for Freedom is the story of these five brave men, the circumstances in which they were born and raised, how they came together at this fateful time and place, and the legacies they left behind. It is an American story that continues to resonate in the present.

In April 2014, Rubin “Hurricane” Carter died after a long battle with cancer. David McCallum was exonerated and freed two months later, after serving 29 years in prison. This is the story of how Carter and his friend and coauthor Ken Klonsky worked for ten years to help free the wrongfully convicted McCallum. It details their struggles—from founding an innocence project, to finding lawyers willing to work pro bono, to hiring a private detective to sift through old evidence and locate original witnesses, and the most difficult part, convincing members of a deeply flawed criminal justice system to reopen a case that would expose their own mistakes. It eventually took a new district attorney, a documentary film, and a New York Daily News op-ed written by Carter on his death bed to secure justice. Freeing David McCallum tells a tale of frustration, agony, and undying hope, and the miracle that resulted in David’s release. 

Ten slaves—all under the age of 19—tell their stories of enslavement, brutality, and dreams of freedom in this collection. Culled from full-length autobiographies, these accounts were selected to help teenagers relate to the horrific experiences of slaves their own age in the not-so-distant past. Included are stories of young slaves, all under the age of 19, torn from their mothers and families, suffering from starvation, and being whipped and tortured. But these are not all tales of deprivation and violence. Teenagers will see themselves in these accounts as the slaves challenge authority, play games, tell jokes, and fall in love. These stories cover the range of the slave experience, from the passage in slave ships across the Atlantic to daily life as a slave both on large plantations and in small city dwellings, and from escaping slavery to fighting in the Civil War. The writings of Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Harriet Jacobs, Elizabeth Keckley, and other less famous slaves are included.

Ronald Kitchen was 21, on his way to buy milk for his four-year-old, when he was picked up by the Chicago police, brutally tortured, and coerced to confess to five counts of heinous murder. He spent 22 years in prison, 13 of those on death row. Kitchen was only one of the many victims of Jon Burge and his notorious Midnight Crew—118 others have come forward so far. Kitchen cofounded the Death Row 10 from his maximum security cellblock and fought together with those men to expose the grave injustices that led to their wrongful convictions. The Death Row 10 appeared on nationwide media and, with the help of lawyers and activists outside, were instrumental in turning the tide against the death penalty in Illinois. Kitchen was finally exonerated in 2013 and filed a high profile lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department, Jon Burge, Mayor Richard Daley, and the Cook County state’s attorney. Largely absent from the current social justice narratives are the testimonies of the victims themselves. Kitchen is a survivor who has turned his suffering into a powerful public cause. The atrocities of the Midnight Crew have been brought to light through Kitchen’s work and are now part of the discussion as the nation engages in an unprecedented conversation about racism.

Now in its 30th printing, this classic presents historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support the theory that ancient Egypt was a black civilization.

A wide-ranging, powerful, alternative vision of the history of the United States and how the slave-breeding industry shaped it
 
The American Slave Coast tells the horrific story of how the slavery business in the United States made the reproductive labor of “breeding women” essential to the expansion of the nation. The book shows how slaves’ children, and their children’s children, were human savings accounts that were the basis of money and credit. This was so deeply embedded in the economy of the slave states that it could only be decommissioned by Emancipation, achieved through the bloodiest war in the history of the United States. The American Slave Coast is an alternative history of the United States that presents the slavery business, as well as familiar historical figures and events, in a revealing new light.