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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 Powells, an independent, union labor bookstore. 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.
Beautiful Shades of Brown: The Art of Laura Wheeler Waring
By Nancy Churnin and Felicia Marshall (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)
Freedom's School
By Lesa Cline-Ransome, James E. Ransome (Illustrator)
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
By Nikki Giovanni, Alicia Vergel De Dios (Illustrator), Damian Ward (Illustrator)
Little Melba and Her Big Trombone
By Katheryn Russell-Brown
Love to Langston
By Tony Medina, R. Gregory Christie
Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl
By Tonya Bolden
New Shoes
By Susan Lynn Meyer
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)
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
The Vast Wonder of the World: Biologist Ernest Everett Just
By Mélina Mangal, Luisa Uribe (Illustrator)
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
Clemente!
By Willie Perdomo, Bryan Collier (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, Jerome Lagarrigue (Illustrator)
Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their lives and Dreams Brought to Life*
By Ashley Bryan, Ashley Bryan (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)
Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker
By Patricia Hruby Powell
Malcolm X: A Fire Burning Brightly
By Walter Dean Myers, Leonard Jenkins (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)
Sweethearts of Rhythm: The Story of the Greatest All-Girl Swing Band in the World
By Marilyn Nelson, Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator)
Thunder Rose
By Jerdine Nolen, Kadir Nelson (Illustrator)
Under the Freedom Tree
By Susan Vanhecke, London Ladd (Illustrator)
Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement*
By Carole Boston Weatherford
Chains
By Laurie Halse Anderson
Forty Acres and Maybe a Mule
By Harriette Gillem Robinet
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
Ship of Souls
By Zetta Elliott
Storm Warriors
By Elisa Carbone
A Wreath for Emmett Till
By Marilyn Nelson, Philippe Lardy (Illustrator)
Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage
By William Loren Katz
Brown Girl Dreaming
By Jacqueline Woodson
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)
Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March
By Lynda Blackmon Lowery
Warriors Don't Cry: The Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High
By Melba Pattillo Beals
We Are One: The Story of Bayard Rustin
By Larry Dane Brimner
We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball
By Kadir Nelson
47
By Walter Mosley
Black Boy
By Richard Wright
Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas
By Sam Durant (Editor), Emory Douglas (Illustrator), Bobby Seale (Foreword by)
The Black Panthers: Portraits from an Unfinished Revolution
By Bryan Shih, Yohuru Williams, Peniel E. Joseph (Introduction by)
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
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
The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba's Struggle for Freedom
By Margarita Engle
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