Non-Fiction
Mules and Men
Tell My Horse
Dust Tracks on a Road
(autobiography)
Slave Narratives & Other Non-Fiction
The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots by John Swanson Jacobs
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Ann Jacobs
Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People by Tiya Miles
They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rodgers
Biography
Harriet Jacobs: A Life by Jean Fagan Yellin
Longform Journalism
The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones & The New York Times Magazine
Selected Works of Zora Neal Hurston
Non Fiction
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood and the Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History by Karen Valby
How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith
Pauli Murray: A Personal and Political Life by Troy R. Saxby
Jane Crow by Pauli Murray
The Sum of Us: What Racism Cost Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee
Barbara Jordan: American Hero by Mary Beth Rogers
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Anthologies
The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader, edited by David Levering Lewis
A Glimpse Into The Black Experience in the United States
Fiction
The Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
Native Son by Richard Wright
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Passing by Nella Larsen (also a 2021 film on Netflix)
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Novels
Jonah’s Gourd Vine
Their Eyes were Watching God
Moses, Man of the Mountain
Additional Recommended Reading
Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo
A novel based on the true story of Ellen, a fair skin black woman, and William Craft, who in 1848 disguised themselves as a disabled white man and his black manservant and traveled from Georgia to Philadelphia.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
The novel begins with two Ghanaian sisters who lead parallel, yet divergent lives: one stays in Ghana and becomes a wealthy slave traders’ wife; one is sold into slavery and sent to America.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
A slave escapes a Georgia plantation and makes her way toward freedom, suffering horrifying setbacks along the way.
Movies about this time period
Rustin (2023), on Netflix
Selma (2014), on Amazon Prime
Marshall (2017), on YouTube
Mississippi Burning (1988), on YouTube