Racial Justice Books
An extensive, but incomplete list, skewed toward non-fiction books and books published in the last five years.
Please buy from a black-owned bookstore (click here for a list), your local independent bookstore, or at the Bookshop link provided.
A
Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight
for a Fair America
Stacey Abrams, 2020
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander, 2010
White Rage: The Unspoken
Truth of Our Racial Divide
Carol Anderson, 2017
One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is
Destroying Our Democracy
Carol Anderson, 2019
I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings
Maya Angelou, 1993
B
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin,1963
The Half Has Never Been
Told: Slavery and the Making
of American Capitalism
Edward E Baptist, 2014
American Prison: A Reporter's Undercover Journey Into the Business
of Punishment
Shane Bauer 2018
Charged: The New Movement to Transform American Prosecution and End Mass Incarceration
Emily Bazelon,, 2019
Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine
Emily Bernard, 2018
Fire Shut Up in My Bones
Charles Blow, 2014
Racism Without Racists:
Color-Blind Racism & the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, 2017
The Yellow House:
A Memoir
Sarah Broom 2019
The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism
Howard Bryant 2018
Becoming Mrs. Burton
Susan Burton, 2017
Chokehold: Policing
Black Men
Paul Butler 2017
C
A Most Beautiful Thing: The True Story of America's First All-Black High School Rowing Team
Arshay Cooper, 2020
D
Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
Angela Davis, 2016
Policing the
Black Man
Angela Davis editor, 2018
Women, Race, & Class
Angela Davis, 1983
The Little Book of Race
and Restorative Justice:
Black Lives, Healing, and Us Social Transformation
Fania Davis, 2019
Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War & Reconstruction
Jim Downs, 2015
E
Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do
Jennifer Eberhardt, 2015
Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted & Exonerated
Dave Eggers and 2 othersl (Editors), 2017
Juneteenth
Ralph Ellison, 2000
F
G
Unexampled Courage: The Blinding of Sgt. Isaac Woodard and the Awakening of President Harry S. Truman and Judge J. Waties Waring
Richard Gergel, 2019
On Account of Race: The Supreme Court, White Supremacy, and the Ravaging of African American Voting Rights
Lawrence Goldstone, 2020
H
A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration
Steven Hahn, 2005
The Hidden History of the War on Voting: Who Stole Your Vote and How to
Get It Back
Thom Hartmann, 2020
Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson
to Flint and Beyond
Marc Lamont Hill 2017
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America
Elizabeth Hinton 2016
I
J
White Negroes: When Cornrows Were in Vogue ... and Other Thoughts on Cultural Appropriation
Lauren Jackson, 2019
This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America
Morgan Jerkins, 2018
This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do the Work
Tiffany Jewell, 2020
Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote,& Insisted on Equality for All
Martha S. Jones, 2020
They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the
American South
Stephanie Jones-Rogers
2020
The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives
of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
Peniel E. Joseph, 2020
Waiting 'til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America
Peniel E. Joseph, 2003
K
The Land Was Ours: How Black Beaches Became White Wealth
in the Coastal South
Andrew W Kahrl, 2016
When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in 20th Century America
Ira Katznelson, 2006
Nine Days: The Race
to Save Martin Luther
King Jr.'s Life and Win
the 1960 Election
Stephen Kendrick, 2021
The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the
United States
Alexander Keyssar, 2000
L
The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson: The Baseball Legend's Battle for Civil Rights During World War II
Michael Lanning, 2020
Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
John Lewis, 1999
The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from
Identity Politics
George Lipsitz, 2018
M
His Truth Is Marching on: John Lewis and the
Power of Hope
John Meacham, 2020
Let My People Vote:
My Battle to Restore
the Civil Rights of
Returning Citizens
Desmond Meade, 2020
My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
Resmaa Menakem, 2017
Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland
Jonathan M Metzl, 2020
Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era
Jerry Mitchell, 2020
From Slave Cabins
to the White House: Homemade Citizenship in African American Culture
Koritha Mitchell, 2020
A Shot in the Moonlight: How a Freed Slave and
a Confederate Soldier Fought for Justice in
the Jim Crow South
Ben Montgomery, 2021
The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, 2017
From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century
A. Kirsten Mullen & William A. Darity, 2020
N
Punishment Without
Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal
Alexandra Natapoff , 2018
