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Reading Challenge A book about Black history |
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Black arms to hold you up : a history of Black resistance
by Ben Passmore
'You're not out in the streets with everyone else?' Ronnie asks his ambivalent son Ben, shambling in with arms full of used books: the works of Malcom X, Robert F. Williams, Assata, and Sanyika Shakur, among others. 'Black liberation is your fight, too.' So begins Black Arms to Hold You Up, a boisterous, darkly funny, and sobering march through Black militant history by political cartoonist Ben Passmore. From Robert Charles's shootout with the police in 1900, to the Black Power movement in the 1960s, to the Los Angeles and George Floyd uprisings of the 1990s and the aughts, readers will tumble through more than a century of armed resistance against the racist state alongside Ben--and meet firsthand the mothers and fathers of the movement, whose stories were as tragic as they were heroic.
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When trees testify : science, wisdom, history, and America's Black botanical legacy by Beronda L. Montgomery
| Montgomery traces how trees like pecan, sycamore, poplar, and willow embody Black American history, botanical knowledge, and survival. Blending science, culture, and personal narrative, she shows how these plants witnessed enslavement, resistance, and resilience, revealing a deep legacy of Black ecological expertise that shaped the nation. |
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The 1619 Project : a new origin story
by Nikole Hannah-Jones, Caitlin Roper, Ilena Silverman, and Jake Silverstein.
In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty people stolen from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States. The New York Times Magazine's award-winning 1619 Project issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.
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The warmth of other suns : the epic story of America's great migration
by Isabel Wilkerson
In this epic work, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. She interviewed more than a thousand individuals, and gained access to new data and offical records, to write this definitive and dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.
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All that she carried : the journey of Ashley's sack, a Black family keepsake
by Tiya Miles
In 1850s South Carolina, just before nine-year-old Ashley was sold, her mother Rose gave her a sack filled with just a few things as a token of her love. Decades later, Ashley's granddaughter Ruth embroidered this history on the bag--including Rose's message that 'It be filled with my Love always.' Historian Tiya Miles carefully follows faint archival traces back to Charleston to find Rose in the kitchen where she may have packed the sack for Ashley. From Rose's last resourceful gift to her daughter, Miles then follows the paths their lives and the lives of so many like them took to write a unique, innovative history of the lived experience of slavery in the United States.
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Call and response : the story of Black Lives Matter
by Veronica Chambers
Call and Response: The Story of Black Lives Matter is a broad and powerful exploration of the history of Black Lives Matter told through photographs, quotes, and informative text by New York Times best-selling authors Veronica Chambers and Jennifer Harlan.
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Four hundred souls : a community history of African America, 1619-2019
by Book Author
A 'choral history' of African Americans covering 400 years of history in the voices of 80 writers, edited by the bestselling, National Book Award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain. Last year marked the four hundredth anniversary of the first African presence in the Americas--and also launched the Four Hundred Souls project, spearheaded by Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Antiracism Institute of American University, and Keisha Blain, editor of The North Star. They've gathered together eighty black writers from all disciplines -- historians and artists, journalists and novelists--each of whom has contributed an entry about one five-year period to create a dynamic multivoiced single-volume history of black people in America.
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A Black queer history of the United States
by C. Riley Snorton and Darius Bost
Gender and sexual expression have always been part of the Black freedom struggle In this latest book in Beacon's award-winning ReVisioning History series, Professors C. Riley Snorton and Darius Bost unearth the often overlooked history of the Black queer community in the United States. Arguing that both gender and sexual expression have been an intimate and intricate part of Black freedom struggle, Snorton and Bost present historical contributions of Black queer, trans, and gender non-conforming Americans from slavery to the present day to highlight how the fight against racial injustice has always been linked to that of sexual and gender justice.
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An African history of Africa : from the dawn of humanity to independence
by Zeinab Badawi
An acclaimed international bestseller, Zeinab Badawi's sweeping narrative of African history traces the continent's extraordinary legacy from prehistory to the present from the African perspective. Everyone is originally from Africa, and this book is therefore for everyone. For too long, Africa's history has been dominated by Western narratives of slavery and colonialism, or simply ignored. Now Zeinab Badawi sets the record straight. In this fascinating book, Badawi guides us through Africa's spectacular history--from the very origins of our species, through ancient civilizations and medieval empires with remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence. Visiting more than 30 African countries to interview countless historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and local storytellers, she unearths buried histories from across the continent and gives Africa its rightful place in our global story.
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Brooding over bloody revenge : enslaved women's lethal resistance
by Nikki M. Taylor
From the colonial through the antebellum era, enslaved women in the US used lethal force as the ultimate form of resistance. By amplifying their voices and experiences, Brooding over Bloody Revenge strongly challenges assumptions that enslaved women only participated in covert, non-violent forms of resistance, when in fact they consistently seized justice for themselves and organized toward revolt. Nikki M. Taylor expertly reveals how women killed for deeply personal instances of injustice committed by their owners. The stories presented, which span centuries and legal contexts, demonstrate that these acts of lethal force were carefully pre-meditated. Enslaved women planned how and when their enslavers would die, what weapons and accomplices were necessary, and how to evade capture in the aftermath. Original and compelling, Brooding Over Bloody Revenge presents a window into the lives and philosophies of enslaved women who had their own ideas about justice and how to achieve it.
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Black genius : essays on an American legacy
by Tre Johnson
A powerful read examining the lack of opportunity given to Black Americans due to structural racism, and how forgotten historical figures and the author's own family found a way to succeed despite the obstacles.
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Black-owned : the revolutionary life of the Black bookstore
by Char Adams
This book Traces the history of Black-owned bookstores as vital centers of activism, culture, and community. From the first abolitionist bookshop in 1834 to the hubs of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements--and today's new generation inspired by Black Lives Matter--Adams reveals how these spaces have fueled liberation through books, ideas, and collective action.
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King : a life
by Jonathan Eig
This portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.
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John Lewis : a life
by David Greenberg
A comprehensive, authoritative biography of Civil Rights icon John Lewis, 'the conscience of the Congress,' drawing on interviews with Lewis and approximately 275 others who knew him at various stages of his life, as well as never-before-used FBI files and documents.
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Barracoon : the story of the last Black cargo
by Zora Neale Hurston
In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. Based on those interviews, which feature Cudjo's unique vernacular, this book illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it.
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Walking with the wind : a memoir of the ovement
by John Lewis with Michael D'Orso
From a sharecropper's farm to Nashville in the late 1950s, Lewis was swept up by the rising winds of the civil rights movement where he risked his life over and over, and went to jail many, many times. By the 1960s, he was steering the sit-in movement through the South, leading the Freedom Rides, assuming the chairmanship of SNCC, and stepping into the national spotlight at the 1963 March on Washington. Lewis was in the Mississippi Summer of 1964, at Bloody Sunday in Selma in 1965, at Bobby Kennedy's side in 1968 moments before Kennedy was gunned down in the kitchen of Los Angeles's Ambassador Hotel.
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Marsha : the joy and defiance of Marsha P. Johnson
by Tourmaline
Black trans luminary Tourmaline brings to life the first definitive biography of the revolutionary activist Marsha P. Johnson, one of the most important and remarkable figures in LGBTQ+ history, revealing her story, her impact, and her legacy. Through nearly two decades of research, Tourmaline brings this fabulous, scandalous, essential justice warrior to life in full color, for the first time.
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Baldwin : a love story
by Nicholas Boggs
This book ells the overlapping stories of Baldwin's most sustaining intimate and artistic relationships: with his mentor, the Black American painter Beauford Delaney; with his lover and muse, the Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger; and with his collaborators, the famed Turkish actor Engin Cezzar and the iconoclastic French artist Yoran Cazac.
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