Black History Month

Nonfiction, biographies, and memoirs for Black History Month

Updated January 14, 2026
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We refuse : a forceful history of Black resistance
Jackson, Kellie Carter
Paper Book
An "unsparing, erudite, and incisive" (Jelani Cobb, staff writer, The New Yorker) reframing of the past and present of Black resistance--both nonviolent and violent--to white supremacy Named a Best Book of 2024 by Smithsonian * Kirkus *...
Wake : the hidden history of women-led slave revolts
Hall, Rebecca 1963-
Paper Book
A Best Book of 2021 by NPR and The Washington Post Part graphic novel, part memoir, Wake is an imaginative tour-de-force that tells the "powerful" (The New York Times Book Review) story of women-led slave revolts and chronicles scholar Rebecca Hall's...
Legacy : a Black physician reckons with racsim in medicine
Blackstock, Uch?
Paper Book
Growing up in Brooklyn, New York, it never occurred to Uche Blackstock and her twin sister, Oni, that they would be anything but physicians. In the 1980s, their mother headed an organisation of Black women physicians, and for years the girls watched these fiercely intelligent women in white coats...
Black AF history : the un-whitewashed story of America
Harriot, Michael
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE * AMAZON'S TOP 20 HISTORY BOOKS OF 2023 * B&N BEST OF EDUCATIONAL HISTORY * THE ROOT'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023 * CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023 From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot,...
The dead are arising : the life of Malcolm X
Payne, Les 1941-2018
Paper Book
Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X--all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam...
Devil in the grove : Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the dawn of a new America
King, Gilbert.
Ebook
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize "A must-read, cannot-put-down history." -- Thomas Friedman, New York Times Arguably the most important American lawyer of the twentieth century, Thurgood Marshall was on the verge of bringing the landmark suit Brown v. Board of Education...
The Art of Ruth E. Carter: Costuming Black History and the Afrofuture, from Do the Right Thing to Black Panther
Carter, Ruth E.
Paper Book
Costume designer Ruth E. Carter has shaped the story of the Black experience on screen--from the eighties streetwear of DO THE RIGHT THING to the royal regalia of COMING 2 AMERICA. Her costume design on Marvel's BLACK PANTHER not only brought Afrofuturism to the mainstream, but also made her...

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