Hutchins Library News Blog

I saw this article, "As Black History Month ends, a reading list for the rest of the year" by Cheryl Townsend Gilkes writing for Religion News Service (RNS). The author offers "an arsenal of 28 books that should make it possible for 'whosoever will' to learn and grow." So in the interest to help readers who wish to keep learning and growing, I checked our library catalog to see which books if any from the list Hutchins Library already has. Out of 28, we have 17 including one that is on order as of this blog post. It should arrive soon. Please note that to access e-books via the library, if you are off campus you will need to authenticate with Berea College username, password, and DUO.

On a side note, for our friends and readers who might not be local, you can always check WorldCat to see if a library near you has these and other books.

Books from the list available at Hutchins Library:

An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi

ISBN: 9780063335417

(Note: on order at this time, should arrive soon.)

Publication Date: 2025-01-14

Already a major international bestseller, Zeinab Badawi's sweeping and much-needed survey of African history traces the continent's extraordinary legacy from prehistory to the present from the African perspective. "Equal parts gripping and galvanizing. . . . Researched across more than 30 countries, it brings the dazzling civilizations of pre-colonial Africa vividly to life. A book that feels both long-overdue--and wholly worth the wait." --British Vogue Everyone is originally from Africa, and this book is therefore for everyone. For too long, Africa's history has been dominated by western narratives of slavery and colonialism, or simply ignored. Now, Zeinab Badawi sets the record straight. In this fascinating book, Badawi guides us through Africa's spectacular history--from the very origins of our species, through ancient civilizations and medieval empires with remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence. Visiting more than thirty African countries to interview countless historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and local storytellers, she unearths buried histories from across the continent and gives Africa its rightful place in our global story. The result is a gripping new account of Africa: an epic, sweeping history of the oldest inhabited continent on the planet, told through the voices of Africans themselves.

 

Black in Blues by Imani Perry

Call Number: New Book Display 305.896 P463b 2025

ISBN: 9780062977397

Publication Date: 2025-01-28

A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue--and its fascinating role in Black history and culture--from National Book Award winner Imani Perry. Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong's question, "What did I do to be so Black and blue?" In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world's favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey--an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology. Perry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture, drawing deeply from her own life as well as art and history: The dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16thcentury. The mixture of awe and aversion in the old-fashioned characterization of dark-skinned people as "Blue Black." The fundamentally American art form of blues music, sitting at the crossroads of pain and pleasure. The blue flowers Perry plants to honor a loved one gone too soon. Poignant, spellbinding, and utterly original, Black in Blues is a brilliant new work that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers and thinkers. Attuned to the harrowing and the sublime aspects of the human experience, it is every bit as vivid, rich, and striking as blue itself.

 

Bouki Fait Gombo by Ibrahima Seck

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9781608011155

Publication Date: 2015-08-15

Through an in-depth study of one of Louisiana's most important sugar plantations, Bouki Fait Gombo traces the impact of slavery on southern culture. This is a thorough examination of the Whitney's evolution--from the precise routes slaves crossed to arrive at the plantation's doors to records of the men, women, and children who were bound to the Whitney over the years. Although Bouki Fait does not shy away from depicting the daily brutalities slaves faced, at the book's heart are the robust culinary and musical cultures that arose from their shared sense of community and homesickness.

 

Carver by Marilyn Nelson

Call Number: Stacks 821.914 N428c

ISBN: 9781886910539

Publication Date: 2001-05-01

Newbery Honor Book National Book Award finalist Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Flora Stieglitz Straus Award Beautiful verse explores agricultural scientist George Washington Carver's life and many achievements, from his work as a botanist and inventor to his unsung gifts as a painter, musician, and teacher. George Washington Carver was determined to help the people he loved. Born a slave in Missouri, he left home in search of an education, eventually earning his master's degree. When Booker T. Washington invited Carver to start the agricultural department at the all-black-staffed Tuskegee Institute, Carver truly found his calling. He spent the rest of his life seeking solutions to the poverty among landless Black farmers by developing new uses for soil-replenishing crops such as peanuts, cowpeas, and sweet potatoes. This STEAM biography reveals Carver's complex and profoundly devout life.

 

Creating Black Americans by Nell Irvin Painter

Call Number: Stacks 973.049 P148c 2006

ISBN: 9780195137552

Publication Date: 2005-11-01

Here is a magnificent account of a past rich in beauty and creativity, but also in tragedy and trauma. Eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter blends a vivid narrative based on the latest research with a wonderful array of artwork by African American artists, works which add a new depth to our understanding of black history. Painter offers a history written for a new generation of African Americans, stretching from life in Africa before slavery to today's hip-hop culture. The book describes the staggering number of Africans--over ten million--forcibly transported to the New World, most doomed to brutal servitude in Brazil and the Caribbean. Painter looks at the free black population, numbering close to half a million by 1860 (compared to almost four million slaves), and provides a gripping account of the horrible conditions of slavery itself. The book examines the Civil War, revealing that it only slowly became a war to end slavery, and shows how Reconstruction, after a promising start, was shut down by terrorism by white supremacists. Painter traces how through the long Jim Crow decades, blacks succeeded against enormous odds, creating schools and businesses and laying the foundations of our popular culture. We read about the glorious outburst of artistic creativity of the Harlem Renaissance, the courageous struggles for Civil Rights in the 1960s, the rise and fall of Black Power, the modern hip-hop movement, and two black Secretaries of State. Painter concludes that African Americans today are wealthier and better educated, but the disadvantaged are as vulnerable as ever. Painter deeply enriches her narrative with a series of striking works of art--more than 150 in total, most in full color--works that profoundly engage with black history and that add a vital dimension to the story, a new form of witness that testifies to the passion and creativity of the African-American experience. * Among the dozens of artists featured are Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, Jacob Lawrence, and Kara Walker * Filled with sharp portraits of important African Americans, from Olaudah Equiano (one of the first African slaves to leave a record of his captivity) and Toussaint L'Ouverture (who led the Haitian revolution), to Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X.

 

James by Percival Everett

Call Number: Fiction E932ja 2024

ISBN: 9780385550369

Publication Date: 2024-03-19

 When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river's banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin...), Jim's agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a "literary icon" (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

 

Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman; Kelly Brown Douglas (Foreword by)

Call Number: Stacks 261.834 T539j 1996

ISBN: 9780807010297

Publication Date: 1996-11-30

Famously known as the text that Martin Luther King Jr. sought inspiration from in the days leading up to the Montgomery bus boycott, Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited helped shape the civil rights movement and changed our nation's history forever. In this classic theological treatise, the acclaimed theologian and religious leader Howard Thurman (1900-1981) demonstrates how the gospel may be read as a manual of resistance for the poor and disenfranchised. Jesus is a partner in the pain of the oppressed and the example of His life offers a solution to ending the descent into moral nihilism. Hatred does not empower--it decays. Only through self-love and love of one another can God's justice prevail.

 

My Face Is Black Is True by Mary Frances Berry

Call Number: Stacks 323.092 H842zb 2005

ISBN: 9781400040032

Publication Date: 2005-09-06

"My face is black is true but its not my fault but I love my name and my honest in dealing with my fellow man." ~Callie House (1899) In her groundbreaking new book, My Face Is Black Is True, historian Mary Frances Berry resurrects the forgotten life of Callie House (1861-1928), ex-slave, widowed Nashville washerwoman and mother of five who, seventy years before the civil rights movement, headed a demand for ex-slave reparations. House was born into slavery in 1861 and sought African-American pensions based on those offered Union soldiers. In a brilliant and daring move, House targeted $68 million in taxes on seized rebel cotton (over $1.2 billion in 2005 dollars) and demanded it as repayment for centuries of unpaid labor. Dr. Berry tells how the Justice Department, persuaded by the postmaster general, banned the activities of Callie House's town organizers, violated her constitutional rights to assembly and to petition Congress, and falsely accused her of mail fraud; the federal officials had the post office open the mail of almost all African-Americans, denying delivery on the smallest pretext. Berry shows how African-American newspapers, most of which preached meekness toward whites, systematically ignored or derided Mrs. House's movement, which was essentially a poor person's movement. Despite being denied mail service and support from the African-American establishment of the day, Mrs. House's Ex-Slave Association flourished until she was imprisoned by the Justice Department for violating the postal laws of the United States; suddenly deprived of her spirit, leadership and ferocity, the first national grassroots African-American movement fell apart. Callie House, so long forgotten that her grave has been lost, emerges as a courageous pioneering activist, a forerunner of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. My Face Is Black Is True is a fascinating book of original scholarship that reclaims a magnificent heroine.

 

Prayers for Dark People by W. E. B. Du Bois; Herbert Aptheker (Editor)

Call Number: Stacks 242.8 D816p

ISBN: 9780870233029

Publication Date: 1980-08-01

A collection of prayers written by Du Bois for students at Atlanta University, thoughtfully compiled and introduced by Herbert Aptheker. These prayers are deeply commited to paying attention to and caring for the inner lives of black Americans. Biblical familiarity and agnosticity are both present in these autobiographical writings, uplifting the hopes and practices of W. E. B. Du Bois's life, while meditating on the still relevant question of how to make "a good life for all".

 

"Somebody's Calling My Name" by Wyatt Tee Walker

Call Number: Stacks 782.253 W186s 1979

ISBN: 9780817008499

Publication Date: 1979-01-01

Traces the musical expressions of the black religious tradition from its ancestral roots to its influence upon the black religious experience today.

 

Collected Poems of Audre Lorde by Audre. Lorde

Call Number: Exhibit/Display - Print 821 L867c 2000

ISBN: 9780393319729

Publication Date: 2000-02-17

A complete collection--over 300 poems--from one of this country's most influential poets.

 

 

 

The Mis-Education of the Negro (an African American Heritage Book) by Carter G. Woodson

Call Number: Stacks 371.974 W898m 2008

ISBN: 9781604592276

Publication Date: 2008-01-01

The Mis-Education of the Negro is one of the most important books on education ever written. Carter G. Woodson shows us the weakness of Eurocentric based curricula that fail to include African American history and culture. This system mis-educates the African American student, failing to prepare them for success and to give them an adequate sense of who they are within the system that they must live. Woodson provides many strong solutions to the problems he identifies. A must-read for anyone working in the education field.

 

The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois; David L. Lewis (Introduction by)

Call Number: Stacks 301.451 D816s 2003

ISBN: 9780375509117

Publication Date: 2003-01-07

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time. When first published in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk struck like a thunderclap, quickly establishing itself as a work that wholly redefined the history of the black experience in America, introducing the now famous "problem of the color line." In decades since, its stature has only grown, and today it ranks as one of the most influential and resonant works in the history of American thought. This centennial edition contains a landmark Introduction by historian David Levering Lewis that brilliantly demonstrates how The Souls of Black Folk remains indispensable not only to an understanding of the history of race and democracy in America but to considerations of the future of racial and cultural comity in the twenty-first century.

 

There Is a River by Vincent Harding

Call Number: Stacks 323.11 H263t

ISBN: 9780151893423

Publication Date: 1981-10-01

This account traces the history of black Americans from their origins in Africa to freedom at the end of the Civil War.

 

 

 

Under the Skin by Linda Villarosa

Call Number: Stacks 362.108 V722u 2022

ISBN: 9780385544887

Publication Date: 2022-06-14

In 2018, Linda Villarosa's New York Times Magazine article on maternal and infant mortality among black mothers and babies in America caused an awakening. Hundreds of studies had previously established a link between racial discrimination and the health of Black Americans, with little progress toward solutions. But Villarosa's article exposing that a Black woman with a college education is as likely to die or nearly die in childbirth as a white woman with an eighth grade education made racial disparities in health care impossible to ignore. Now, in Under the Skin, Linda Villarosa lays bare the forces in the American health-care system and in American society that cause Black people to "live sicker and die quicker" compared to their white counterparts. Today's medical texts and instruments still carry fallacious slavery-era assumptions that Black bodies are fundamentally different from white bodies. Study after study of medical settings show worse treatment and outcomes for Black patients. Black people live in dirtier, more polluted communities due to environmental racism and neglect from all levels of government. And, most powerfully, Villarosa describes the new understanding that coping with the daily scourge of racism ages Black people prematurely. Anchored by unforgettable human stories and offering incontrovertible proof, Under the Skin is dramatic, tragic, and necessary reading.

 

We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For by Eddie Glaude

Call Number: Stacks 323.042 G552w 2024

ISBN: 9780674737600

Publication Date: 2024-04-16

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Begin Again, a politically astute, lyrical meditation on how ordinary Black Americans can shake off their reliance on a small group of professional politicians and pursue self-cultivation and grassroots movements to achieve a more just and perfect democracy. We are more than the circumstances of our lives, and what we do matters. In We Are the Leaders We Have Been Looking For, one of the nation's preeminent scholars and a New York Times bestselling author, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., makes the case that the hard work of becoming a better person should be a critical feature of Black politics. Through virtuoso interpretations of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Ella Baker, Glaude shows how ordinary people have the capacity to be the heroes that our democracy so desperately requires, rather than outsourcing their needs to leaders who purportedly represent them. Based on the Du Bois Lectures delivered at Harvard University, the book begins with Glaude's unease with the Obama years. He felt then, and does even more urgently now, that the excitement around the Obama presidency had become a disciplining tool to narrow legitimate forms of Black political dissent. This narrowing continues to undermine the well-being of Black communities. In response, Glaude guides us away from the Scylla of enthusiastic reliance on elected leaders and the Charybdis of full surrender to a belief in unchanging political structures. Glaude weaves anecdotes about his own evolving views on Black politics together with the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, Sheldon Wolin, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison. Narrated with passion and philosophical intensity, this book is a powerful reminder that if American democracy is to survive, we must build a better society that derives its strength from the pew, not the pulpit.

 

When Sunday Comes by Claudrena N. Harold

Call Number: e-book

ISBN: 9780252052453

Publication Date: 2020-11-16

Gospel music evolved in often surprising directions during the post-Civil Rights era. Claudrena N. Harold's in-depth look at late-century gospel focuses on musicians like Yolanda Adams, Andraé Crouch, the Clark Sisters, Al Green, Take 6, and the Winans, and on the network of black record shops, churches, and businesses that nurtured the music. Harold details the creative shifts, sonic innovations, theological tensions, and political assertions that transformed the music, and revisits the debates within the community over groundbreaking recordings and gospel's incorporation of rhythm and blues, funk, hip-hop, and other popular forms. At the same time, she details how sociopolitical and cultural developments like the Black Power Movement and the emergence of the Christian Right shaped both the art and attitudes of African American performers.

 

 

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a blog post with a small reading list for Black History Month. While I was writing that post and selecting books for the list, I found a few more books that may be of interest this month and beyond. This time I am focusing on biographies, memoirs, and similar works. Some these books feature prominent and known figures and others feature people who need to be better known. Books on this list are in no particular order, and they are all available here at Hutchins Library.

The First Black Marines: an Oral History by Trevor R. Getz; Robert Willis; Joseph H. Geeter III; Liz Clarke (Illustrator)

Call Number: Stacks 359.96 G394f 2025

ISBN: 9780197650370

Publication Date: 2024-10-24

The First Black Marines: An Oral History tells the extraordinary stories of the men who made history as the first African Americans to serve in the US Marine Corps. Based on extensive oral history interviews with a group of veterans conducted by the authors, this new title in OUP's Graphic History Series documents the experiences of these men as they underwent training at the segregated Camp Montford Point in Jacksonville, North Carolina, during the 1940s and served in the Pacific theater of World War II. Narrated in the authentic voices of the Marines and featuring powerful imagery, this book provides a personal and moving account of the challenges they faced and overcame as pioneers in the US military during the Jim Crow era of widespread racial segregation and discrimination. The graphic history is accompanied by a highly accessible introduction to an inquiry-based approach to historical research and the methodology of oral history that empowers students to develop and conduct their own research projects in their communities. In addition, the book includes a brief overview of the historical context in which the Marines' stories unfold as well as a carefully chosen set of primary documents.

 

John Lewis by Raymond Arsenault

Call Number: Stacks 328.7309 L674za 2024

ISBN: 9780300253757

Publication Date: 2024-01-16

 In this first book-length biography of Lewis, Raymond Arsenault traces Lewis's upbringing in rural Alabama, his activism as a Freedom Rider and leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, his championing of voting rights and anti-poverty initiatives, and his decades of service as the "conscience of Congress."   Both in the streets and in Congress, Lewis promoted a philosophy of nonviolence to bring about change. He helped the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights leaders plan the 1963 March on Washington, where he spoke at the Lincoln Memorial. Lewis's activism led to repeated arrests and beatings, most notably when he suffered a skull fracture in Selma, Alabama, during the 1965 police attack later known as Bloody Sunday. He was instrumental in the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in Congress he advocated for racial and economic justice, immigration reform, LGBTQ rights, and national health care.   Arsenault recounts Lewis's lifetime of work toward one overarching goal: realizing the "beloved community," an ideal society based in equity and inclusion. Lewis never wavered in this pursuit, and even in death his influence endures, inspiring mobilization and resistance in the fight for social justice.

 

Bring Judgment Day by Sheila Curran Bernard

Call Number: Stacks 782.421 L839zb 2024

ISBN: 9781009098120

Publication Date: 2024-07-11

Known worldwide as Lead Belly, Huddie Ledbetter (1889-1949) is an American icon whose influence on modern music was tremendous - as was, according to legend, the temper that landed him in two of the South's most brutal prisons, while his immense talent twice won him pardons. But, as this deeply researched book shows, these stories were shaped by the white folklorists who 'discovered' Lead Belly and, along with reporters, recording executives, and radio and film producers, introduced him to audiences beyond the South. Through a revelatory examination of arrest, trial, and prison records; sharecropping reports; oral histories; newspaper articles; and more, author Sheila Curran Bernard replaces myth with fact, offering a stunning indictment of systemic racism in the Jim Crow era of the United States and the power of narrative to erase and distort the past.

 

American Imam by Taymullah Abdur-Rahman

Call Number: Stacks 297.87 A136a 2024

ISBN: 9781506489285

Publication Date: 2024-02-27

Imam Taymullah Abdur-Rahman's incredible life story weaves the contemporary Black American experience with the Black Muslim American experience and emphasizes the role of interreligious dialogue in the fight for abolition and justice. By the time he was twelve, Taymullah Abdur-Rahman (born Tyrone Sutton) was a rising pop star, recruited as part of the R&B group Perfect Gentlemen, with a top-ten hit, national teen magazine covers, and an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.However, after his music career peaked, Abdur-Rahman found himself back home, with little to show for his success. He became a teen father struggling to survive in Roxbury, MA. Seeing Islam as a way to discipline himself in an unrelenting environment, he converted. He went on to work in a maximum-security prison as a Muslim chaplain, where he became zealously focused on saving souls instead of understanding the outside forces that lead men to prison. Later, in his work as the first paid Muslim chaplain at Harvard, Abdur-Rahman began to seek counsel outside of Islam, engaging with Jewish and Christian mentors who opened his eyes to the gifts of interreligious dialogue and helped lead him to what he was truly seeking: enlightenment. With this new framework, he returned to working with prisoners and clearly saw the cyclical effects of systemic racism that keep Black and brown people locked up and without support in America today. A sweeping narrative, American Imam voices the contemporary concerns of Black Muslim Americans in the shadow of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, in the aftermath of 9/11, and in light of the fights for social justice and prison abolition. Abdur-Rahman's story sounds an indelible rallying cry for understanding across race, religion, and cultural divides.

 

Night Flyer by Tiya Miles; Henry Louis Gates (Series edited by)

Call Number: Stacks 306.362 T885zm 2024

ISBN: 9780593491164

Publication Date: 2024-06-18

Harriet Tubman is among the most famous Americans ever born and soon to be the face of the twenty-dollar bill. Yet often she's a figure more out of myth than history, almost a comic-book superhero. Despite being barely five feet tall, unable to read, and suffering from a brain injury, she managed to escape from her own enslavement, return again and again to lead others north to freedom without loss of life, speak out powerfully against slavery, and then become the first American woman in history to lead a military raid, freeing some seven hundred people. You could almost say she's America's Robin Hood, a miraculous vision, often rightly celebrated but seldom understood. Tiya Miles's extraordinary Night Flyer changes all that. With her characteristic tenderness and imaginative genius, Miles explores beyond the stock historical grid to weave Tubman's life into the fabric of her world. She probes the ecological reality of Tubman's surroundings and examines her kinship with other enslaved women who similarly passed through a spiritual wilderness and recorded those travels in profound and moving memoirs. What emerges, uncannily, is a human being whose mysticism becomes more palpable the more we understand it--a story that offers us powerful inspiration for our own time of troubles. Harriet Tubman traversed many boundaries, inner and outer. Now, thanks to Tiya Miles, she becomes an even clearer and sharper signal from the past, one that can help us to echolocate a more just and sustainable path.

 

A Few Days Full of Trouble by Wheeler Parker; Christopher Benson

Call Number: Stacks 364.134 T574zp 2023

ISBN: 9780593134269

Publication Date: 2023-01-10

The last surviving witness to the lynching of Emmett Till tells his story, with poignant recollections of Emmett as a boy, critical insights into the recent investigation, and powerful lessons for racial reckoning, both then and now.  In 1955, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was lynched. That remains an undisputed fact of the case that ignited a flame within the Civil Rights Movement that has yet to be extinguished. Yet the rest of the details surrounding the event remain distorted by time and too many tellings. What does justice mean in the resolution of a cold case spanning nearly seven decades? In A Few Days Full of Trouble, this question drives a new perspective on the story of Emmett Till, relayed by his cousin and best friend--the Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., a survivor of the night of terror when young Emmett was taken from his family's rural Mississippi Delta home in the dead of night.   Rev. Parker offers an emotional and suspenseful page-turner set against a backdrop of reporting errors and manipulations, racial reckoning, and political pushback--and he does so accompanied by never-before-seen findings in the investigation, the soft resurrection of memory, and the battle-tested courage of faith. A Few Days Full of Trouble is a powerful work of truth-telling, a gift to readers looking to reconcile the weight of the past with a hope for the future.

 

Built from the Fire by Victor Luckerson

Call Number: Stacks 976.686 L941b 2023

ISBN: 9780593134375

Publication Date: 2023-05-23

When Ed Goodwin moved with his parents to the Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his family joined a community soon to become the center of black life in the West. But just a few years later, on May 31, 1921, the teenaged Ed hid in a bathtub as a white mob descended on his neighborhood, laying waste to thirty-five blocks and murdering as many as three hundred people in one of the worst acts of racist violence in U.S. history. The Goodwins and their neighbors soon rebuilt the district into "a Mecca," in Ed's words, where nightlife thrived and small businesses flourished. Ed bought a newspaper to chronicle Greenwood's resurgence and battles against white bigotry, and his son Jim, an attorney, embodied the family's hopes for the civil rights movement. But by the 1970s urban renewal policies had nearly emptied the neighborhood. Today the newspaper remains, and Ed's granddaughter Regina represents the neighborhood in the Oklahoma state legislature, working alongside a new generation of local activists to revive it once again.  In Built from the Fire, journalist Victor Luckerson tells the true story behind a potent national symbol of success and solidarity and weaves an epic tale about a neighborhood that refused, more than once, to be erased.

 

King: a Life by Jonathan Eig

Call Number: New Book Display 323.092 K53zei 2023

ISBN: 9780374279295

Publication Date: 2023-05-16

Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King: A Life is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.--and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family's origins as well as MLK's complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father--as well as the nation's most mourned martyr. In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history's greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime. Includes 8 pages of black-and-white photographs.

 

The Talk by Darrin Bell

Call Number: Graphic Novels 305.896 B433t 2023

ISBN: 9781250805140

Publication Date: 2023-06-06

Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn't have a realistic water gun. She said she feared for his safety, that police tend to think of little Black boys as older and less innocent than they really are. Through evocative illustrations and sharp humor, Bell examines how The Talk shaped intimate and public moments from childhood to adulthood. While coming of age in Los Angeles--and finding a voice through cartooning--Bell becomes painfully aware of being regarded as dangerous by white teachers, neighbors, and police officers and thus of his mortality. Drawing attention to the brutal murders of African Americans and showcasing revealing insights and cartoons along the way, he brings us up to the moment of reckoning when people took to the streets protesting the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. And now Bell must decide whether he and his own six-year-old son are ready to have The Talk.

 

His Name Is George Floyd (Pulitzer Prize Winner) by Robert Samuels; Toluse Olorunnipa

Call Number: Stacks 305.896 F645zs 2022

ISBN: 9780593490617

Publication Date: 2022-05-17

The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the latest Black person to die at the hands of the police, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin. The video recording of his death set off the largest protest movement in the history of the United States, awakening millions to the pervasiveness of racial injustice. But long before his face was painted onto countless murals and his name became synonymous with civil rights, Floyd was a father, partner, athlete, and friend who constantly strove for a better life.   His Name Is George Floyd tells the story of a beloved figure from Houston's housing projects as he faced the stifling systemic pressures that come with being a Black man in America. Placing his narrative within the context of the country's enduring legacy of institutional racism, this deeply reported account examines Floyd's family roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his schools, the overpolicing of his community amid a wave of mass incarceration, and the callous disregard toward his struggle with addiction--putting today's inequality into uniquely human terms. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with Floyd's closest friends and family, his elementary school teachers and varsity coaches, civil rights icons, and those in the highest seats of political power, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa offer a poignant and moving exploration of George Floyd's America, revealing how a man who simply wanted to breathe ended up touching the world.

 

A Worthy Piece of Work by Michael Hines

Call Number: Stacks 371.1 M849zh 2022

ISBN: 9780807007426

Publication Date: 2022-05-24

The story of Madeline Morgan, the activist educator who brought Black history to one of the nation's largest and most segregated school systems. A Worthy Piece of Work tells the story of Madeline Morgan (later Madeline Stratton Morris), a teacher and an activist in WWII-era Chicago, who fought her own battle on the home front, authoring curricula that bolstered Black claims for recognition and equal citizenship. During the Second World War, as Black Americans both fought to save democracy abroad and demanded full citizenship at home, Morgan's work gained national attention and widespread praise, and became a model for teachers, schools, districts, and cities across the country. Scholar Michael Hines unveils this history for the first time, providing a rich understanding of the ways in which Black educators have created counternarratives to challenge the anti-Black racism found in school textbooks and curricula. At a moment when Black history is under attack in school districts and state legislatures across the country, A Worthy Piece of Work reminds us that struggles over history, representation, and race are far from a new phenomenon.

 

Walk with Me by Kate Clifford Larson

Call Number: Stacks 973.049 H214zLa 2021

ISBN: 9780190096847

Publication Date: 2021-09-01

Few figures embody the physical courage, unstinting sacrifice, and inspired heroism behind the Civil Rights movement more than Fannie Lou Hamer. For millions hers was the voice that made "This Little Light of Mine" an anthem. Her impassioned rhetoric electrified audiences. At the Democratic Convention in 1964, Hamer's televised speech took not just Democrats but the entire nation to task for abetting racial injustice, searing the conscience of everyone who heard it. Born in the Mississippi Delta in 1917, Hamer was the 20th child of Black sharecroppers and raised in a world in which racism, poverty, and injustice permeated the cotton fields. As the Civil Rights Movement began to emerge during the 1950s, she was struggling to make a living with her husband on lands that her forebears had cleared, ploughed, and harvested for generations. When a white doctor sterilized her without her permission in 1961, Hamer took her destiny into her own hands. Bestselling biographer Kate Clifford Larson offers the first account of Hamer's life for a general audience, capturing and illuminating what made Hamer the electrifying force that she became when she walked onto stages across the country during the 1960s and until her death in 1977. Walk with Me does justice to the full force of Hamer's activism and example. Based on new sources, including recently opened FBI files and Oval Office transcripts, the biography features interviews with some of the people closest to Hamer and conversations with Civil Rights leaders who fought alongside her. Larson's biography will become the standard account of an extraordinary life.

 

The Assault on Elisha Green by Randolph Paul Runyon

Call Number: Stacks 305.896 R943a 2021

ISBN: 9780813152387

Publication Date: 2021-10-26

On June 8, 1883, Rev. Elisha Green was traveling by train from Maysville to Paris, Kentucky. At Millersburg, about forty students from the Millersburg Female College crowded onto the train, accompanied by their music teacher, Frank L. Bristow, and the college president, George T. Gould. Gould grabbed the reverend by the shoulder and ordered him to give up his seat. When Green refused, Bristow and Gould assaulted him until the conductor intervened and ordered the assailants to stop or he would throw them off of the train. Friends advised Green to take legal action, and he did, winning his case against his assailants in March 1884, though with only token compensation. The significance of this case lies not only in the prevailing justice of the 1800s, but also in the fact that a black man won a lawsuit against two white men. In The Assault on Elisha Green: Race and Religion in a Kentucky Community, historian Randolph Paul Runyon recounts one man's pursuit of justice over violence and racism in the nineteenth century. He tells the story of Green's life and follows the network of relationships that led to the event of the assault. Tracing these three men's lives brings the reader from the slavery era to the eve of the First World War, from Kentucky to New Mexico, from Covington to the Kentucky River Palisades, with particular focus on Mason and Bourbon Counties. In this engagingly written tale, Runyon masterfully interweaves background information with the immediacy of the harrowing attack and its aftermath, revealing the true character of the primary actors and the racial tensions unique to a border state.

 

The Three Mothers by Anna Malaika Tubbs

Call Number: Stacks 306.874 T884t 2021

ISBN: 9781250756121

Publication Date: 2021-02-02

Berdis Baldwin, Alberta King, and Louise Little were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women. These three extraordinary women passed their knowledge to their children with the hope of helping them to survive in a society that would deny their humanity from the very beginning--from Louise teaching her children about their activist roots, to Berdis encouraging James to express himself through writing, to Alberta basing all of her lessons in faith and social justice. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced. These three mothers taught resistance and a fundamental belief in the worth of Black people to their sons, even when these beliefs flew in the face of America's racist practices and led to ramifications for all three families' safety. The fight for equal justice and dignity came above all else for the three mothers. These women, their similarities and differences, as individuals and as mothers, represent a piece of history left untold and a celebration of Black motherhood long overdue.

 

 

If you want to find more books or other materials on this or other topics, you can visit the library website and check the library catalog.

Need assistance, please stop by or contact the Reference Desk.

I recently saw this article, "Celebrate Black History Month by reading these 16 sci-fi and fantasy authors who've shaped the genre," that offers a list of Black science fiction and fantasy authors. I decided to check the library catalog and see which authors and works we have so our readers can come on over and check them out. From the article's list of authors, we have the following items in our collections:

Octavia E. Butler: Kindred, Fledgling, Collected Stories (LOA #338) by Octavia Butler; Gerry Canavan (Editor); Nisi Shawl (Editor)

Call Number: Fiction B984955oc 2020

ISBN: 9781598536751

Publication Date: 2021-01-19

The definitive edition of the complete works of the "grand dame" of American science fiction begins with this volume gathering two novels and her collected stories. An original and eerily prophetic writer, Octavia E. Butler used the conventions of science fiction to explore the dangerous legacy of racism in America in harrowingly personal terms. She broke new ground with books that featured complex Black female protagonists--"I wrote myself in," she would later recall--establishing herself as one of the pioneers of the Afrofuturist aesthetic. In 1995 she became the first science fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, in recognition of her achievement in creating new aspirations for the genre and for American literature.  This first volume in the Library of America edition of Butler's collected works opens with her masterpiece,  Kindred, one of the landmark American novels of the last half century. Its heroine, Dana, a Black woman, is pulled back and forth between the present and the pre-Civil War past, where she finds herself enslaved on the plantation of a white ancestor whose life she must save to preserve her own. In Fledgling, an amnesiac discovers that she is a vampire, with a difference: she is a new, experimental birth with brown skin, giving her the fearful ability to go out in sunlight. Rounding out the volume are eight short stories and five essays--including two never before collected, plus a newly researched chronology of Butler's life and career and helpful explanatory notes prepared by scholar Gerry Canavan. Butler's friend, the writer and editor Nisi Shawl, provides an introduction.

 

Imaro by Charles Saunders

Call Number: Fiction S2562r 2006

ISBN: 9781597800365

Publication Date: 2006-02-01

Imaro is a rousing adventure... a tale of a young man's continuing struggle to gain acceptance amongst his people, and to break the cycle of alienation and violence that plagues his life. Imaro is heroic fantasy like it's never been done before. Based on Africa, and African traditions and legends, Charles Saunders has created Nyumbani (which means "home" in Swahili), an amalgam of the real, the semi-real, and the unreal. Imaro is the name of the larger-than-life warrior, an outcast, who travels across Nyumbani, searching for a home. Like his contemporaries, Karl Edward Wagner (Kane) and Michael Moorcock (Elric), Charles Saunders brings something new to the traditional heroic fantasy tale. A broad knowledge of, and passion for, the history and myths of Africa led to the creation of a heroic fantasy character the likes of which the world has never seen. Imaro is no Tarzan... no Conan... Imaro is a warrior out of African legend. Saunders' novel fuses the narrative style of fantasy fiction with a pre-colonial, alternate Africa. Inspired by and directly addresses the alienation of growing up an African American fan of Science Fiction and Fantasy, which to this day remains a very ethnically homogenous genre. It addresses this both structurally (via its unique setting) and thematically (via its alienated, tribeless hero-protagonist). The tribal tensions and histories presented in this fantasy novel reflect actual African tribal histories and tensions, and provide a unique perspective to current and recent conflicts in Africa, particularly the Rwandan genocide and the ongoing conflict in The Sudan.

 

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

Call Number: Fiction J49fi 2015 bk. 1

ISBN: 9780316229296

Publication Date: 2015-08-04

At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times) This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time. It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester. This is the Stillness, a land long familiar with catastrophe, where the power of the earth is wielded as a weapon. And where there is no mercy. Read the first book in the critically acclaimed, three-time Hugo award-winning trilogy by NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin.

 

Hutchins Library does have the complete trilogy: The Obelisk Gate (book 2) and The Stone Sky (book 3).

 

After the Rain by Nnedi Okorafor; David Brame (Illustrator); John Jennings (Adapted by)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 741.5 J543a 2021

ISBN: 9781419743559

Publication Date: 2021-01-05

After the Rain is an adaptation of Nnedi Okorafor's short story "On the Road." The adaptation begins in Nigeria during a violent and unexpected storm. A young Nigerian American woman named Chioma answers a knock at her door and is horrified to see a boy with a severe head wound standing there. When he touches her, his hand burns like fire and he disappears. Chioma knows that something is wrong, and that the boy has "marked" her in some way . . . Haunted and hunted, Chioma must embrace her heritage in order to face her future. John Jennings and David Brame's collaboration uses bold art and colors to powerfully tell this tale of identity and destiny.

 

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

Call Number: Young Adult A233ch 2018

ISBN: 9781250170972

Publication Date: 2018-03-06

 They killed my mother. They took our magic. They tried to bury us. Now we rise. Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie's Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good. Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers and her growing feelings for an enemy.  

 

Hutchins Library also has the other two books in the trilogy: Children of Virtue and Vengeance (Book 2) and Children of Anguish and Anarchy (Book 3)

 

Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson

Call Number: Fiction H7972sk 2018

ISBN: 9781504052764

Publication Date: 2018-07-03

 In Skin Folk, with works ranging from science fiction to Caribbean folklore, passionate love to chilling horror, Nalo Hopkinson is at her award-winning best, spinning tales like "Precious," in which the narrator spews valuable coins and gems from her mouth whenever she attempts to talk or sing. In "A Habit of Waste," a self-conscious woman undergoes elective surgery to alter her appearance; days later she's shocked to see her former body climbing onto a public bus. In "The Glass Bottle Trick," the young protagonist ignores her intuition regarding her new husband's superstitions--to horrifying consequences.   Hopkinson's unique pacing and vibrant dialogue sets a steady beat for stories that illustrate why she received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Entertaining, challenging, and alluring, Skin Folk is not to be missed.  

 

The Memory Librarian by Janelle Monáe

Call Number: Fiction M743me 2022

ISBN: 9780063070875

Publication Date: 2022-04-19

New York Times bestseller! In The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer, singer-songwriter, actor, fashion icon, futurist, and worldwide superstar Janelle Monáe brings to the written page the Afrofuturistic world of one of her critically acclaimed albums, exploring how different threads of liberation--queerness, race, gender plurality, and love--become tangled with future possibilities of memory and time in such a totalitarian landscape...and what the costs might be when trying to unravel and weave them into freedoms. Whoever controls our memories controls the future. Janelle Monáe and an incredible array of talented collaborators have crafted a collection of tales comprising the bold vision and powerful themes that have made Monáe such a compelling and celebrated storyteller. Dirty Computer introduced a world in which thoughts--as a means of self-conception--could be controlled or erased by a select few. And whether you were human, AI, or other, your life and sentience were dictated by those who'd convinced themselves they had the right to decide your fate. That was until Jane 57821 decided to remember and break free. Expanding from that mythos, these stories fully explore what it's like to live in such a totalitarian society . . . and what it takes to get out of it. Building off the tradition of speculative fiction writers such as Octavia E. Butler, Ted Chiang, Becky Chambers, and Nnedi Okorafor--and filled with powerful themes and Monáe's emblematic artistic vision--The Memory Librarian serves to readers tales that dissect the human trials of identity expression, technology, and love, reaching through to the worlds of memory and time, and the stakes and power that pulse there.

 

Note: Sheree Renee Thomas, mentioned in the article, contributes a story in The Memory Librarian.

 

Black Boy Joy by Kwame Mbalia (Editor)

Call Number: Fiction M478bL 2021

ISBN: 9780593379936

Publication Date: 2021-08-03

Celebrate the joys of Black boyhood with stories from seventeen bestselling, critically acclaimed Black authors-including Jason Reynolds, Jerry Craft, and Kwame Mbalia. Black boy joy is... Picking out a fresh first-day-of-school outfit. Saving the universe in an epic intergalactic race. Finding your voice-and your rhymes-during tough times. Flying on your skateboard like nobody's watching. And more! From seventeen acclaimed Black male and non-binary authors comes a vibrant collection of stories, comics, and poems about the power of joy and the wonders of Black boyhood. Contributors include- B. B. Alston, Dean Atta, P. Djeli Clark, Jay Coles, Jerry Craft, Lamar Giles, Don P. Hooper, George M. Johnson, Varian Johnson, Kwame Mbalia, Suyi Davies Okungbowa, Tochi Onyebuchi, Julian Randall, Jason Reynolds, Justin Reynolds, DaVaun Sanders, and Julian Winters

 

Note: P. Djèlí Clark, mentioned in the article, contributes a story in Black Boy Joy.

 

The Midnight Bargain by C. L. Polk

Call Number: Young Adult P769mi 2021

ISBN: 9781645660293

Publication Date: 2021-12-07

From the bestselling, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Witchmark comes a sweeping, romantic new fantasy set in a world reminiscent of Regency England, where women's magic is taken from them when they marry. A sorceress must balance her desire to become the first great female magician against her duty to her family. Beatrice Clayborn is a sorceress who practices magic in secret, terrified of the day she will be locked into a marital collar that will cut off her powers to protect her unborn children. She dreams of becoming a full-fledged Magus and pursuing magic as her calling as men do, but her family has staked everything to equip her for Bargaining Season, when young men and women of means descend upon the city to negotiate the best marriages. The Clayborns are in severe debt, and only she can save them, by securing an advantageous match before their creditors come calling.  In a stroke of luck, Beatrice finds a grimoire that contains the key to becoming a Magus, but before she can purchase it, a rival sorceress swindles the book right out of her hands. Beatrice summons a spirit to help her get it back, but her new ally exacts a price: Beatrice's first kiss . . . with her adversary's brother, the handsome, compassionate, and fabulously wealthy Ianthe Lavan.  The more Beatrice is entangled with the Lavan siblings, the harder her decision becomes: If she casts the spell to become a Magus, she will devastate her family and lose the only man to ever see her for who she is; but if she marries--even for love--she will sacrifice her magic, her identity, and her dreams. But how can she choose just one, knowing she will forever regret the path not taken?

 

You can find these and other books via the library catalog. Need assistance? Stop by the Reference Desk or you can use the virtual chat feature on the library website.

Happy reading.

 

 

February is Black History Month in the United States and other parts of the world. This is a time when libraries often offer suggested reading lists to help the community learn more through reading. Today I would like to highlight some books that may be of interest this month and throughout the year. These books are all available at Hutchins Library. If you want to find more, you can always visit our library website, check the library catalog, and do a search for more titles. Need assistance? You can stop by the Reference Desk during regular library hours, use our chat service, and/or set up an appointment with a librarian. See our website for hours and details.

Our History Has Always Been Contraband by Colin Kaepernick (Editor); Robin D. G. Kelley (Editor); Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Editor)

Call Number: Stacks 973.049 O937 2023

ISBN: 9798888900574

Publication Date: 2023-07-04

"The centuries-long attack on Black history represents a strike against our very worth, brilliance, and value. We're ready to fight back. And when we fight, we win." --Colin Kaepernick. Since its founding as a discipline, Black Studies has been under relentless attack by social and political forces seeking to discredit and neutralize it. Our History Has Always Been Contraband was born out of an urgent need to respond to the latest threat: efforts to remove content from an AP African American Studies course being piloted in high schools across the United States. Edited by Colin Kaepernick, Robin D. G. Kelley, and Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Our History Has Always Been Contraband brings together canonical texts and authors in Black Studies, including those excised from or not included in the AP curriculum. Featuring writings by: David Walker, Frederick Douglass, Anna Julia Cooper, Zora Neale Hurston, W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, James Baldwin, June Jordan, Angela Y. Davis, Robert Allen, Barbara Smith, Toni Cade Bambara, bell hooks, Barbara Christian, Patricia Hill Collins, Cathy J. Cohen, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Saidiya Hartman, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, and many others. Our History Has Always Been Contraband excerpts readings that cut across and between literature, political theory, law, psychology, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, queer and feminist theory, and history.

 

I have personally read this book and recommend it.

 

 

My Black Country by Alice Randall

Call Number: Stacks 781.642 R188m 2024

ISBN: 9781668018408

Publication Date: 2024-04-09

Alice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter, and author presents "a celebration of all things country music" (Ken Burns) as she reflects on her search for the first family of Black country music. Country music had brought Alice Randall and her activist mother together and even gave Randall a singular distinction in American music history: she is the first Black woman to cowrite a number one country hit, Trisha Yearwood's "XXX's and OOO's (An American Girl)". Randall found inspiration and comfort in the sounds and history of the first family of Black country music: DeFord Bailey, Lil Hardin, Ray Charles, Charley Pride, and Herb Jeffries who, together, made up a community of Black Americans rising through hard times to create simple beauty, true joy, and sometimes profound eccentricity. What emerges in My Black Country is "a delightful, inspirational story of persistence, resistance, and sheer love" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) of this most American of music genres and the radical joy in realizing the power of Black influence on American culture. As country music goes through a fresh renaissance today, with a new wave of Black artists enjoying success, My Black Country is the perfect gift for longtime country fans and a vibrant introduction to a new generation of listeners who previously were not invited to give the genre a chance.

 

 

The Stolen Wealth of Slavery by David Montero; Michael Eric Dyson (Foreword by)

Call Number: Stacks 381.44 M778s 2024

ISBN: 9780306827174

Publication Date: 2024-02-06

This groundbreaking book tracks the massive wealth amassed from slavery from pre-Civil War to today, showing how our modern economy was built on the backs of enslaved Black people--and lays out a clear argument for reparations that shows exactly what was stolen, who stole it, and to whom it is owed.   In this timely, powerful, investigative history, The Stolen Wealth of Slavery, Emmy Award-nominated journalist David Montero follows the trail of the massive wealth amassed by Northern corporations throughout America's history of enslavement. It has long been maintained by many that the North wasn't complicit in the horrors of slavery. The truth, however, is that large Northern banks--including well-known institutions like Citibank, Bank of New York, and Bank of America--were critical to the financing of slavery; that they saw their fortunes rise dramatically from their involvement in the business of enslavement;  and that white business leaders and their surrounding communities created enormous wealth from the enslavement and abuse of Black bodies. The Stolen Wealth of Slavery grapples with facts that will be a revelation to many: Most white Southern enslavers were not rich--many were barely making ends meet--with Northern businesses benefitting the most from bondage-based profits. And some of the very Northerners who would be considered pro-Union during the Civil War were in fact anti-abolition, seeing the institution of slavery as being in their best financial interests, and only supporting the Union once they realized doing so would be good for business. It is a myth that the wealth generated from slavery vanished after the war. Rather, it helped finance the industrialization of the country, and became part of the bedrock of the growth of modern corporations, helping to transform America into a global economic behemoth. In this remarkable book, Montero elegantly and meticulously details rampant Northern investment in slavery. He showcases exactly what was stolen, who stole it, and to whom it is owed, calling for corporate reparations as he details contemporary movements to hold companies accountable for past atrocities.

 

 

A Most Tolerant Little Town by Rachel Louise Martin

Call Number: Stacks 379.263 M382m 2023

ISBN: 9781665905145

Publication Date: 2023-06-13

In graduate school, Rachel Martin was sent to a small town in the foothills of the Appalachians, where locals wanted to build a museum to commemorate the events of September 1956, when Clinton High School became the first school in the former Confederacy to attempt court mandated desegregation. But not everyone wanted to talk. As one founder of the Tennessee White Youth told her, "Honey, there was a lot of ugliness down at the school that year; best we just move on and forget it." For years, Martin wondered what it was some white residents of Clinton didn't want remembered. So, she went back, eventually interviewing over sixty townsfolk--including nearly a dozen of the first students to desegregate Clinton High--to piece together what happened back in 1956: the death threats and beatings, picket lines and cross burnings, neighbors turned on neighbors and preachers for the first time at a loss for words. The National Guard rushed to town, along with national journalists like Edward R. Morrow and even evangelist Billy Graham. But that wasn't the most explosive secret Martin learned... In A Most Tolerant Little Town, Rachel Martin weaves together over a dozen perspectives in an intimate, kaleidoscopic portrait of a small town living through a turbulent turning point for America. The result is at once a "gripping" (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) mystery and a moving piece of forgotten civil rights history, rendered "with precision, lucidity and, most of all, a heart inured to false hope" (The New York Times). You may never before have heard of Clinton, Tennessee--but you won't be forgetting the town anytime soon.

 

 

Black Folk: the roots of the Black working class by Blair Kelley

Call Number: Stacks 331.639 K293b 2023

ISBN: 9781631496554

Publication Date: 2023-06-13

There have been countless books, articles, and televised reports in recent years about the almost mythic "white working class," a tide of commentary that has obscured the labor, and even the very existence, of entire groups of working people, including everyday Black workers. In this brilliant corrective, Black Folk, acclaimed historian Blair LM Kelley restores the Black working class to the center of the American story. Spanning two hundred years--from one of Kelley's earliest known ancestors, an enslaved blacksmith, to the essential workers of the Covid-19 pandemic--Black Folk highlights the lives of the laundresses, Pullman porters, domestic maids, and postal workers who established the Black working class as a force in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taking jobs white people didn't want and confined to segregated neighborhoods, Black workers found community in intimate spaces, from stoops on city streets to the backyards of washerwomen, where multiple generations labored from dawn to dusk, talking and laughing in a space free of white supervision and largely beyond white knowledge. As millions of Black people left the violence of the American South for the promise of a better life in the North and West, these networks of resistance and joy sustained early arrivals and newcomers alike and laid the groundwork for organizing for better jobs, better pay, and equal rights. As her narrative moves from Georgia to Philadelphia, Florida to Chicago, Texas to Oakland, Kelley treats Black workers not just as laborers, or members of a class, or activists, but as people whose daily experiences mattered--to themselves, to their communities, and to a nation that denied that basic fact. Through affecting portraits of her great-grandfather, a sharecropper named Solicitor, and her grandmother, Brunell, who worked for more than a decade as a domestic maid, Kelley captures, in intimate detail, how generation after generation of labor was required to improve, and at times maintain, her family's status. Yet her family, like so many others, was always animated by a vision of a better future. The church yards, factory floors, rail cars, and postal sorting facilities where Black people worked were sites of possibility, and, as Kelley suggests, Amazon package processing centers, supermarkets, and nursing homes can be the same today. With the resurgence of labor activism in our own time, Black Folk presents a stirring history of our possible future.

 

 

The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones (Created by); The New The New York Times Magazine (Created by); Caitlin Roper (Editor); Ilena Silverman (Editor); Jake Silverstein (Editor)

Call Number: Stacks 973 S625 2021

ISBN: 9780593230572

Publication Date: 2021-11-16

 In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty people stolen from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States. The New York Times Magazine's award-winning 1619 Project issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself. This book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation's founding and construction--and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.

 

Have you read any of the above? Do you have other titles you would like to suggest? Feel free to leave us a comment.

 

In addition to the list above, if you are interested in graphic novels, we made a list of titles for Black History Month.

Welcome to another edition of "From Our Shelves," where I read a book from our collections and give you a short review to help you decide if you want to read it. This week I read Psalms of My People by lenny duncan. The author takes us on a learning tour of Black History in the United States through hip-hop. In the book, the author selects key works in hip-hop and looks at them as religious texts. The author then writes a psalm on the specific work and looks also at context and broader history.  Initially I was not sure what to make of the book, but once I started reading, it drew me right in. I just kept reading. It is an accessible text, and the psalms format gives the material a bit of rhythm. There is a musicality as you read. Overall, this is a book that packs a lot of wisdom, and I really enjoyed it. Thus I highly recommend it.

Here are the details from the library catalog so you can find it in our library:

Psalms of My People by Lenny Duncan

Call Number: Stacks 782.421 D911p 2024

ISBN: 9781506479026

Publication Date: 2024-01-09

If you want to understand the Black experience in the US, you have to understand hip-hop. James Baldwin, in his famous talk "The Struggle for the Artist's Integrity," suggests that "the poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us." And to understand the truth about the history of Black peoples in America, argues lenny duncan, we must look to the modern Black poet: the hip-hop artist. In Psalms of My People, artist, scholar, and activist lenny duncan treats the work of hip-hop artists from the last several decades--from N.W.A, Tupac, and Biggie to Lauryn Hill, Jay-Z, and Kendrick Lamar--like sacred scripture.  "Who else but the hip-hop artist," asks Duncan, "has embodied the cries, pain, and secret concrete ? Whose art? Our art. Whose story is written in the book of life with crimson lines dipped in a well that is 400+ years deep? Whose story? Our story. For whom does God bring down empires? Us."

 

Malcolm X Day is a U.S. holiday observed either on his birthday, May 19th, or on the third Friday in May. It is observed in some way in 16 states as of this post, often in specific cities and often with educational events and other activities.  

To honor the civil rights activist and leader on this day, I am highlighting some books and resources on Malcolm X and his times available at Hutchins Library.

Books listed below, in no particular order, are available here at the library. If you want to find more, you can visit the library website and use the library catalog to search for more books and other resources the library owns or can access. If you need assistance, you can contact or visit the reference desk.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley

Call Number: Stacks 305.896 X11a 1999

ISBN: 9780345350688

Publication Date: 1987-10-12

ONE OF TIME'S TEN MOST IMPORTANT NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY In the searing pages of this classic autobiography, originally published in 1964, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and anti-integrationist, tells the extraordinary story of his life and the growth of the Black Muslim movement. His fascinating perspective on the lies and limitations of the American Dream, and the inherent racism in a society that denies its nonwhite citizens the opportunity to dream, gives extraordinary insight into the most urgent issues of our own time. The Autobiography of Malcolm X stands as the definitive statement of a movement and a man whose work was never completed but whose message is timeless. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand America. Praise for The Autobiography of Malcolm X "Extraordinary . . . a brilliant, painful, important book."--The New York Times "This book will have a permanent place in the literature of the Afro-American struggle."--I. F. Stone

 

 

Malcolm X by Manning Marable; G. Valmont Thomas (Read by)

Call Number: Stacks 297.87 X11zm 2011

ISBN: 9780670022205

Publication Date: 2011-04-04

Selected by The New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of the Year. Years in the making-the definitive biography of the legendary black activist. Of the great figures in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man. In death he became a broad symbol of both resistance and reconciliation for millions around the world. Manning Marable's new biography of Malcolm is a stunning achievement. Filled with new information and shocking revelations that go beyond the Autobiography, Malcolm X unfolds a sweeping story of race and class in America, from the rise of Marcus Garvey and the Ku Klux Klan to the struggles of the civil rights movement in the fifties and sixties. Reaching into Malcolm's troubled youth, it traces a path from his parents' activism through his own engagement with the Nation of Islam, charting his astronomical rise in the world of Black Nationalism and culminating in the never-before-told true story of his assassination. Malcolm X will stand as the definitive work on one of the most singular forces for social change, capturing with revelatory clarity a man who constantly strove, in the great American tradition, to remake himself anew.

 

A Lie of Reinvention by Jared Ball (Editor); Todd Steven Burroughs (Editor)

Call Number: E-Book

ISBN: 9781574780512

Publication Date: 2013-07-01

A Lie of Reinvention is a response to Manning Marable’s biography of Malcolm X, A Life of Reinvention. Marable’s book was controversially acclaimed by some as his magna opus. At the same time, it was denounced and debated by others as a worthless read full of conjecture, errors, and without any new factual content. In this collection of critical essays, editors Jared Ball and Todd Steven Burroughs lead a group of established and emerging Black scholars and activists who take a clear stance in this controversy: Marable’s biography is at best flawed and at worst a major setback in American history, African American studies, and scholarship on the life of Malcolm X. In the tradition of John Henrik Clarke’s classic anthology "William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond,” this volume provides a striking critique of Marable’s text. In 1968, Clarke and his assembled writers felt it essential to respond to Styron’s fictionalized and ahistorical Nat Turner, the heroic leader of one of America’s most famous revolts against enslavement. In A Lie of Reinvention, the editors sense a different threat to an African American icon, Malcolm X. This time, the threat is presented as an authoritative biography. To counter the threat, Ball and Burroughs respond with a barbed collection of commentaries of Marable’s text. The essays come from all quarters of the Black community. From behind prison walls, Mumia Abu-Jamal revises his prior public praise of Marable’s book with an essay written specifically for this volume. A. Peter Bailey, a veteran journalist who worked with Malcolm X’s Organization for Afro-American Unity, disputes how he is characterized in Marable’s book. Bill Strickland, who also knew Malcolm X, provides what he calls a "personal critique” of the biography. Younger scholars such as Kali Akuno, Kamau Franklin, Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, Christopher M. Tinson, Eugene Puryear and Greg Thomas join veterans Rosmari Mealy, Raymond Winbush, Amiri Baraka and Karl Evanzz in pointing out historical problems and ideological misinterpretations in Marable’s work.

 

 

The Dead Are Arising by Les Payne; Tamara Payne

Call Number: Stacks 320.546 X11zp 2020

ISBN: 9781631491665

Publication Date: 2020-10-20

Les Payne, the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, embarked in 1990 on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X--all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders around the world. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become over a hundred hours of interviews into an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction. The result is this historic biography that conjures a never-before-seen world of its protagonist, a work whose title is inspired by a phrase Malcolm X used when he saw his Hartford followers stir with purpose, as if the dead were truly arising, to overcome the obstacles of racism. Setting Malcolm's life not only within the Nation of Islam but against the larger backdrop of American history, the book traces the life of one of the twentieth century's most politically relevant figures "from street criminal to devoted moralist and revolutionary." In tracing Malcolm X's life from his Nebraska birth in 1925 to his Harlem assassination in 1965, Payne provides searing vignettes culled from Malcolm's Depression-era youth, describing the influence of his Garveyite parents: his father, Earl, a circuit-riding preacher who was run over by a street car in Lansing, Michigan, in 1929, and his mother, Louise, who continued to instill black pride in her children after Earl's death. Filling each chapter with resonant drama, Payne follows Malcolm's exploits as a petty criminal in Boston and Harlem in the 1930s and early 1940s to his religious awakening and conversion to the Nation of Islam in a Massachusetts penitentiary. With a biographer's unwavering determination, Payne corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations--from the unmasking of the mysterious NOI founder "Fard Muhammad," who preceded Elijah Muhammad; to a hair-rising scene, conveyed in cinematic detail, of Malcolm and Minister Jeremiah X Shabazz's 1961 clandestine meeting with the KKK; to a minute-by-minute account of Malcolm X's murder at the Audubon Ballroom. Introduced by Payne's daughter and primary researcher, Tamara Payne, who, following her father's death, heroically completed the biography, The Dead Are Arising is a penetrating and riveting work that affirms the centrality of Malcolm X to the African American freedom struggle.

 

The Sword and the Shield by Peniel E. Joseph

Call Number: Stacks 323.092 J835s 2020

ISBN: 9781541617865

Publication Date: 2020-03-31

This "landmark" (Ibram X. Kendi, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist) dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the twentieth century's most iconic African American leaders   To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense versus nonviolence, black power versus civil rights, the sword versus the shield. The struggle for black freedom is wrought with the same contrasts. While nonviolent direct action is remembered as an unassailable part of American democracy, the movement's militancy is either vilified or erased outright. In The Sword and the Shield, Peniel E. Joseph upends these misconceptions and reveals a nuanced portrait of two men who, despite markedly different backgrounds, inspired and pushed each other throughout their adult lives. This is a strikingly revisionist biography, not only of Malcolm and Martin, but also of the movement and era they came to define.  

 

The Three Mothers by Anna Malaika Tubbs

Call Number: Stacks 306.874 T884t 2021

ISBN: 9781250756121

Publication Date: 2021-02-02

 Stamped from the Beginning Much has been written about Berdis Baldwin's son James, about Alberta King's son Martin Luther, and Louise Little's son Malcolm. but virtually nothing has been said about the extraordinary women who raised them. In her groundbreaking and essential debut The Three Mothers, scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America's most pivotal heroes. Berdis Baldwin, Alberta King, and Louise Little were all born at the beginning of the 20th century and forced to contend with the prejudices of Jim Crow as Black women. These three extraordinary women passed their knowledge to their children with the hope of helping them to survive in a society that would deny their humanity from the very beginning--from Louise teaching her children about their activist roots, to Berdis encouraging James to express himself through writing, to Alberta basing all of her lessons in faith and social justice. These women used their strength and motherhood to push their children toward greatness, all with a conviction that every human being deserves dignity and respect despite the rampant discrimination they faced. These three mothers taught resistance and a fundamental belief in the worth of Black people to their sons, even when these beliefs flew in the face of America's racist practices and led to ramifications for all three families' safety. The fight for equal justice and dignity came above all else for the three mothers. These women, their similarities and differences, as individuals and as mothers, represent a piece of history left untold and a celebration of Black motherhood long overdue.

 

Want to do some research on Malcolm X, his work and times? In addition to books and materials from the library collections, you could try using one of these databases available through the library website. Note that if you are off campus, you will be prompted to log in with your Berea College credentials to gain access.

 

• Academic Search Complete
• America: History and Life
• Ethnic Newswatch
• J-Stor

Here are some websites and freely available online resources that may be of interest.

• Want to research Malcolm X's papers? They are held at the New York Public Library (some materials may be digitized, check the site for details).
• Learn a bit more about the observance via the Zinn Education Project. They also offer other articles and resources on Malcolm X.
• Social Justice Books offers a list of books for teaching about Malcolm X from elementary school to adult nonfiction. You can check the library catalog to see which ones we may have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to another edition of "From Our Shelves" where I read a book from our collection, and give you a short review to help you decide if you want to read it or not. Today we have another selection for Black History Month, but again, this is one you can read anytime. Today's book is How Not To Get Shot: And Other Advice From White People by D.L. Hughley. I will say up front that you may not want to laugh when reading this, but you probably will anyways as Hughley combines serious race and social commentary with some deep biting satire. Hughley's mission for the book is a simple one: to distill the essence of the important information from White people that Blacks (and other minorities) need to know to avoid problems like getting shot. Hughley takes the very serious issues of racism in the United States, and in ridiculing them, adding some sarcasm and hyperbole, gets you to laugh even as you are outraged. The book may be humor and satire, but it is seriously grounded in real facts and solid information. This is a book that everyone should read, so I am providing the library catalog details below so folks can go check it out.

How Not to Get Shot by D. L. Hughley; Doug Moe

Call Number: Stacks 827.92 H894h 2018

ISBN: 9780062698544

Publication Date: 2018-06-26

The fearless comedy legend--one of the "Original Kings of Comedy"--hilariously breaks down the wisdom of white people, advice that has been killing black folks in America for four hundred years and counting. 200 years ago, white people told black folks, "'I suggest you pick the cotton if you don't like getting whipped." Today, it's "comply with police orders if you don't want to get shot." Now comedian/activist D. L. Hughley -one the Original Kings of Comedy-confronts and remixes white people's "advice" in this "hilarious examination of the current state of race relations in the United States" (Publishers Weekly). White people have been giving "advice" to black folks for as long as anyone can remember, telling them how to pick cotton, where to sit on a bus, what neighborhood to live in, when they can vote, and how to wear our pants. Despite centuries of whites' advice, it seems black people still aren't listening, and the results are tragic. Now, at last, activist, comedian, and New York Times bestselling author D. L. Hughley offers How Not to Get Shot, an illustrated how-to guide for black people, full of insight from white people, translated by one of the funniest black dudes on the planet. In these pages you will learn how to act, dress, speak, walk, and drive in the safest manner possible. You also will finally understand the white mind. It is a book that can save lives. Or at least laugh through the pain. Black people: Are you ready to not get shot! White people: Do you want to learn how to help the cause? Let's go!

This month Access World News*, also known as Newsbank, highlighted this article on "Movies to Watch for Black History Month." They listed nine movies. I went ahead and checked our library catalog, and I found that we have six of the nine films from the article. I am listing them below so you can check them out. In addition, if a movie is based on a book and/or has a companion book, and we have the book I am listing the book.

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

Call Number: Stacks 510.925 S554h 2016

ISBN: 9780062363596

Publication Date: 2016-09-06

 The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA at the leading edge of the feminist and civil rights movement, whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space--a powerful, revelatory contribution that is as essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern America as Between the World and Me and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. The basis for the smash Academy Award-nominated film starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner. Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of their generation. Originally relegated to teaching math in the South's segregated public schools, they were called into service during the labor shortages of World War II, when America's aeronautics industry was in dire need of anyone who had the right stuff. Suddenly, these overlooked math whizzes had a shot at jobs worthy of their skills, and they answered Uncle Sam's call, moving to Hampton, Virginia and the fascinating, high-energy world of the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. Even as Virginia's Jim Crow laws required them to be segregated from their white counterparts, the women of Langley's all-black "West Computing" group helped America achieve one of the things it desired most: a decisive victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and complete domination of the heavens. Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA's greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country's future.  

 

You can find the film in our DVD collection with the call number: DVD 791.437 H6317 2017.

 

 

 

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas; Amandla Stenberg (Foreword by)

Call Number: Young Adult T4517ha 2017

ISBN: 9780062498533

Publication Date: 2017-02-28

 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. Khalil was unarmed. Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil's name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. 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 upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

 

Find the film in our DVD collection with the call number: DVD 791.437 H3615 2018.

 

 

 

Selma (2015). Summary: "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historical struggle to secure voting rights for all people. A dangerous and terrifying campaign that culminated with an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1964." Find it in our DVD Collection with call number DVD 791.437 S468 2015.

  Daughters of the Dust (2000). Summary: "Story of a large African-American family as they prepare to move North from the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia at the dawn of the 20th century." Find it in our DVD collection with call number DVD 791.437 D238 2000.

   Lee Daniels' The Butler (2013). Summary: "A butler tells the story of a White House [butler] who serves eight presidents over three decades. During his tenure as a butler at the White House, the civil rights movement, Vietnam, and other major events affect this man's life, family, and American society." 

  Glory (2000). Summary: "Two idealistic young Bostonians lead the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, America's first Black regiment in the Civil War." Find it in the DVD collection with call number DVD 791.437 G562 2000 Discs 1-2 .

*Access World News is one of our news databases. It provides "full text from nearly 3,700 U.S. and 2,300 International newspapers. Direct links are available to search Kentucky and Appalachian Region newspapers, major metro titles, international resources, newswires, broadcast transcripts, America's news magazines, world and US newspapers." You can find and access the database from the library homepage under "Electronic Resources." If you are off-campus, you will need to authenticate and log in with your Berea College credentials and DUO.

Welcome to another edition of "From Our Shelves," where I highlight and write a short review of a book I have read from our collection. February is Black History Month, so this week I read Allow Me to Retort. In this book, Mystal takes on a big challenge: debunking the myth that the U.S. Constitution is an inclusive and infallible document. In reality, as Mystal demonstrates and carefully explains in the book, the U.S. Constitution is a document designed to preserve White supremacy at the expense of Black people, and pretty much every other "minority" group, but Mystal for now focuses on Black people, which is a big task in itself. This may also be a good book for reading groups and clubs. It offers good arguments supported with solid evidence, and it has just a touch of snark to make it easier to read.

See below for the book's library catalog details.

Allow Me to Retort by Elie Mystal

Call Number: Stacks 342.73 M998a 2023

ISBN: 9781620976814

Publication Date: 2022-03-01

Allow Me to Retort is an easily digestible argument about what rights we have, what rights Republicans are trying to take away, and how to stop them. Mystal explains how to protect the rights of women and people of color instead of cowering to the absolutism of gun owners and bigots. He explains the legal way to stop everything from police brutality to political gerrymandering, just by changing a few judges and justices. He strips out all of the fancy jargon conservatives like to hide behind and lays bare the truth of their project to keep America forever tethered to its slaveholding past. Mystal brings his trademark humor, expertise, and rhetorical flair to explain concepts like substantive due process and the right for the LGBTQ community to buy a cake, and to arm readers with the knowledge to defend themselves against conservatives who want everybody to live under the yoke of eighteenth-century white men. The same tactics Mystal uses to defend the idea of a fair and equal society on MSNBC and CNN are in this book, for anybody who wants to deploy them on social media. You don't need to be a legal scholar to understand your own rights. You don't need to accept the "whites only" theory of equality pushed by conservative judges. You can read this book to understand that the Constitution is trash, but doesn't have to be.

February is Black History Month in the United States and other parts of the world. This is a time when libraries often offer suggested reading lists to help the community learn more through reading. Today I would like to highlight some graphic novels and comics that may be of interest for Black History Month as well as throughout the year. These are available in the library's graphic novels collection located in the library's main floor. These are listed in no particular order.

The March series by John Lewis. This is his story and a look at his journey and struggles for civil rights in the United States. The series is in three volumes. I've read it, and it is one I can highly recommend.

March: Book One by John Lewis; Andrew Aydin; Nate Powell (Illustrator)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 741.5 L674m 2013 bk. 1

ISBN: 9781603093002

Publication Date: 2013-08-13

#1 New York Times Bestseller Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon and key figure of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president. Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award and LA Times Book Prize finalist for Swallow Me Whole). March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall. Many years ago, John Lewis and other student activists drew inspiration from the 1958 comic book "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story." Now, his own comics bring those days to life for a new audience, testifying to a movement whose echoes will be heard for generations.

 

March: Book Two by John Lewis; Andrew Aydin; Nate Powell (Illustrator)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 741.5 L674m 2015 bk. 2

ISBN: 9781603094009

Publication Date: 2015-01-20

After the success of the Nashville sit-in campaign, John Lewis is more committed than ever to changing the world through nonviolence - but as he and his fellow Freedom Riders board a bus into the vicious heart of the deep south, they will be tested like never before. Faced with beatings, police brutality, imprisonment, arson, and even murder, the movement's young activists place their lives on the line while internal conflicts threaten to tear them apart. But their courage will attract the notice of powerful allies, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy... and once Lewis is elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, this 23-year-old will be thrust into the national spotlight, becoming one of the "Big Six" leaders of the civil rights movement and a central figure in the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

 

March: Book Three by John Lewis; Andrew Aydin; Nate Powell (Illustrator)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 741.5 L674m 2016 bk. 3

ISBN: 9781603094023

Publication Date: 2016-08-02

 By the fall of 1963, the Civil Rights Movement has penetrated deep into the American consciousness, and as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis is guiding the tip of the spear. Through relentless direct action, SNCC continues to force the nation to confront its own blatant injustice, but for every step forward, the danger grows more intense- Jim Crow strikes back through legal tricks, intimidation, violence, and death. The only hope for lasting change is to give voice to the millions of Americans silenced by voter suppression- "One Man, One Vote." To carry out their nonviolent revolution, Lewis and an army of young activists launch a series of innovative campaigns, including the Freedom Vote, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and an all-out battle for the soul of the Democratic Party waged live on national television. With these new struggles come new allies, new opponents, and an unpredictable new president who might be both at once. But 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.

 

 

 

The Harlem Hellfighters by Max Brooks; Caanan White (Illustrator)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 940.403 B873h 2014

ISBN: 9780307464972

Publication Date: 2014-04-01

From bestselling author Max Brooks, the riveting story of the highly decorated, barrier-breaking, historic black regiment--the Harlem Hellfighters In 1919, the 369th infantry regiment marched home triumphantly from World War I. They had spent more time in combat than any other American unit, never losing a foot of ground to the enemy, or a man to capture, and winning countless decorations. Though they returned as heroes, this African American unit faced tremendous discrimination, even from their own government. The Harlem Hellfighters, as the Germans called them, fought courageously on--and off--the battlefield to make Europe, and America, safe for democracy.   In THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS, bestselling author Max Brooks and acclaimed illustrator Caanan White bring this history to life. From the enlistment lines in Harlem to the training camp at Spartanburg, South Carolina, to the trenches in France, they tell the heroic story of the 369th in an action-packed and powerful tale of honor and heart.

 

 

 

Black History in Its Own Words by Ron Wimberly (Artist)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 973.049 W757b 2017

ISBN: 9781534301535

Publication Date: 2017-02-14

A look at Black History framed by those who made it. BLACK HISTORY MONTH IN ITS OWN WORDS presents quotes of dozens of black luminaries with portraits & illustrations by Ronald Wimberly. Featuring the memorable words and depictions of Angela Davis,Jean-Michael Basquiat, Kanye West, Zadie Smith, Ice Cube, Dave Chappelle, JamesBaldwin, Spike Lee and more.

 

 

Invisible Men: the Trailblazing Black Artists of Comic Books by Ken Quattro

Call Number: Stacks 741.597 Q25i 2020

ISBN: 9781684055869

Publication Date: 2020-12-15

Hear the riveting stories of Black artists who drew--mostly covertly behind the scenes--superhero, horror, and romance comics in the early years of the industry. The life stories of each man's personal struggles and triumphs are represented as they broke through into a world formerly occupied only by whites. Using primary source material from World War II-era Black newspapers and magazines, this compelling book profiles pioneers like E.C. Stoner, a descendant of one of George Washington's slaves, who became a renowned fine artist of the Harlem Renaissance and the first Black artist to draw comic books. Perhaps more fascinating is Owen Middleton who was sentenced to life in Sing Sing. Middleton's imprisonment became a cause celebre championed by Will Durant, which led to Middleton's release and subsequent comics career. Then there is Matt Baker, the most revered of the Black artists, whose exquisite art spotlights stunning women and men, and who drew the first groundbreaking Black comic book hero, Vooda! The book is gorgeously illustrated with rare examples of each artist's work, including full stories from mainstream comic books from rare titles like All-Negro Comics and Negro Heroes, plus unpublished artist's photos. Invisible Men features Ken Quattro's impeccable research and lean writing detailing the social and cultural environments that formed these extraordinary, yet invisible, men!

 

 

Black Panther: World of Wakanda by Afua Richardson (Cover Design by); Ta-Nehisi Coates; Roxane Gay; Yona Harvey; Jack Kirby (Illustrator)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 741.597 G285b

ISBN: 9781302906504

Publication Date: 2017-06-13

The world building of Wakanda continues in a love story where tenderness is matched only by brutality! You know them now as the Midnight Angels, but in this story they are just Ayo and Aneka, young women recruited to become Dora Milaje, an elite task force trained to protect the crown of Wakanda at all costs. Their first assignment will be to protect Queen Shuri... but what happens when your nation needs your hearts and minds, but you already gave them to each other? Meanwhile, former king T'Challa lies with bedfellows so dark, disgrace is inevitable. Plus, explore the true origins of the People's mysterious leader, Zenzi. Black Panther thinks he knows who Zenzi is and how she got her powers - but he only knows part of the story! COLLECTING: BLACK PANTHER: WORLD OF WAKANDA 1-6

 

In addition to World of Wakanda, our graphic novels collection features other titles in Marvel's Black Panther series, so come on over and check them out too. And if you want more Marvel Comics at this time:

 

Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man Ultimate Collection Book 1 by Chris Samnee (Illustrator); David Marquez (Illustrator); Brian Michael Bendis; Sara Pichelli (Illustrator, Cover Design by)

Call Number: 741.597 B458m

ISBN: 9780785197782

Publication Date: 2015-07-28

Miles Morales takes up the mantle of the Ultimate Spider-Man! Before Peter Parker died, young Miles was poised to start the next chapter in his life in a new school. Then, a spider's bite granted the teenager incredible arachnid-like powers. Now, Miles has been thrust into a world he doesn't understand, with only gut instinct and a little thing called responsibility as his guides. Can he live up to Peter's legacy as Spider-Man? Collecting: Ultimate Fallout 4, Ultimate Comics Spider-Man (2011) 1-12, Spider-Men 1-5. Note the library does have the 3-volume set of this run.

 

 

 

 

Incognegro: a Graphic Mystery (New Edition) by Mat Johnson; Warren Pleece (Illustrator)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 741.597 J682i 2018

ISBN: 9781506705644

Publication Date: 2018-02-06

Zane Pinchback, a reporter for the New York-based New Holland Herald, is sent to investigate the arrest of his own brother, charged with the brutal murder of a white woman in Mississippi. With a lynch mob already swarming, Zane must stay 'incognegro' long enough to uncover the truth behind the murder in order to save his brother - and himself. Suspenseful, unsettling and relevant, Incognegro is a tense graphic novel of shifting identities, forbidden passions, and secrets that run far deeper than skin colour.

 

 

The Silence of Our Friends by Mark Long; Jim Demonakos; Nate Powell (Illustrator)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 741.597 L849s 2018

ISBN: 9781250164988

Publication Date: 2018-01-02

A New York Times-bestselling graphic novel based on the true story of two families--one white and one black--who find common ground as the civil rights struggle heats up in Texas. This semi-autobiographical tale is set in 1967. A white family from a notoriously racist neighborhood in the suburbs and a black family from its poorest ward cross Houston's color line, overcoming humiliation, degradation, and violence to win the freedom of five black college students unjustly charged with the murder of a policeman. The Silence of Our Friends follows events through the point of view of young Mark Long, whose father is a reporter covering the story. Semi-fictionalized, this story has its roots solidly in very real events. With art from the brilliant Nate Powell (Swallow Me Whole) bringing the tale to heart-wrenching life, The Silence of Our Friends is a new and important entry in the body of civil rights literature.

 

 

Big Black: Stand at Attica by Frank "Big Black" Smith; Jared Reinmuth; Ameziane (Illustrator)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 365.974 S647b 2020

ISBN: 9781684154791

Publication Date: 2020-02-18

A graphic novel memoir from Frank "Big Black" Smith, a prisoner at Attica State Prison in 1971, whose rebellion against the injustices of the prison system remains one of the bloodiest civil rights confrontations in American history. FOUR DAYS IN 1971 CHANGED THE COURSE OF AMERICAN HISTORY. THIS IS THE TRUE STORY FROM THE MAN AT THE CENTER OF IT ALL. In the summer of 1971, the New York's Attica State Prison is a symbol of everything broken in America - abused prisoners, rampant racism and a blind eye turned towards the injustices perpetrated on the powerless. But when the guards at Attica overreact to a minor incident, the prisoners decide they've had enough - and revolt against their jailers, taking them hostage and making demands for humane conditions. Frank "Big Black" Smith finds himself at the center of this uprising, struggling to protect hostages, prisoners and negotiators alike. But when the only avenue for justice seems to be negotiating with ambitious Governor Nelson Rockefeller, Big Black soon discovers there may be no hope in finding a peaceful resolution for the prisoners in Attica. Written by Jared Reinmuth and Frank "Big Black" Smith himself, adapted and illustrated by Ameziane, Big Black: Stand At Attica is an unflinching look at the price of standing up to injustice in what remains one of the bloodiest civil rights confrontations in American history.

 

 

Parable of the Sower: a Graphic Novel Adaptation by Octavia E. Butler; Damian Duffy (Adapted by); John Jennings (Illustrator); Nalo Hopkinson (Introduction by)

Call Number: Graphic Novels 741.597 D858o 2020

ISBN: 9781419731334

Publication Date: 2020-01-28

In this graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the Sower by Damian Duffy and John Jennings, the award-winning team behind the #1 New York Times bestseller Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, the author portrays a searing vision of America's future.  In the year 2024, the country is marred by unattended environmental and economic crises that lead to social chaos. Lauren Olamina, a preacher's daughter living in Los Angeles, is protected from danger by the walls of her gated community. However, in a night of fire and death, what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny . . . and the birth of a new faith.

 

 

 

 

Tim Binkley, Head of Special Collections and Archives, is pleased to announce the following events at SC&A for the months of February and March 2023. 

3:00-4:00 PM, January 27 – February 24

Explore the Writings of Carter G. Woodson

Berea College graduate Carter G. Woodson, Ph.D. (1875-1950) was a prominent historian who initiated the field of Black studies. In 1926 he founded “Negro History Week,” the predecessor to today’s annual Black History Month. This year during Black History Month, Hutchins Library invites you to spend an hour (or more!) each week reading published and unpublished writings of Dr. Woodson that are in the Berea College Special Collections and Archives.

“Friday Finds” tours of Woodson’s books and letters will begin at the Hutchins Library foyer at 3 PM each Friday starting January 27 and ending February 24. To participate in these free events, please register in advance at https://bctrace.com/explore/. For additional information, or to schedule a group visit on days other than Fridays, please contact Tim Binkley at binkleyt@berea.edu or 859-985-3267.

3:00-4:00 PM, March 2 – 31

Explore the Writing of bell hooks

Former Berea College professor bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins, Ph.D., 1952-2021) is no longer with us. Fortunately, many of her writings and recordings are preserved in the Berea College Special Collections and Archives. Throughout Women’s History Month 2023, Hutchins Library invites you to spend an hour (or more!) each week reading from bell hooks’ writings and listening to episodes of the recent Think Humanities podcast series, “bell hooks: becoming, being, and beyond.” 

“Friday Finds” tours of bell hooks materials and recordings will begin at the Hutchins Library foyer at 3 PM each Friday in March. To participate in these free events, please register in advance at https://bctrace.com/explore/. For additional information, or to schedule a group visit on days other than Fridays, please contact Tim Binkley at binkleyt@berea.edu or 859-985-3267.

Special Collections and Archives presents "In Memoriam: bell hooks." This is an exhibit recalling and celebrating the life, career, contributions, and legacy of Dr. bell hooks. The exhibit features items and materials from the bell hooks papers collection. This exhibit is co-sponsored the bell hooks center and Hutchins Library.

The exhibit runs from February 1 through March 30, 2022. It can be viewed in the library's main floor during library regular hours. Note that access to the building, due to COVID, is limited to Berea College ID holders (faculty, students, and staff) at this time.

For visitors outside of campus, please contact Library Director Calvin Gross at 859-985-3274 or via e-mail at grossj@berea.edu to set up an appointment.

A sample of the carefully curated materials of the bell hooks papers, from Special Collections and Archives.

Hutchins Library is pleased to invite the campus community to see our book display to honor the life and works of bell hooks. The display can be viewed in the library's main floor during regular library hours. Books on the display are available for check out. The display will run through the end of January 2022.

 March's reference book of the Month:  The Jim Crow Encyclopedia

~ Recommended for students majoring in African-American Studies, history, and peace and Justice Studies~

The Jim Crow Encyclopedia Jim Crow refers to a set of laws in many states, predominantly in the South, after the end of Reconstruction in 1877 that severely restricted the rights and privileges of African Americans. As a caste system of enormous social and economic magnitude, the institutionalization of Jim Crow was the most significant element in African American life until the 1960s Civil Rights Movement led to its dismantling. Racial segregation, as well as responses to it and resistance against it, dominated the African American consciousness and continued to oppress African Americans and other minorities, while engendering some of the most important African American contributions to society. This major encyclopedia is the first devoted to the Jim Crow era. The era is encapsulated through more than 275 essay entries on such areas as law, media, business, politics, employment, religion, education, people, events, culture, the arts, protest, the military, class, housing, sports, and violence as well as through accompanying key primary documents excerpted as side bars. This set will serve as an invaluable, definitive resource for student research and general knowledge. The authoritative entries are written by a host of historians with expertise in the Jim Crow era. The quality content comes in an easy-to-access format. Readers can quickly find topics of interest, with alphabetical and topical lists of entries in the frontmatter, along with cross-references to related entries per entry. Further reading is provided per entry. Dynamic sidebars throughout give added insight into the topics. A chronology, selected bibliography, and photos round out the coverage. Sample entries include Advertising, Affirmative Action, Armed Forces, Black Cabinet, Blues, Brooklyn Dodgers, Bolling v. Sharpe, Confederate Flag, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Detroit Race Riot 1943, Ralph Ellison, Eyes on the Prize, G.I. Bill, Healthcare, Homosexuality, Intelligence Testing, Japanese Internment, Liberia, Minstrelsy, Nadir of the Negro, Poll Taxes, Rhythm and Blues, Rural Segregation, Sharecropping, Sundown Towns, Booker T. Washington, Works Project Administration, World War II. by Nikki L. M. Brown (Editor); Barry M. Stentiford (Editor)

Call Number: 305.896 J614 2008

Publication Date: 2008-09-30

Jim Crow refers to a set of laws in many states, predominantly in the South, after the end of Reconstruction in 1877 that severely restricted the rights and privileges of African Americans. As a caste system of enormous social and economic magnitude, the institutionalization of Jim Crow was the most significant element in African American life until the 1960s Civil Rights Movement led to its dismantling.

Racial segregation, as well as responses to it and resistance against it, dominated the African American consciousness and continued to oppress African Americans and other minorities, while engendering some of the most important African American contributions to society. This major encyclopedia is the first devoted to the Jim Crow era. The era is encapsulated through more than 275 essay entries on such areas as law, media, business, politics, employment, religion, education, people, events, culture, the arts, protest, the military, class, housing, sports, and violence as well as through accompanying key primary documents excerpted as side bars.

This set will serve as an invaluable, definitive resource for student research and general knowledge. The authoritative entries are written by a host of historians with expertise in the Jim Crow era. 

Black History Month is an annual celebration of achievements by African Americans and a time for recognizing the central role of blacks in U.S. history. Also known as African American History Month, the event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian Carter G. Woodson and other prominent African Americans. Since 1976, every U.S. president has officially designated the month of February as Black History Month. Other countries around the world, including Canada and the United Kingdom, also devote a month to celebrating black history.

“If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated,” Woodson said of the need for such study.

In 1926, Woodson and the Association for the Study of African American Life and History(ASALH) launched a “Negro History Week” to bring attention to his mission and help school systems coordinate their focus on the topic. Woodson chose the second week in February, as it encompassed both Frederick Douglass’ birthday on February 14 and Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on February 12.

Since 1976, every U.S. president has officially designated the month of February as Black History Month. Other countries around the world, including Canada and the United Kingdom, also devote a month to celebrating black history.

Decsription from:

History.com Editors. “Black History Month.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 14 Jan. 2010, www.history.com/topics/black-history/black-history-month.

Zorthian, Julia. “Black History Month: How It Started and Why It's in February.” Time, Time, 29 Jan. 2016, time.com/4197928/history-black-history-month/.

Carter G. Woodson by Burnis R. Morris

Call Number: 973.049 W898zm 2017

This study reveals how historian Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950) used the black press and modern public relations techniques to popularize black history during the first half of the twentieth century. Explanations for Woodson's success with the modern black history movement usually include his training, deep-rooted principles, and single-minded determination. Often overlooked, however, is Woodson's skillful use of newspapers in developing and executing a public education campaign built on truth, accuracy, fairness, and education. Burnis R. Morris explains how Woodson attracted mostly favorable news coverage for his history movement due to his deep understanding of the newspapers' business and editorial models as well as his public relations skills, which helped him merge the interests of the black press with his cause. Woodson's publicity tactics, combined with access to the audiences granted him by the press, enabled him to drive the black history movement--particularly observance of Negro History Week and fundraising activities. Morris analyzes Woodson's periodicals, newspaper articles, letters, and other archived documents describing Woodson's partnership with the black press and his role as a publicist. This rarely explored side of Woodson, who was often called the "Father of Black History," reintroduces Woodson's lost image as a leading cultural icon who used his celebrity in multiple roles as an opinion journalist, newsmaker, and publicist of black history to bring veneration to a disrespected subject. During his active professional career, 1915-1950, Woodson merged his interests and the interests of the black newspapers. His cause became their cause.
 

Black Pioneers by William Loren Katz

Call Number: 977.004 K19b

Out of a past little noted in history texts comes this tale of African American pioneers in the Ohio and Mississippi valleys. These pathfinders were slaves, poets, runaways, missionaries, farmers, teachers, and soldiers. For these African Americans, the frontier meant freedom, and from the earliest times, some seized liberty by joining Indian nations.As Southern slaveholders tried to pass laws to make slavery legal in the West and territorial legislatures wrote "Black Laws" that limited basic rights to white settlers, African American pioneers became freedom fighters. From Ohio to Kansas they battled slavehunters and developed Underground Railroad stations. Black families built their own schools and churches and created unique forms of protest to ensure their advancement.Historian William Loren Katz reveals a frontier saga that has often been buried, glossed over, or lost.
 

The Black Campus Movement by Ibram H. Rogers

Call Number: 378.198 R726b 2012

This book provides the first national study of this intense and challenging struggle which disrupted and refashioned institutions in almost every state. It also illuminates the context for one of the most transformative educational movements in American history through a history of black higher education and black student activism before 1965.

 

 

And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

Call Number: 821 A584a Copy 3

Maya Angelou's unforgettable collection of poetry lends its name to the documentary film about her life, And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS's American Masters.   Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size But when I start to tell them, They think I'm telling lies. I say, It's in the reach of my arms, The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I'm a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me.   Thus begins "Phenomenal Woman," just one of the beloved poems collected here in Maya Angelou's third book of verse. These poems are powerful, distinctive, and fresh--and, as always, full of the lifting rhythms of love and remembering. And Still I Rise is written from the heart, a celebration of life as only Maya Angelou has discovered it.   "It is true poetry she is writing," M.F.K. Fisher has observed, "not just rhythm, the beat, rhymes. I find it very moving and at times beautiful. It has an innate purity about it, unquenchable dignity. . . . It is astounding, flabbergasting, to recognize it, in all the words I read every day and night . . . it gives me heart, to hear so clearly the caged bird singing and to understand her notes."
 

The Black 100 by Columbus Salley

Call Number: 973.049 S168b 1993

"Who are the most influential African-Americans that ever lived?" "Any such list is subject to passionate discussion and debate. It is within this controversy that readers are educated about the full breadth and depth of the African-American experience." "After extensive thought and research author and educator Dr. Columbus Salley has selected the 100 most influential African-Americans of all time, and then ranked them according to their contributions to the struggle for equality." "As a result, the Black 100 is a unique compendium of the most significant African-Americans, past and present. Dr. Salley identifies 100 black women and men as the collective giants on whose shoulders African-Americans stand in their unending quest for full economic, political and social equality." "The Black 100 is not a debate on the "most talented" or "most famous" Black Americans, but is a listing - and ranking - of those who have had the greatest impact on the progress toward complete participation in our society. Here are the 100 who have fundamentally altered the ways in which millions of Americans - of all races - live today." "It is fascinating to read how the author ranks the influence of some personalities as opposed to others. Who is first? Who is last? And why? The list of names in The Black 100 reads like a history of African-Americans over nearly 400 years. To name just a few: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Malcolm X, Thurgood Marshall, James Baldwin, Booker T. Washington, Fannie Lou Hamer, Muhammad Ali, Bill Cosby." "Dr. Salley reveals the unique contributions of each of the 100 to African-American history." "The Black 100 is one of the most provocative and informative books ever written on this subject. It will be endlessly debated, discussed and scrutinized. A compellingly readable contribution to an understanding of our history, it will prove to be an essential book for all students and teachers in the field - as well as for a vast reading public of all colors - for many years to come."

 

I Love Libraries, an initiative of the American Library Association (ALA) has published "Librarians Share a Black Lives Matter Comics Reading List." The list provides titles ranging in ages from children to adult. The list contains both fiction and nonfiction titles. From their list, Hutchins Library has the titles listed below that you can request to read. During the COVID-19 situation,  you can contact Library Director Calvin Gross via e-mail (grossj AT berea DOT edu), and the books can be pulled out for you, checked out in your name, and then either set up in a bag in the library foyer or mailed to you via postal service if you are out of town (and affiliated to Berea College).

Titles from the list available at Hutchins Library:

Black History in Its Own Words by Ron Wimberly (Artist)

Call Number: 973.049 W757b 2017

ISBN: 9781534301535

Publication Date: 2017-02-14

A look at Black History framed by those who made it. BLACK HISTORY MONTH IN ITS OWN WORDS presentsquotes of dozens of black luminaries with portraits & illustrations byRonald Wimberly. Featuring the memorable words and depictions of Angela Davis,Jean-Michael Basquiat, Kanye West, Zadie Smith, Ice Cube, Dave Chappelle, JamesBaldwin, Spike Lee and more.

 

March: Book One by John Lewis; Andrew Aydin; Nate Powell (Illustrator)

Call Number: 741.5 L674m 2013 bk. 1

ISBN: 9781603093002

Publication Date: 2013-08-13

#1 New York Times Bestseller Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon and key figure of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president. Now, to share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis presents March, a graphic novel trilogy, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and New York Times best-selling artist Nate Powell (winner of the Eisner Award and LA Times Book Prize finalist for Swallow Me Whole). March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall. Many years ago, John Lewis and other student activists drew inspiration from the 1958 comic book "Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story." Now, his own comics bring those days to life for a new audience, testifying to a movement whose echoes will be heard for generations. Winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award -- Special Recognition #1 Washington Post Bestseller A Coretta Scott King Honor Book An ALA Notable Book One of YALSA's Top 10 Great Graphic Novels for Teens One of YALSA's Top 10 Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults One of YALSA's Outstanding Books for the College Bound One of Reader's Digest's Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read Endorsed by NYC Public Schools' "NYC Reads 365" program Selected for first-year reading programs by Michigan State University, Marquette University, and Georgia State University Nominated for three Will Eisner Awards Nominated for the Glyph Award Named one of the best books of 2013 by USA Today, The Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, School Library Journal, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, The Horn Book, Paste, Slate, ComicsAlliance, Amazon, and Apple iBooks.

 

March: Book Two by John Lewis; Andrew Aydin; Nate Powell (Illustrator)

Call Number: 741.5 L674m 2015 bk. 2

ISBN: 9781603094009

Publication Date: 2015-01-20

Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one of the key figures of the civil rights movement, continues his award-winning graphic novel trilogy with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell, inspired by a 1950s comic book that helped prepare his own generation to join the struggle. Now, March brings the lessons of history to vivid life for a new generation, urgently relevant for today's world. After the success of the Nashville sit-in campaign, John Lewis is more committed than ever to changing the world through nonviolence - but as he and his fellow Freedom Riders board a bus into the vicious heart of the deep south, they will be tested like never before. Faced with beatings, police brutality, imprisonment, arson, and even murder, the movement's young activists place their lives on the line while internal conflicts threaten to tear them apart. But their courage will attract the notice of powerful allies, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy... and once Lewis is elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, this 23-year-old will be thrust into the national spotlight, becoming one of the "Big Six" leaders of the civil rights movement and a central figure in the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. New York Times Bestseller One of YALSA's Great Graphic Novels for Teens 2016 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work - Winner 2016 Harvey Award for Best Biographical, Historical, or Journalistic Presentation - Winner 2016 Harvey Award for Best Graphic Album Original - Winner 2016 Street Literature Book Award Medal for Best Graphic Novel - Winner 2016 Denver Independent Comic & Art Expo Award for Best Work - Mid/Large Press - Winner

 

March: Book Three by John Lewis; Andrew Aydin; Nate Powell (Illustrator)

Call Number: 741.5 L674m 2016 bk. 3

ISBN: 9781603094023

Publication Date: 2016-08-02

Welcome to the stunning conclusion of the award-winning and best-selling MARCH trilogy. Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one of the key figures of the civil rights movement, joins co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell to bring the lessons of history to vivid life for a new generation, urgently relevant for today's world. By the fall of 1963, the Civil Rights Movement has penetrated deep into the American consciousness, and as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, John Lewis is guiding the tip of the spear. Through relentless direct action, SNCC continues to force the nation to confront its own blatant injustice, but for every step forward, the danger grows more intense: Jim Crow strikes back through legal tricks, intimidation, violence, and death. The only hope for lasting change is to give voice to the millions of Americans silenced by voter suppression: "One Man, One Vote." To carry out their nonviolent revolution, Lewis and an army of young activists launch a series of innovative campaigns, including the Freedom Vote, Mississippi Freedom Summer, and an all-out battle for the soul of the Democratic Party waged live on national television. With these new struggles come new allies, new opponents, and an unpredictable new president who might be both at once. But 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. Winner of the 2016 National Book Award for Young People's Literature #1 New York Times Bestseller 2017 Coretta Scott King Author Award Winner 2017 Michael L. Printz Award Winner 2017 Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Medal Winner 2017 YALSA Award for Excellence in Nonfiction - Winner 2017 Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children's Literature - Winner 2017 Flora Stieglitz Straus Award Winner 2017 LA Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature - Finalist  

 

Race to Incarcerate by Marc Mauer; Michelle Alexander (Foreword by); Sabrina Jones

Call Number: 364.973 J791r 2013

ISBN: 9781595585417

Publication Date: 2013-04-02

The United States' rate of incarceration is the highest in the world. Mauer's Race to Incarcerate is the essential text for understanding the exponential growth of the US prison system, and it has become canonical for those active in the US criminal justice reform movement. Now Sabrina Jones has collaborated with Mauer to adapt his seminal book into a vivid graphic narrative designed to reach a mainstream audience. Jones's dramatic artwork adds passion and compassion to the complex story of four decades of prison expansion and its corrosive effect on society.

 

Black History for Beginners by Denise Dennis; Susan Willmarth

Call Number: 305.896 D411b

ISBN: 0863160689

Publication Date: 1984-06-01

Covering a rich but often ignored history, the author chronicles the black struggle from capture and enslavement in Africa right up to the Civil Rights movement and different kinds of struggles that black people face today.

 

 

The Harlem Hellfighters by Max Brooks; Caanan White (Illustrator)

Call Number: 940.403 B873h 2014

ISBN: 9780307464972

Publication Date: 2014-04-01

From bestselling author Max Brooks, the riveting story of the highly decorated, barrier-breaking, historic black regiment--the Harlem Hellfighters In 1919, the 369th infantry regiment marched home triumphantly from World War I. They had spent more time in combat than any other American unit, never losing a foot of ground to the enemy, or a man to capture, and winning countless decorations. Though they returned as heroes, this African American unit faced tremendous discrimination, even from their own government. The Harlem Hellfighters, as the Germans called them, fought courageously on--and off--the battlefield to make Europe, and America, safe for democracy.   In THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS, bestselling author Max Brooks and acclaimed illustrator Caanan White bring this history to life. From the enlistment lines in Harlem to the training camp at Spartanburg, South Carolina, to the trenches in France, they tell the heroic story of the 369th in an action-packed and powerful tale of honor and heart.

 

Kindred: a Graphic Novel Adaptation by Octavia E. Butler; Damian Duffy (Adapted by); John Jennings (Illustrator); Nnedi Okorafor (Introduction by)

Call Number: 741.597 D858k

ISBN: 9781419728556

Publication Date: 2018-07-24

More than 35 years after its release, Kindred continues to draw in new readers with its deep exploration of the violence and loss of humanity caused by slavery in the United States, and its complex and lasting impact on the present day. Adapted by celebrated academics and comics artists Damian Duffy and John Jennings, this graphic novel powerfully renders Butler's mysterious and moving story, which spans racial and gender divides in the antebellum South through the 20th century. Butler's most celebrated, critically acclaimed work tells the story of Dana, a young black woman who is suddenly and inexplicably transported from her home in 1970s California to the pre-Civil War South. As she time-travels between worlds, one in which she is a free woman and one where she is part of her own complicated familial history on a southern plantation, she becomes frighteningly entangled in the lives of Rufus, a conflicted white slaveholder and one of Dana's own ancestors, and the many people who are enslaved by him. Held up as an essential work in feminist, science-fiction, and fantasy genres, and a cornerstone of the Afrofuturism movement, there are over 500,000 copies of Kindred in print. The intersectionality of race, history, and the treatment of women addressed within the original work remain critical topics in contemporary dialogue, both in the classroom and in the public sphere. Frightening, compelling, and richly imagined, Kindred offers an unflinching look at our complicated social history, transformed by the graphic novel format into a visually stunning work for a new generation of readers.

 

 

Hutchins Library is pleased to announce that Dr. Valeria Watkins Solo Art Exhibit, "Truth is Truth," is now on display in our main floor during the month of  February 2019. This month-long exhibit honors Black History Month. The exhibit can be viewed during library regular hours. It is free and open to the public.

In addition, there will be an artist reception on Thursday, February 7, 2019 at 5pm in the library's main floor. Light refreshments will be provided. This event is also free and open to the public.

Dr. Valeria Watkins, the artist, provided the following statement on the exhibit:

Hello and welcome to a month long exhibit in honor of Black History Month. This 2019 solo exhibit is titled “Truth is Truth” and includes 15 new amazing and beautiful acrylic paintings.

Each paintings is an expression of the creative process that I find within the stillness of my meditation. I enjoy working with all the beautiful colors of the acrylic paints. I use various tools which helps to add to the paintings structure.

Putting combinations of colors on canvas is pretty cool! The right combinations really make the creative process exciting and challenging. I am inspired to follow that intuitive spark of creativity within me which can be both bold and elusive.

I strive to convey a freedom that can move the viewer. Spend time with each painting and enjoy! And leave your comments.

Please feel free to check out my online Art Gallery if you want to see more of my work! www.valeriawatkins.foliotwist.com.

"Disruption." Acrylic. One of the various paintings by Dr. Valeria Watkins on display this month at Hutchins Library.

Hutchins Library is pleased to announce that during the month of February, and to honor Black History Month, we will feature a solo art exhibit of Dr. Valeria Watkins' work. The exhibit will run throughout the month of February. It can be viewed in the library's center wall on the main floor. The exhibit can be viewed during regular library hours.

This event is free and open to the public.

In addition, the public is invited to a reception with the artist on Friday, February 9, 2018. The reception will run from 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm, and it will be held in the gathering area in front of the center wall. Light refreshments will be provided.

Dr. Watkins has provided the following statement to accompany  the exhibit:

"Welcome to Black History Month and this 2018 solo exhibit. It consists of 15 new Abstract Acrylic Paintings. I have added oil pastels to some of the images and they are identified as multi media.

The title of this series is, “Challenges to the Personal”. I work hard at stepping outside the frame of my personal idea of what is correct and incorrect to allow the colors to find their own boundaries and connections. My process begins with meditation.  It is from that space of stillness that I first engaged the creative process and I maintain this stillness until there is a finished canvas.

The more I spend time painting, the more I feel the energy of the combinations of colors and the rhythm they create when combined. And I fall in love all over again. I don’t see images and I don’t try to do… something. My intention is to allow my intuition to be my guide from beginning to end.

Thank you for viewing this work. I hope you will be inspired to discover the artist within you.

Enjoy, Dr. Valeria"

Some photos from the exhibit:

Wide view of display.

Painting entitled "Waking Up."

Painting entitled "Blue Invasion."

This month's display is dedicated to Black History Month:

Black History Month, or National African American History Month, is an annual celebration of achievements by black Americans and a time for recognizing the central role of African Americans in U.S. history. The event grew out of “Negro History Week,” the brainchild of noted historian Carter G. Woodson and other prominent African Americans. Since 1976, every U.S. president has officially designated the month of February as Black History Month. Other countries around the world, including Canada and the United Kingdom, also devote a month to celebrating black history.

Check out some relevant  resources we have available:

What Is African American History? by Pero Gaglo Dagbovie

Call Number: 973.049 D125w 2015

Publication Date: 2015

Scholarship on African American history has changed dramatically since the publication of George Washington Williams' pioneering A History of the Negro Race in America in 1882. Organized chronologically and thematically, What is African American History? offers a concise and compelling introduction to the field of African American history as well as the black historical enterprise past, present, and future. The author explores the growth and maturation of scholarship on African American history from late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries until the field achieved significant recognition from the 'mainstream' U.S. historical profession in the 1970s. Subsequent decades witnessed the emergence and development of key theoretical approaches, controversies, and dynamic areas of concentration in black history, the vibrant field of black women's history, the intriguing relationship between African American history and Black Studies, and the imaginable future directions of African American history in the twenty-first century. 

 

And Still I Rise by Henry L. Gates; Kevin M. Burke

Call Number: 973.049 G259a 2015

Publication Date: 2015

The companion book to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s PBS series, And Still I Rise—a timeline and chronicle of the past fifty years of black history in the U.S. in more than 350 photos. Beginning with the assassination of Malcolm X in February 1965, And Still I Rise: From Black Power to the White House explores the last half-century of the African American experience. More than fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the birth of Black Power, the United States has both a black president and black CEOs running Fortune 500 companies—and a large black underclass beset by persistent poverty, inadequate education, and an epidemic of incarceration. Harvard professor and scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. raises disturbing and vital questions about this dichotomy. How did the African American community end up encompassing such profound contradictions? And what will “the black community” mean tomorrow? 

 

Carter G. Woodson in Washington, D. C. by Pero Gaglo Dagbovie

Call Number: 973.049 W898zda 2014

Publication Date: 2014

The discipline of black history has its roots firmly planted at 1538 Ninth Street, Northwest, in Washington, D.C. The Victorian row house in Black Broadway" was once the modest office-home of Carter G. Woodson. The home was also the headquarters of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). Woodson dedicated his entire life to sustaining the early black history "mass education movement." He contributed immensely not just to African American history but also to American culture. Scholar Pero Gaglo Dagbovie unravels Woodson's "intricate" personality and traces his relationship to his home, the Shaw neighborhood and the District of Columbia.

 

The Black Campus Movement by Ibram H. Rogers

Call Number: 378.198 R726b 2012

Publication Date: 2012

This book provides the first national study of this intense and challenging struggle which disrupted and refashioned institutions in almost every state. It also illuminates the context for one of the most transformative educational movements in American history through a history of black higher education and black student activism before 1965.

 

The New Abolition by Gary Dorrien

Call Number: 970.980 D716n 2015

Publication Date: 2015

The black social gospel emerged from the trauma of Reconstruction to ask what a "new abolition" would require in American society. It became an important tradition of religious thought and resistance, helping to create an alternative public sphere of excluded voices and providing the intellectual underpinnings of the civil rights movement. This tradition has been seriously overlooked, despite its immense legacy.   In this groundbreaking work, Gary Dorrien describes the early history of the black social gospel from its nineteenth-century founding to its close association in the twentieth century with W. E. B. Du Bois. He offers a new perspective on modern Christianity and the civil rights era by delineating the tradition of social justice theology and activism that led to Martin Luther King Jr.

 

Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement by Yohuru R. Williams

Call Number: 323.119 W728r 2016

Publication Date: 2015

The African American struggle for civil rights in the twentieth century is one of the most important stories in American history. With all the information available, however, it is easy for even the most enthusiastic reader to be overwhelmed. In Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement, Yohuru Williams has synthesized the complex history of this period into a clear and compelling narrative. Considering both the Civil Rights and Black Power movements as distinct but overlapping elements of the Black Freedom struggle, Williams looks at the impact of the struggle for Black civil rights on housing, transportation, education, labor, voting rights, culture, and more, and places the activism of the 1950s and 60s within the context of a much longer tradition reaching from Reconstruction to the present day. Exploring the different strands within the movement, key figures and leaders, and its ongoing legacy, Rethinking the Black Freedom Movement is the perfect introduction for anyone seeking to understand the struggle for Black civil rights in America.

 

 

 

2017 Berea College Service Awards
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the speaker had to withdraw. An update will be posted as soon as it becomes available

If you are interested in Mrs. Woolfolk's work, you should explore these books that we have available for check-out, at the display near the cafe!

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr by Clayborne Carson

Call Number: 323.409 K53a

Publication Date: 1998

Celebrated Stanford University historian Clayborne Carson is the director and editor of the Martin Luther King Papers Project; with thousands of King's essays, notes, letters, speeches, and sermons at his disposal, Carson has organized King's writings into a posthumous autobiography. In an early student essay, King prophetically penned: "We cannot have an enlightened democracy with one great group living in ignorance.... We cannot have a nation orderly and sound with one group so ground down and thwarted that it is almost forced into unsocial attitudes and crime." Such statements, made throughout King's career, are skillfully woven together into a coherent narrative of the quest for social justice. The autobiography delves, for example, into the philosophical training King received at Morehouse College, Crozer Theological Seminary, and Boston University, where he consolidated the teachings of Afro-American theologian Benjamin Mays with the philosophies of Locke, Rousseau, Gandhi, and Thoreau. Through King's voice, the reader intimately shares in his trials and triumphs, including the Montgomery Boycott, the 1963 "I Have a Dream Speech," the Selma March, and the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. In one of his last speeches, King reminded his audience that "in the final analysis, God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives." Carson's skillful editing has created an original argument in King's favor that draws directly from the source, illuminating the circumstances of King's life without deifying his person. --Eugene Holley Jr.

 

The Rights Revolution by Samuel Walker

Call Number: 323.097 W184r

Publication Date: 1998

The most dramatic change in American society in the last forty years has been the explosive growth of personal rights, a veritable "rights revolution" that is perceived by both conservatives and liberals as a threat to traditional values and our sense of community. Is it possible that our pursuit of personal rights is driving our country toward moral collapse? In The Rights Revolution, Samuel Walker answers this question with an emphatic no. The "rights revolution," says Walker, is the embodiment of the American ideals of morality and community. He argues that the critics of personal rights--from conservatives such as Robert Bork to liberals such as Michael Sandel--often forget the blatant injustices perpetrated against minorities such as women, homosexuals, African-Americans, and mentally handicapped citizens before the civil ights movement. They attack "identity politics" policies such as affirmative action, but fail to offer any reasonable solution to the dilemma of how to overcome exclusion in a society with such a powerful legacy of discrimination. Communitarians, who offer the most comprehensive alternative to a rights-oriented society, rarely define what they mean by community. What happens when conflicts arise between different notions of community? Walker concedes that the expansion of individual rights does present problems, but insists that the gains far outweigh the losses. And he reminds us that the absolute protection of our individual rights is our best defense against discrimination and injustice. The Rights Revolution is an impassioned call to honor the personal rights of all American citizens, and to embrace an enriched sense of democracy, tolerance, and community in our nation.

 

Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights by Michael K. Honey

Call Number: 331.639 H772s

Publication Date: 1993

This book chronicles the rarely studied southern industrial union movement from the Great Depression to the cold war, using the strategically located river city of Memphis as a case study. Honey analyzes the economic basis of segregation and the denial of fundamental human rights and civil liberties it entailed.