Oral history
Barracoon
Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston records Cudjo Lewis’s account of captivity, the Atlantic crossing, and life in Africatown.
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9 books
Fiction
Beloved
Toni Morrison
A mother and daughter reckon with the afterlife of slavery in a house haunted by a child’s return.
History
Black Reconstruction in America
W. E. B. Du Bois
Du Bois centers Black workers and political participation in an account of Reconstruction and its overthrow.
Fiction
Conjure Women
Afia Atakora
A mother and daughter practice healing in a community struggling through the transition from slavery to freedom.
Poetry
Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride
Frank X Walker
A poetry sequence approaches the life of the celebrated Black jockey through imagined voices.
History
Schooling the Freed People
Ronald E. Butchart
A history of the teachers and institutions that helped build schools in the first decades after emancipation.
History
Self-Taught
Heather Andrea Williams
The book follows Black people’s pursuit of reading and schooling before, during, and after the Civil War.
Essays
The Souls of Black Folk
W. E. B. Du Bois
Du Bois explores emancipation’s aftermath, segregated education, and the experience he calls double consciousness.
Memoir
Up from Slavery
Booker T. Washington
Washington recounts his path from enslavement to leadership at Tuskegee and sets out his educational philosophy.