Black History Month | David City Hruska Library

121) The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

Author

Philyaw, Deesha

Description

The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double standards and their own needs and passions. There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who has a crush on the preacher's...

122) Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education

Author

Smith, Mychal Denzel

Description

An unflinching account of what it means to be a young black man in America today, and how the existing script for black manhood is being rewritten in one of the most fascinating periods of American history.
How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too...

123) The Fire Next Time

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Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The book that galvanized the nation, gave voice to the emerging civil rights movement in the 1960s—and still lights the way to understanding race in America today. - "The finest essay I've ever read." —Ta-Nehisi CoatesAt once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document

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124) Black cake: a novel

Author

Wilkerson, Charmaine

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Description

"In this moving debut novel, two estranged siblings must set aside their differences to deal with their mother's death and her hidden past--a journey of discovery that takes them from the Caribbean to London to California and ends with her famous black cake. In present-day California, Eleanor Bennett's death leaves behind a puzzling inheritance for her two children, Byron and Benny: a traditional Caribbean black cake, made from a family recipe with...

125) Memphis: a novel

Author

Stringfellow, Tara M

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Description

"In the summer of 1995, ten-year-old Joan, her mother, and her younger sister flee her father's violence to the only place they have left: her mother's ancestral home in Memphis. Half a century ago, Joan's grandfather built this majestic house for her grandmother--only to be lynched, days after becoming the first Black detective in Memphis, by his all-white police squad. This wasn't the first time violence altered the course of Joan's family's trajectory,...

126) Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

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Formats:

eAudiobook, eBook

Description

Devil in the Grove, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction, is a gripping true story of racism, murder, rape, and the law. It brings to light one of the most dramatic court cases in American history, and offers a rare and revealing portrait of Thurgood Marshall that the world has never seen before. As Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns did for the story of America's black migration, Gilbert King's Devil in the Grove does for...

127) Double Victory: How African American Women Broke Race and Gender Barriers to Help Win World War II

Author

Mullenbach, Cheryl

Description

“Allow all black nurses to enlist, and the draft won't be necessary. . . . If nurses are needed so desperately, why isn't the Army using colored nurses?”

“My arm gets a little sore slinging a shovel or a pick, but then I forget about it when I think about all those boys over in the Solomons.”

Double Victory tells the stories of African American women

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128) Parable of the talents

Author

Butler, Octavia E

Description

Originally published in 1998, this shockingly prescient novel's timely message of hope and resistance in the face of fanaticism is more relevant than ever. In 2032, Lauren Olamina has survived the destruction of her home and family, and realized her vision of a peaceful community in northern California based on her newly founded faith, Earthseed. The fledgling community provides refuge for outcasts facing persecution after the election of an ultra-conservative...

129) My people: five decades of writing about Black lives

Author

Hunter-Gault, Charlayne

Description

"Charlayne Hunter-Gault is an eminent Dean of American journalism, a vital voice whose work chronicled the civil rights movement and so much of what has transpired since then. My People is the definitive collection of her reportage and commentary. Spanning datelines in the American South, South Africa and points scattered in between, her work constitutes a history of our time as rendered by the pen of a singular and indispensable black woman journalist....

130) Just mercy: a story of justice and redemption

Author

Stevenson, Bryan

Description

A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice-from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice...

131) Your name is a song

Author

Thompkins-Bigelow, Jamilah

Description

Saddened by her classmates' and teacher's mispronunciations of her name, a girl is empowered by her discovery that names are like songs when she and her mom celebrate the musicality of African, Asian, Black-American, Latinx, and Middle Eastern names. Frustrated by a day full of teachers and classmates mispronouncing her beautiful name, a little girl tells her mother she never wants to come back to school. In response, the girl's mother teaches her...

Author

Cabrera, Cozbi A

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Description

Mama's love is brighter than the sun, even on the rainiest of days. This celebration of a mother-daughter relationship is perfect for sharing with little ones! On a rainy day when the house smells like cinnamon and Papa and Luca are still asleep, when the clouds are wearing shadows and the wind paints the window with beads of water, I want to be everywhere Mama is. With lyrical prose and a tender touch, the Caldecott and Coretta Scott King Honor Book...

133) Chocolate me!

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Description

Relates the experiences of a dark-skinned, curly-haired child who wishes he could look more like the lighter-skinned children in his community until his mother helps him realize how wonderful he is inside and out.

134) Twelve rounds to glory: the story of Muhammad Ali

Author

Smith, Charles R

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Description

A brief biography in verse of boxer Muhammad Ali.

135) Through my eyes

Author

Description

Ruby Bridges recounts the story of her involvement, as a six-year-old, in the integration of her school in New Orleans in 1960.

136) Of thee I sing: a letter to my daughters

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"In this tender, beautiful letter to his daughters, President Barack Obama has written a moving tribute to thirteen groundbreaking Americans and the ideals that have shaped our nation. From the artistry of Georgia O'Keeffe, to the courage of Jackie Robinson, to the patriotism of George Washington, President Obama sees the traits of these heroes within his own children, and within all of America's children"--Book jacket.

137) Justice for George Floyd

Author

Harris, Duchess

Description

This book explores who George Floyd was, what happened the day he died, and the protests that followed. Floyd's death caused a wave of protests across the United States and around the world calling for an end to police violence. On May 25, 2020, George Floyd died while in the custody of four officers of Minnesota's Minneapolis Police Department. One of the officers had knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly ten minutes. Floyd's death caused a wave of protests...

138) Star child: a biographical constellation of Octavia Estelle Butler

Author

Zoboi, Ibi Aanu

Formats:

Description

"From the New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award finalist, a biography in verse and prose of science fiction visionary Octavia Butler. Acclaimed novelist Ibi Zoboi illuminates the young life of the visionary storyteller Octavia E. Butler in poems and prose. Born into the Space Race, the Red Scare, and the dawning Civil Rights Movement, Butler expereinced an American childhood that shaped her into the groundbreaking science-fiction...

139) Unspeakable: the Tulsa Race Massacre

Author

Weatherford, Carole Boston

Description

"Celebrated author Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrator Floyd Cooper provide a powerful look at the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, one of the worst incidents of racial violence in our nation's history"-- The 1921 Tulsa, Oklahoma, race massacre was one of the worst incidents of racial violence in our nation's history. On May 31 and June 1 an armed mob looted homes and businesses as Black families fled. The police did nothing to protect Greenwood,...

140) A history of me

Author

Theodore, Adrea

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Description

"A mother's account of her experience as the only Black child in school serves as an empowering message to her daughter"--