Celebrate Juneteenth!
"History is always being revised, as new information, comes to light and when different people see known documents and have their own responses to them, shaped by their individual experiences." --Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth
For this Juneteenth, we're highlighting some famous books that elucidate the historical and cultural movements behind this important holiday.
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
Told in Wilkerson's incredible writing, the story of three individuals who's lives from 1915 to 1970 drastically changed from their cross-country moves upending their lives and everything they once knew.
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
With ninety writes and two incredible editors, this "community" history of African Americans spans centuries with the first slave ship all the way to 2019.
On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
Part history, part memoir, this incredible book details the history and origins of Juneteenth and tracing the trials and tribulations African-Americans have faced in the decades since.
Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Through the visual culture lens of the African-American experience during Jim Crow, scholar and filmmaker, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. examines why after Lincoln, America still needed Martin Luther King, Jr.
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
In this collection of essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates examines the repeat of power from Reconstruction-era black politicians ending in a return of white supremacist rule in the South, to the first black president ending with another return to white supremacy with the following election. These powerful essays capture Coates' story and voice through the historical and cultural movements around him.
A Black Women's History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross
IBy focusing on Black women's stories--freedwomen, enslaved women, activists, queer women, artists, and so many more--Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross give voices to the overlooked and often quieted histories of women who have suffered, endured, thrived, and surpassed.