Teach the Black Freedom Struggle Class Titles

The Zinn Education Project (coordinated by Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change) hosts a monthly class for educators with people's historians on the Black Freedom Struggle. Check out recordings from past sessions and sign up for upcoming sessions.

Here are the titles addressed by the historians and journalists who have presented to date.

Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands

By Kelly Lytle Hernández

Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War

By Howard W. French

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A Hip-Hop History (Young Adult Edition)

By Jeff Chang and Dave "Davey D" Cook

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision

By Barbara Ransby

Fugitive Pedagogy: Carter G. Woodson and the Art of Black Teaching

By Jarvis R Givens

Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad

By Matthew F. Delmont

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

By Clint Smith

I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction

By Kidada E. Williams

I've Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land

By Alaina E. Roberts

I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle

By Charles M. Payne

Julian Bond's Time to Teach: A History of the Southern Civil Rights Movement

By Julian Bond and Danny Lyon (Photographer)

Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice

By Bryan Stevenson

The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World

By Dave Zirin

Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression

By Robin D. G. Kelley

A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

By Jeanne Theoharis

A People's History of Sports in the United States: 250 Years of Politics, Protest, People, and Play

By Dave Zirin

"Prisons Make Us Safer" And 20 Other Myths about Mass Incarceration

By Victoria Law

Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era

By Ashley D. Farmer

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks

By Jeanne Theoharis

The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks: Young Readers Edition

By Jeanne Theoharis and Brandy Colbert

The Revolution Has Come: Black Power, Gender, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland

By Robyn C. Spencer

Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom

By Keisha N. Blain

The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition

By Manisha Sinha

They Left Great Marks on Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I

By Kidada E. Williams

Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State

By Garrett Felber

To 'joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War

By Tera W. Hunter

Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation

By Linda Villarosa

Until Justice Be Done: America's First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

By Kate Masur

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers Won the Vote & Insisted on Equality for All

By Martha S. Jones

Want to Start a Revolution? Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle

Edited by Jeanne Theoharis, Komozi Woodard, and Dayo F. Gore

The Young Lords: A Radical History

By Johanna Fernandez

Learn about our criteria for selecting titles at Social Justice Books. 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.

If you value this book list, please help us promote it and create more book lists.

Donate Today