Books you SHOULD be reading all year
created by wednesdaymourning
last updated February, 2026
Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology
Deirdre Cooper Owens
Legacy: Women Poets of the Harlem Renaissance
Nikki Grimes
This Is Your Time
Ruby Bridges
Facing Freedom: An African American Community in Virginia from Reconstruction to Jim Crow (The American South Series)
Daniel B. Thorp
Those Who Saw the Sun: African American Oral Histories from the Jim Crow South
Jaha Nailah Avery
Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South
Winfred Rembert
Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South
Beth Macy
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
Tiya Miles
Africatown: America's Last Slave Ship and the Community It Created
Nick Tabor
The Untold Life of Peter Lee: "born of slave parents, the property of Colonel John Stevens"
Holly Metz
The Narrative of Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth
Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House
Elizabeth Keckley
Twelve Years a Slave
Solomon Northup
The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row
Anthony Ray Hinton
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Harriet Ann Jacobs
It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation
M.K. Asante Jr.
Malcolm X: In His Own Words
Nathan Lee
A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School
Carlotta Walls LaNier
My Soul Is Rested: The Story of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South
Howell Raines
Oh, Freedom!: Kids Talk About the Civil Rights Movement with the People Who Made It Happen
Casey King
Freeman's Challenge: The Murder That Shook America's Original Prison for Profit
Robin Bernstein
Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present
Nell Irvin Painter
Buses Are a Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider
Charles Person
Invisible Boy: A Memoir of Self-Discovery
Harrison Mooney
A High Price for Freedom: Raising Hidden Voices from the African American Past
Clyde W. Ford
The War Within a War: The Black Struggle in Vietnam and at Home
Wil Haygood
The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women’s Magic
Lindsey Stewart
Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson
Tourmaline Tourmaline
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