The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County
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January 2012

Booklists · Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

January 16th is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day! Celebrate his birthday with one of these African American staff picks from the Library's collection.

Books for Kids: Easy Books

cover of Love Twelve Miles Long

Love Twelve Miles Long

Glenda Armand

We March

Shane Evans

Ellen's Broom

Kelly Starling Lyons

When Grandmama Sings

Margaree King Mitchell

Freedom Song: The Story of Henry "Box" Brown

Sally M. Walker

Jazz Age Josephine: Dancer, Singer--Who's That, Who? Why That's Miss Josephine Baker, to You!

Jonah Winter

Books for Kids: Fiction and Nonfiction

cover of What Color Is My World?

What Color Is My World?: How African-American Inventors Changed the Way We Live

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Words Set Me Free: The Story of Young Frederick Douglass

Lesa Cline-Ransome

I Lay My Stitches Down

Cynthia Grady

Freedom's A-Calling Me

Ntozake Shange

Adult Fiction: Classics

Go Tell It on the Mountain

James Baldwin

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Zora Neale Hurston

Beloved

Toni Morrison

The Color Purple

Alice Walker

The Wedding

Dorothy West

Native Son

Richard Wright

Adult Fiction: General

cover of Twelve Gates to the City

Capital Wives

Rochelle Alers

Twelve Gates to the City

Daniel Black

Money Can't Buy Love

Connie Briscoe

Just Wanna Testify

Pearl Cleage

The Resurrection of Nat Turner. Part 1, The Witnesses

Sharon Ewell Foster

Silver Sparrow

Tayari Jones

Getting to Happy

Terry McMillan

Mama Ruby

Mary Monroe

When the Thrill Is Gone

Walter Mosley

Hurricane

Jewell Parker Rhodes

Love, Honor, and Betray

Kimberla Lawson Roby

Midnight and the Meaning of Love

Sister Souljah

The Taste of Salt

Martha Southgate

Salvage the Bones

Jesmyn Ward

The Choir Director

Carl Weber

Zone One

Colson Whitehead

Adult Nonfiction: Classics

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave

Frederick Douglass

Roots

Alex Haley

A Raisin in the Sun

Lorraine Hansberry

Three Negro Classics: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk, and The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Black Boy: (American Hunger): A Record of Childhood and Youth

Richard Wright

Adult Nonfiction: Biographies

cover of My Song: A Memoir

My Song: A Memoir

Harry Belafonte

I Got This: How I Changed My Ways and Lost What Weighed Me Down

Jennifer Hudson

It Is Well with My Soul: The Extraordinary Life of a 106-Year-Old Woman

Ella Mae Cheeks Johnson

The Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring

Sugar Ray Leonard

Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

Manning Marable

No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington

Condoleezza Rice

Adult Nonfiction: African American History

cover of Fraternity

Fraternity: In 1968, a Visionary Priest Recruited 20 Black Men to the College of the Holy Cross and Changed Their Lives and the Course of History

Diane Brady

Burial for a King : Martin Luther King Jr.'s Funeral and the Week That Transformed Atlanta and Rocked the Nation

Rebecca Burns

Life Upon These Shores: Looking at African American History, 1513-2008

Henry Louis Gates

Harlem: The Four Hundred Year History from Dutch Village to the Capital of Black America

Jonathan Gill

Black Faces of War: A Legacy of Honor from the American Revolution to Today

Robert V. Morris

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Isabel Wilkerson
Need more suggestions? Contact your local library and a reference librarian will be happy to assist you.