This selection of books is based upon real people, facts, and events that help paint a clearer picture of race relations in America. Click on the book title to be redirected to a site with a summary and reviews. A link has been provided if a free pdf of the book is available.
Between the World and Me | Ta-Nehisi Coates
The New Jim Crow | Michelle Alexander
Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption | Bryan Stevenson
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America | Ibram X. Kendi
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr. | Martin Luther King Jr.
The Autobiography of Malcom X | Malcolm X | pdf
Assata: An Autobiography | Assata Shakur | pdf
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass | Frederick Douglass | pdf
12 Years A Slave | Solomon Northup
The Fire Next Time | James Baldwin
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race | Jesmyn Ward
Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? | Mumia Abu-Jamal
Citizen: An American Lyric | Claudia Rankine
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? | Beverly Daniel Tatum
Race Matters | Cornel West | pdf
The Color of the Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America | Richard Rothstein
Heavy: An American Memoir | Kiese Laymon
Dreams From My Father | Barack Obama
Becoming | Michelle Obama
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoire | Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Asha Bandele, et al.
The Hidden Rules of Race: Barriers to An Inclusive Economy | Andrea Flynn, Susan R. Holmberg, Dorian T. Warren, Felicia J. Wong
The Race Card | Richard Thompson Ford
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America | James Forman Jr.
The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in America's Law Enforcement | Matthew Horace
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America | Elizabeth Hinton
Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower | Dr. Brittney Cooper
Freedom is A Constant Struggle | Angela Davis
Are Prisons Obsolete? | Angela Davis | pdf
Women, Race, and Class | Angela Davis | pdf
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Maya Angelou
Your Silence Will Not Protect You | Audre Lourde | poetry
Sister Outsider | Audre Lorde
Black is the Body | Emily Bernard
Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism | bell hooks | pdf
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color | Cherrie Moraga
The Souls of Black Folk | W.E.B. DuBois | pdf
Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil | W.E.B. DuBois | pdf
Black Skin, White Masks | Frantz Fanon | pdf
Wretched of the Earth | Frantz Fanon | pdf
Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" | Zura Neale Hurston
They Can't Kill Us All | Wesley Lowry
The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within U.S. Slave Culture | Vincent Woodard
Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People | Ben Crump
Men We Reaped | Jesmyn Ward
Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow | Leon F. Litwack
Black Like Me | John Howard Griffin
Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race | Debby Irving
I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness | Austin Channing Brown
American's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America | Jim Wallis
Racial Realities and Post-Racial Dreams: The Age of Obama and Beyond | Julius Bailey