Made a federal holiday in 2021, Juneteenth commemorates the day the last enslaved people were emancipated in the United States on June 19, 1865. The list below celebrates fiction and nonfiction by African American authors that continue to shape our culture, celebrate liberation, and acknowledge the ongoing work towards freedom and equality. Click on the link to view summaries or place holds.
youth
Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi
Free at Last!: Stories and Songs of Emancipation by Doreen Rappaport
Ben and the Emancipation Proclamation by Pat Sherman
All Different Now by Angela Johnson
Sing a Song by Kelly Starling Lyons
For Beautiful Black Boys Who Believe in a Better World by Michael W. Waters
Henry’s Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad by Ellen Levine
teen
My Name is Not Friday by Jon Walter
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi
This is My America by Kim Johnson
Crossing Ebenezer Creek by Tonya Bolden
Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History by Joel Christian Gill
Black Enough: Stories of Being Young & Black in America by Ibi Aanu Zoboi
Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates Jr.
adult
Four Hundred Souls Edited by Ibram C. Kendi and Keisha N. Blaine
Kindred by Octavia Bulter
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
We Are Each Other’s Harvest by Natalie Baszile
Beloved by Toni Morrison
On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed
Conjure Women by Afia Atakora
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson