Formerly known as the Ferguson Reads List, this reading list is intended to provide some history and context to the recent protests. This is a community curated list of books that explore race, not only in St. Louis, but America as a whole. By no means a full comprehensive list, here are a few to get you started on the trail of understanding what’s happening. For more information, please visit www.left-bank.com/black-lives-matter
Children’s Books
Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit‐Ins by Carole Boston Weatherford
Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom by Virginia Hamilton
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams‐Garcia Civil Rights History
Freedom Summer: The Savage Season of 1964 That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy by Bruce Watson
Lynching of Cleo Wright by Dominic J. Capeci JR
The Freedom Summer Murders by Don Mitchell
The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America by James T. Patterson
March, Book 1 by John Lewis
Contempt of Court: The Turn‐of‐the‐Century Lynching That Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism by Mark Curriden
Freedom’s Ballot: African American Political Struggles in Chicago from Abolition to the Great Migration by Margaret Garb
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund
S. Morgan
A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School by Carlotta Walls Lanier
Olivia’s Story: The Conspiracy of Heroes behind Shelley v Kraemer by Jeffery Copeland
Waking from the Dream: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Shadow of Martin Luther King Jr. by David Chappell
Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis that Shocked the Nation by Elizabeth Jacoway
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose
Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America by Elliot Jaspin
Medical Appartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington
Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 by William Tuttle
Contemporary Civil Rights Issues
Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America
by Eugene Robinson
The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t and Why by Jabari Asim
Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice by Paul Kivel
The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues by Angela Y. Davis
Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble‐Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice by Si Kahn
The House That Race Built edited by Wahneema Lubiano
Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty‐First Century by Monique W. Morris
Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect by Robert J. Sampson
The News: A User’s Manual by Alain De Botton Combined Destinies: Whites Sharing Grief about
Racism by Jealous T. Ann
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the
Wealth Gap by Mat Taibbi
The Fragile Mind: How It Has Produced and Unwittingly Perpetuates America’s Tragic Disparities by Jarik Conrad
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise
Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk about Race and How to Do It by Shelly Tochluk
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class by Ian Haney‐Lopez
Memoir
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood by Ta‐Nehisi Coates
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
The Grace of Silence: A Family Memoir by Michele Norris
High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America by Jessica B. Harris
March, Book 1 by John Lewis
Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
At the Elbows of My Elders by Gail Milissa Grant A Mighty Long Way by Carlotta Walls Lanier Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
Novels and Stories Exploring Race
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi Americahah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
A Taste of Honey by Jabari Asim
Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines Native Son by Richard Wright
King Hedley II by August Wilson
Shedding from the Inside by Kalonna Carpenter Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse
Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison
Policing and Incarceration
Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander Losing Legitimacy by Gary Lafree
Mass Incarceration on Trial by Jonathan Simon Suspicion Nation by Lisa Bloom
The Central Park Five by Sarah Burns
Arbitrary Justice by Angela J. Davis
Life in Prison by Stanley “Tookie” Williams
No Choirboy: Murder, Violence and Teenagers on Death Row by Susan Kuklin
Why Are So Many Black Men in Prison? By Demico Boothe
Race in St. Louis History
Never Been a Time by Harper Barnes
Mapping Decline by Colin Gordon
Grassroots at the Gateway by Clarence Lang
That’s the Way it Was by Vida “Sister” Goldman Prince
Olivia’s Story by Jeffrey Copeland
