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Here are titles on Black history for children, young adults, and educators. Teaching for Change carefully selects the best multicultural and social justice books for children, young adults, and educators. Learn about our criteria for selecting titles. Feedback on these lists and suggestions for additional titles are welcome.
Most of the books on these lists are linked for more information or purchase to Bookshop (an indie bookstore platform) and / or Powells.com (an independent, unionized bookstore). A small percentage from book sales through these links goes to Teaching for Change. Titles with reviews on this site are noted with an asterisk(*).
See more recommended titles on these lists: Civil Rights Teaching, Reconstruction, Slavery, Resistance, and Reparations
Find lessons and additional resources for teaching about African American history at the Zinn Education Project (coordinated by Teaching for Change and Rethinking Schools) and the website for Putting the Movement Back Into Civil Rights Teaching.
For information about D.C. Area Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action visit D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice.
All Different Now: Juneteenth, the First Day of Freedom
By Angela Johnson, E. B. Lewis (Illustrator)
Beautiful Shades of Brown: The Art of Laura Wheeler Waring
By Nancy Churnin and Felicia Marshall (Illustrator)
Charlie Takes His Shot: How Charlie Sifford Broke the Color Barrier in Golf
By Nancy Churnin and John Joven (Illustrator)
Child of the Civil Rights Movement*
By Paula Young Shelton, Raúl Colón (Illustrator)
Circle Unbroken: A Story of a Basket and Its People
By Margot Theis Raven, E. B. Lewis (Illustrator)
Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table
By Jacqueline Briggs Martin, Eric-Shabazz Larkin (Illustrator), Will Allen (Afterword by)
Free at Last: A Juneteenth Poem
By Sojourner Kincaid Rolle and Alex Bostic (Illustrator)
Freedom's School
By Lesa Cline-Ransome, James E. Ransome (Illustrator)
Go Forth and Tell: The Life of Augusta Baker, Librarian and Master Storyteller
By Breanna J. McDaniel
The Great Migration: Journey to the North*
By Eloise Greenfield, Jan Spivey Gilchrist (Illustrator)
Harlem's Little Blackbird
By Renee Watson, Christian Robinson (Illustrator)
Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat
Edited by Nikki Giovanni, Alicia Vergel De Dios (Illustrator), Damian Ward (Illustrator)
Ida B. Wells, Voice of Truth: Educator, Feminist, and Anti-Lynching Civil Rights Leader
By Michelle Duster and Laura Freeman (Illustrator)
The Light She Feels Inside
By Gwendolyn Wallace and Olivia Duchess (Illustrator)
Little Melba and Her Big Trombone
By Katheryn Russell-Brown
No Mirrors in My Nana's House
By Ysaye M. Barnwell, Synthia Saint James (Illustrator)
The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read
By Rita Lorraine Hubbard and Oge Mora (Illustrator)
Opening the Road: Victor Hugo Green and His Green Book
By Keila V. Dawson and Alleanna Harris (Illustrator)
Shirley Chisholm Dared: The Story of the First Black Woman in Congress
By Alicia D. Williams and April Harrison (Illustrator)
Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down
By Andrea Davis Pinkney, Brian Pinkney (Illustrator)
Someday Is Now: Clara Luper and the 1958 Oklahoma City Sit-ins
By Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, Jade Johnson (Illustrator)
So Tall Within: Sojourner Truth's Long Walk Toward Freedom
By Gary Schmidt, Daniel Mintor (Illustrator)
Sprouting Wings: The True Story of James Herman Banning, the First African American Pilot to Fly Across the United States
By Louisa Jaggar, Shari Becker, and Floyd Cooper (Illustrator)
Sugar Hill: Harlem's Historic Neighborhood
By Carole Boston Weatherford, R. Gregory Christie (Illustrator)
Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt
By Deborah Hopkinson
Tea Cakes for Tosh*
By Kelly Starling Lyons
This Is the Rope: A Story from the Great Migration
By Jacqueline Woodson
When the Beat Was Born: DJ Kool Herc and the Creation of Hip Hop*
By Laban Carrick Hill, Theodore Taylor (Illustrator)
Zora Hurston and the Chinaberry Tree
By William Miller, Cornelius Van Wright
Bayou Magic
By Jewell Parker Rhodes
Before John Was a Jazz Giant: A Song of John Coltrane
By Carole Boston Weatherford, Sean Qualls (Illustrator)
Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues
By Patricia C. McKissack, Fredrick McKissack, Jr.
Blues Journey
By Christopher Myers
The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth & Harlem's Greatest Bookstore
By Vaunda Micheaux Nelson
Call Me Miss Hamilton: One Woman's Case for Equality and Respect *
By Carole Boston Weatherford and Jeffery Boston Weatherford (Illustrator)
Choosing Brave: How Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till Sparked the Civil Rights Movement *
By Angela Joy and Janelle Washington (Illustrator)
A Day for Rememberin' Inspired by the True Events of the First Memorial Day
By Leah Henderson and Floyd Cooper (Illustrator)
Dayshaun's Gift
By Zetta Elliott, Alex Portal (Illustrator)
Ellington Was Not a Street
By Ntozake Shange, Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)
Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins
By Carole Boston Weatherford and Jerome Lagarrigue (Illustrator)
Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their lives and Dreams Brought to Life*
By Ashley Bryan, Ashley Bryan (Illustrator)
Going Places: Victor Hugo Green and His Glorious Book
By Tonya Bolden and Eric Velasquez (Illustrator)
Granddaddy's Turn: A Journey to the Ballot Box
By Michael S. Bandy, Eric Stein, James Ransome (Illustrator)
Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad
By Ellen Levine, Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)
How Do You Spell Unfair? MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee *
By Carole Boston Weatherford and Frank Morrison (Illustrator)
Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker
By Patricia Hruby Powell
Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston
By Alicia D. Williams and Jacqueline Alcántara (Illustrator)
Lizzie Demands a Seat! Elizabeth Jennings Fights for Streetcar Rights
By Beth Anderson and E. B. Lewis (Illustrator)
Mae Makes a Way: The True Story of Mae Reeves, Hat & History Maker
By Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and Andrea Pippins (Illustrator)
Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly
By Walter Dean Myers, Leonard Jenkins (Illustrator)
Moving Forward: From Space-Age Rides to Civil Rights Sit-Ins with Airman Alton Yates
By Chris Barton and Steffi Walthall (Illustrator)
Mumbet's Declaration of Independence *
By Gretchen Woelfle, Alix Delinois (Illustrator)
Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton*
By Don Tate
The Price of Freedom: How One Town Stood Up to Slavery
By Dennis Brindell Fradin, Judith Bloom Fradin, Eric Velasquez (Illustrator)
Richard Wright and the Library Card
By William Miller, R. Gregory Christie
Rosa
By Nikki Giovanni, Bryan Collier (Illustrator)
Step by Step! How the Lincoln School Marchers Blazed a Trail to Justice
By Debbie Rigaud, Carlotta Penn
Read: “Marching Mothers” Sue to Desegregate Schools
There Was a Party for Langston
By Jason Reynolds, Jerome Pumphrey (Illustrator), and Jarrett Pumphrey (Illustrator)
Thunder Rose
By Jerdine Nolen, Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)
Under the Freedom Tree
By Susan Vanhecke, London Ladd (Illustrator)
The Vast Wonder of the World: Biologist Ernest Everett Just
By Mélina Mangal and Luisa Uribe (Illustrator)
Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement*
By Carole Boston Weatherford
When the Schools Shut Down: A Young Girl's Story of Virginia's Lost Generation and the Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka Decision
By Pizzoli Tamara, Yolanda Gladden, and Keisha Morris (Illustrator)
Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule
By Harriette Gillem Robinet
Leaving Lymon
By Lesa Cline-Ransome
Let the Circle Be Unbroken
By Mildred D. Taylor
Mississippi Bridge
By Mildred D. Taylor
Ninth Ward
By Jewell Parker Rhodes
Old African
By Julius Lester
The Rock and the River
By Kekla Magoon
A Wreath for Emmett Till
By Marilyn Nelson, Philippe Lardy (Illustrator)
Across the Tracks: Remembering Greenwood, Black Wall Street, and the Tulsa Race Massacre
By Alverne Ball and Stacey Robinson (Illustrator)
Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage
By William Loren Katz
Brown Girl Dreaming
By Jacqueline Woodson
Defiant: Growing Up in the Jim Crow South
By Wade Hudson
Video with author: Wade Hudson on Defiant: Growing Up in the Jim Crow South
Emancipation Proclamation: Lincoln and the Dawn of Liberty
By Tonya Bolden
Frederick Douglass: From Slavery to Statesman
By Henry Elliot
Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom
By Virginia Hamilton, Leo Dillon (Illustrator), Diane Dillon (Illustrator)
March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine
By Melba Pattillo Beals, Frank Morrison (Illustrator)
Race Against Time: The Untold Story of Scipio Jones and the Battle to Save Twelve Innocent Men
By Sandra Neil Wallace and Rich Wallace
Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March
By Lynda Blackmon Lowery
Teaching Story from a D.C. Educator: Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom
Warriors Don't Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High
By Melba Pattillo Beals
We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball
By Kadir Nelson
Black Boy
By Richard Wright
The Black Panthers: Portraits from an Unfinished Revolution
By Bryan Shih, Yohuru Williams, Peniel E. Joseph (Introduction by)
The Burning: Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921
By Tim Madigan, adapted for young people by Hilary Beard
Dust Tracks on a Road
By Zora Neale Hurston
Growing Up in Slavery: Stories of Young Slaves as Told by Themselves
By Yuval Taylor (Editor), Kathleen Judge (Illustrator)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
By Maya Angelou
Lighting the Fires of Freedom: African American Women in the Civil Rights Movement
By Janet Dewart Bell
Malcolm X for Beginners
By Bernard Aquina Doctor
Malcolm X on Afro-American History
By Malcolm X
No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller
By Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, R. Gregory Christie (Illustrator)
The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano
By Margarita Engle, Sean Qualls (Illustrator)
The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks: Young Readers Edition *
By Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert
Selma, Lord, Selma: Girlhood Memories of the Civil Rights Days
By Frank Webb Sikora
Warriors Don't Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High
By Melba Pattillo Beals
Freedoms Unfinished Revolution: An Inquiry Into the Civil War & Reconstruction
By William Friedheim, Joshua Brown