Defend Black History: A Reading List
The racist governor of Florida continues to escalate his attacks on the freedom to learn and teach history. We at Haymarket stand in solidarity with all those in Florida and across the country who are organizing to resist. We know that the books we publish are dangerous to those in power, especially when they are in the hands of those who are organizing to fight for liberation. That’s why we publish them. That's why they’re trying to ban them.
In light of this recent round of attacks on the freedom to read, we’ve made three ebooks free to download, and are raising funds to help us send hundreds of free books to young people in Florida.
In addition, we've put together this reading list of indispensable books on Black history and politics, all 40% Off as part of our Black history month sale.
“This brilliant book is the best analysis we have of the #BlackLivesMatter moment of the long struggle for freedom in America. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has emerged as the most sophisticated and courageous radical intellectual of her generation.” —Dr. Cornel West
The Chicago Race Riot of 1919, the most intense of the riots comprising the nation’s Red Summer, has shaped the last century but is not widely discussed. In 1919, award-winning poet Eve L. Ewing explores the story of this event—which lasted eight days and resulted in thirty-eight deaths and almost 500 injuries—through poems recounting the stories of everyday people trying to survive and thrive in the city.
Black Lives Matter at School succinctly generalizes lessons from successful challenges to institutional racism that have been won through the Black Lives Matter at School movement. This book will inspire many more educators and activists to join the Black Lives Matter at School movement at a moment when this antiracist work in our schools could not be more urgent and critical to education justice.
Written with award-winning sportswriter Dave Zirin, Super Bowl Champion Michael Bennet’s Things That Make White People Uncomfortable is a sports book for young people who want to make a difference, a memoir, and a book as hilarious and engaging as it is illuminating.
A conservative, bipartisan consensus dominates the discussion about what’s wrong with our schools and how to fix them. It offers “solutions” that scapegoat teachers, vilify unions, and impose a market mentality. But in each case, students lose. This book, written by teacher-activists, speaks back to that elite consensus and offers an alternative vision of learning for liberation.
In this urgent and incisive collection of new interviews bookended by two new essays, Marc Lamont Hill critically examines the “pre-existing conditions” that have led us to this moment of crisis and upheaval, guiding us through both the perils and possibilities, and helping us imagine an abolitionist future.
In these newly collected essays, interviews, and speeches, world-renowned activist and scholar Angela Y. Davis illuminates the connections between struggles against state violence and oppression throughout history and around the world.
Told with warmth, brilliance, humor and conviction, Angela Davis’s autobiography is a classic account of a life in struggle with echoes in our own time.
Black Panther and Cuban exile Assata Shakur has inspired generations of radical protest, including the contemporary movement for Black lives. Drawing its title from one of America's foremost revolutionaries, this collection of thought-provoking essays by award-winning Black Panther Party scholar Donna Murch explores how social protest is challenging our current system of state violence and mass incarceration.
By rejecting elitist identity politics in favor of a constructive politics of radical solidarity, Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò advances the possibility of organizing across our differences in the urgent struggle for a better world.
"If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free." —Combahee River Collective Statement
Katherine Franke makes a powerful case for reparations for Black Americans by amplifying the stories of formerly enslaved people and calling for repair of the damage caused by the legacy of American slavery.
How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America is a classic study of the intersection of racism and class in the United States. It has become a standard text for courses in American politics and history, and has been central to the education of thousands of political activists since the 1980s.
Gary Younge explains why Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech maintains its powerful social relevance by sharing the dramatic story surrounding it. Fifty years later, "The Speech" endures as a defining moment in the Civil Rights movement and a guiding light in the ongoing struggle for racial equality.
Considered an indispensable study of the organization, of the 1960s, and of the process of social change, SNCC: The New Abolitionists influenced a generation of activists struggling for civil rights and seeking to learn from the successes and failures of those who built the fantastically influential Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Here are Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, and Fred Hampton; Kathleen Cleaver and other Panther women; the party's court battles and acquittals; its positions on black separatism, the power structure, the police, violence, and education; as well as songs, poems, and political cartoons. This is the story behind the Black Panthers.
In an era of stark racial injustice, Aaron Dixon dedicated his life to revolution, founding the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party in 1968 at age nineteen. In My People Are Rising, he traces the course of his own radicalization, and that of a generation.
“The Brother You Choose is a landmark book for anyone who wants to understand the deep connectivity of Black America. It provides a ringside seat to the bruising fight for Civil Rights with two men, Eddie Conway and Paul Coates, as they provide necessary lessons on politics, change, community and enduring bonds.” —Walter Mosley
Undivided Rights captures the evolving and largely unknown activist history of women of color organizing for reproductive justice—on their own behalf.
“Through exacting research, exacting presentation, and careful analysis, Leo Zeilig offers a remarkable contribution to radical thought and practice worthy of Walter Rodney's legacy.” —Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò
“In this incredibly powerful, vital work, Ransby has rescued Eslanda Robeson from the shadows of her famous husband and establishes her as one of the most important activists, scholars, critics and theorists to connect anticolonialism with the black freedom movement in the U.S.” — Robin D.G. Kelley
In 1971, the inmates of Attica revolted, took hostages, and forced the authorities into four days of desperate negotiation. The rebels demanded—and were granted—the presence of a group of observers to act as unofficial mediators. Tom Wicker, then the Associate Editor of the New York Times, was one of those summoned. This is his account.
In this classic account, historian Philip Foner traces the radical history of Black workers’ contribution to the American labor movement.
Detroit: I Do Mind Dying tracks the extraordinary development of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as they became two of the landmark political organizations of the 1960s and 1970s.