Black History Month Featured Nonfiction

Updated January 29, 2026
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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. ...
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, a searingly...
Black ball : Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the generation that saved the soul of the NBA
Runstedtler, Theresa
Paper Book
A vital narrative history of 1970s pro basketball, and the Black players who shaped the NBA Against a backdrop of ongoing resistance to racial desegregation and strident calls for Black Power, the NBA in the 1970s embodied the nation's imagined descent into...
The Black box : writing the race
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.
Paper Book
A New York Times Notable Book * Shortlisted for the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Christian Gauss Award for Outstanding Books in Literary Scholarship "Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard...
The Black church : this is our story, this is our song
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr.
Paper Book
The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. "Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work." --Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again "Engaging. . . . In Gates's telling, the Black church shines bright...
Black folk could fly : selected writings
Kenan, Randall
Paper Book
A New York Times Notable Book A Book Riot Best Book of 2022 A personal, social, and intellectual self-portrait of the beloved and enormously influential late Randall Kenan, a master of both fiction and nonfiction. Virtuosic in his use of literary...
Black in blues : how a color tells the story of my people
Perry, Imani
Paper Book
A "vast, multifaceted and enchanting" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune) meditation on the color blue and its fascinating role in Black history and culture, from National Book Award winner Imani Perry, "the most important interpreter of Black life in our time" (Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.) ...
Black wings : courageous stories of African Americans in aviation and space history
Hardesty, Von
Paper Book
Colin Powell once observed that "a dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work." This sentiment is mirrored dramatically in the story of African Americans in aerospace history. The invention of the airplane in the first decade of...
Breath better spent : living Black girlhood
Hill, DaMaris B.
Paper Book
A Netgalley "Must-Read Books by Black Authors in 2022" From the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing comes a new book of narrative in verse that takes a personal and historical look at the experience of Black girlhood.<...
Built from the fire : the epic story of Tulsa's Greenwood district, America's Black Wall Street : one hundred years in the neighborhood that refused to be erased
Luckerson, Victor
Paper Book
A multigenerational saga of a family and a community in Tulsa's Greenwood district, known as "Black Wall Street," that in one century survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, urban renewal, and gentrification "Ambitious . . . absorbing . . . By the end of Luckerson's outstanding...
Driving while black : African American travel and the road to civil rights
Sorin, Gretchen Sullivan
Paper Book
The ultimate symbol of independence and possibility, the automobile has shaped this country from the moment the first Model T rolled off Henry Ford's assembly line. Yet cars have always held distinct importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by...
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...
HBCU made : a celebration of the black college experience
Rascoe, Ayesha
Paper Book
In this joyous essay collection edited by NPR's Ayesha Rascoe, celebrities and other alumni provide testimonials about their experience attending historically Black college universities-which shaped their lives and made them who they are today. With a diverse set...
The jazzmen : how Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie transformed America
Tye, Larry
Paper Book
From the New York Times bestselling author of Satchel and Bobby Kennedy, a sweeping and spellbinding portrait of the longtime kings of jazz--Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie--who, born within a few years of one another, overcame racist exclusion and...
King of the North : Martin Luther King Jr.'s life of struggle outside the South
Theoharis, Jeanne
Paper Book
A Ms. Magazine Most Anticipated Book Shortlisted 2025, Museum of African American History Stone Book Award From the New York Times bestselling author, a radical reframing of the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr. "Theoharis shows us...
The kneeling man : my father's life as a Black spy who witnessed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Seletzky, Leta McCollough
Paper Book
BCALA Literary Award Winner Finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award The intimate and heartbreaking story of a Black undercover police officer who famously kneeled by the assassinated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr--and a daughter's quest for the truth about her father...
Last seen : the enduring search by formerly enslaved people to find their lost families
Giesberg, Judith Ann
Paper Book
"[A] meticulously excavated tribute to the formerly enslaved mothers, fathers, siblings, and kin who published 'last seen' advertisements in search of loved ones stolen from them in bondage...a vital work of recovery." --Ilyon Woo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Master, Slave,...
The message
Coates, Ta-Nehisi
Paper Book
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The renowned author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell--and the ones we don't--shape our realities. "Ta-Nehisi Coates always writes with a...
The movement : the African American struggle for civil rights
Holt, Thomas C.
Paper Book
The civil rights movement was among the most important historical developments of the twentieth century and one of the most remarkable mass movements in American history. Not only did it decisively change the legal and political status of African Americans, but it prefigured as well the moral...
My black country : a journey through country music's black past, present, and future
Randall, Alice
Paper Book
Alice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter, and author presents "a celebration of all things country music" (Ken Burns) as she reflects on her search for the first family of Black country music. Country music had brought Alice Randall and her activist mother together and...
A soldier's life : a Black woman's rise from Army brat to Six Triple Eight champion
Cummings, Edna W.
Paper Book
One woman's extraordinary personal journey in the US military and her triumphant effort to honor her predecessors with the Congressional Gold Medal Looking back on her remarkable career, Retired Army Colonel Edna W. Cummings can justly say that "the odds ain't good,...
The swans of Harlem : five Black ballerinas, fifty years of sisterhood, and their reclamation of a groundbreaking history
Valby, Karen
Paper Book
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK * Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography * The forgotten story of a pioneering group of five Black ballerinas and their fifty-year sisterhood, a legacy erased from history--until now. "This is the kind...

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