Obviously, Run, Chico, Run has nothing to do with running for office, but metaphorical running, as in trying to survive in a teen gang in Spanish Harlem. The lead character Francisco, aka Chico, yearns to escape the slums, and actually succeeds, at least for a time, by getting tossed into reform school. Four years later he's a changed man. Or is he? By hook or by crook, he finds himself being dragged back into his old life of street crime, and that isn't going to end well at all. No spoiler there, though—the book opens in court and tells the story of poor Chico's downfall working backward. Wenzell Brown wrote other novels in this vein, including Gang Girl, The Wicked Streets, and Teen-Age Mafia. Run, Chico, Run is 1953, with cover art from Barye Phillips. Another nice cover came with the 1960 re-issue, below, but that one's uncredited. 

Science has given humanity a lot over the centuries. What will turn out to be one of its most important gifts is its conclusion, widely disseminated beginning in 1950 but by today firmly proven thanks to DNA sequencing, that race doesn’t exist in any scientific way. Of course, many don’t consider that fact a gift—but many people also had serious problems with the revelation that the Earth wasn’t flat. The concept of race comes entirely from the human imagination, and anti-black racism dates from within about the last five-hundred years, created principally as a means to justify the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Seen in that light, scientific proof that race doesn’t exist represents not new knowledge, but a return to knowledge that was the norm before the drive for riches caused men to deliberately warp human thought as a means to cover for mass cruelty.

As an imaginary construct, however, race is persistently powerful, which the collection of paperback fronts above and below strongly illustrate. We weren’t around when any of these were written, but their existence reveals a surprisingly (to us) lively market in such material. Were all the books you see here of great worth? Certainly not. But even with their flaws—particularly woman-blaming for rape—these books are artifacts of a fascinating racial dialogue that we suspect, on balance, was beneficial. We have fifty examples and there are at least a couple dozen more we didn’t include (Black Dicks for Marcie was just a bit too out there). Some of those pieces will pop up later in a slightly different themed collection. In addition to what you see here, we also put together a related group last year featuring an Asian theme and you can see that here.