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Juneteenth Read Alouds
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Recommended Reads for Juneteenth
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All Boys Aren't Blue
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Call Number: j. 306.766208996 J63aIn a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson explores his childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys. Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren't Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson's emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults. -
Ashley Bryan: Words to My Life's Song
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Call Number: j. 818.5 B84wAshley's autobiography is full of art, photographs, and the poignant never-say-never tale of his rich life, a life that has always included drawing and painting. Even as a boy growing up during the Depression, he painted -- finding cast off objects to turn into books and kites and toy and art. Even as a solder in the segregated Army on the beaches of Normandy, he sketched -- keeping charcoal crayons and paper in his gasmask to draw with during lulls. Even as a talented, visionary art student who was accepted and then turned away from college upon arrival, the school telling Ashley that to give a scholarship to an African American student would be a waste, he painted -- continuing to create art when he could have been discouraged, continuing to polish his talents when his spirit should have been beaten. Ashley went on to become a Hans Christian Anderson Award nominee, a May Hill Arbuthnot lecturer, and a multiple Coretta Scott King award winner. As you might imagine, his story is powerful, bursting with his creative energy, and a testament to believing in oneself. It's a book every child in America should have access to and it does what the very best autobiographies do; it inspires! -
Claudette Colvin
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Call Number: j. 323 C72hOn March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South. -
Extraordinary people of the civil rights movement
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Call Number: j. 323.092 H22eA look at the lives of some courageous Americans who worked hard for civil rights in America. -
Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King
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Call Number: j. 323.092 K58 M36hAn introduction to a great civil rights leader. In simple words and beautiful scratchboard illustrations, the story of King's life and his commitment to understanding between races is told. -
Martin's Big Words
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Call Number: j. 323 K58 R18mA brief biographical sketch of Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the greatest figures in the American civil rights movement. -
Meet Coretta Scott King
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Call Number: j. 323.092 K58 M68mThis book introduces the life of Coretta Scott King who worked beside her husband, Martin Luther King Jr., for equal rights of African Americans. -
Meet Jesse Jackson
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Call Number: j. 973.927 J13 M68mProfiles the civil rights activist and politician, discussing his involvement in the civil rights movement, his presidential campaigns, and his role as freelance diplomat and world humanitarian. -
Rosa
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Call Number: j. 323 P23 G43rFifty years after her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus, Mrs. Rosa Parks is still one of the most important figures in the American civil rights movement. This picture-book tribute to Mrs. Parks is a celebration of her courageous action and the events that followed. -
A thousand never evers
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Call Number: j. B91tAs the civil rights movement in the South gains momentum in 1963--and violence against African Americans intensifies--the black residents, including seventh-grader Addie Ann Pickett, in the small town of Kuckachoo, Mississippi, begin their own courageous struggle for racial justice. -
Seeds of Change
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Call Number: j. 305.8 C42sA picture book biography of scientist Wangari Maathai, the first African woman - and first environnmentalist - to win a Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for planting trees in her native Kenya. Detailed narrative and vibrant images paint a robust portrait of this inspiring champion of women's rights and the environment and engagingly capture the people, clothing and landscape of Kenya.
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1963 Birmingham Church Bombing
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Call Number: j. 322.42 K69nISBN: 9780756540920On a quiet Sunday morning in September 1963, a bomb blew open the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Four young African-American girls who were preparing for the worship service died in the blast. The attack was the work of the Ku Klux Klan, a shadowy racist organization that for decades waged a violent campaign of terror against people working for racial equality. The devastating bombing gave momentum to the civil rights movement, leading to the passage of important federal civil rights laws. -
As Good as Anybody: Martin Luther King Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel’s amazing march toward freedom
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Call Number: j. 323.092 K58mThe story of two icons for social justice, how they formed a remarkable friendship and turned their personal experiences of discrimination into a message of love and equality for all. -
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I have a dream speech in translation : what it really means
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Call Number: j. 323.092 K58 H71dPresents Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech and explains its meaning using everyday language. Describes the events that led to the speech and its significance through history. -
Freedom Rides: Campaign for Equality
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Call Number: j. 323.1196 An2fA look at the Freedom Rides of 1961, in which activists rode buses throughout the South in nonviolent protest against racial discrimination. -
Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men who Changed America
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Call Number: j. 973.0496 P65hPresents the stories of ten African-American men from different eras in American history, organized chronologically to provide a scope from slavery to the modern day. -
Living through the Civil Rights Movement
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Call Number: j. 323.1196 L76gPresents a collection of speeches, articles, and personal narratives describing the early years of the Civil Rights Movement. -
Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary
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Call Number: j. 323.1196 P25mThis book recounts the three months of protest that took place before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s landmark march from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery to promote equal rights and help African-Americans earn the right to vote. -
Marching to the Mountaintop
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Call Number: j. 323.092 B32mExplores how the media, politics, the civil rights movement, and labor protests all converged to set the scene for one of Dr. King's greatest speeches and for his tragic death on April 4, 1968, in Memphis. -
Selma and the Voting Rights Act
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Call Number: j. 324.62 K58 Ar3cBy the mid-1960s, the civil rights movement had been alive for many years and had achieved a fair amount of success in guaranteeing the rights of all Americans to equality and justice. But throughout much of the country, especially in the South, racism still prevailed and African Americans remained unable to vote, driven away from voter registration by complex and arbitrary regulations designed only to deny black voters any power or influence. -
Selma’s Bloody Sunday
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Call Number: j. 323.1196 K58 R11sThe 1870 passage of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, that no man could be denied the right to vote, was a big step forward in the civil rights movement. However, nearly 100 years later, most African Americans in the South still could not vote. In March 1965, a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state Capitol in Montgomery was planned to demand voting rights. But the marches only made it six blocks before they were stopped and brutally attacked by state troopers. March 7 became known as Bloody Sunday. The beatings outraged Americans who rallied to support the civil rights movement. -
Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down
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Call Number: j.323.1196 P65sThis picture book is a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the momentous Woolworth's lunch counter sit-in, when four college students staged a peaceful protest that became a defining moment in the struggle for racial equality and the growing civil rights movement. -
Spies of Mississippi
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Call Number: j. 323.1196 B67sIn the 1950s and 1960s, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission compiled secret files on more than 87,000 private citizens in the most extensive state spying program in U.S. history. Its mission: to save segregation. -
This Book is Anti-Racist
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Call Number: j. 305.8 J54bLearn about identities, true histories, and anti-racism work. This book is written so young people will feel empowered to stand up to the adults in their lives. This book will give them the language and ability to understand racism and a drive to undo it. -
We Are Not yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide
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Call Number: j.323.1196Publication Date: 2018When America makes progress toward racial equality, the systemic response is a backlash that rolls back those wins. This edition especially for teens, adapted from the author's White Rage, illuminates these dark moments of history. -
When the Children Marched: The Birmingham Civil Rights Movement
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Call Number: j. 323.1196 M45wDiscusses the Birmingham civil rights movement, the great leaders of the movement, and the role of the children who helped fight for equal rights and to end segregation in Birmingham.
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Choosing Brave: how Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till sparked the civil rights movement
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Call Number: j. 323.092 T46 J84cA Caldecott-honor winning picture book biography of the mother of Emmett Till, and how she channeled grief over her son's death into a call to action for the civil rights movement. Mamie Till-Mobley is the mother of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy who was brutally murdered while visiting the South in 1955. His death became a rallying point for the civil rights movement, but few know that it was his mother who was the catalyst for bringing his name to the forefront of history. -
Grandmama’s pride
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Call Number: j. B53gWhile on a trip in 1956 to visit her grandmother in the South, six-year-old Sarah Marie experiences segregation for the first time, but discovers that things have changed by the time she returns the following year. -
Hush harbor : praying in secret
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Call Number: j. Ev15hWhile Simmy watches for danger from high in a tree, other slaves gather in a hidden spot in the woods to sing and pray together in their own way, risking their lives in pursuit of religious freedom. Includes historical facts about hush, or brush, arbors and the churches that grew from them. -
Let Freedom Sing
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Call Number: j. 323.1196 N48lSimple poetry pays tribute to African Americans who struggled for civil rights. -
The Undefeated
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Call Number: j. Al26uAn ode to black American triumph and tribulation, with art from a two-time Caldecott Honoree. Originally performed for ESPN's The Undefeated, this poem is a love letter to black life in the United States. It highlights the unspeakable trauma of slavery, the faith and fire of the civil rights movement, and the grit, passion, and perseverance of some of the world's greatest heroes.
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Freedom Train
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Call Number: j. C677fTwelve-year-old Clyde Thomason’s older brother is a guard on the Freedom Train, which is carrying the Bill of Rights and other documents throughout the country in 1948, but Clyde is also learning about rights and freedom as he is saved from a beating by an African American boy, and later returns the favor when men in their Atlanta suburb decide to show the "Nigras" their place. -
New Kid
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Call Number: j. C84nSeventh grader Jordan Banks loves nothing more than drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to the art school of his dreams, his parents enroll him in a prestigious private school known for its academics, where Jordan is one of the few kids of color in his entire grade. As he makes the daily trip from his Washington Heights apartment to the upscale Riverdale Academy Day School, Jordan soon finds himself torn between two worlds--and not really fitting into either one. Can Jordan learn to navigate his new school culture while keeping his neighborhood friends and staying true to himself? -
The Return of Gabriel
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Call Number: j. Ar55rIn the summer of 1964, a thirteen-year-old white boy whose best friend is black is caught in the middle when civil rights workers and Ku Klux Klan members clash in a small town near Tupelo, Mississippi. -
A thousand never evers
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Call Number: j. B91tAs the civil rights movement in the South gains momentum in 1963--and violence against African Americans intensifies--the black residents, including seventh-grader Addie Ann Pickett, in the small town of Kuckachoo, Mississippi, begin their own courageous struggle for racial justice.
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A tugging string : a novel about growing up during the Civil Rights era
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Call Number: j. G85tA fictionalized account of the author’s years growing up in Great Neck, New York, during the turbulent civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s, when African Americans were struggling to attain equality, with his father, who was a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Includes commentary from the author’s father, Jack Greenberg. -
A yellow watermelon: a novel
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Call Number: j. D911yGrowing up in poverty-stricken, racially segregated, rural Alabama in the late 1940s, a white boy named Ted and a black boy named Poudlum become secret friends, join forces to integrate the cotton field laborers, and try to stop evil forces from depriving Poudlum’s family of their property and livelihood. -
The Rock and the River
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Call Number: j. M27rIn 1968 Chicago, fourteen-year-old Sam Childs is caught in a conflict between his father’s nonviolent approach to seeking civil rights for African Americans and his older brother, who has joined the Black Panther Party.
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The Audacity of Hope
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Call Number: 973.04960092 Ob1aAt the heart of this book is Barack Obama’s vision of how we can move beyond our divisions to tackle concrete problems. He examines the growing economic insecurity of American families, the racial and religious tensions within the body politic, and the transnational threats—from terrorism to pandemic—that gather beyond our shores. And he grapples with the role that faith plays in a democracy—where it is vital and where it must never intrude. Underlying his stories is a vigorous search for connection: the foundation for a radically hopeful political consensus. -
Between the World and Me
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Call Number: 305.800973 C63bIn a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Coates shares the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder. -
Conversations with Audre Lorde
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Call Number: 811.5 L88coThe interviews in this collection portray the many additional sides of the Harlem-born author and activist. She was also a rebellious child of Caribbean parents, a mastectomy patient, a blue-collar worker, a college professor, a student of African mythology, an experimental autobiographer in her book titled Zami, a critic of imperialism, and a charismatic orator. These interviews reveal the sense of displacement that made Lorde a champion of the outcast and the forgotten―whether in New York, Mississippi, Berlin, or Soweto. -
Even the Stars Look Lonesome
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Call Number: 818.5 An4eEven the Stars Look Lonesome is Maya Angelou talking of the things she cares about most. In her unique, spellbinding way, she re-creates intimate personal experiences and gives us her wisdom on a wide variety of subjects. -
Fighting on Two Fronts
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Call Number: 959.704308996 W52fIn this dramatic history of race relations during the Vietnam War, James E. Westheider illustrates how American soldiers in Vietnam grappled with many of the same racial conflicts that were roiling their homeland thousands of miles away. Over seven years in the making, Fighting on Two Fronts draws on interviews with dozens of Vietnam veterans - black and white - and official Pentagon documents to paint the first complete picture of the African American experience in Vietnam. -
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race
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Call Number: 305.896 F51wNational Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward takes James Baldwin's 1963 examination of race in America, The Fire Next Time, as a jumping off point for this groundbreaking collection of essays and poems about race from the most important voices of her generation and our time. Ward knows that Baldwin's words ring as true as ever today. In response, she has gathered short essays, memoir, and a few essential poems to engage the question of race in the United States. And she has turned to some of her generation's most original thinkers and writers to give voice to their concerns. The Fire This Time is divided into three parts that shine a light on the darkest corners of our history, wrestle with our current predicament, and envision a better future. -
Four Hundred Souls
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Call Number: 973.0496 F82kA chorus of extraordinary voices tells one of history's great epics: The four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619-- a year before the Mayflower dropped anchor off Cape Cod, when the White Lion disgorged "some 20 and odd Negroes" onto the shores of Virginia-- to the present, when African Americans, descendants of those on the White Lion and a thousand other routes to this country, continue a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles, stunning achievements, and millions of ordinary lives passing through extraordinary history. Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume "community" history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a brief period of that four-hundred-year-span. -
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women that a Movement Forgot
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Call Number: 305.420973 K33hA collection of essays taking aim at the legitimacy of the modern feminist movement, arguing that it has chronically failed to address the needs of all but a few women. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others? -
How the Word Is Passed
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Call Number: 973.0496 Sm5h'This book is Clint Smith's contemporary portrait of the United States of America as a slave-owning nation. Beginning in his own hometown of New Orleans, Smith leads the reader through an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks, those that are honest about the past and those that are not, that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves. -
I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches that Changed the World
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Call Number: 323.092 K58iAs Coretta Scott King says in her foreword, "This collection includes many of what I consider to be my husband's most important writings and orations." In addition to the famed keynote address of the 1963 march on Washington, the renowned civil rights leader's most influential words included here are the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," the essay "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence," and his last sermon, "I See the Promised Land," preached the day before he was assassinated. -
Juneteenth Texas
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Call Number: eBookJuneteenth Texas reflects the many dimensions of African-American folklore. The personal essays are reminiscences about the past and are written from both black and white perspectives. They are followed by essays which classify and describe different aspects of African-American folk culture in Texas; studies of specific genres of folklore, such as songs and stories; studies of specific performers, such as Lightnin' Hopkins and Manse Lipscomb and of particular folklorists. -
My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Call Number: 323.092 K58 K581m rev edAn inside look at the life and work of the noted civil rights leader, from the viewpoint of his wife Coretta Scott King. -
On Juneteenth
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Call Number: Cardinal Textbooks at Circulation Desk ; T. 394.263 G65oWeaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed's On Juneteenth provides a historian's view of the country's long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond. All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed-herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s-forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all. Combining personal anecdotes with poignant facts gleaned from the annals of American history, Gordon-Reed shows how, from the earliest presence of Black people in Texas to the day in Galveston on June 19, 1865, when Major General Gordon Granger announced the end of legalized slavery in the state, African-Americans played an integral role in the Texas story. -
The Radical King
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Call Number: 323.092 K58rArranged thematically in four parts, The Radical King includes twenty-three selections, curated and introduced by Dr. Cornel West, that illustrate King's revolutionary vision, underscoring his identification with the poor, his unapologetic opposition to the Vietnam War, and his crusade against global imperialism. As West writes, "Although much of America did not know the radical King--and too few know today--the FBI and US government did. They called him 'the most dangerous man in America.' This book unearths a radical King that we can no longer sanitize." -
The Souls of Black Folk
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Call Number: 973.0496 D85sFirst published in 1903, this collection of essays exposed the magnitude of racism in society. The book endures today as a classic document of American and political history. -
Talking Back: Thinking Feminism, Thinking Black
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Call Number: 305.48896073 H76tIn Talking Back, bell hooks writes about the meaning of feminist consciousness in daily life and about self-recovery, about overcoming white-and male-supremacy, and about intimate relationships, exploring the point where the public and private meet. -
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man
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Call Number: 920.7108896 G22tAs some remarkable men talk about their lives, many perspectives emerge. All these men came from modest circumstances and all achieved preeminence. They are people, Gates writes, "who have shaped the world as much as they were shaped by it, who gave as good as they got." Three are writers-- James Baldwin was once regarded as the intellectual spokesman for the black community; Anatole Broyard chose to hide his black heritage so as to be seen as a writer on his own terms; and Albert Murray rose to the pinnacle of literary criticism. General-turned-political-figure Colin Powell discusses his interactions with three presidents; entertainer Harry Belafonte's career has been distinct from his fervent activism; dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones' fierce courage and creativity have continued in the shadow of AIDS; and religious leader Louis Farrakhan continues to attract controversy -
The Trumpet of Conscience
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Call Number: 323 K58tIn November and December 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered five lectures for the renowned Massey Lecture Series of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Immediately released under the title Conscience for Change after King’s assassination, it was republished as The Trumpet of Conscience. Each oration speaks prophetically to today’s perils, addressing issues of equality, conscience and war, the mobilization of young people, and nonviolence. The book concludes with “A Christmas Sermon on Peace,” a powerful lecture about nonviolence as a path to world peace that was broadcast live from Ebenezer Baptist Church on Christmas Eve in 1967. -
Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom
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Call Number: 323.1196073 L95tAs the youngest marcher in the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Albama, Lynda Blackmon Lowery proved that young adults can be heroes. Jailed nine times before her fifteenth birthday, Lowery fought alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. for the rights of African-Americans. In this memoir, she shows today's young readers what it means to fight nonviolently (even when the police are using violence, as in the Bloody Sunday protest) and how it felt to be part of changing American history. -
We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice
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Call Number: 303.372 K11wWhat if social transformation and liberation isn't about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle. -
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? by
Call Number: 973.0496 K58wIn this prophetic work, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, asserting that humankind-for the first time-has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty. -
Why We Can't Wait
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Call Number: 305.896073 K58w 2010Often applauded as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s most incisive and eloquent book, Why We Can't Wait recounts the Birmingham campaign in vivid detail, while underscoring why 1963 was such a crucial year for the civil rights movement. During this time, Birmingham, Alabama, was perhaps the most racially segregated city in the United States, but the campaign launched by Fred Shuttlesworth, King, and others demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action. King examines the history of the civil rights struggle and the tasks that future generations must accomplish to bring about full equality. -
Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics
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Call Number: 305.896 H76yKnown mainly as a feminist thinker, hooks addresses a broad range of issues related to gender, race, teaching, and media, always advancing the understanding that these topics must be conceived of as interconnected, not isolated strands. Yearning crosses disciplinary boundaries in major debates on cultural criticism and the politics of race and gender. Hooks warns us about the tendency of the discourse about difference to be removed from the struggle we must all wage against power.
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Anger Is a Gift
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Call Number: j. Os4aSchneider Teen Book Award Winner
Moss Jeffries is many things--considerate student, devoted son, loyal friend and affectionate boyfriend, enthusiastic nerd. But sometimes Moss still wishes he could be someone else--someone without panic attacks, someone whose father was still alive, someone who hadn't become a rallying point for a community because of one horrible night. And most of all, he wishes he didn't feel so stuck. Moss can't even escape at school--he and his friends are subject to the lack of funds and crumbling infrastructure at West Oakland High, as well as constant intimidation by the resource officer stationed in their halls. That was even before the new regulations--it seems sometimes that the students are treated more like criminals. Something will have to change--but who will listen to a group of teens? When tensions hit a fever pitch and tragedy strikes again, Moss must face a difficult choice: give in to fear and hate or realize that anger can actually be a gift. -
The Hate U Give
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Call Number: j. T361hSixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does--or does not--say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life. -
Letters to My Mother
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Call Number: j. C17lA young African-Cuban girl is sent to live with her aunt and cousins after the death of her mother and begins to write letters to her deceased mother telling of the misery, racial prejudice, and mistreatment at the hands of those around her.
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X
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Call Number: 301.451 L72aThis classic autobiography of Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement. -
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood
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Call Number: 975.26 C63bPaul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons. Most of all, he was a wily tactician whose mission was to carry his sons across the shoals of inner-city adolescence and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crack, and into the safe arms of Howard University, where he worked so his children could attend for free. Among his brood of seven, his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and sensitive and almost comically miscalibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and all-too-ready for the challenges of the streets. The Beautiful Struggle follows their divergent paths through this turbulent period, and their father's steadfast efforts to keep them whole in a world that seemed bent on their destruction. -
Becoming
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Call Number: 973.932 Ob1bAn intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States. Here, for the first time, Michelle Obama describes the early years of her marriage as she struggles to balance her work and family with her husband's fast-moving political career. She takes us inside their private debate over whether he should make a run for the presidency and her subsequent role as a popular but oft-criticized figure during his campaign. Narrating with grace, good humor, and uncommon candor, she provides a vivid, behind-the-scenes account of her family's history-making launch into the global limelight as well as their life inside the White House over eight momentous years--as she comes to know her country and her country comes to know her. -
Colored People: A Memoir
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Call Number: 985.400496 G22cIn this rich memoir of his early life, the celebrated scholar and writer Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gives us an indelible portrait of a vanished America. It was a time when the United States was just crossing the threshold into desegregation; when racial boundaries were constantly shifting and progress was measured primarily by the number of black faces that appeared on television. But Gates's story is not only a story about race. It is the story of a family, of a village, and of a special time and place in American history. Through Gates's memories and portraits of the people in his early life, he conveys a deep sense of and longing for the extended family and close community that was so much a part of an earlier America. -
Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
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Call Number: Ebook, available onlineIn this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father-a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man-has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey-first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother's family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father's life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance. -
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
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Call Number: 818.5 An4iSent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. -
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself
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Call Number: 973.608625 J15iAs Linda Brent, the author's pseudonym, Harriet Jacobs recounts the history of her family and recalls the degradation of slavery, especially the sexual oppression she experienced as a slave woman. -
Juneteenth
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Call Number: 813.5 El5jThe story of a black man who passes for white and becomes a race-baiting U.S. senator. When he is shot on the Senate floor, the first visitor in hospital is a black musician-turned-preacher who raised him. As the two men talk, their respective stories come out. -
My Bondage and My Freedom
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Call Number: 326 D74mMy Bondage and My Freedom is Douglass’s masterful recounting of his remarkable life and a fiery condemnation of a political and social system that would reduce people to property and keep an entire race in chains. -
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates
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Call Number: 975.26 M78oTwo kids with the same name were born blocks apart in the same decaying city within a few years of each other. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, army officer, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, this is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation trying to find their way in a hostile world. -
Twelve Years a Slave
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Call Number: 326.9763 N81tThe story of Solomon Northup is a bizarre and incredible one. Born a free black in New York State in 1808, he was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841, and spent most of the next 12 years as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation. His years in this condition of servitude were filled with abuse, apprehension, and a profound fear for his life (he narrowly escaped lynching). Northup's years in captivity are dramatically recounted here, as are his attempts to bring charges against the men who originally abducted him. An educated man when he entered slavery, Northup was able to write about the institution as both an outsider and as one of its victims. The result was an exceptionally detailed and accurate description of slave life and plantation society. -
The Underground Railroad
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Call Number: 813.6 W58uCora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted. Their first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city's placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom. -
Up From Slavery, An Autobiography by
Call Number: 326 W27uThe dramatic autobiographical account of Booker T. Washington’s unique American experience—a struggle against social and ideological bias that he began as a slave and never stopped. -
Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
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Call Number: 328.73092 L58wJohn Lewis tells his story of struggle in the civil rights movement, of comradeship in that community, of its battles and triumphs. -
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
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Call Number: 323.092 K52wPublication Date: 2018In 2013, when Trayvon Martin's killer went free, Patrisse Khan-Cullors' outrage led her to co-found Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. Condemned as terrorists and as a threat to America, these loving women founded a hashtag that birthed the movement to demand accountability from the authorities who continually turn a blind eye to the injustices inflicted upon people of Black and Brown skin.
