As Maya Angelou, American author, poet and civil rights activist, said, "History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."
To commemorate Black History Month, Roseville Libraries is sharing this curated list of recommended readings and DVDs from its collection.
Adult non-fiction:
Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 / Ibram X. Kendi & Keisha N. Blain.
The Black History Book / Prof. Nemata Blyden, Paula Akpan, Mireille Harper, Keith Lockhart, Dr. Tyesha Maddox.
Making Our Way Home: The Great Migration and the Black American Dream / Blair Imani.
An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States / Kyle T. Mays.
Teaching Black History to White People / Leonard N. Moore.
Buses are a Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider / Charles Person, with Richard Rooker.
The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation / Anna Malaika Tubbs.
Adult fiction:
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance / Zora Neale Hurston.
Harlem Shuffle / Colson Whitehead.
The Underground Railroad / Colson Whitehead.
The Nickel Boys / Colson Whitehead.
The Prophets / Robert Jones, Jr.
Deacon King Kong / James McBride.
The Water Dancer / Ta-Nehisi Coates.
The twelve tribes of Hattie / Ayana Mathis.
The Vanishing Half / Brit Bennett.
Teen fiction:
Blood like Magic / Liselle Sambury.
Children of Blood and Bone / by Tomi Adeyemi.
Concrete Rose / Angie Thomas.
Every Body Looking / Candice Iloh.
Legendborn / Tracy Deonn.
Let's talk about Love / Claire Kann.
Not so Pure and Simple / Lamar Giles.
One of the Good Ones / Maika Moulite and Maritza Moulite.
Teen non-fiction:
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You / Jason Reynolds.
We are Not Yet Equal: Understanding our Racial Divide / Carol Anderson with Tonya Bolden.
Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow / by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. with Tonya Bolden.
Children’s picture books:
Henry’s Freedom Box / Ellen Levine.
Hair Love – a celebration of daddies and daughters everywhere / Matthew A. Cherry.
This Jazz Man / Karen Ehrhardt.
Follow the Drinking Gourd / Jeanette Winter.
Ron’s Big Mission / Rose Blue and Corrine J. Naden.
Children’s chapter books and non-fiction – for older children:
The People Could Fly : American Black Folktales / Virginia Hamilton
The Lions of Little Rock / Kristen Levine.
One Crazy Summer / Rita Williams-Garcia.
Watsons go to Birmingham—1963 / Christopher Paul Curtis.
Elijah of Buxton / Christopher Paul Curtis
To watch:
Kanopy Must-see Black History
The Life and Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech
If Beale Street Could Talk [DVD]
12 Years a Slave [DVD]
Black Patriots: Heroes of the Revolution [DVD]
Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. [DVD]
Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind. [DVD]
I Am Not Your Negro [DVD]
In our ongoing partnership with Placer County-based non-profit GlobalMarketplace.org, residents are invited to participate in a future community session of
Conversations on Racial Healing where participants have a safe space to learn more about racism and discuss racial bias in a nine-week series of small-group discussions.