Black History month is celebrated in February in the United States. While many would agree African-American history shouldn't have just one month devoted to it and black history is American history, the idea has grown significantly from its origins in the 1970s and in 2020 much of corporate America is involved in the celebration, including Coca Cola and Google.
If you’re looking to start reading yourself in to the contribution of African-Americans to the cultural and political life of the United States, then this is a good place to start. The cultural and legal historian, Imani Perry, professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, chooses her top African American history books. She talks about the challenges of writing the history of people who have lived a marginalised existence and explains that her work is not an act of dry academic scholarship, but driven by a desire to bring to life past suffering and find the roots of a more just society.
Farah Jasmine Griffin, Professor of English and Comparative literature and of African-American studies at Columbia University, chooses the best African American literature and discusses the scope of African-American literature, defining it as “literature about the limitations and possibilities of black life in a nation where white supremacy still reigns.”
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1
Festivals of Freedom: Memory and Meaning in African American Emancipation Celebrations, 1808-1915
by Mitch Kachun -
2
Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery
by Barbara Krauthamer & Deborah Willis -
3
Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South
by Stephanie Camp -
4
To 'Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War
by Tera Hunter -
5
A Black Women's History of the United States
by Daina Berry & Kali Gross
The Best Books for Juneteenth, recommended by Barbara Krauthamer
The Best Books for Juneteenth, recommended by Barbara Krauthamer
June 19th, or ‘Juneteenth,’ is a holiday commemorating the final end of slavery in the United States. Professor Barbara Krauthamer, a leading historian of African American slavery and emancipation, talks us through its significance down the decades and which books to read to get a better understanding of what it’s all about.
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1
Black Reconstruction in America
by WEB Du Bois -
2
Exodus: Religion, Race and Nation in Early Nineteenth-Century Black America
by Eddie S Glaude Jr -
3
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression
by Robin D G Kelley -
4
Hands on the Freedom of the Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC
Faith S. Holsaert, Martha Prescod, and others (eds.) -
5
Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present
by Nell Irvin Painter
African American History Books, recommended by Imani Perry
African American History Books, recommended by Imani Perry
Princeton Professor Imani Perry—a prolific scholar of African American Studies whose biography of Lorraine Hansberry, Looking For Lorraine, won the 2019 PEN Biography Prize—recommends five books she considers essential to an understanding of the history of black life in America.
The Best African American Literature, recommended by Farah Jasmine Griffin
An ever-growing body of authors are writing about the reality of what it means to be black in America, says Farah Jasmine Griffin, director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University. Here she recommends five works of African American literature, from greats like Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison to lesser-known gems by Ann Petry.
