Reading List
Ibram X. Kendi
Historian & Author
Ibram X. Kendi is an American historian and author who writes about race and discriminatory policy in the United States. His books include Stamped from the Beginning, How to Be an Antiracist and the picture book Antiracist Baby. He founded the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University in 2020, received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2021, and in 2025 joined Howard University to lead its new Institute for Advanced Study. Time named him one of its 100 most influential people of 2020.
Ida: A Sword Among Lions
Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching
by Paula J. Giddings · Biography
“Giddings microscopically renders not only the life of Ida Wells and all her courageous anti-lynching activism, but the life of the 19th- and early 20th-century United States that Wells navigated and endlessly challenged. It is the best biography I have ever read of an American activist.” — via Article, December 2016
Black Reconstruction in America
1860-1880
by W. E. B. Du Bois · History
“Du Bois considered this 1935 book, not The Souls of Black Folk, to be his magnum opus. And I could not agree more.” — via Article, December 2016
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
by Isabel Wilkerson · History
“The whole time I was reading Wilkerson's book, subtitled The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, my mind was filled with mental pictures. The scene-setting, the dialogue, the character development...I still cannot believe that this award-winning work is nonfiction.” — via Article, December 2016
Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston · Classics
“This novel, the masterwork of anti-racist fiction, innovatively explores the precarious love life of a Southern black woman wrestling sexism, racism, and, ultimately, poverty. Hurston portrays black people in all their imperfections and complex diversity, which is what makes them human, and humanly equal to all other racial groups.” — via Article, December 2016
All About Love
New Visions
by Bell Hooks · Nonfiction
“This book changed my life forever. Hooks schooled me that love is not a noun or a strong emotional attachment. Love is a verb. Love is not the three words we say to people. Love is how we treat people, how people treat us. I love because of this book.” — via Article, December 2016
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
by Malcolm X, Alex Haley · 1965 · Biography
“Malcolm X's life story, a story of self-critique and transformation, shows us human potential at its best, and becomes a lesson in what is possible for us all.” — via Article, December 2016
