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Recommended books on African American history for non-Americans
Hi all. As the title says, I'm looking for recommendations on books about African American history. I'm Irish and I know the basics about the civil rights movement and some other bits through documentaries like 13th . Outside of that I've realized that my understanding of what African Americans have been though over the last couple of hundred years is pretty piss poor. I'd really like to educate myself a bit more, so any recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
recent books (last decade or so):
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story by Nikole Hannah-Jones and others - the book-length version of the NYT Magazine cover story from 2019
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein - "The book documents the history of state sponsored segregation stretching back to the late 1800s and exposes racially discriminatory policies put forward by most presidential administrations in that time, including liberal presidents like Franklin Roosevelt."
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson - "tells the story of the Great Migration, the movement of Black Americans out of the Southern United States to the Midwest, Northeast, and West from approximately 1915 to 1970."
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents also by Isabel Wilkerson - "The book describes racism in the United States as an aspect of a caste system – a society-wide system of social stratification characterized by notions such as hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, and purity."
We Were Eight Years in Power and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michele Alexander
older books - these are notable not just for the history they contain, but for context of how they influenced American perceptions of race relations around the time they were published:
Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe - the 2nd best-selling book of the 19th century in the US (surpassed only by the Bible). probably the most well-known contemporaneous account of the experience of enslaved people. it's received a lot of criticism since it was published (Notes of a Native Son, for example, has an entire chapter about it) so you'd definitely want to read it in that context instead of just as a standalone work.
Black Reconstruction in America (1935) by W.E.B. Du Bois - "The book challenged the standard academic view of Reconstruction at the time, the Dunning School, which contended that the period was a failure and downplayed the contributions of African Americans. Du Bois instead emphasized the agency of Black people and freed slaves during the Civil War and Reconstruction and framing the period as one that held promise for a worker-ruled democracy to replace a slavery-based plantation economy."
Notes of a Native Son (1955) and The Fire Next Time (1963) by James Baldwin.
Black Like Me (1961) by John Howard Griffin - "Griffin was a native of Mansfield, Texas, who had his skin temporarily darkened to pass as a black man. He traveled for six weeks throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Georgia to explore life from the other side of the color line."
Roots: The Saga of an American Family (1976) by Alex Haley - also adapted into a PBS (US public television) miniseries
This is essentially the entire list that I would have given OP. I would only add The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty.
Nominally about Twitty's practice as a foodways interpreter in the south, it becomes a quest to fill in gaps, created by the diaspora, in Twitty's own family history. It often means literally retracing their steps, making the book as much about the creation of a roadmap of the US domestic slave trade as much as a family tree.
It's an absolutely fascinating and really well-written book; and since Twitty's investigation concludes at the 20th century, it makes a really great opener for The Warmth of Other Suns.
Thanks for the recommendation. Looks like an interesting book and different way of walking through history.
Thanks a million for this extensive list. Will definitely add many of these to my "to read" list.
There's a huge, gaping "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass"-shaped hole in your "old books" list, if you don't mind me saying.
Being Irish, @Kro might also be interested in reading about Douglas's time in Ireland. This website gives a good overview of the impact the trip on Ireland had on him, and also maps out all the places he visited while there. And I haven't read it but "Frederick Douglass in Ireland: The Black O'Connell" by Laurence Fenton could definitely be an interesting read on the subject.
Cheers for the recommendation. Going to check out that now.
Edit. Just read through the website and has tweeked my interest in the book. Not surprised that he encountered bigotry in Belfast at that time either considering the Protestant majority at the time didn't consider Irish Catholics even human. Pleasantly surprised at how well he was received in the UK considering their ties to slavery at the time and how supported colonialism was at the time.
The UK had ended their involvement with the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, and had abolished slavery entirely both in Britain and in their overseas possessions by 1833. There's a good argument that this was largely semantic, considering the way the UK exploited their colonies and subject peoples, but there was very little popular support of chattel slavery in Britain by the time of Douglass's visit.
The dude was an excellent writer. I second this.
I would also add 12 Years a slave https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Years_a_Slave
Twelve Years a Slave is an 1853 memoir and slave narrative by Solomon Northup as told to and written by David Wilson. Northup, a black man who was born free in New York state, details himself being tricked to go to Washington, D.C., where he was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Deep South
There's also a fantastic movie adaptation of this story which came out a few years back.
@spit-evil-olive-tips's list is a tour de force, but I can recommend some of the /r/askhistorians FAQ/Wiki pages which contain lots of books/resources on the topic:
Books on Civil Rights and race relations in North America
African Americans FAQ page
I would add Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi.
Also Wendell Berry's the Hidden Wound is a very thoughtful autobiographical essay by a descendent of slave owners. Bel Hooks used it as part of her class about racism.