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February is Black History Month!

Pierce Library invites you to join us in celebrating Black History Month!

Black History Month, also sometimes called African American History Month, is observed in the United States every February. Originating as "Negro History Week" as proposed by Carter G. Woodson in 1925, its overwhelming popularity, combined with a heightened awareness of the importance of recognizing and celebrating Black history, resulted in it being expanded to a month-long observance in 1976. Since then, every U.S. president has issued Black History Month proclamations. 

This is a time to celebrate Black excellence in all of its forms. This month, we pay tribute to the ingenuity and contributions of Black artists and visionaries past and present; honor the strength and resilience of Black communities; and continue the work of building a more just and equitable society. We hope the books and resources below inspire you and teach you something new!

2025 Theme: African Americans and Labor

Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America
Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class
Gray Areas: How the Way We Work Perpetuates Racism and What We Can Do to Fix It
A Working People: A History of African American Workers Since Emancipation
Race, Work, and Leadership: New Perspectives on the Black Experience
A Matter of Moral Justice: Black Women Laundry Workers and the Fight for Justice

eBook Available

We Are Each Other's Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy
African American Workers and the Appalachian Coal Industry

eBook Available

Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s

eBook Available

Twice As Hard: The Stories of Black Women Who Fought to Become Physicians, from the Civil War to the 21st Century

eBook Available

We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in the Space Program

eBook Available

Changing the Face of Engineering: The African American Experience

eBook Available

Take a Lesson: Black Achievers on How They Made It and What They Learned Along the Way

eBook Available

Working While Black: Essays on Television Portrayals of African American Professionals

eBook Available

Nonfiction Books

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
Lifting the Chains: The Black Freedom Struggle Since Reconstruction
An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States
A Black Women's History of the United States
African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals
The 1619 Project

eBook Available

The Survivors of the Clotilda: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the American Slave Trade
You Don't Know Us Negroes and Other Essays
All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

eBook Available

The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea
The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth
The Black Panthers: Portraits From an Unfinished Revolution
Power Hungry: Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement
Vanguard: How Black women broke barriers, won the vote, and insisted on equality for all
The Movement: The African American Struggle for Civil Rights

eBook Available

Path to Grace: Reimagining the Civil Rights Movement

eBook Available

Twisted: The Tangled History of Black Hair Culture
Voodoo: An African American Religion
Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought
Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America
Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

eBook Available

Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement
Ride or Die: A Feminist Manifesto for the Well-Being of Black Women
Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot
Patriarchy Blues: Reflections on Manhood
You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience
Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit
The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health

eBook Available

Black Art: A Cultural History
Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures

Coming Soon

Comrade Sisters: Women of the Black Panther Party

Memoirs & Biographies

Lovely One
The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
King: A Life
Shirley Chisholm: Champion of Black Feminist Power Politics
John Lewis: A Life
The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X
Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

Coming Soon

A Good Cry
Lorraine Hansberry: The Life Behind a Raisin in the Sun
My Life, My Love, My Legacy
Langston Hughes
Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the #MeToo Movement
Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine
Between the World and Me

eBook Available

When They Call You a Terrorist
Read Until You Understand: The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature
Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden

Fiction

The Nickel Boys
The Love Songs of W.E.B. du Bois
The Other Black Girl
Nightcrawling: A Novel
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
Horse
Pomegranate
The Blueprint

Coming Soon

Temple Folk
Yonder
Nightbloom
Moonrise over New Jessup

Coming Soon

Holler, Child
Heads of the Colored People
Ramadan Ramsey
Nobody's Magic
My Government Means to Kill Me: A Novel
The Water Dancer

eBook Available

Girl, Woman, Other
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
Homebodies
Big Girl: A Novel
The Underground Railroad
Homegoing
The Hate U Give

Poetry

This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets
African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song
Don't Call Us Dead: Poems
My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter

eBook Available

The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop
¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets

eBook Available

I Can't Talk about the Trees Without the Blood

eBook Available

Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin
The Complete Poetry of Maya Angelou

eBook Available

The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde
Selected Poems of Langston Hughes

eBook Available


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