Kyla Marshell of Poetry Foundation recognized Sarah Webster Fabio, who has been called “the mother of black studies.” Fabio was a revolutionary poet during the Black Arts Movement, but her name and works have fallen in the shadows of more well known poets of the time, such as Sonia Sanchez, Amiri Baraka, and Nikki Giovanni.

Ta-Nehisi Coates spoke about the influence poetry has had on his writing.

Karen Grigsby Bates of NPR reviewed Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X. In the book, authors Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith recount the relationship between the two figures and the role religion ultimately played in ending their friendship.

“The Civil Right’s Activist You May Not Know but Should” – Abesi Manyando of the Huffington Post remembered activist Washington Booker III, who passed away last month.

Patricia Hill Collins of the New York Times reviewed Until There is Justice: The Life of Anna Arnold Hedgeman, by Jennifer Scanlon. Hedgeman was an African American civil rights activist who died in 1990. She was a founding member of the National Organization for Women and dedicated her life to racial and gender justice. This biography recounts the life of the relatively unknown but influential figure.

Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post reviewed The Black Presidency: Barack Obama and the Politics of Race in America, by Michael Eric Dyson. In the book, Dyson writes a scathing critique of the Obama administration, accusing Obama of “racial procrastination.”