Showing titles in Cultural Heritage

Shohei Ohtani, also known as "Shotime," is widely known for his skills in both pitching and hitting. At the 2016 Japan Series, Ohtani led his team, the Fighters, to victory. He later signed to the Los Angeles Angels in 2017 and earned the title of American League Rookie of the Year in 2018. In 2021, Ohtani made Major League Baseball history with over ten homeruns, over twenty stolen bases, and over one hundred strikeouts. That same year, at only age twenty-seven, he was given the American League Most Valuable Player Award.

Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America to be enslaved, eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis was then the only person alive to tell the story of his capture and bondage—fifty years after the Atlantic human trade was outlawed in the United States. Cudjo shared his firsthand account with legendary folklorist, anthropologist, and writer Zora Neale Hurston.

Motivated by her love for the game and inspired by the legendary Jackie Robinson, Mamie Johnson is determined to be a professional baseball pitcher. But in a sport that's determined by white men, there is no place for a black woman. Mamie doesn't give up - from the time she insists on trying out for the all-male, all-white Police Athletic League until she realizes her dream and becomes one of three women to play in the Negro Leagues. Mamie Johnson's life shows that with courage and perseverance one can overcome even the greatest challenges.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was only 25 when he helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott and was soon organizing black people across the country in support of the right to vote, desegregation, and other basic civil rights. Maintaining nonviolent and peaceful tactics even when his life was threatened, King was also an advocate for the poor and spoke out against racial and economic injustice until his death - from an assassin's bullet - in 1968.

In November 1960, all of America watched as a tiny six-year-old black girl, surrounded by federal marshals, walked through a mob of screaming segregationists and into her school. An icon of the civil rights movement, Ruby Bridges chronicles each dramatic step of this pivotal event in history through her own words.

In her amazing diary, Anne Frank revealed the challenges and dreams common for any young girl. But Hitler brought her childhood to an end and forced her and her family into hiding. Who Was Anne Frank? looks closely at Anne’s life before the secret annex, what life was like in hiding, and the legacy of her diary.

Leif Erikson was born to be an explorer. His father, Erik the Red, had established the first European settlement in present-day Greenland, and although he didn't yet know it, Leif was destined to embark on an adventure of his own. The wise and striking Viking landed in the area known as Vinland almost five centuries before Christopher Columbus even set sail! "Leif the Lucky" and the other fierce, sea-fearing pirates were accomplished navigators who raided foreign lands for resources, hunted for their food, and passed down Old Norse myths from one generation to the next.

Cuando José Hernández Moreno tenía 10 años, en 1972, vio aterrizar en la Luna el Apollo 17 en la televisión en blanco y negro de su familia y supo que sería astronauta cuando fuese mayor. Más tarde, aquella noche, se lo contó a su padre y se quedó sorprendido cuando este le dijo: «Puedes hacerlo, m'ijo».

Taken from his mother at age three, Steve Klakowicz lives in the clutches of a cruel foster family. He finds his only refuge in a box of books given to him by a kind stranger, books that take him to new worlds he can only imagine. He begins to hope that one day he might have a different life. As he grows, Steve is determined to unravel the mystery of his origins and find his birth family. A light-skinned boy with blue eyes, a curly Afro, and a Polish last name, he embarks on an extraordinary quest for his identity, armed with only one clue. Yet nothing is as it appears.

Katherine knew it was wrong that African Americans didn't have the same rights as others - as wrong as 5+5=12. She knew it was wrong that people thought women could only be teachers or nurses - as wrong as 10-5=3. And she proved everyone wrong by zooming ahead of her classmates, starting college at 15, and eventually joining NASA, where her calculations helped pioneer America's first manned flight into space, its first manned orbit of Earth, and the world's first trip to the moon!

On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery, Alabama city bus and refused to give up her seat to a white man, an act that ignited a movement that changed modern history.

Critically acclaimed author Jabari Asim gives listeners a fascinating glimpse into the boyhood of civil rights leader John Lewis. Even as a very young boy, John Lewis knew he wanted to be a preacher when he grew up. He wanted to be the kind of leader who could use his passionate speeches to stir hearts to change, minds to think, and bodies to take action. But why wait to grow up? At five years old, when he became the official caretaker of the 60 chickens on his family's farm, he realized he had a wonderful audience to practice on.

Jean-Michael Basquiat and his unique collage-style paintings rocketed to fame in the 1980s as a cultural phenomenon unlike anything the art world had ever seen. But before that he was a little boy who saw art everywhere: in poetry books and museums, in games and in the words that we speak, and in the pulsing energy of New York City. Now, Javaka Steptoe's vivid text introduces young listeners to the powerful message that art doesn't always have to be neat or clean - and definitely not inside the lines - to be beautiful.

Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States, was a young girl when she dared to dream big. Her dream? To become a lawyer and a judge. Sonia did not let the hardships of her background - which included growing up in the rough housing projects of New York City's South Bronx, dealing with juvenile diabetes, coping with parents who argued and fought personal demons, and worrying about money - stand in her way. Always, she believed in herself. Her determination propelled her ever forward.

No one could have imagined that the frail seven-year-old slave girl who arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1761 would become the first published African American, achieving fame for her poetry in both America and England. Upon her arrival, Phillis quickly learned to read the Bible and other classic literature, publishing her first poem in 1767 when she was thirteen and a book of poetry in 1773. Her poetry encouraged freedom for all people, and she proved to a doubting generation that intelligence and creativity are not limited to a particular race.

The inspiring story of Vice President Kamala Harris told in the new Who HQ Now format for trending topics. On November 7, 2020, Kamala Harris, a senator from California, became the first woman and the first African American and South Asian American person to be elected to the vice presidency. While her nomination for this position was not unexpected, her rise to national prominence was one filled with unexpected turns and obstacles.

In exuberant verse, Patricia Hruby Powell creates an extraordinary portrait of the passionate performer and civil rights advocate Josephine Baker, the woman who worked her way from the slums of St. Louis to the grandest stages in the world. Meticulously researched by the author, Josephine's powerful story of struggle and triumph is an inspiration and a spectacle, just like the legend herself

Born into slavery in Maryland, Frederick Douglass was separated from his mother during infancy, then taken from his grandparents at the age of six to serve at the “Great House” on the Wye Plantation in Maryland. He never imagined the cruelties he would witness or the indignities of his family being treated like cattle to be sold, divided, and scattered far and wide. Escaping from slavery, Frederick Douglass became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in America.

As did his father before him, Pierce Butler treats his plantation slaves like family. But massive gambling debts force him to sell 429 “family” members. When the auction begins, torrential rain falls - not stopping until the final slave is sold the next day. The ominous rainfall prompts these words: “This ain’t rain. This is God’s tears.” Based on the largest slave auction in U.S. history, this poignant montage is the fictionalized account of that 1859 Georgia tragedy.

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Real-Life Tales of Black Girl Magic, edited by award-winning journalist Lilly Workneh with a foreword by #BlackGirlMagic originator CaShawn Thompson, is dedicated to amplifying and celebrating the stories of Black women and girls from around the world; features the work of over 60 Black female and non-binary authors, illustrators, and editors; is designed to acknowledge, applaud and amplify the incredible stories of Black women and girls from the past and present; and celebrates Black Girl Magic around the world.