Fiction
Beloved
Toni Morrison
A mother and daughter reckon with the afterlife of slavery in a house haunted by a child’s return.
Collection
Black History & Heritage
Read histories and firsthand accounts of freedom, institution-building, migration, and resistance.
The shelves
Books in this collection
Music history
The Chitlin' Circuit
Preston Lauterbach
Lauterbach follows the promoters, musicians, and venues that sustained Black touring circuits.
Reference
The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia
Gerald L. Smith, Karen Cotton McDaniel, John A. Hardin
A reference work brings together people, institutions, and events in Black Kentucky history.
History
The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935
James D. Anderson
A study of who built, financed, and contested Black education across the post-emancipation South.
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.
History
Self-Taught
Heather Andrea Williams
The book follows Black people’s pursuit of reading and schooling before, during, and after the Civil War.
Oral history
Freedom on the Border
Catherine Fosl, Tracy E. K'Meyer
Kentuckians’ oral histories illuminate the work of challenging segregation across the state.
Fiction
A Mercy
Toni Morrison
Multiple voices illuminate a household in the unsettled world of seventeenth-century colonial America.
Essays
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin
Two essays examine faith, racial power, and the obligations Americans owe one another.
Oral history
Barracoon
Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston records Cudjo Lewis’s account of captivity, the Atlantic crossing, and life in Africatown.
Speculative fiction
Kindred
Octavia E. Butler
A Black writer is repeatedly pulled from twentieth-century California to a Maryland plantation.
History
The Warmth of Other Suns
Isabel Wilkerson
Three lives trace the distinct routes and consequences of the Great Migration.
History
Caste
Isabel Wilkerson
Wilkerson compares inherited hierarchies across societies to examine how inequality is made durable.
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.
Memoir
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Douglass describes enslavement, his pursuit of literacy, and his emergence as an abolitionist.
Memoir
My Bondage and My Freedom
Frederick Douglass
Douglass revisits the details of his enslavement and expands on his life in the abolitionist movement.
Memoir
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Harriet Jacobs
Jacobs recounts exploitation, years spent in hiding, and her efforts to secure freedom for her children.
Memoir
Up from Slavery
Booker T. Washington
Washington recounts his path from enslavement to leadership at Tuskegee and sets out his educational philosophy.
Essays
The Mis-Education of the Negro
Carter G. Woodson
Woodson asks what schooling teaches Black students to believe about themselves and their history.
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
Trouble in Mind
Leon F. Litwack
Oral histories and contemporary records trace how Black Southerners lived through the rise of Jim Crow.
History
From Slavery to Freedom
John Hope Franklin
A broad historical survey provides context for the institutions and struggles behind local stories.
History
The Half Has Never Been Told
Edward E. Baptist
A study of slavery’s expansion and the role coerced labor played in American economic growth.
History
The New Jim Crow
Michelle Alexander
Alexander traces the legal and political machinery of mass incarceration and its consequences after sentencing.
History
How the Word Is Passed
Clint Smith
Visits to historic sites and memorials ask how public institutions tell the story of American slavery.
History
The 1619 Project
Nikole Hannah-Jones
Essays, poems, and fiction explore slavery’s place in American institutions and historical memory.
History
The Other Slavery
Andrés Reséndez
A historical study traces the enslavement of Indigenous people across the Americas and its persistence after bans.
History
Stamped from the Beginning
Ibram X. Kendi
Five historical figures provide points of entry into changing ideas about race and their political uses.
History
Black Against Empire
Joshua Bloom, Waldo E. Martin Jr.
A history of the Black Panther Party follows its organizing strategies and the pressures that weakened it.
Memoir
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X, Alex Haley
Malcolm X recounts the institutions, encounters, and journeys that transformed his political and religious life.
Memoir
Assata
Assata Shakur
Shakur recounts her upbringing, political organizing, imprisonment, and experiences with the legal system.
Graphic memoir
March: Book One
John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, Nate Powell
The first volume traces Lewis’s childhood and the organizing that led to the Nashville lunch-counter sit-ins.
Memoir
Walking with the Wind
John Lewis, Michael D'Orso
Lewis recalls the practical training, collective decisions, and personal risks behind movement campaigns.
Fiction
The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963
Christopher Paul Curtis
A Michigan family’s visit to Birmingham brings a child’s perspective to an era of racial violence.
Fiction
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Mildred D. Taylor
Cassie Logan watches her Mississippi family defend the land and independence they have worked to hold.
History
Heart and Soul
Kadir Nelson
A family-story voice and paintings guide readers through major chapters in African American history.
Poetry
Turn Me Loose
Frank X Walker
Poems use distinct voices to consider the killing of Medgar Evers and the persistence of public memory.
Memoir
Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave
William Wells Brown
Brown describes enslavement and escape, illuminating a life that began near Lexington and led into abolitionism.
Fiction
Conjure Women
Afia Atakora
A mother and daughter practice healing in a community struggling through the transition from slavery to freedom.
Essays
South to America
Imani Perry
Perry travels across the South to consider how the region’s places and contradictions shape the nation.
History
The Negro in the Making of America
Benjamin Quarles
Quarles traces African American participation in the making of American political and social institutions.