Educate Yourself: Black History & Society

Please note that listed sites are not necessarily endorsed by #TheWorldIsWatching. The following links are provided in good faith to educate our community members. For original research and commentary by our organization, please check out our Issue Briefings series.

Videos & Podcasts

Online Texts

Print Texts

Note: To support the Black community, particularly amidst a pandemic that has disproportionately affected them and other communities of color, we recommend purchasing from independent, Black-owned bookstores. For lists of Black-owned bookstores that process online orders, click here or here.

  • Layla F. Saad, Me and White Supremacy: A 28-Day Challenge to Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor (2019)
  • Elisa Camahort Page, Carolyn Gerin, Jamia Wilson, Road Map for Revolutionaries (2018)
  • Mahzarin R. Banaji, Anthony G. Greenwald, Blind Spot: Hidden Biases of Good People (2013)
  • Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudices that Shape Our Lives (2020)
  • Dr. Pragya Agarwal, Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias (2020)
  • Ruth King, Mindful of Race: Understanding and Transforming Habits of Harm (2018, nonfiction)
  • Ijeomo Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race (2018, nonfiction)
  • Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (2018, nonfiction)*
  • Ibrahim X. Kendi, How to be an Antiracist (2019, nonfiction)
  • Dorothy Roberts, Fatal Intervention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Recreate Race in the Twenty-First Century (2012, nonfiction)
  • Kalwant Bhopal, White Privilege: The Myth of a Post-Racial Society (2018, nonfiction)
  • Angela Saini, Superior: The Return of Race Science (2019, nonfiction)
  • Michele Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010, criminal justice)
  • Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete? (2003, criminal justice)
  • Ed Gordon, Conversations in Black: On Politics, Power and Leadership (2020, leadership)
  • Paul Ortiz, An African American and Latinx History of the United States (2018, history)
  • Paul Butler, Chokehold: Policing Black Men (2017, criminal justice)
  • Damon Young, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays (2019, memoir)
  • Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969, autobiography)
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (2015, memoir)
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power (2017, essays)
  • Ibrahim X. Kendi, Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2016, nonfiction)
  • Patrisse Cullors and Asha Bandele, When They Call You a Terrorist (2020, memoir from the BLM cofounders)
  • Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (1984, essays)
  • James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963, nonfiction)
  • bell hooks, Ain’t I A Woman (1981, dissertation): named after Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech
  • Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard (2019, essays)
  • Jim Wallis, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America (2015)
  • Mira Jacob, Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations (2019)
  • Jesmyn Ward, The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race (2017, nonfiction)
  • Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric (2014, nonfiction)
  • Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous People’s History of the United States (2015, history)
  • Kiese Laymon, Heavy: An American Memoir (2018, memoir)
  • Akiba Solomon, How We Fight White Supremacy (2018, essays)
  • Michael Eric Dyson, Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America (2017, nonfiction)
  • Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (2017, history)
  • Mumia Abu-Jamal, Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? (2017, nonfiction)
  • Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Greatest Migration (2014, history)
  • Mikki Kendall, Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot (2020, nonfiction)
  • Carol Anderson, PhD, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (2017, nonfiction)
  • Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, American Lynching (2014, nonfiction)
  • Catherine Morris, We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women 1965-85 (2017, nonfiction)
  • Solomon Northup, Twelve Years A Slave (1853, nonfiction)

If you have additional resources you would like listed here, please contact us.