Black History Month: Nonfiction

A selection of new nonfiction books about Black History.

Updated December 27, 2023
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The 1619 Project : a new origin story
Hannah-Jones, Nikole
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER * A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present. "[A] groundbreaking compendium . . ....
African founders : how enslaved people expanded American ideals
Fischer, David Hackett
Paper Book
In this sweeping, foundational work, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Hackett Fischer draws on extensive research to show how enslaved Africans and their descendants enlarged American ideas of freedom in varying ways in different regions of the early United States. ...
American inheritance : liberty and slavery in the birth of a nation, 1765-1795
Larson, Edward J.
Paper Book
New attention from historians and journalists is raising pointed questions about the founding period: was the American revolution waged to preserve slavery, and was the Constitution a pact with slavery or a landmark in the antislavery movement? Leaders of the founding who called for American...
Black AF history : the un-whitewashed story of America
Harriot, Michael
Audiobook
Buses are a comin' : memoir of a freedom rider
Person, Charles
Paper Book
A firsthand exploration of the cost of boarding the bus of change to move America forward--written by one of the Civil Rights Movement's pioneers. At 18, Charles Person was the youngest of the original Freedom Riders, key figures in the U.S. Civil Rights Movement...
By hands now known : Jim Crow's legal executioners
Burnham, Margaret A.
Paper Book
If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law? In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship...
Driving the Green book : a road trip through the living history of Black resistance
Hall, Alvin D.
Paper Book
Join award-winning broadcaster Alvin Hall on a journey through America's haunted racial past, with the legendary Green Book as your guide. For countless Americans, the open road has long been a place where dangers lurk. In the era of Jim Crow, Black travelers experienced...
Four hundred souls : a community history of African America, 1619-2019
Kendi, Ibram X.
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A chorus of extraordinary voices tells the epic story of the four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present--edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on...
Half American : the epic story of African Americans fighting World War II at home and abroad
Delmont, Matthew F.
Paper Book
The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont. Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in...
How the word is passed : a reckoning with the history of slavery across America
Smith, Clint
Paper Book
This "important and timely" (Drew Faust, Harvard Magazine) #1 New York Times bestseller examines the legacy of slavery in America--and how both history and memory continue to shape our everyday lives. Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint...
Make good the promises : reclaiming Reconstruction and its legacies
Conwill, Kinshasha
Paper Book
The companion volume to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture exhibit, opening in September 2021 With a Foreword by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Eric Foner and a preface by veteran museum director and historian Spencer Crew<...
Of blood and sweat : Black lives and the making of White power and wealth
Ford, Clyde W.
Paper Book
"Ford's overlap of past and present, narrative and commentary is masterful, and makes this volume all the more valuable to those readers wise enough to allow the past to inform the future. Of Blood and Sweat is a myth-busting work of genius that will stand as the last word on this vital subject...
On Juneteenth
Gordon-Reed, Annette
Paper Book
Weaving 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...
Race and reckoning : from founding fathers to today's disruptors
Cose, Ellis
Paper Book
Ranging from chattel slavery, through the New Deal to the Covid pandemic, a groundbreaking work that investigates how pivotal decisions have established and perpetuated discriminatory practices, even as the rise of disinformation and other modern advertising techniques...
Read until you understand : the profound wisdom of Black life and literature
Griffin, Farah Jasmine
Paper Book
Farah Jasmine Griffin has taken to her heart the phrase "read until you understand," a line her father, who died when she was nine, wrote in a note to her. She has made it central to this book about love of the majestic power of words and love of the magnificence of Black life. Griffin has...
Say their names : how Black lives came to matter in America
Bunn, Curtis
Paper Book
Until justice be done : America's first civil rights movement, from the revolution to reconstruction
Masur, Kate
Paper Book
The half-century before the Civil War was beset with conflict over equality as well as freedom. Beginning in 1803, many free states enacted laws that discouraged free African Americans from settling within their boundaries and restricted their rights to testify in court, move freely from place to...
Vigilance : the life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad
Diemer, Andrew K.
Paper Book
The remarkable and inspiring story of William Still, an unknown abolitionist who dedicated his life to managing a critical section of the Underground Railroad in Philadelphia--the free state directly north of the Mason-Dixon Line--helping hundreds of people escape from slavery. ...

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