Black History Collection

When the Watson family—ten-year-old Kenny, Momma, Dad, little sister Joetta, and brother Byron—sets out on a trip south to visit Grandma in Birmingham, Alabama, they don’t realize that they’re heading toward one of the darkest moments in America’s history. The Watsons’ journey reminds us that even in the hardest times, laughter and family can help us get through anything.

This picture book tells the story of a nine-year-old girl who in 1968 witnessed the Memphis sanitation strike - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s final stand for justice before his assassination - when her father, a sanitation worker, participated in the protest.

No discussion of the Civil Rights Movement is complete without the story of Rosa Parks. But what was this activist like as a child? Following young Rosa from a fishing creek to a one-room schoolhouse, from her wearing homemade clothes to wondering what "white" water tastes like, readers will be inspired by the experiences that shaped one of the most famous African-Americans in history.

Based on the New York Times bestselling book and the Academy Award—nominated movie, author Margot Lee Shetterly and Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award winner Laura Freeman bring the incredibly inspiring true story of four black women in STEM who helped NASA launch men into space to picture book readers!

As a youth, Malcolm endured violence, loss, hunger, foster care, racism, and being incarcerated. He emerged from it all to make a lasting impact. As a Black Muslim. As a family man. As a revolutionary. Malcolm’s life story shows the promise of every human being. 

On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South.

by Margot Lee Shetterly

A biographical account of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Christine Darden. These mathematicians, known as "colored computers," overcame racial and gender barriers at NASA from the 1930s to the 1960s to facilitate critical Space Race achievements.

by John Lewis (Author), Andrew Aydin (Author), Nate Powell (Illustrator)
 

Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) was an American icon who repeatedly made history as one of the key figures of the Civil Rights Movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence brought him from an Alabama sharecropper’s farm to the halls of Congress, from a segregated schoolroom to the 1963 March on Washington, and from receiving beatings from state troopers to receiving the Medal of Freedom from the first African-American president.

To share his remarkable story with new generations, Lewis turned to the graphic novel format, in collaboration with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell, and inspired by a 1950s comic book that helped prepare his own generation to join the struggle. The resulting trilogy, March, became a groundbreaking and definitive work of graphic memoir — a perennial bestseller, a vital resource in classrooms across America, the recipient of countless honors, and the first comic to win the National Book Award. 

A haunting portrait of race and class, innocence and injustice, hypocrisy and heroism, tradition and transformation in the Deep South of the 1930s, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird remains as important today as it was upon its initial publication in 1960, during the turbulent years of the Civil Rights movement.

Now, this most beloved and acclaimed novel is reborn for a new age as a gorgeous graphic novel. 

Details the historical context leading up to the 1921 white-supremacist attack on Tulsa’s thriving Black Greenwood district, revealing how and why the event happened and why the history was buried for so long. 

On point historical photographs combined with strong narration bring the saga of the Woolworth lunch counter sit-ins in the early 1960s to life. Readers will learn about the four brave college students who started it all, as well as the many who came after. These events changed the world. The photographer who took the photographs shown in this book is now in his 90s, but he agreed to an exclusive interview for this book.

In Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Boy former American football player Emmanuel Acho addresses the awkward questions white and other non-black people have been afraid to ask and don’t know how to answer. Drawing from his own experiences, Emmanuel creates a safe space for curious young people and their parents to find answers to difficult questions about race and racism. This essential book will help support readers to dismantle racism and be the drivers of change in their own lives, schools and communities.