AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

A “2020 NCSS Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People” Selection

A vibrantly illustrated and compelling collection of profiles about women and men who revolutionized politics, policy, commerce and activism.

You likely know that Barack Obama was the first African American president of the United States. And you…

John Lewis (A), Andrew Aydin (A) and Nate Powell (ILT)

List Price: $14.95 (Paperback – Graphic Novel / Biography /African American History – Civil Rights Era – 2015)

Declaration: Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon, one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence…

Floyd Cooper (A and ILT)

List Price: $17.99 (Hardcover – Biography / Sports / Basketball – 2004)

What was Michael Jordan like as a boy? You might be surprised that the greatest professional basketball player ever wasn’t even the best player in his own family!

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Laurie Calkhoven (A) and Monique Dong (ILT)

List Price: $4.99 (Paperback – Biography / Ballet Dancer – 2016)

Pirouette across the stage and get to know Misty Copeland—the first African-American woman to become…

“A brilliant introduction to a powerful Black female politician and voting rights activist. Todd and Freeman bring this to life in their creative biography of Georgia-based politician Abrams.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred reviews)

“Freeman’s airbrush-style digital art leans into portraiture while visually bridging the astral divide, evoking yearning, frustration, and sisterly…

James Buckley (A) and Gregory Copeland (ILT)

List Price: $6.50 (Paperback – Biography / Sports / Track and Field – 2015)

At the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, track and field star Jesse Owens ran himself straight into international glory by winning four gold medals. But the life of Jesse Owens is much more…

Charles R. Smith Jr. (A) and Shane W. Evans (ILT)

List Price: $20.99 (Hardcover – History / 28 Important Days In History – 2015) 

Each day features a different influential figure in African-American history, from Crispus Attucks, the first man shot in the Boston Massacre, sparking the Revolutionary War, to Madame C. J. Walker, who…

Louisa Jagger (A) and Shari Becker (A) and  Floyd Cooper (ILT)

List Price: $18.99 (Hardcover – First Black Pilot to Fly Across the USA – 2021)

The inspirational and true story of James Herman Banning, the first African American pilot to fly across the country, comes to life in this picture book biography…

Gary D. Schmidt (A) and Daniel Minter (ILT) 

List Price: $18.99 (Hardcover – Abolitionist/ Feminists / Leader – 2018)

From celebrated author Gary D. Schmidt comes a picture book biography of a giant in the struggle for civil rights, perfectly pitched for readers today.

Sojourner Truth was born into slavery but possessed a mind and…

Ilyasah Shabazz (A) and Renee Watson (A)

List Price: $17.56 (Hardcover – Biography / Young Activist – 2018) 

In Detroit, 1945, eleven-year-old Betty’s house doesn’t quite feel like home. She believes her mother loves her, but she can’t shake the feeling that her mother doesn’t want her. Church helps those worries fade, if only for…

Shana Corey (A) and James Bernardin (ILT)

List Price: $12.99 (Hardcover – Biography / First Lady – 2018)

A Step 3 biography of esteemed lawyer and former First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama!

Michelle Obama is a lot like YOU! She grew up on the South Side of…

Lupita Nyong’o (A) and Vashti Harrison (ILT) 

List Price: $17.95 (Hardcover – Self Love and Discovering Your Unique Beauty – 2019)

From Academy Award–winning actress Lupita Nyong’o comes a powerful, moving picture book about colorism, self-esteem, and learning that true beauty comes from within.

Sulwe has skin the color of midnight. She is darker…

Julius Lester (A) and Karen Barbour (A) and (ILT) 

List Price: $8.99 (Paperback – Race / Similarities and Differences – 2005)

This gorgeous book—great to read with kids of any age—allows for open-ended conversation and questions.” (Brightly.com)

In this acclaimed book, the author of the Newberry Honor Book To Be a Slave shares his…

We all have the power to make meaningful change! This story about one step in the civil rights movement – the Montgomery Bus Boycott – follows one boy’s day walking the walk.

Dexter and his Papa have a long walk ahead to Dex’s piano lessons. Dex sure wants to ride one of those buses…

Louise Borden (A), Mary Kay Kroeger (A) and Teresa Flavin (ILT)

List Price: $8.99 (Paperback – First Black Aviator – 2004)

When Bessie Coleman was a child, she wanted to be in school — not in the cotton fields of Texas, helping her family earn money. She wanted to be somebody significant in…

Paula Young Shelton (A) and Ralu Colo (ILT)

List Price: $8.99  (Paperback – African American History / Civil Rights Era – 2009)

Two parents decide to return with their three daughters to the Deep South during the time of the Freedom Riders, the early 1960s, returning to Georgia…

Javaka Steptoe (A)

Maya Angelou (A)

List Price: $7.99 (Paperback – Biography / Memoir – 2009)

Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as…

National Book Award–winning and New York Times bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi (How to Be an Antiracist, Antiracist Baby) returns with a new picture book that serves as a modern bedtime classic.

As children all over the…

Trevor Noah (A) 

List Price: $9.99 (Paperback – Entertainer / BiRacial / Memoire – 2020)

The host of The Daily Show, Trevor Noah, shares his personal story and the injustices he faced while growing up half black, half white in South Africa under and after apartheid in this New York Times bestselling young readers’ adaptation of…

In this book from the critically acclaimed, multimillion-copy best-selling Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of Martin Luther King Jr., the inspiring minister and civil rights activist.

Little Martin grew up in a family of preachers: his dad was a preacher, his uncle was a preacher, his grandfather was a preacher…so maybe…

A powerful and accessible bilingual picture book that highlights “the power and impact of ordinary but dedicated citizens.

Every day, thousands of farm workers harvested the food that ended up on kitchen tables all over the country. But at the end of the day, when the workers sat down to eat, there were only beans…

Chris Crowe (A) and Tim Okamura (ILT)

List Price: $5.99 (Paperback – Fictionalized True Story / Emmett Till – 2002)

Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black teenager from Chicago, was unused to the mores of the segregated South. While visiting his uncle in the summer of 1955, he allegedly made flirtatious remarks…

Carole Boston Weatherford (A) and Floyd Cooper (ILT) 

List Price: $17.99 (Hardcover – 1921 Tulsa Race Riot and Massacre – 2021)

Celebrated author Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrator Floyd Cooper provide a powerful look at the Tulsa Race Massacre, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in our nation’s history. The book traces the…

Charles Johnson (A)

List Price: $17.00 (Paperback – African American History / Middle Passage / Slave Trade – 1998)

A twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Charles Johnson’s National Book Award-winning masterpiece of a novel in the tradition of Billy Budd and Moby-Dick heroic in proportion to fiction that hooks the mind” (The New York…

G. Neri (A) and Randy Duburke (ILT)

List Price: $16.95 (Paperback –   South Side Gang Member  – 2010)

Eleven-year old Roger is trying to make sense of his classmate Robert “Yummy” Sandifer’s death, but first he has to make sense of Yummy’s life. Yummy could be as tough as a pit bull…

Arlisha Norwood (A)

List Price: $14.99 (Paperback – Black Leaders In History  – 2020)

Meet extraordinary black heroes throughout history―biographies for kids ages 8 to 12

You’re invited to meet ancient Egyptian rulers, brilliant scientists, legendary musicians, and civil rights activists―all in the same book! Black Heroes introduces you to 51 black…

Anne Petry (A)

List Price: $7.99 (Paperback – History / Biography / Underground Railroad / Escape from Slavery – 1996)

This quintessential middle grade biography of Harriet Tubman now features a cover by NAACP Image Award winner and Caldecott Honor illustrator Kadir Nelson, a foreword by National Book Award finalist Jason Reynolds,…

Carole Boston Weatherford (A) and (ILT) James E. Ransome

List Price: $18.99 (Hardcover – Kids Bio of Dr. King – 2018)

You can be a King. Stamp out hatred. Put your foot down and walk tall.

You can be a King. Beat the drum for justice. March to your own conscience.

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From the Newberry Honor–winning author of Genesis Begins Again comes a shimmering picture book that shines the light on Zora Neale Hurston, the extraordinary writer and story catcher extraordinaire who changed the face of American literature.

Zora was a girl who hankered for tales like bees for honey. Now, her mama…

Paul Von Blum (A) and Elizabeth Von Notias & Ramsess (ILT)

List Price:$16.99 (Paperback – Biography / Activist / Singer/ Actor / Athlete – 2013)

Paul Robeson, despite being one of the greatest Renaissance figures in American history, still remains in relative anonymity. An exceptional scholar, lawyer, athlete, stage and screen actor, linguist,…

Sarah Fabiny (A) Who HQ (A) and Ted Hammond (ILT)

 List Price: $6.99 (Paperback – Journalist / Activist- Exposed Lynching -2020) 

The story of how a girl born into slavery became an early leader in the civil rights movement and the most famous black female journalist in nineteenth-century America.

Born into slavery in 1862, Ida…

Vashti Harrison (A and ILT) 

From the author of Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History comes the highly anticipated follow-up, a beautifully illustrated collectible detailing the lives of women creators around the world.

Featuring the true…

Vaunda Micheaux Nelson (A) and R. Gregory Christie (ILT)

List Price: $19.99  (Library Binding – Biography Law Enforcement / U.S. Marshall – 2009)

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Kofi A. Annan (A), Dudley J. Thompson (A) and Barrington A. Watson (ILT)

List Price: $15.00 (Paperback – Biographies / Pan Africanists – 2005)

This book celebrates the lives of seventeen Black leaders who have made outstanding contributions to the liberation, unity and solidarity of Africa and African peoples throughout…

Walter Dean Myers (A), Leonard Jenkins (ILT)

List Price: $8.99 (Paperback – Biography / Leader / Revolutionary – 2003)

“I believe in recognizing every human being
as a human being, neither white, black, brown, nor red.”

This was just one of the messages that Malcolm X brought to people of…

Kathryn Lasky (A) and Nneka Bennett (ILT)

List Price: $5.99  (Paperback – Biography / Entrepreneur / Cosmetics – 2000)

A biography of Sarah Breedlove Walker who, though born in poverty, pioneered her genius ideas in hair and beauty care products for black women, and became a great financial success. (48…

Walter Dean Myers (A) and Leonard Jenkins (ILT)

List Price: $8.99 (Paperback – Civil Rights Movement History – 2003)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is one of the most celebrated figures of the twentieth century. A crusader for nonviolent social justice, he led African Americans in their demands for equality through peaceful…

In this book from the critically acclaimed, multimillion-copy best-selling Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of Jesse Owens, the great track and field star.

The youngest of ten children, Jesse grew up working in the cotton fields of Alabama. Discovered by his high school track and field coach, Jesse quickly rose to…

Joel Christian (A and ILT) Henry Louis Gates (FRWD)

List Price: $23.95 (Paperback – Graphic Novel –  True Stories – 2014)

Strange Fruit Volume I is a collection of stories from early African American history that represent the oddity of success in the face of great adversity. Each of the nine illustrated chapters chronicles…

Elspeth Leacock and Susan Buckley (Adaptor), Lydia Blackmon Lowery (A) and PJ Loughran (ILT)

List Price: $11.99 (Paperback – Civil Rights Era/ Protest/ Social Justice – 2016)

A memoir of the Civil Rights Movement from one of its youngest heroes–now in paperback will an all-new discussion guide.

As the youngest marcher in the…

The life of civil rights icon Angela Davis is illuminated in an extraordinary picture book biography. Booklist praised this profound exploration of American history, activism, the civil rights movement, and the power of the people as a one that “should be part of all social studies curricula.” For fans of Maya’s Song, Nina, and <span class="a-text-bold…

From the #1 New York Times bestselling series comes the latest title in the Who HQ Now format for trending topics. It tells the history of a political and social movement that advocates for non-violent civil disobedience and protests against incidents of police brutality–and all racially…

Kelly Starling Lyons (A) and Laura Freeman (ILT)

List Price $20.95 (Hardcover – Builder / Designer / Architect – 2021)

The Story of Architect Philip Freelon

You’ve seen the building. Now meet the man whose life went into it.

Philip Freelon’s grandfather was an acclaimed painter of the Harlem…

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (A) and Jade Johnson (ILT) 

List Price: $17.95 (Hardcover – Lunch Counter Sit In Pioneer – 2018) 

Someday Is Now tells the inspirational story of the celebrated civil rights leader, Clara Luper, who led one of the first lunch-counter…

Margot Lee Shettterly (A) 

List Price: $9.99 (Paperback – Biography / Science – Aerospace Engineer – 2015) 

This inspiring biography tells the story of Katherine Johnson, an African American mathematician. An inspiring figure in the history of STEM, she eventually worked on the mission to send a man to the moon.  Her story…

James Ransome (A and ILT) 

List Price: $17.99 (Hardcover – Siblings Escape to Freedom – 2019)

A young slave girl witnesses the heartbreak and hopefulness of her family and their plantation community when her brother escapes for freedom in this brilliantly conceived picture book by Coretta Scott King Award winner James E. Ransome.

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A timely picture book biography about Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman in Congress, who sought the Democratic nomination to be the president of the United States.

Shirley Chisholm famously said, “If they don’t give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair.” This dynamic biography illuminates how Chisholm was a doer,…

Rick Bowers (A) 

List Price: $16.95  (Hardcover – African American History / Civil Rights Era / White Supremacy – 2010) 

The Spies of Mississippi is a compelling story of how state spies tried to block voting rights for African Americans during the Civil Rights era. This book sheds new light on one of…