History and Culture of Race Resource Guide

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s Racism without Racist. This book explores the type of racism that exists in contemporary America. More specifically, the author defines this new type of racism as "color-blind racism" because it involves the perpetuation of white dominance and privilege in a more passive way than racism was carried out in the past, and often those who display color-blind racism think they are not racist.

Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought. In this outstanding volume, the author explores the words and ideas of Black feminist intellectuals as well as those African-American women outside academe. The author provides an interpretive framework for the work of such prominent Black feminist thinkers as Angela Davis, bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Audre Lorde.

Angela Davis’ Women, Race, and Class. In this classic book, the author creates a powerful study of the women's liberation movement in the United States, from abolitionist days to the present, which demonstrates how it has always been hampered by the racist and classist biases of its leaders.

Bell Hooks’ Killing Rage. In this powerful volume, the author argues that eradicating racism and sexism must go hand in hand.

Martin
Luther King, Jr’s Why We Can’t Wait.
In this classic book, the author explores, in great details, the various events
and forces behind the Civil Rights Movement, especially the situation that led
to the author’s writing of the “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man. This classic book examines the plight of a nameless narrator of the novel whodescribes growing up in a Black American community in the South, attending a Historically-Black college from which he is expelled, moves to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood,” and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the “invisible man” he imagines himself to be.

Toni Morrison’s Beloved. In this emotional story, Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened.

Mamie Till-Mosley’s Death of the Innocence.
In this powerful and emotional book, the author displays the mother of Emmett
Till recounting the story of her life, her son’s tragic death, and the dawn of
the civil rights movement.

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. In this powerful and emotional book, the author, a brilliant lawyer, tell a true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of criminal justice.

Carter G. Woodson’s The Miseducation of the Negro. First published in 1933, this class study illustrates that Black Americans of his day were being culturally indoctrinated, rather than taught, in American schools. This conditioning, the author concludes, caused Black Americans to become dependent and to seek out inferior places in the greater society of which they are a part.

Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration.  Vintage, 2011. A historical study of the Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award among other accolades.

Dave Zirin’s What's My Name Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States. Haymarket Books, 2005. 

A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America  

Sharon Draper’s Copper Sun. This book displays the epic story of a young girl who is torn from her African village, sold into enslavement, and stripped of everything she has ever known, except hope.

Vanessa Brantley-Newton’s Grandma’s Purse.
In this charming picture book, the author shows that when Grandma Mimi comes to
visit, she always brings warm hugs, sweet treats, and her purse for her special
her granddaughter.

Cheryl Willis Hudson’s We Rise We Resist We Raise Our Voices. In this captivating volume, the author collects the writings and views of fifty of the foremost diverse children's authors and illustrators to answers the question – “In this divisive world, what shall we tell our children?"

Varian Johnson’s What were the Negro Leagues.
This outstanding book chronicles the history of the “Negro” Baseball leagues.

Jelani Memory’s A Kids Book about Racism.
In this book you will find a clear description of what racism is, how it makes
people feel when they experience it, and how to spot it when it happens.

Lupita Nyong’o’ Sulwe. In this critically-acclaimed book, the author follows the story of a young girl who wishes for her dark skin to be lighter. The story is ultimately about colorism and learning to love oneself, no matter one's skin tone.

Jason Reynolds and Ibram X Kendi’s Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You. This book helps us better understand why we are where we are based on the issue of race.

Margot Lee Shetterly’s Hidden Figures.
This book tells the phenomenal true story of the Black American female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space.

Megan Stine’s Who is Michelle Obama.
This book chronicles the life story of First Lady Michelle Obama.

Rita Williams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer.
This inspirational book tells the story of three sisters who travel to Oakland, California, in 1968 to meet the mother who abandoned them.

A Different Mirror for Young People: A History of Multicultural America (For Young People Series)