Image Award
Children
1996 Hair Structure and Chemistry Simplified by Virginia Hamilton
This is an anthology of 17 illustrated stories ranging from the historical to classic fairy tales, American tall tales to ghost stories, and each of them featuring an African American girl or woman as the main character.
Fiction
1996 Children of the Dust by Clancy Carlile
Set during the Oklahoma land rush of the 1880s, this novel tells the interlocking stories of dispossessed Indians and newly-freed blacks. Gypsy Smith, a mixed-blood black-Cherokee gunfighter and lawman seeks revenge after he is attacked by the Klu Klux Klan and left for dead. Schoolteacher John Maxwell, who teaches Indians that they must conform to the ways of the white man in order to survive, is forced to confront his convictions when his daughter falls in love with a Cheyenne boy.
Nonfiction
1996 When We Were Colored by Clifton L. Taulbert
Taulbert affectionately looks back at his childhood in this evocative tale of life in the segregated South.
1997 Don't Block the Blessings by Patti Labelle
In this New York Times bestselling autobiography, Patti LaBelle explains how she overcame the devastating and violent loss over her parents and the deaths of her three sisters to become the glamorous, adored, and outrageous star with the five-inch pumps and the five-octave range.