Countryman, Matthew J. Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia. University of Pennsylvania Press, PA, 2005. Up South traces the efforts of two generations of black Philadelphians to turn the City of Brotherly Love into a place of promise and opportunity for all. Although Philadelphia rarely appears in the histories of the modern civil rights struggle, the city was home to a vibrant and groundbreaking movement for racial justice in the years between World War II and the 1970s. By broadening the chronological and geographic parameters of the civil rights movement, Up South explores the origins of civil rights liberalism, the failure of the liberal program of anti discrimination legislation and interracial coalition-building to deliver on its promise of racial equality, and the subsequent rise of the Black Power movement.

Rankine, Claudia. Citizen: An American Lyric. Minneapolis, MN: Graywolf Press, 2014. Claudia Rankine’s bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seemingly slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV—everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person’s ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named “post-race society.

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.New York, NY: WW Norton, 2017.In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation - that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it wasde jure segregation - the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state and federal governments - that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.

Smith, Mychal Denzel. Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching. New York, NY: Nation Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group Inc., 2016. How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years, describing his efforts to come into his own in a world that denied his humanity. Smith unapologetically upends reigning assumptions about black masculinity, rewriting the script for black manhood so that depression and anxiety aren't considered taboo, and feminism and LGBTQ rights become part of the fight. The questions Smith asks in this book are urgent-for him, for the martyrs and the tokens, and for the Trayvons that could have been and are still waiting.

Smith, Tracy K.. Ordinary Light: A Memoir. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015. In Ordinary Light, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Tracy K. Smith tells her remarkable story, giving us a quietly potent memoir that explores her coming-of-age and the meaning of home against a complex backdrop of race, faith, and the unbreakable bond between a mother and daughter. Here is the story of a young artist struggling to fashion her own understanding of belief, loss, history, and what it means to be black in America.

Winfrey Harris, Tamara. The Sisters Are Alright: Changing the Broken Narrative of Black Women in America. Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2015. What is wrong with Black women? Not a damned thing but the biased lens most people use to view them, says Tamara Winfrey Harris. When African women arrived on American shores, the three-headed hydra of asexual and servile Mammy, angry and bestial Sapphire, and oversexed and lascivious Jezebel followed close behind. In the ‘60s, the Matriarch, the willfully unmarried baby machine leeching off the state, joined them. These caricatures persist - even in the ‘enlightened’ 21st century- through newspaper headlines, Sunday sermons, social media memes, cable punditry, government policies, and Top 40 lyrics. The Sisters Are Alright delves into areas like marriage, motherhood, health, sexuality, beauty, and more. And using progressive author analysis brought to life by the stories of real women, it reveals the effects of anti-black woman propaganda and how real black women are living their lives and pushing back against distorted cartoon versions of themselves.

Wolfinger, James. Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.In a detailed study of life and politics in Philadelphia between the 1930s and 1950s James Wolfinger demonstrates how racial tensions in working-class neighborhoods and job sites shaped the contours of mid-twentieth-century liberal and conservative politics. As racial divisions fractured the working class, he argues, Republican leaders exploited these racial fissures to reposition their party as the champion of ordinary white citizens besieged by black demands and overwhelmed by liberal government orders.

Clemmons, Zinzi. What We Lose. New York, NY: Viking, 2017.Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. An elegiac distillation, at once intellectual and visceral, of a young woman’s understanding of absence and identity that spans continents and decades, What We Lose heralds the arrival of a virtuosic new voice in fiction.

Flournoy, Angela.The Turner House. City: New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015. The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone-and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit's East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts--and shapes--their family's future. Already praised by Ayana Mathis as "utterly moving" and "un-putdownable," The Turner House brings us a colorful, complicated brood full of love and pride, sacrifice and unlikely inheritances. It's a striking examination of the price we pay for our dreams and futures, and the ways in which our families bring us home.

Hill, Lawrence. The Book of Negroes. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.Abducted as an 11 year old child from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea in a coffle - a string of slaves - Aminata Diallo is sent to live as a slave in South Carolina. But years later, she forges her way to freedom, serving the British in the Revolutionary War and registering her name in the historic, “Book of Negroes.” This book, an actual document, provides a short but immensely revealing record of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the US for resettlement in Nova Scotia, only to find that the haven they sought was steeped in an oppression all of its own.

Jones, Tayari. An American Marriage. New York, NY: Algonquin Books, 2018. This stirring love story is a deeply insightful look into the hearts and minds of three people who are at once bound and separated by forces beyond their control. An American Marriage is a masterpiece of storytelling, an intimate look into the souls of people who must reckon with the past while moving forward - with hope and pain - into the future.

Mathis, Ayana Twelve Tribes of Hattie. New York, NY: Random House, 2012.In 1923, fifteen-year-old Hattie Shepherd, swept up by the tides of the Great Migration, flees Georgia and heads north. Full of hope she settles in Philadelphia to build a better life. Instead she marries a man who will bring her nothing but disappointment and watches helplessly as her first born twins are lost to an illness that a few pennies could have prevented. Hattie gives birth to nine more children, whom she raises with grit, mettle and not an ounce of the tenderness they crave. She vows to prepare them to meet a world that will not be kind. Their lives, captured here in twelve luminous threads, tell a story of a mother’s monumental courage and a nation’s tumultuous journey.

Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem. What Color Is My World? The Lost History of African-American Inventors. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2012. [Grades 3-7] Did you know that James West invented the microphone in your cell phone? That Fred Jones invented the refrigerated truck that makes supermarkets possible? Or that Dr. Percy Julian synthesized cortisone from soy, easing untold people’s pain? These are just some of the black inventors and innovators scoring big points in this dynamic look at several unsung heroes who shared a desire to improve people’s lives.

Alexander, Kwame: The Playbook: 52 Rules to Aim, Shoot and Score in This Game Called Life. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. [Grades 5-7] You gotta know the rules to play the game. Ball is life. Take it to the hoop. Soar. What can we imagine for our lives? What if we were the star players, moving and grooving through the game of life? What if we had our own rules of the game to help us get what we want, what we aspire to, what will enrich our lives? Illustrated with photographs by Thai Neave, “The Playbook” is intended to provide inspiration on the court of life. Each rule contains wisdom from inspiring athletes and role models such as Nelson Mandela, Serena Williams, LeBron James, Carli Lloyd, Steph Curry and Michelle Obama.

Giovanni, NIki. I Am Loved. New York, NY: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2018. [Preschool-grade 4] There is nothing more important to a child than to feel loved, and this gorgeous gathering of poems written by Nikki Giovanni celebrates exactly that. Hand-selected by Newbery honoree Ashley Bryan, he has, with his masterful flourish of color, shape, and movement, added a visual layering that drums the most impartant message of all to young, old, parent, child, grandparent, and friend alike: You are loved.

Harrison, Vashti. Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History. New York, NY: Little, Brown Books for Youth Readers, 2017. [Grade level 3-7] Featuring forty trailblazing black women in American history, Little Leaders educates and inspires as it relates true stories of breaking boundaries and achieving beyond expectations.

Perkins, Useni Eugene. Hey Black Child. New York, NY: LB Keys/Little, Brown and Company, 2017. [Preschool-grade 3] A lyrical, empowering poem that celebrates black children and seeks to inspire all young ones to dream big and achieve their goals.

Barnes, Derrick. Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut. Chicago, IL: Bolden, an Agate imprint, 2017. [Grades kindergarten-3] This rhythmic, read-aloud title is an unbridled celebration of the self-esteem, confidence, and swagger boys feel when they leave the barber’s chair—a tradition that places on their heads a figurative crown, beaming with jewels, that confirms their brilliance and worth and helps them not only love and accept themselves but also take a giant step toward caring how they present themselves to the world. The fresh cuts. That’s where it all begins.

de la Peña, Matt. Last Stop on Market Street. New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Son’s, an imprint of Penguin Group, 2017. [Grades kindergarten-2] A young boy rides the bus across town with his grandmother and learns to appreciate the beauty in everyday things.

Elliott, Zatta. Bird. New York, NY: Lee & Low Books Inc., 2008. [Grades 1-5] Bird, an artistic young African American boy, expresses himself through drawing as he struggles to understand his older brother's drug addiction and death, while a family friend, Uncle Son, provides guidance and understanding.

Thomas, Angie. The Hate U Give. New York, NY: Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2017. [Ages 14+] After witnessing her friend's death at the hands of a police officer, Starr Carter's life is complicated when the police and a local drug lord try to intimidate her in an effort to learn what happened the night Kahlil died.

This resource was created, in part, with the generous support of the Open Society Foundation and Black Public Media.