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William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) is the greatest of African American intellectuals--a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation's history from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, Du Bois penned his epochal masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work;...
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"'The only way to undo racism is to consistently identify and describe it -- and then dismantle it.' Ibram X. Kendi's concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America -- but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi asks us to think about what an antiracist society might look like, and how we can play an...
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This adaptation of Ibram X. Kendi's "Stamped From the Beginning" explores the history of racist ideas in America by examining the lives of notable historical figures, from Cotton Mather and Thomas Jefferson to W.E.B. Du Bois and Angela Davis. Discusses how racist ideas spread and how they are also discredited.
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS
In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World).
“Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison
In...
In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World).
“Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison
In...
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"For Ta-Nehisi Coates, history has always been personal. At every stage of his life, he's sought in his explorations of history answers to the mysteries that surrounded him--most urgently, why he, and other black people he knew, seemed to live in fear ... In [this book], Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings--moments when he discovered some new truth...
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"This play about a young white boy and two African servants is at once a compelling drama of South African apartheid and a universal coming-of-age story. Originally produced in 1982, it is now an acknowledged classic of the stage, whose themes of injustice, racism, friendship, and reconciliation traverse borders and time"--Amazon.com.
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In his first novel in ten years, Ernest Gaines, the highly acclaimed author of the best-selling The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, brings us a wrenching story of death and identity in a small Cajun Louisiana community in the late 1940s. A young black named Jefferson is a reluctant party in a shoot-out in a liquor store in which the three other men involved are all killed, including the white store owner. Jefferson, the only survivor, is accused...
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Children's and Middle Grade Novels in Spanish and English/Novelas juveniles en español e inglés
Nashville Reads 2023: Celebrating Our Freedom to Read!
Nashville Reads 2023: Celebrating Our Freedom to Read!
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Young Cassie Logan endures humiliation and witnesses the horrors of a KKK cross-burning rampage before she fully understands the importance her family places on having land of their own.
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"When Rowan finds a skeleton on her family's property, investigating the brutal, century-old murder leads to painful discoveries about the past. Alternating chapters tell the story of William, another teen grappling with the racial firestorm leading up to the 1921 Tulsa race riot, providing some clues to the mystery"--
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11th-12th Grade Reading
ALA Youth Media Award Winners 2023
Nashville Reads 2024 | The Works of Jason Reynolds
ALA Youth Media Award Winners 2023
Nashville Reads 2024 | The Works of Jason Reynolds
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"A smash up of art and text that viscerally captures what it is to be Black. In America. Right Now"--
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Lena and Campbell, two high school girls with different styles and social circles are thrown together when a massive fight at a football game leads to a riot as racial tension heats up. The two form an unlikely friendship and both learn about different points of view from living in different parts of the same city.
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Baldwin's early essays have been described as 'an unequalled meditation on what it means to be Black in America'. This rich and stimulating collection contains 'Fifth Avenue, Uptown: a Letter from Harlem', polemical pieces on the tragedies inflicted by racial segregation and a poignant account of his first journey to 'the Old Country', the southern states. Yet equally compelling are his 'Notes for a Hypothetical Novel' and personal reflections on...
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Perry Wallace was born at an historic crossroads in U.S. history. He entered kindergarten the year that the Brown v. Board of Education decision led to integrated schools, allowing blacks and whites to learn side by side. A week after Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, Wallace enrolled in high school and his sensational jumping, dunking, and rebounding abilities quickly earned him the attention of college basketball recruiters from...
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Examines the events leading up the Charlottesville protests in August of 2017 in which members of the Unite the Right movement took to the streets to protest the removal of a Confederate statue. The rally broke out into violence resulting in the death of one protester. Discusses the events that led up to the alt-right rally, the counter-protests, the police presence, and responses from community leaders and politicians. Also contains sidebars that...
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Pudd'nhead Wilson begins with a young slave woman taking her light-skinned child -- fearing for his life -- and exchanging him with her master's child. Like much of Twain, the tale becomes an indictment of racial prejudice in the antebellum south, full of Twain's gentle yet sharp-elbowed humor.
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"In 1956, one year before federal troops escorted the Little Rock 9 into Central High School, fourteen year old Jo Ann Allen was one of twelve African-American students who broke the color barrier and integrated Clinton High School in Tennessee. At first things went smoothly for the Clinton 12, but then outside agitators interfered, pitting the townspeople against one another. Uneasiness turned into anger, and even the Clinton Twelve themselves wondered...
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9th-10th Grade Reading
Anti-Racist Non-fiction: YA
High School Battle of the Books - 2022-23
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Anti-Racist Non-fiction: YA
High School Battle of the Books - 2022-23
More Lists...
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"In the early morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob marched across the train tracks in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and into its predominantly Black Greenwood District--a thriving, affluent neighborhood known as America's Black Wall Street. They brought with them firearms, gasoline, and explosives. In a few short hours, they'd razed thirty-five square blocks to the ground, leaving hundreds dead. The Tulsa Race Massacre is one of the most devastating acts of racial...
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Meticulously researched and drawn from numerous primary sources, this biography-in-verse tells the story of racism in the U.S. through six important Black Americans from different eras who struggled for justice, chronicling how much--and how little---racism has changed since our country's founding.