Juneteenth for Adults

Juneteenth is an annual holiday that celebrates the emancipation of African Americans who were enslaved in the United States. It commemorates the arrival of Union troops to Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, to announce the end of slavery – two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Here are some books by Black authors and artists that celebrate African American culture, resistance and achievement.

Updated May 12, 2024
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LINCC (Libraries in Clackamas County)Happy Valley Library
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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...
Master slave husband wife : an epic journey from slavery to freedom
Woo, Ilyon
Paper Book
Winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Biography "A rich narrative of the Crafts, an enslaved couple who escaped from Georgia in 1848, with light-skinned Ellen disguised as a disabled white gentleman and William as her manservant, exploiting assumptions about race, class, and...
She came to slay : the life and times of Harriet Tubman
Dunbar, Erica Armstrong
Paper Book
In the bestselling tradition of The Notorious RBG comes a lively, informative, and illustrated tribute to one of the most exceptional women in American history--Harriet Tubman--a heroine whose fearlessness and activism still resonate today. Harriet Tubman is best known as...
Frederick Douglass : prophet of freedom
Blight, David W.
Paper Book
**Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History** "Extraordinary...a great American biography" (The New Yorker) of the most important African American of the 19th century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading...
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 . . ....
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...
Twelve years a slave : narrative of Solomon Northup, a citizen of New-York, kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and rescued in 1853
Northup, Solomon
Paper Book
Solomon Northup was a free man, the son of an emancipated Negro Slave. Until the spring of 1841 he lived a simple, uneventful life with his wife and three children in Upstate New York. Then, suddenly, he fell victim to a series of bizarre events that make this one of the most amazing...
Stamped from the beginning : the definitive history of racist ideas in America
Kendi, Ibram X.
Paper Book
 The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society. Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America -- it is more sophisticated...
Sweet Home Cafe cookbook : a celebration of African American cooking
Lukas, Albert
Paper Book
A celebration of African American cooking with 109 recipes from the National Museum of African American History and Culture's Sweet Home Cafe. A James Beard Foundation Book Award nominee for best American cookbook; a Food & Wine best cookbook; a Booklist top 10 food book; an...
Stony the road : Reconstruction, white supremacy, and the rise of Jim Crow
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.
Paper Book
The abolition of slavery after the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked 'a new birth of freedom' in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary to march in...
Beloved : a novel
Morrison, Toni.
Paper Book
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author.  This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story" (...
Juneteenth : a novel
Ellison, Ralph
Paper Book
From the author of bestselling Invisible Man--the classic novel of African-American experience--this long-awaited second novel tells an evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century. Brilliantly crafted, moving, and wise, Juneteenth is the work...
Homegoing
Gyasi, Yaa
Paper Book
Winner of the NBCC's John Leonard First Book Prize A New York Times 2016 Notable Book One of Oprah's 10 Favorite Books of 2016 NPR's Debut Novel of the Year One of Buzzfeed's Best Fiction Books Of 2016 One of Time's Top 10 Novels of 2016
Freedom national : the destruction of slavery in the United States, 1861-1865
Oakes, James.
Paper Book
Freedom National is a groundbreaking history of emancipation that joins the political initiatives of Lincoln and the Republicans in Congress with the courageous actions of Union soldiers and runaway slaves in the South. It shatters the widespread conviction that the Civil War was first and...
The underground railroad : a novel
Whitehead, Colson
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * PULITZER PRIZE WINNER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * "An American masterpiece" (NPR) that chronicles a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South. One of The New York Times's 10...

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