Social Justice Reading Guide - Freshmen: Anti-Racist Books

A collection of essays by black women writers, curated by the founder of the popular book club Well-Read Black Girl, on the importance of recognizing ourselves in literature.

Presents the argument that since the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, when African Americans make advances toward full participation in our democracy, white reaction feeds deliberate and relentless rollback of their progress.

A bracingly original approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society—and in ourselves. Ibram X. Kendi’s concept of antiracism reenergizes and reshapes the conversation about racial justice in America—but even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other.

A history of racist and antiracist ideas in America, from their roots in Europe until today, adapted from the National Book Award winner Stamped from the Beginning.

Learn about identities, true histories, and anti-racism in twenty [lessons]. This book is written so young people will feel empowered to stand up to the adults in their lives. This book will give them the language and ability to understand racism and a drive to undo it.

When seventeen-year-old Avery moves to rural Georgia to live with her ailing grandmother, she encounters decade-old family secrets and a mystery surrounding the town's racist past.

While writing letters to Innocence X, a justice-seeking project, asking them to help her father, an innocent black man on death row, teenaged Tracy takes on another case when her brother is accused of killing his white girlfriend.

Sixteen-year-old Alex Rufus's curse of seeing the future distracts him from being and doing his best, but when he sees his little brother Isaiah's imminent death, he races against time, death, and circumstances to save him.

With the Rodney King riots closing in on high school senior Ashley and her family, the privileged bubble she has enjoyed, protecting her from the difficult realities most black people face, begins to crumble.

Novel in verse about a boy who keeps his sense of humanity despite being wrongfully incarcerated.

A collection of coming-of-age short stories that reflect on the African American teenage experience in America.

When his best friend is unfairly arrested and kicked off the team, Russell Boudreaux kneels during the national anthem in an effort to fight for justice and, in an instant, falls from local stardom to become a target of hatred.

Explores the story of how the #BlackLivesMatter movement started and spread across the nation and world, including the journey of one of its co-founders, Patrisse Khan-Cullors. The original "adult" version is also available for checkout.

Lynda Blackmon Lowery recounts her experiences as the youngest marcher on the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama recounts his experiences as a lawyer working to assist those desperately in need, reflecting on his pursuit of the ideal of compassion in American justice.

Written as a letter to his 15-year-old son, Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings--moments when he discovered some new truth about our long, tangled history of race, whether through his myth-busting professors at Howard University, a trip to a Civil War battlefield with a rogue historian, a journey to Chicago's South Side to visit aging survivors of 20th century America's 'long war on black people,' or a visit with the mother of a beloved friend who was shot down by the police.