The Best African American History Books You Need to Read

One of the greatest myths underpinning racism and white supremacy in America today is the idea that slavery is something that happened a long time ago and has no bearing on our lives in the 21st century. 

This “vivid, moving, and beautifully cadenced” (The New Yorker) book exposes the lie in that narrative while also shining a light on what the lives of slaves were really like, as told through oral histories with surviving former slaves commissioned by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s.

The Revolutionary War is often framed purely as a battle for American independence from Britain, but the role of Black soldiers fighting on both sides is often forgotten. For those who had been brought to the continent in chains, freedom was still a long way off. 

There were many Black soldiers who fought on the side of the British in exchange for promised freedoms, while others joined the revolution and a coalition of sailors pushed for emancipation. In this “fascinating” (Booklist) book that “pulls no punches” (Historian), Alan Gilbert asks us to rethink everything we think we know about the Revolutionary War.

The author of the New York Times bestselling A Night to Remember brings us another unforgettable history of an, unfortunately, less often-remembered moment. 

As air force veteran James H. Meredith became the first Black student to register at the previously segregated University of Mississippi in Oxford, racial tensions ignited riots that rocked the community and exposed the lingering poison of racism. 

In this definitive history of the events, Walter Lord examines the racial hatred at the root of the riot, its ties to Mississippi history, and how it continues to be felt across the country.

Emilie Frances Davis was a freeborn woman living in Philadelphia during the Civil War. Through three pocket diaries, she reveals a compelling snapshot of life for a kind of person we rarely hear about. 

These diaries alone are a rare and valuable historical artifact, but scholar Karsonya Wise Whitehead adds layers to them. She explores the role of women like Davis at the moment in which she lived, and how individuals of different economic and social classes weathered the Civil War era differently, providing historic insight and context that would be impossible without the aid of such direct, first-hand accounts.

This CASEY Award Finalist for Best Baseball Book of the Year showcases “one of the great untold stories about baseball history, one that almost sounds too good to be true” (Chicago Tribune). 

That story? The first integrated semipro baseball team, who played out of Bismark, North Dakota a decade before Jackie Robinson broke into the Major Leagues. 

The result? A book that is “required reading for anyone who loves baseball, who loves a vivid story well-told” (Philadelphia Daily News).

With so many stories told about the Titanic by now, can there be any more still to tell? Despite the attention that the sinking of that great ship has gotten over the years, much still remains misunderstood or forgotten. 

One such story is that of Joseph Laroche, one of the only Black passengers on the ship who was able to travel in first or second class. Related to not one but two Haitian presidents, Laroche was himself an engineer of no small renown who had worked on the Parisian railway. In this absorbing biography, Serge Bile tells the story of Laroche and how he came to be on the most infamous ship in all of history.

USA Today called Ethan Michaeli’s account of the history of The Chicago Defender, a black newspaper that decried Jim Crow and encouraged Black Americans in the South to join the Great Migration, an “epic, meticulously detailed account” that “not only reminds its readers that newspapers matter but so do black lives, past and present.” 

Beginning in 1905, the Defender was printed in Chicago and smuggled into some of the most isolated communities in the deep South, where formerly disenfranchised Black voters found new ways to make their voices heard.

Named a New York Times Notable Book, Candacy A. Taylor’s Green Book was published between 1936 and 1966 and hailed as the “black travel guide to America.” It offered hotels, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses that were safe for Black travelers. It is a “sweeping story of black travel within Jim Crow America across four decades” (The New York Times Book Review). 

The Green Book itself served as the inspiration for the Oscar-winning film of the same name in 2018, and for those who want to learn more about this fascinating piece of our nation’s history, there’s no better place to start than right here.

The history of the Civil Rights movement in America is inextricably tied up with the history of the Black Panther Party. In this “moving memoir experience” (Bobby Seale), Aaron Dixon, founder of the Party’s Seattle chapter, recounts his experiences during the Civil Rights movement. 

He marched alongside Martin Luther King, volunteered to help desegregate schools, and founded the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party when he was only 19. Through his eyes, we see history taking shape and experience the unforgettable legacy of the Civil Rights movement.

Former President Barack Obama once called Congressman James Clyburn “one of a handful of people who, when they speak, the entire Congress listens.” N

ow, in this “remarkably candid new memoir” (NPR), Clyburn shares the story of how he grew up in the Jim Crow South and beat the odds to become one of the most powerful people in Washington. Along the way, he paints a portrait not just of one man’s rise, but of America at a turning point, one which we still face today.

Katherine Franke has been called “one of the sharpest, most conscientious thinkers in progressive politics,” by Jelani Cobb, New Yorker columnist and author of The Substance of Hope. 

In this compelling new book, she makes the case for reparations to Black Americans by amplifying stories of the horrors of slavery and the promises that have not been kept. Through first-person accounts and persuasive arguments, Franke will make you look at the subject in a whole new light.