100 books like Slaves Without Masters

By Ira Belin,

Here are 100 books that Slaves Without Masters fans have personally recommended if you like Slaves Without Masters. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of And Still the Waters Run: The Betrayal of the Five Civilized Tribes

Jeff Provine Author Of Secret Oklahoma City: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

From my list on showing the hidden struggles of Oklahomans.

Why am I passionate about this?

I grew up on my family’s land run farm north of Enid before coming to the OKC metro for school, giving me a view of the quiet rural spaces and the hopping city life Oklahoma pushes for today and more! 

Jeff's book list on showing the hidden struggles of Oklahomans

Jeff Provine Why did Jeff love this book?

People were shocked to read about the Osage murders, but those who’ve read Angie Debo just had to sigh and shake their heads since it’s nothing new. Her 1936 work opened my eyes to the systematic devastation of the tribes, bite by bite. Forced off their homelands with removal, they were promised to hold land in Oklahoma “as long as the waters run,” but it wasn’t more than a few decades before allotment narrowed tribal holdings and opened up more land to be taken. With Native peoples not even legal citizens, anyone with money had to have a guardian, a breeding ground for amoral administrators to siphon off as much as they wanted.

By Angie Debo,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked And Still the Waters Run as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Debo's classic work tells the tragic story of the spoliation of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek, and Seminole nations at the turn of the last century in what is now the state of Oklahoma. After their earlier forced removal from traditional lands in the southeastern states--culminating in the devastating 'trail of tears' march of the Cherokees--these five so-called Civilized Tribes held federal land grants in perpetuity, or "as long as the waters run, as long as the grass grows." Yet after passage of the Dawes Act in 1887, the land was purchased back from the tribes, whose members were then…


Book cover of Fallen Prince: William James Edwards, Black Education, and the Quest for Afro-American Nationality

Jillian Hishaw Author Of Systematic Land Theft

From my list on the history of land dispossession.

Why am I passionate about this?

My family’s farm was lost due to a dishonest lawyer that my great-grandmother entrusted. Because of that, I have devoted the past 20 years of my career to providing low-cost legal services to aging rural farmers around estate planning and civil rights. As an attorney, I have worked for the US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Civil Rights in Washington DC. I also founded the non-profit organization F.A.R.M.S., which provides services to aging rural farmers such as preventing farm foreclosures, executing wills, and securing purchase contracts. After drafting Systematic Land Theft over the span of several years, I am happy to release this historic synopsis documenting the land theft of Indigenous and Black communities. I have written extensively on the topics of agriculture, environmental, and land injustice in a variety of legal, trade, and other publications.

Jillian's book list on the history of land dispossession

Jillian Hishaw Why did Jillian love this book?

William James Edward is the grandfather of the author Donald Stone. The author does a great job of highlighting the importance that William J. Edward placed on lineage at the beginning of the book. The author shows the forgotten legacy of Edwards as one of Tuskegee’s first graduates. Edwards goes on to start a secondary school in Wilcox county Alabama, following the legacy of Booker T. Washington. The school was called the Snow Hill Institute and in its prime employed over 20 teachers and had over a dozen buildings on the campus. The curriculum was like Tuskegee, where the students learned trades and received a formal education. Under the leadership of William James Edwards, the school thrived until it was forced to close in the 1960s. Donald Stone mostly uses primary sources to paint a picture of the opposition that Edwards faced in trying to operate a school outside of…

By Donald P. Stone,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fallen Prince as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Book by Stone, Donald P.


Book cover of The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

Hamilton Nolan Author Of The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor

From my list on the power of the American labor movement.

Why am I passionate about this?

I'm a labor journalist. I've spent the past 20 years writing widely about inequality, class war, unions, and the way that power works in America. My parents were civil rights and antiwar activists in the 1960s and 70s, and they instilled in me an appreciation for the fact that social movements are often the only thing standing between regular people and exploitation. My curiosity about power imbalances in America drew me inexorably towards the absence of worker power and led me to the conclusion that the labor movement is the tool that can solve America's most profound problems. I grew up in Florida, live in Brooklyn, and report all over.

Hamilton's book list on the power of the American labor movement

Hamilton Nolan Why did Hamilton love this book?

You can’t understand the role of labor in America unless you understand slavery, which set the original template for American labor exploitation that still echoes to this day.

This book is one of the best explorations of American slavery, its roots, and its integral connection to the capitalism that surrounds us all.

When you appreciate how long and completely slaves were oppressed and who got the gains of the work they did, you will develop a much sharper appreciation for the importance of maintaining worker power today.

By Edward E. Baptist,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Half Has Never Been Told as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Americans tend to cast slavery as a pre-modern institution,the nation's original sin, perhaps, but isolated in time and divorced from America's later success. But to do so robs the millions who suffered in bondage of their full legacy. As historian Edward E. Baptist reveals in The Half Has Never Been Told , the expansion of slavery in the first eight decades after American independence drove the evolution and modernization of the United States. In the span of a single lifetime, the South grew from a narrow coastal strip of worn-out tobacco plantations to a continental cotton empire, and the United…


Book cover of Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom

Jillian Hishaw Author Of Systematic Land Theft

From my list on the history of land dispossession.

Why am I passionate about this?

My family’s farm was lost due to a dishonest lawyer that my great-grandmother entrusted. Because of that, I have devoted the past 20 years of my career to providing low-cost legal services to aging rural farmers around estate planning and civil rights. As an attorney, I have worked for the US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Civil Rights in Washington DC. I also founded the non-profit organization F.A.R.M.S., which provides services to aging rural farmers such as preventing farm foreclosures, executing wills, and securing purchase contracts. After drafting Systematic Land Theft over the span of several years, I am happy to release this historic synopsis documenting the land theft of Indigenous and Black communities. I have written extensively on the topics of agriculture, environmental, and land injustice in a variety of legal, trade, and other publications.

Jillian's book list on the history of land dispossession

Jillian Hishaw Why did Jillian love this book?

A beautiful manuscript documenting the overall racial tension between Indigenous, enslaved Africans, and Europeans is superbly described by Dr. Miles in all aspects. The undertones of admiration and challenges between all three racial groups is eloquently pictured in the relationship between Shoeboots, a prominent Cherokee Champion and farmer, and Doll, his companion and enslaved African woman. The three-decade depiction of Shoeboot’s and Doll’s lives together and Doll’s petition to the federal government requesting Shoe Boot’s pension as his widow is beyond historic. Ties that Bind is a true testament to the enslaved Africans tribal experience before, during, and after slavery; it is essential to one’s book collection.  

By Tiya Miles,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ties That Bind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This beautifully written book, now in its second edition, tells the haunting saga of a quintessentially American family. It is the story of Shoe Boots, a famed Cherokee warrior and successful farmer, and Doll, an African slave he acquired in the late 1790s. Over the next thirty years, Shoe Boots and Doll lived together as master and slave and also as lifelong partners who, with their children and grandchildren, experienced key events in American history including slavery, the Creek War, the founding of the Cherokee Nation and subsequent removal of Native Americans along the Trail of Tears, and the Civil…


Book cover of Kindred

Hajar Yazdiha Author Of The Struggle for the People's King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement

From my list on understanding revisionist history politics.

Why am I passionate about this?

I studied forty years of the political misuses of the memory of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement as a sociologist at USC and the daughter of Iranian immigrants who has always been interested in questions of identity and belonging. My interest in civil rights struggles started early, growing up in Virginia, a state that celebrated the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday alongside Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. I wanted to understand how revisionist histories could become the mainstream account of the past and how they mattered for the future of democracy.

Hajar's book list on understanding revisionist history politics

Hajar Yazdiha Why did Hajar love this book?

I am, to put it lightly, obsessed with the way Octavia Butler revolutionizes the timescape and invites us to speculate about worlds that could be. In this and so many of her books, her vision of Afrofuturism is one that reminds us that our ancestral pasts and our imagined futures are always connected. 

I thought a lot about the future when I wrote my book, and I share Butler’s conviction that there is collective healing and liberation in revisiting and reimagining the past.

I also love that my neighborhood library in Pasadena is the one Octavia Butler used to frequent!

By Octavia E. Butler,

Why should I read it?

15 authors picked Kindred as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner

The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

“I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.”

Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon…


Book cover of Fire On The Mountain

Christopher Brown Author Of Tropic of Kansas

From my list on a second American Civil War.

Why am I passionate about this?

I began writing speculative fiction because I was fascinated by its potential as a laboratory to imagine the world that could be. It’s a narrative form that allows us to play with revolutionary changes in society without any real people getting hurt. And it compels the author to do the hard work of imagining how others experience life in the real world as well as the imaginary one. The best SF novels balance their speculations with a grounding in the observed world, entertaining us with propulsive wonder while filling our minds with new ideas and fresh perspectives that linger long after we put the book down.

Christopher's book list on a second American Civil War

Christopher Brown Why did Christopher love this book?

The Civil War in this short novel by Bisson, who sadly died in early 2024, is part of the book's backstory. It is set in a 1950s America in which our 1860s Civil War never happened.

In Bisson’s mirror America, Harriet Tubman joined John Brown in his raid on Harper’s Ferry, resulting in a victory for the abolitionists that led to a massive slave uprising in the South, aided by radical Europeans and Mexicans seeking to reclaim territory and ultimately the formation of a new socialist utopia from the former states of the Deep South.

With this bold and radical counterfactual as the backdrop, Bisson uses a chorus of compelling narrations to imagine the more just America that could be—and the struggles it would take to realize it.

By Terry Bisson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Fire On The Mountain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Presenting an alternative version of African American history, this novel explores what might have happened if John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harper’s Ferry had been successful. Chronicling life in a thriving black nation founded by Brown in the former southeastern United States, this dramatic story opens 100 years later, just as Nova Africa is poised to celebrate its first landing of a spacecraft on Mars. The prosperous black state will soon be tested when the granddaughter of John Brown returns from Africa to reunite with her daughter and share with her a secret that will alter their lives forever.


Book cover of Mrs. Wiggins

Suzette Harrison Author Of My Name Is Ona Judge

From my list on portraying African-American historical heroines.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have a youthful spirit, but an old soul. Perhaps, that’s why I love African American history and gravitated to Black Studies as my undergraduate degree. My reverence for my ancestors sends me time and again to African-American historical fiction in an effort to connect with our past. Growing up, I was that kid who liked being around my elders and eavesdropping on grown-ups' conversations. Now, I listen to my ancestors as they guide my creativity. I’m an award-winning hybrid author writing contemporary and historical novels, and I value each. Still, it’s those historical characters and tales that snatch me by the hand and passionately urge me to do their bidding. 

Suzette's book list on portraying African-American historical heroines

Suzette Harrison Why did Suzette love this book?

Clearly, I’m a fan of small, southern town tales depicting amazing African American females who make magic out of the injustices stacked against them. Well, meet Maggie Wiggins. She and her best friend, Hubert, turn life tragedies and situations into a “perfectly suited” marriage of deception. Outwardly, they live an enviable existence; but only they know the cost of their happiness. I love Mary Monroe’s ability to infuse humor into the most chilling situations, as well as her small town cosmoses and complicated, “countrified” characters. They frustrate me to no end, yet I find myself rooting for them, just as I rooted for Maggie to win. She does in the end but at such a horrific cost that I’ll never look at a bowl of gumbo the same way again. 

By Mary Monroe,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Mrs. Wiggins as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of the classic, captivating, and scandalous Mama Ruby series, comes a church-going matriarch’s rags to riches Depression era story set in the Deep South. The respectable family she has built means everything to her, and she’ll do anything to keep them.
 
The daughter of a prostitute mother and an alcoholic father, Maggie Franklin knew her only way out was to marry someone upstanding and church-going. Someone like Hubert Wiggins, the most eligible man in Lexington, Alabama—and the son of its most revered preacher. Proper and prosperous, Hubert is glad to finally…


Book cover of The Hidden Wound

Neta Jackson Author Of The Yada Yada Prayer Group

From my list on friendship across racial and cultural barriers.

Why am I passionate about this?

During college, I attended an inner-city black church during the years of the civil rights movement—and it changed the course of my life. My husband and I have lived in diverse neighborhoods and attended multicultural churches for most of our 56 years of marriage, realizing we have much to learn from our brothers and sisters of color. But the biggest influence that caused me to write the Yada Yada Prayer Group novels was/is the prayer group of sisters of color that I’ve been part of for over 25 years. As we spent time together every week for years (!), these sisters helped turn my life and my faith upside down—or maybe “right side up.”

Neta's book list on friendship across racial and cultural barriers

Neta Jackson Why did Neta love this book?

Two people who worked for Wendell Berry’s family when he was a child had a profound effect on his life—“Aunt Georgie” Ashby and Nick Watkins. With the simplicity of their lives birthing profound wisdom, Berry credits them for helping to expose the hidden wound of racism and putting his feet on a path to reject the deeply ingrained racism of his youth. The result is a deeply thoughtful book of reflections and wisdom on the cancer that infects our society and what we must do to lance and heal it—if we will. A “must read” on your bookshelf.

By Wendell Berry,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Hidden Wound as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An impassioned, thoughtful, and fearless essay on the effects of racism on the American identity by one of our country’s most humane literary voices.

Acclaimed as “one of the most humane, honest, liberating works of our time” (The Village Voice), The Hidden Wound is a book-length essay about racism and the damage it has done to the identity of our country. Through Berry’s personal experience, he explains how remaining passive in the face of the struggle of racism further corrodes America’s great potential. In a quiet and observant manner, Berry opens up about how his attempt to discuss racism is…


Book cover of Jubilee

Faye Snowden Author Of A Killing Rain

From my list on making you fall in love with reading.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a writer who loves to read. In fact when aspiring writers ask me for advice about getting started, I tell them to read widely, and more importantly, to fall in love with reading. So much about craft can be learned from deconstructing good books to see how they work. Each of the five books I’ve selected have influenced the way I tell my stories. They have taught me to examine past works for inspiration and compelling beginnings.

Faye's book list on making you fall in love with reading

Faye Snowden Why did Faye love this book?

Walker’s Jubilee extends the slave narrative, a popular weapon used by abolitionists to fight slavery. Instead of ending when the main character escapes their cruel master, Walker tells the story of a woman’s journey from emancipation to reconstruction and beyond.

I included this book not only because of a great beginning, but also because I wanted to give an example of how important story is to the success of a book, and in some cases more important than the language.

Besides, how can you not read on after a first chapter with the title, “Death is a mystery that only the squinch owl knows”? 

By Margaret Walker,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Jubilee as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Jubilee tells the true story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress. Vyry bears witness to the South's antebellum opulence and to its brutality, its wartime ruin, and the promises of Reconstruction. Weaving her own family's oral history with thirty years of research, Margaret Walker's novel brings the everyday experiences of slaves to light. Jubilee churns with the hunger, the hymns, the struggles, and the very breath of American history.


Book cover of The Bloody Shirt: Terror After the Civil War

John Poniske Author Of Snakebit: Prelude to War

From my list on reflecting on our current cultural impasse.

Why am I passionate about this?

I was raised in Springfield, Illinois, what is considered Lincoln’s backyard. I grew up fascinated by history, and the Civil War in particular. The trouble was, its racial overtones always bothered me. Later in life, I became a high school history and journalism teacher and turned my interest in historical-based board gaming into a business I called Indulgent Wife Enterprises (because my wife is so incredibly supportive). To date, I have published 30 board games based mostly on American conflicts. When I retired, I began the ambitious project of writing a strongly researched account of the divisions leading up to the Civil War and through to the Reconstruction period that followed. 

John's book list on reflecting on our current cultural impasse

John Poniske Why did John love this book?

Ever since I was a little kid in Springfield, Illinois (Lincoln’s hometown), I found racism hard to understand. Where did it come from? Why is it so rooted in our society?

This book taught me about black dreams, freedom, and rights ravaged by widespread violence and intimidation. I was particularly impressed by General Lewis Merrill, assigned by Grant to prosecute KKK excesses in the northern counties of South Carolina; he was a man who, like me, could not believe the cruel outrages he was told… until he saw them for himself.

By Stephen Budiansky,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Bloody Shirt as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in the South, African Americans, and the Antebellum South?

The South 188 books
African Americans 799 books