BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED. Prominent Black creators lend their voice, their insight, and their talent to an inspiring anthology that celebrates Black culture and Black life. Essays, poems, short stories, and historical excerpts blend with a full-color eight-page insert of spellbinding art to capture the pride, prestige, and jubilation that is being Black in America. In these pages, find the stories of the past, the journeys of the present, and the light guiding the future. BLACK LIVES WILL ALWAYS MATTER.

Foreword /by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson -- Miracle child / by Sharon M. Draper -- Coloring outside the lines / by Jerdine Nolen -- James Baldwin's great debate / by Wade Hudson -- Black lives have always mattered / by Wade Hudson -- Famous blerds in history / by Keith Knight -- Hank Aaron Passes on the legacy / by Wade Hudson -- The storms and sunshine of my life / by Lamar Giles -- At our kitchen table / by Lesa Cline-Ransome -- Isn't it obvious? / by Nic Stone -- The slave mother / by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper -- Joy lives in you / by Kelly Starling Lyons -- Witness / by Nikki Grimes -- You are . . . / by Denene Millner -- Excerpt from What to the slave is the Fourth of July? / by Frederick Douglass -- Black boy reading / by Ronald L. Smith -- Self-reflection / by Kwame Mbalia -- Black butterfly / by Paula Chase -- Letter from Daisy Bates to Roy Wilkins: the treatment of the Little Rock Nine -- Darnella Frazier, eyewitness / by Carole Boston Weatherford -- How to be an activist / by Don Tate -- My hero is a Black cowboy / by Robert H. Miller -- Drumbeat, ring shout, roll call, cypher / by Ibi Zoboi -- An interview with DeRay Mckesson -- Mary McLeod Bethune's "last will and testament" / by Cheryl Willis Hudson and Wade Hudson -- Claiming my space / by Adedayo Perkovich -- Freedom in the music / by Curtis Hudson -- Back to myself / by Tiffany Jewell -- Recognize! / by Cheryl Willis Hudson -- The devil in the flowers / by Alicia D. Williams -- Your breath is a song / by Mahogany L. Browne.