50+ Resources for Black History Month

Black and white image of Angela Davis, who stands on the right hand side in front of a crowd.
by Abaki Beck
In honor of Black History Month, we've compiled some of our favorite resources below. Find more on our White Supremacy & empire and Racial Communities & Identities pages. Another great resource is the Black History Month Library! Know any other great resources? Let us know at!
History
Teaching Hard History, Southern Poverty Law Center report on how slavery is taught
Lynching in America interactive database
“Lynch Law in America,” by Ida B. Wells (1900)
“This Awful Slaughter,”by Ida B. Wells (1909)
“Letter from Birmingham Jail,” by Martin Luther King, Jr. April 16, 1963
Arrest records of Rosa Parks, National Archives
Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, comic from the 1950s
Don't blame Black Lives Matter for provoking violence. The civil rights movement did, too. by Simone Sebastian
The Black Radical Tradition, a massive pdf including more than 500 pages of writing by authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Frances M. Beal, the Combahee River Collective, I Wor Kuen, and more (table of contents included). Learn more here.
Poetry & Fiction
- Wild Seed by Octavia Butler (full book)
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (full book)
For the Record, a poem by Audre Lorde
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (full novel)
Plays by August Wilson, such as Gem of the Ocean, Radio Gulf, or Fences
Let America be American Again by Langston Hughes
Rosa Parks poem, Atlanta Team of the Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival
Emmet poem, Philadelphia Team, Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival
Black Feminsims
A Black Feminist Roundtable On bell hooks, Beyonce, and “Moving Beyond Pain” by Lori Adelman
My Battle Against the Assumed Androgyny of Black Women by Aja Barber
“Double Jeopardy: To Be Black and Female,” in The Black Woman by Frances Beale.
Lemonade Syllabus by Candice Benbow, a pdf/book with over 200 art, literature, and historical resources celebrating black womanhood (named for Beyonce's 2016 visual album Lemonade)
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment by Patricia Hill Collins (full book)
Black Feminist Thought in the Matrix of Domination by Patricia Hill Collins
Performance Practice as a Site of Opposition by bell hooks (from Let’s Get it On: The Politics of Black Performance, edited by Catherine Ugwu)
Feminismos negros: Una antolgía edited by Mercedes Jabardo (full book in Spanish)
An Open Letter to Mary Daly by Audre Lorde
Black Feminism and Intersectionality by Sharon Smith
Contemporary Activism
#BlackIslamSyllabus by Kayla Renee Wheeler
Black Lives Matter Syllabus: Race, Resistance, and Populist Protest
“Walking While Black” by Garnette Cadogan
“Black intellectuals, white audiences: Searching for tales of authentic blackness” by Matthew Clair
Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y. Davis (full book)
Racialized Punishment and Prison Abolition by Angela Y. Davis
Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex by Angela Davis
Ferguson: In Defense of Rioting by Darlene Cunha
White Supremacy
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (preface by Jean-Paul Sartre)
- Black Skins, White Masks by Franz Fanon (full book)
- The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lorde
- Teaching Resistance: The Racial Politics of Mass Media (from “Killing Rage, Ending Racism”) by bell hooks
- Defining Racism: Can we talk? by Beverley Daniel Tatum
- Teaching to Transgress: Education as a Practice of Freedom by bell hooks (full book)