Black History Month

A collection of nonfiction books pertaining to Black History in the United States.

Updated January 11, 2024
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Half American : the epic story of African Americans fighting World War II at home and abroad
Delmont, Matthew F.
Paper Book
* Winner of the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction * A New York Times Notable Book * A Best Book of the Year from TIME, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Washington Independent Review of Books, and more! The definitive history of...
Footnotes : the Black artists who rewrote the rules of the Great White Way
Gaines, Caseen
Paper Book
The triumphant story of how an all-Black Broadway cast and crew changed musical theatre--and the world--forever. "This musical introduced Black excellence to the Great White Way. Broadway was forever changed and we, who stand on the shoulders of our brilliant ancestors, are charged with...
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 . . ....
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...
Colorization : one hundred years of Black films in a white world
Haygood, Wil
Paper Book
A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR * BOOKLISTS' EDITOR'S CHOICE * ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR "At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book.... Without a doubt, not only the very best film book [but] also one of the best books of the...
Barracoon : the story of the last "black cargo"
Hurston, Zora Neale
Paper Book
One of the New York Times' Most Memorable Literary Moments of the Last 25 Years!  * New York Times Bestseller *  TIME Magazine's Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 * New York Public Library's Best Book of 2018 * NPR's Book Concierge Best Book of 2018 * ...
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...
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...
Hidden figures : the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race
Lee Shetterly, Margot.
Paper Book
The #1 New York Times bestseller -WINNER OF ANISFIELD-WOLF AWARD FOR NONFICTION -WINNER BLACK CAUCUS OF AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION BEST NONFICTION BOOK -WINNER NAACP IMAGE AWARD BEST NONFICTION BOOK -WINNER NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES,...
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...
An Afro-Indigenous history of the United States
Mays, Kyle T.
Paper Book
The first intersectional history of the Black and Native American struggle for freedom in our country that also reframes our understanding of who was Indigenous in early America Beginning with pre-Revolutionary America and moving into the movement for Black lives and contemporary...
Illustrated Black history : honoring the iconic and the unseen
McCalman, George
Paper Book
*AWARD WINNER* of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work - Debut Author / and the NCBR Recognition Award A gorgeous collection of 145 original portraits that celebrates Black pioneers--famous and little-known--in politics, science, literature, music, and more-...
All that she carried : the journey of Ashley's sack, a black family keepsake
Miles, Tiya
Paper Book
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A renowned historian traces the life of a single object handed down through three generations of Black women to craft a "deeply layered and insightful" (The Washington Post) testament to people who are left out...
I never had it made
Robinson, Jackie
Paper Book
The color of law :
Rothstein, Richard,
Paper Book
In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation--that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions...
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...
Shine bright : a very personal history of black women in pop
Smith, Danyel
Paper Book
American pop music is arguably this country's greatest cultural contribution to the world, and its singular voice and virtuosity were created by a shining thread of Black women geniuses stretching back to the country's founding. This is their surprising, heartbreaking, soaring story--from ...
Driving while black : African American travel and the road to civil rights
Sorin, Gretchen Sullivan
Paper Book
The basis of a major PBS documentary by Gretchen Sorin and Ric Burns (first airing: October 13, 2020 at 9PM ET), this revelatory history shows how the automobile fundamentally changed African American life. It's hardly a secret that mobility has always been limited, if not impossible...
Africatown : America's last slave ship and the community it created
Tabor, Nick
Paper Book
An evocative and epic story, Nick Tabor's Africatown charts the fraught history of America from those who were brought here as slaves but nevertheless established a home for themselves and their descendants, a community which often thrived despite persistent racism and environmental...
The color of compromise :
Tisby, Jemar,
Paper Book
An acclaimed, timely narrative of how people of faith have historically--up to the present day--worked against racial justice. And a call for urgent action by all Christians today in response. The Color of Compromise is both enlightening and compelling, telling a history we either ignore...
The three mothers : how the mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin shaped a nation
Tubbs, Anna Malaika
Paper Book
New York Times Bestseller "This dynamic blend of biography and manifesto centers on Louise Little, Alberta King, and Berdis Baldwin . . . Tubbs's book stands against the women's erasure, a monument to their historical importance." --The New Yorker...
Medical Apartheid The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
Washington, Harriet A.
Paper Book
From the era of slavery to the present day, the first full history of black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. Medical Apartheidis the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on...

This title is available as an audiobook through OverDrive/Libby

Caste : the origins of our discontents
Wilkerson, Isabel
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NEW YORK TIMES READERS PICK: 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY * OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK * "An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far."--Dwight Garner, The New York Times
The warmth of other suns : the epic story of America's great migration
Wilkerson, Isabel.
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER * TIME'S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE * ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S FIVE BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY   "A brilliant and stirring epic . . . Ms. Wilkerson does for the...

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