A longtime educator explores how the study of Black history challenges our understanding of race, nation, and the stories we tell about who we are.
Black history is under attack from powerful forces that seek to excise it from classrooms, libraries, and the popular imagination. Yet its opponents fail to understand a simple truth: the best education challenges our assumptions, helps us see larger forces at work, and gives us glimpses of alternate futures.
In Black History Is for Everyone, Brian Jones offers a meditation on the power of Black history, using his own experiences as a lifelong learner and classroom teacher to question everything—from the radicalism of the American Revolution to the meaning of “race” and “nation.”
With warmth and immersive storytelling, Jones encourages us to delve deeper into our collective history, explores how curiosity about our world is essential—and reminds us that with stakes so high, the effort is worth it.
Brian Jones has taught many ages and grades in New York City’s public schools and the City University of New York. He served as the inaugural director of the Center for Educators and Schools at the New York Public Library and was the associate director of education at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The author of The Tuskegee Student Uprising: A History, his writing has also appeared in The New York Times, Guardian, and Jacobin.
ISBN: 9798888904473
Publication date: September 30, 2025
Introduction: “Gruesome, Truthful, Yet Digestible”
Chapter One: Race: Free People of Color
Chapter Two: Nation: “Your National Greatness”
Chapter Three: Revolution: Tout Moun Se Moun
Chapter Four: Education: The “Mightier Work” of Reconstruction
Epilogue: Back to the Library
"Amid widespread political censorship and attacks, Black History Is for Everyone pulses with love, insight, and possibility. Brian Jones shares how Black history has challenged and energized his own thinking, inviting each of us to reflect on what we learn, why we learn it, and how it shapes our understanding of the nation and our place in the world. From Bacon’s Rebellion to the Haitian Revolution, this book reveals how those who came before us resisted oppression—and reminds us that study and struggle have always gone hand in hand."
—Ruha Benjamin, author of Imagination: A Manifesto
“With searing honesty and incisive prose, Black History Is for Everyone offers a sweeping journey through more than three centuries of Black history. Brian Jones masterfully blends personal reflection with powerful storytelling, revealing the centrality of Black history to American life. Urgent, eye-opening, and deeply engaging, this is essential reading for students, educators, and anyone ready to see the past—and the present—with fresh eyes.”
—Ashley D. Farmer, author of Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore
“Black History is for Everyone is a love letter to students, a history lesson, and a critical analysis of the segregated schools—with too few Black teachers and too little Black history—that we have today. At a moment when many are shrinking from and erasing our history, Brian Jones pointedly shows us the many ways that the study of Black history enriches us all. This is the book we need to see the road forward.”
—Jeanne Theoharis, author of King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr's Life of Struggle Outside the South
"As Brian Jones makes clear, organized attempts to erase Black history are hardly confined to the contemporary moment. Through historicizing accounts of his own experiences as a scholar, teacher, and library worker, Jones offers a clear and compelling argument that the struggle to know who we are and where we come from is essential to the fight for our shared future."
—Emily Drabinski, Associate Professor, Queens College, CUNY
“Brian Jones, one of our most insightful pedagogists, reminds us that the Black experience is so central to the American experience that no one’s education is complete without its examination. This book is required reading."
—Tracie D. Hall, former Executive Director, American Library Association
Edited by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
Edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, et al.
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