Black History Month Suggested Reads, Middle School 2017 Nonfiction (by call number) The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. By Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 305.896 GAT A recounting of the experience of people of African descent over the past five centuries in North America. Juneteenth: Freedom Day. By Muriel Miller Branch 394.263 BRA Discusses the origin and present-day celebration of Juneteenth, a holiday marking the day Texan slaves realized they were free. The People Could Fly: American Black Folktales. By Virginia Hamilton 398.2 HAM Retold Afro-American folktales of animals, fantasy, the supernatural, and desire for freedom, born of the sorrow of the slaves, but passed on in hope. Wake up Our Souls: A Celebration of Black American Artists. By Tonya Bolden 704.03 BOL Explores the lives and creations of a select number of notable African-American men and women who have contributed to the American art scene. Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt. Contributions by William Arnett and others 746.46 GEE Examines the quilting culture of Gee's Bend, a small African-American community in Alabama, presenting photos of many quilts along with several essays by scholars and Gee's Bend quilt artists on such topics as the community's quiltmaking aesthetic, the role of family in the art, and the quiltmaking heritage of five generations of women descended from slave Dinah Miller. Notes of a Native Son. By James Baldwin 814 BAL James Baldwin was among the most eloquent writers in mid-20th-century America to deal with black-white relations. His first published essays on the subject were initially collected in this penetrating and impassioned book. Finding America intolerable, Baldwin exiled himself in Europe for nearly ten years. He tells of the meeting of the American black with the African; of a harrowing Christmas sojourn in a Paris jail because of a friend's stolen bedsheet; and finally, the poignant and haunting essay of the first visit of a black person to a remote Swiss village, where he is treated as a living wonder and never becomes more than a stranger in the village. The Port Chicago 50: Disaster, Mutiny, and the Fight for Civil Rights. By Steve Sheinkin 940.54 SHE Describes the fifty black sailors who refused to work in unsafe and unfair conditions after an explosion in Port Chicago killed 320 servicemen, and how the incident influenced civil rights. Courage has no Color: The True Story of the Triple Nickles: America's First Black Paratroopers. By Tanya Lee Stone 940.54 STO Examines the role of African-Americans in the military through the history of the Triple Nickles, America's first black paratroopers, who fought against attacks perpetrated on the American West by the Japanese during World War II. Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War. Edited by Wallace Terry 959.704 BLO Describes the experiences of twenty African-American soldiers during the Vietnam War. Page 1 Black History Month Suggested Reads, Middle School 2017 Writings. By W. E. B. Du Bois 973 DUB Historian, sociologist, novelist, editor, and political activist, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was the most gifted and influential black intellectual of his time. This Library of America volume presents his essential writings, covering the full span of a restless life dedicated to the struggle for racial justice. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream. By Barack Obama. 973 OBA Then-Senator Barak Obama addresses twenty-first century politics in the United States, commenting on economic insecurities of citizens, race, religion, terrorism, threat of a pandemic, and other related issues. Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom. By Virginia Hamilton 973.7 HAM Recounts the journey of Black slaves to freedom via the underground railroad, an extended group of people who helped fugitive slaves in many ways. Days of Jubilee: The End of Slavery in the United States. By Pat McKissack 973.7 MCK Uses slave narratives, letters, diaries, military orders, and other documents to chronicle the various stages leading to the emancipation of slaves in the United States. Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters. By Pat McKissack 975.03 MCK Describes the customs, recipes, poems, and songs used to celebrate Christmas in the big plantation houses and in the slave quarters just before the Civil War. Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism. By Derrick A. Bell FAC 305.8 BEL Focuses on the theme of racism as an integral, permanent, and indestructible component of American society. Promises Kept: Raising Black Boys to Succeed in School and in Life. By Joe Brewster FAC 371.829 BRE Provides guidance for helping African American boys become successful in school, at home, and in the world. Graphic Novels (by author) Incognegro. By Mat Johnson 741.5 JOH Zane Pinchback, a light-skinned African-American in the early twentieth-century, is tired of trying to pass for white in order to report on the lynchings and public executions taking place in the Deep South, but he opts to use the deception one more time when his brother is jailed in Mississippi on charges of killing a white woman. March: Book One. By John Lewis 741.5 LEW Presents in graphic novel format the life of Georgia congressman John Lewis, focusing on his youth in rural Alabama, his meeting with Martin Luther King Jr. and the birth of the Nashville Student Movement. Page 2 Black History Month Suggested Reads, Middle School 2017 March: Book Two. By John Lewis 741.5 LEW The continuing graphic novel account of some pivotal moments in the Civil Rights Movement, and now Congressman John Lewis’ role in them. Ends with the 1963 bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama African American church. March: Book Three. By John Lewis 741.5 LEW This volume starts in 1963, when John Lewis was a chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. SNCC continues to force the nation to confront its own blatant injustice. The only hope for lasting change is to give voice to the millions of Americans silenced by voter suppression: "One Man, One Vote." Fractures within the movement are deepening... even as 25-year-old John Lewis prepares to risk everything in a historic showdown high above the Alabama river, in a town called Selma. Bayou: Volume One. By Jeremy Love 741.5 LOV Lee Wagstaff, the daughter of a sharecropper in the Depression-era town of Charon, Mississippi, sets off into a dangerous, parallel world, accompanied by the kind, blues-singing swamp monster Bayou, in search of her friend Lily Westmoreland who has been kidnapped by the evil Bog--a crime for which Lee's father stands accused. Monster: A Graphic Novel. By Guy A. Sims 741.5 MYE While on trial as an accomplice to a murder, sixteen-year-old Steve Harmon records his experiences in prison and in the courtroom in the form of a film script as he tries to come to terms with the course his life has taken. Poetry (by author) Maya Angelou: Poems. By Maya Angelou 811.54 ANG Brings together poems previously published in "Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Diiie," "Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well," "And Still I Rise," and "Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?" The Great Migration: Journey to the North. By Eloise Greenfield 811.54 GRE Describes the journey of African Americans from their homes in the South to industrial cities in the North around the time of World War I, and includes paintings that depict the migration. The Dream Keeper and Other Poems. By Langston Hughes 811.54 HUG A collection of sixty-six poems for young readers, selected by the author, including lyrical poems, songs, and blues, many exploring the black experience. Never forgotten. By Pat McKissack 811.54 MCK A lyrical story-in-verse that details the experiences of an African boy who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. A Wreath for Emmett Till. By Marilyn Nelson 811.54 NEL An illustrated poetry collection eulogizing Emmett Till, an African American man who was killed in a brutal, racially motivated lynching in 1955. Page 3 Black History Month Suggested Reads, Middle School 2017 How I Discovered Poetry. By Marilyn Nelson 811.54 NEL The author reflects on her childhood in the 1950s and her development as an artist and young woman through fifty poems that consider such influences as the Civil Rights Movement, the "Red Scare" era, and the feminist movement. Biography, Autobiography (by subject person) and Biography Collections (by author) The Greatest: Muhammad Ali. By Walter Dean Myers B ALI An illustrated biography of boxing great Muhammad Ali that addresses his politics, his fight against Parkinson's disease, and boxing's dangers. The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights. By Russell Freedman B ANDERSON Tells the life story of singer Marian Anderson, describing her famous 1939 Lincoln Memorial performance and explaining how she helped end segregation in the American arts after being refused the right to perform at Washington's Constitution Hall because of the color of her skin. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. By Maya Angelou B ANGELOU Autobiography covering the childhood of a woman who has been a professional dancer, actress, poet, journalist, and television producer. The Long Shadow of Little Rock: A Memoir. By Daisy Bates B BATES Presents the memoirs of Daisy Bates, Civil Rights activist, newspaper writer, and officer in the N.A.A.C.P. who played an integral part in the integration of nine African American students into Little Rock's Central High School on September 25, 1957.