Chains: Seeds of America

By Laurie Halse Anderson

After being sold to a cruel couple in New York City, a slave named Isabel spies for the rebels during the Revolutionary War.

Saving Savannah

By Tonya Bolden

Savannah Riddle feels suffocated by her life as the daughter of an upper class African American family in Washington, D.C., until she meets a working-class girl named Nell who introduces her to the suffragette and socialist movements and to her politically active cousin Lloyd.

Black Girl Unlimited: The Remarkable Story of a Teenage Wizard

By Echo Brown

From age six through her high school valedictory speech, believing she and her mother are wizards helps young Echo cope with poverty, hunger, her mother's drug abuse, and much more.

The Long Ride

By Marina Budhos

In New York in 1971, Jamila and Josie are bused across Queens where they try to fit in at a new, integrated junior high school while their best friend, Francesca, tests the limits at a private school.

Tyler Johnson Was Here

By Jay Coles

When Marvin Johnson's twin, Tyler, goes to a party, Marvin decides to tag along to keep an eye on his brother. But what starts as harmless fun turns into a shooting, followed by a police raid. The next day Tyler is missing, and it's up to Marvin to find him. But when Tyler is found dead, a video leaked online tells an even more chilling story: Tyler has been shot and killed by a police officer. Terrified as his mother unravels, mourning a brother who is now a hashtag, Marvin must learn what justice and freedom really mean.

Copper Sun

By Sharon M. Draper

Amari's life was once perfect. But when slave traders invade her village and brutally murder her entire family, Amari finds herself dragged away to a slave ship headed to the Carolinas, where she is bought by a plantation owner and given to his son as a birthday present. Survival seems all that Amari can hope for. But then an act of unimaginable cruelty provides her with an opportunity to escape, and with an indentured servant named Polly she flees to Fort Mose, Florida, in search of sanctuary at the Spanish colony. Can the illusive dream of freedom sustain Amari and Polly on their arduous journey, fraught with hardship and danger?

A Sky Full of Stars

By Linda Williams Jackson

Sequel to: Midnight without a moon.

In Stillwater, Missippi, in 1955, thirteen-year-old African American Rose Lee Carter looks to her family and friends to understand her place in the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement.

Slay

By Brittney Morris

An honors student at Jefferson Academy, seventeen-year-old Keira enjoys developing and playing Slay, a secret, multiplayer online role-playing game celebrating black culture, until the two worlds collide.

Anger Is a Gift 

By Mark Oshiro

Six years ago, Moss Jefferies' father was murdered by an Oakland police officer. Along with losing a parent, the media's vilification of his father and lack of accountability has left Moss with near crippling panic attacks. Now, in his sophomore year of high school, Moss and his fellow classmates find themselves increasingly treated like criminals in their own school. New rules. Random locker searches. Constant intimidation and Oakland Police Department stationed in their halls. Despite their youth, the students decide to organize and push back against the administration. When tensions hit a fever pitch and tragedy strikes, Moss must face a difficult choice: give in to fear and hate or realize that anger can actually be a gift.

Who Put This Song On? 

By Morgan Parker

Morgan can't count the number of times she's been the only non-white person at the sleepover, been teased for her "weird" outfits, and been told she's not "really" black. She's spent most of her summer crying in bed; it feels like the whole world is listening to the same terrible track on repeat, and Morgan sees life as a never-ending hamster wheel of agony. She knows why she's in therapy. When Morgan makes friends with fellow outcasts, blasts music like there's no tomorrow, and discovers what being black means to her, she finally puts her mental health first. After all, darkness doesn't have to be a bad thing.

All American Boys

By Jason Reynolds & Brendan Kiely

Two teens--one black, one white--grapple with the repercussions of a single violent act that leaves their school, their community, and, ultimately, the country bitterly divided by racial tension. When sixteen-year-old Rashad is mistakenly accused of stealing, classmate Quinn witnesses his brutal beating at the hands of a police officer who happens to be the older brother of his best friend. Told through Rashad and Quinn's alternating viewpoints.

Monster: A Graphic Novel

By Walter Dean Myers ; adapted by Guy A. Sims ; illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile

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

Dear Martin

By Nic Stone

Writing letters to the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., seventeen-year-old college-bound Justyce McAllister struggles to face the reality of race relations today and how they are shaping him.

Calling My Name

By Liara Tamani

Taja Brown, growing up in a conservative and tightly knit African American family, battles family expectations to discover a sense of self and find her unique voice and purpose.

All The Days Past, All The Days To Come

By Mildred D. Taylor

Cassie Logan, first met in Song of the Trees and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, is a young woman now, searching for her place in the world, a journey that takes her from Toledo to California, to law school in Boston, and, ultimately, in the 60s, home to Mississippi to participate in voter registration. She is witness to the now-historic events of the century: the Great Migration north, the rise of the civil rights movement, preceded and precipitated by the racist society of America, and the often violent confrontations that brought about change.

The Hate U Give

By Angie Thomas

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend, Khalil, at the hands of a police officer. Soon afterward, Khalil's death is a national headline. Protestors take to the streets and Starr's neighborhood becomes a war zone. What everyone wants to know is: What really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. But what Starr does--or does not--say could destroy her community. It could also endanger her life.

On The Come Up

By Angie Thomas

As the daughter of an underground hip hop legend who died right before he hit big, Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. She's been labeled a hoodlum at school, and the fridge at home is empty after her mom loses her job. So Bri pours her anger and frustration into her first song, which goes viral for all the wrong reasons. Portrayed by the media as a menace, Bri makes a choice-- and becomes the very thing the public has made her out to be. The odds are stacked against her, and freedom of speech isn't always free.

This Side of Home

By Renée Watson

Twins Nikki and Maya Younger always agreed on most things, but as they head into their senior year they react differently to the gentrification of their Portland, Oregon, neighborhood and the new--white--family that moves in after their best friend and her mother are evicted.

Piecing Me Together

By Renée Watson

Every day Jade rides the bus out of her poor neighborhood and away from her friends to the private school where she feels like an outsider. She doesn't really welcome the invitation to join Women to Women, a mentorship program for "at-risk" girls. Just because her mentor is black and graduated from the same high school doesn't mean she understands where Jade is coming from. She's tired of being singled out as someone who needs help, someone people want to fix. Jade wants to speak, to create, to express her joys and sorrows, her pain and her hope.

The Hammer and the Anvil: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the End of Slavery in America

By Dwight Jon Zimmerman ; illustrated by Wayne Vansant

A graphic novel account of two of the most important figures of 19th-century U.S. history: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America

By Ibi Zoboi

A collection of short stories explore what it is like to be young and black, centering on the experiences of black teenagers and emphasizing that one person's experiences, reality, and personal identity are different than someone else.

One Person, No Vote: How Not All Voters Are Treated Equally [Young Adult Adaptation]

By Carol Anderson with Tonya Bolden

Known as the Shelby ruling, the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice. In the aftermath of Shelby, more and more states have adopted voter suppression laws, from photo ID requirements to gerrymandering to poll closures. But with that has come the resistance: the organizing, activism, and court battles to restore the basic right to vote to all Americans.

We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide [Young Adult Adaptation]

By Carol Anderson with Tonya Bolden

When America achieves milestones of progress toward full and equal black participation in democracy, the systemic response is a consistent racist backlash that rolls back those wins. We Are Not Yet Equal examines five of these moments.

The March Against Fear: The Last Great Walk Of The Civil Rights Movement And The Emergence Of Black Power

By Ann Bausum

James Meredith's 1966 march in Mississippi began as one man's peaceful protest for voter registration and became one of the South's most important demonstrations of the civil rights movement. It brought together leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael, who formed an unlikely alliance that resulted in the Black Power movement, which ushered in a new era in the fight for equality.

Racial Profiling: Everyday Inequality

By Alison Marie Behnke

In the United States, racial profiling affects thousands of Americans every day. Both individuals and institutions such as law enforcement agencies, government bodies, and schools routinely use race or ethnicity as grounds for suspecting someone of an offense. Explores the history, the many manifestations, and the consequences of this form of social injustice.

Accused!: The Trials of the Scottsboro Boys: Lies, Prejudice, and the Fourteenth Amendment 

By Larry Dane Brimmer

In 1931, nine teenagers were arrested as they traveled on a train through Scottsboro, Alabama. The youngest was thirteen, and all had been hoping to find something better at the end of their journey. But they never arrived. Instead, two white women falsely accused them of rape. The effects were catastrophic for the young men, who came to be known as the Scottsboro Boys. Being accused of raping a white woman in the Jim Crow south almost certainly meant death, either by a lynch mob or the electric chair. The Scottsboro boys found themselves facing one prejudiced trial after another, in one of the worst miscarriages of justice in U.S. history. 

Unpunished Murder: Massacre at Colfax and the Quest for Justice

By Lawrence Goldstone

On Easter Sunday of 1873, just eight years after the Civil War ended, a band of white supremacists marched into Grant Parish, Louisiana, and massacred over one hundred unarmed African Americans. The court case that followed would reach the highest court in the land. Yet, following one of the most ghastly and barbaric incidents of mass murder in American history, not a single person was convicted. The opinion issued by the Supreme Court in US v. Cruikshank set in motion a process that would help create a society in which black Americans were oppressed and denied basic human rights -- legally, according to the courts. These injustices would last for the next hundred years, and many continue to exist to this day.

Stolen Justice: The Struggle For African American Voting Rights 

By Lawrence Goldstone

Following the Civil War, the Reconstruction era raised a new question to those in power in the US: Should African Americans, so many of them former slaves, be granted the right to vote?

In this vivid portrait of the systematic suppression of the African American vote, critically acclaimed author Lawrence Goldstone traces the injustices of the post-Reconstruction era through the eyes of incredible individuals, both heroic and barbaric, and examines the legal cases that made the Supreme Court a partner of white supremacists in the rise of Jim Crow.

The Rose That Grew From Concrete

By Tupac Amaru Shakur

His talent was unbounded, a raw force that commanded attention and respect. His death was tragic -- a violent homage to the power of his voice. His legacy is indomitable -- remaining vibrant and alive. Here are Tupac's most honest and intimate thoughts conveyed through the pure art of poetry -- a mirror into his enigmatic life and its many contradictions. Written in his own hand at the age of nineteen, they embrace his spirit, his energy ... and his ultimate message of hope.

March

By John Lewis and Andrew Aydin ; art by Nate Powell

This graphic novel trilogy is a first-hand account of Congressman John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement.

Growing Up In Slavery: Stories of Young Slaves as Told by Themselves

Edited by Yuval Taylor ; illustrations by Kathleen Judge

Ten slaves - all under the age of 19 - tell their stories of enslavement, brutality, and dreams of freedom .