Centering Black Stories

We are making a commitment to decenter whiteness, and decolonize the ways in which our country has rooted its systems, in order to amplify Black voices and stories. We offer the reading list below as part of our commitment to tell, honor and center the stories of Black and African American people. Black Lives Matter.

Older Readers

The Hate U Give by Angi Thomas

March: Book Three by John Lewis

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

X: A Novel by Ilyasah Shabazz

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo, PhD

A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Darius & Twig by Walter Dean Myers

Hidden Figures Young Readers’ Edition by Margot Lee Shetterly

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor

Stella by Starlight by Sharon M. Draper

Younger Readers

A Poem for Peter by Andrea Davis Pinkney, Illustrated by Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson

Firebird by Misty Copeland and Christopher Myers

Ghost by Jason Reynolds

If A Bus Could Talk: The Story of Rosa Parks by Faith Ringgold

Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña, Illustrated by Christian Robinson

Let’s Talk About Race by Julius Lester

Lillian’s Right to Vote by Jonah Winter

The Other Side by Jacqueline Woodson

One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia

Ruth and the Green Book by Calvin Alexander Ramsey

Separate Is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation by Duncan Tonatiuh

The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats

The Story Of Ruby Bridges by Robert Coles

This Is the Rope: A Story From the Great Migration by Jacqueline Woodson, Illustrated by James Ransome

We Troubled the Waters by Ntozake Shange

White Flour by David LaMotte