99 books like The Juneteenth Story

By Alliah L. Agostini,

Here are 99 books that The Juneteenth Story fans have personally recommended if you like The Juneteenth Story. 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 Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II

Steven Rogers Author Of A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues: What You Can Do Right Now to Help the Black Community

From my list on reasons behind the enormous racial wealth gap.

Why am I passionate about this?

Steven Rogers is a retired professor from Harvard Business School (HBS) where he created a new course titled, “Black Business Leaders and Entrepreneurship.” He has written more HBS case studies with Black protagonists than anyone in the world. He is an HBS and Williams College alum. He majored in Black history. He has taught at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and West Point U.S. Military Academy. He has published 3 books including Entrepreneurial Finance (4 editions), Successful Black Entrepreneurs, and A Letter to my White Friends and Colleagues: What You Can Do Now to Help the Black Community.

Steven's book list on reasons behind the enormous racial wealth gap

Steven Rogers Why did Steven love this book?

The wealth gap between Blacks and Whites in the U.S. is enormous! Whites have 10 times the wealth as Blacks. The disparity is not because Whites are smarter or have worked harder. This book does a masterful job of clearly explaining one of the reasons behind the wide wealth gap. 

Most people are aware of the fact that 246 years of slavery was a successful government policy that intentionally enriched Whites while simultaneously impoverishing Blacks. But most people are not aware that a new system with the same dual objectives, followed the abolition of slavery in 1865. This book tells the story of Black Codes, Vagrancy Laws, and convict leasing that occurred for 60 years after the passage of the 13th Amendment, emancipating Black enslaved people. These government supported policies replaced slavery as the new program to subsidize White wealth creation at the expense of millions of Blacks. 

Douglas Blackman…

By Douglas A. Blackmon,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Slavery by Another Name as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This groundbreaking historical expose unearths the lost stories of enslaved persons and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude shortly thereafter in “The Age of Neoslavery.”

By turns moving, sobering, and shocking, this unprecedented Pulitzer Prize-winning account reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the companies that profited most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.

Following the Emancipation Proclamation, convicts—mostly black men—were “leased” through forced labor camps operated by state and federal governments. Using a…


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

Julie Kabat Author Of Love Letter from Pig: My Brother's Story of Freedom Summer

From my list on building compassion around issues of race.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a child, it was shocking to observe prejudice and bullying. I wanted with all my being to resist, to make things right. I trust that in this I am not alone. Juxtaposed, I remember instances of compassion and still feel grateful. My oldest brother Luke helped me think deeply about these kinds of events. In response, I dedicated myself to a career in music and arts in education. I felt blessed to bring students from different cultures together to build creativity, understanding, and community. I wanted to empower young people to voice their feelings and thoughts in the poetry, stories, and plays they wrote, set to music, and performed. 

Julie's book list on building compassion around issues of race

Julie Kabat Why did Julie love this book?

This book captured me from its first pages, a history that reads like a novel. “They fled as if under a spell or a high fever,” Isabel Wilkerson writes, explaining the exodus from the South by oppressed African Americans.

As a writer, she drew me in by focusing on three people she came to know, who comprise the main story, providing an intimate window into the epic event. And didn’t they meet resistance and white supremacy in the North, too? Sadly, of course. I knew little about the Great Migration before and yet had learned much about the Harlem Renaissance, the southern roots of jazz in Chicago, and more. Six million on the move! This book taught me not just about our country in the past but our present as well.

By Isabel Wilkerson,

Why should I read it?

18 authors picked The Warmth of Other Suns as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official…


Book cover of The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap

Steven Rogers Author Of A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues: What You Can Do Right Now to Help the Black Community

From my list on reasons behind the enormous racial wealth gap.

Why am I passionate about this?

Steven Rogers is a retired professor from Harvard Business School (HBS) where he created a new course titled, “Black Business Leaders and Entrepreneurship.” He has written more HBS case studies with Black protagonists than anyone in the world. He is an HBS and Williams College alum. He majored in Black history. He has taught at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and West Point U.S. Military Academy. He has published 3 books including Entrepreneurial Finance (4 editions), Successful Black Entrepreneurs, and A Letter to my White Friends and Colleagues: What You Can Do Now to Help the Black Community.

Steven's book list on reasons behind the enormous racial wealth gap

Steven Rogers Why did Steven love this book?

This is one of my all-time favorite books! It was given to me by my nephew Kareem, in 2018. I have read it cover to cover, twice. My handwritten notes are on over 50% of the pages. 

The research that Baradarian put into this book is unparalleled. The book is chockful of facts and data that I never knew about Black history. For example, her research uncovered the fact that the forty acres of land that were to go to the 4 million formerly enslaved Black people after the Civil War was to be sold, not given to Blacks at $1.25 per acre. 

This book is filled with an abundance of typically unknown data, as she admirably tells the history of Blacks in America, through the Black banking industry’s chronicles. 

In the spirit of full transparency, my love for this book preceded the 2019 interview that I did of Baradarian…

By Mehrsa Baradaran,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked The Color of Money as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Read this book. It explains so much about the moment...Beautiful, heartbreaking work."
-Ta-Nehisi Coates

"A deep accounting of how America got to a point where a median white family has 13 times more wealth than the median black family."
-The Atlantic

"Extraordinary...Baradaran focuses on a part of the American story that's often ignored: the way African Americans were locked out of the financial engines that create wealth in America."
-Ezra Klein

When the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, the black community owned less than 1 percent of the total wealth in America. More than 150 years later, that number…


Book cover of Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America

Steven Rogers Author Of A Letter to My White Friends and Colleagues: What You Can Do Right Now to Help the Black Community

From my list on reasons behind the enormous racial wealth gap.

Why am I passionate about this?

Steven Rogers is a retired professor from Harvard Business School (HBS) where he created a new course titled, “Black Business Leaders and Entrepreneurship.” He has written more HBS case studies with Black protagonists than anyone in the world. He is an HBS and Williams College alum. He majored in Black history. He has taught at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and West Point U.S. Military Academy. He has published 3 books including Entrepreneurial Finance (4 editions), Successful Black Entrepreneurs, and A Letter to my White Friends and Colleagues: What You Can Do Now to Help the Black Community.

Steven's book list on reasons behind the enormous racial wealth gap

Steven Rogers Why did Steven love this book?

After reading Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston, I wanted to learn more. This book, about the last Black person captured in Africa and enslaved in America, was astounding, but short. 

My thirst for more about the protagonist, Kossolo Lewis, led me to Dreams of Africa in Alabama. This book gives excellent riveting details about slavery, the crime against humanity. It also fascinatingly tells the detailed story, supported by research of facts and data about a crime against Federal U.S. laws, how Mr. Lewis was taken from Africa in the 1850’s, more than 4 decades after the U.S. prohibited the importation of people to be enslaved in 1808. 

By reading this book, I was exposed to real life stories about a White family, who broke laws, so they could enrich themselves off of the suffering of other humans. But even more importantly, the book chronicles Mr. Lewis’ life after slavery.…

By Sylviane A. Diouf,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dreams of Africa in Alabama as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the summer of 1860, more than fifty years after the United States legally abolished the international slave trade, 110 men, women, and children from Benin and Nigeria were brought ashore in Alabama under cover of night. They were the last recorded group of Africans deported to the United States as slaves. Timothy Meaher, an established Mobile businessman, sent the slave ship, the Clotilda , to Africa, on a bet that he could "bring a shipful of niggers
right into Mobile Bay under the officers' noses." He won the bet.

This book reconstructs the lives of the people in West…


Book cover of When Night Falls: Book One Of The Three Gifts

Kyoko M. Author Of The Black Parade

From my list on books to celebrate Juneteenth that aren’t about black pain.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am passionate about Juneteenth as a way to celebrate black and African voices, but without it always having to do with the Civil Rights movement or with slavery. Black and African voices deserve to be heard, but they also deserve to write about what they’re passionate about and what they love rather than being constantly pigeonholed into writing about the Civil Rights movement or slavery. I decided to pick books that celebrate black and African voices that still have conflict and an impact on the reader but don’t veer into the often overused black pain trope.

Kyoko's book list on books to celebrate Juneteenth that aren’t about black pain

Kyoko M. Why did Kyoko love this book?

An excellent fantasy tale with loads of great imagery and a very distinct narrative voice. It blends some of the best kinds of epic and high fantasy together. It also has very intricate and interesting lore to its story and characters that I couldn’t put down.

I loved seeing the creativity in how his world was formed and how it operates. Coleman is really able to paint a picture that’s beautiful and unique. 

By Gerald L. Coleman,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

New York Times Bestselling Author, Andrew Hartley calls it "Vast and thoroughly realized. Rich and sweeping: a true epic!"

Book Description:

We rarely consider the reputation of our age. An ordinary one, for most of us, would suffice. You might be an Empress too concerned with the affairs of State, a soldier focused on your duty, a former rascal trying to find redemption, or even a great warrior too busy with your command to know that there are whispers being spoken in late-night taverns. But what happens when your ordinary age stops being so ordinary? What happens when dark, twisted…


Book cover of Earthrise

Kyoko M. Author Of The Black Parade

From my list on books to celebrate Juneteenth that aren’t about black pain.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am passionate about Juneteenth as a way to celebrate black and African voices, but without it always having to do with the Civil Rights movement or with slavery. Black and African voices deserve to be heard, but they also deserve to write about what they’re passionate about and what they love rather than being constantly pigeonholed into writing about the Civil Rights movement or slavery. I decided to pick books that celebrate black and African voices that still have conflict and an impact on the reader but don’t veer into the often overused black pain trope.

Kyoko's book list on books to celebrate Juneteenth that aren’t about black pain

Kyoko M. Why did Kyoko love this book?

I liked this book because it’s off the beaten path. It’s amazing to me that the author at some point mentioned she’s never seen the Firefly series, yet this book really does evoke that kind of story in a good way. It has to do with a fun, colorful bunch of crooks on a rickety ship that take on a new member who turns out to land them in a world of trouble.

I really loved the voice of the main lead, given that she’s a tough lady, but she also has vulnerable sides too. The crew all have well-defined roles and personalities and the plot is enjoyable. It also has elements from harem and josei manga/anime, which is right up my alley. 

By M.C.A. Hogarth, Julie Dillon (illustrator),

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Reese Eddings has enough to do keeping her rattletrap merchant vessel, the TMS Earthrise, profitable enough to pay food for herself and her micro-crew. So when a mysterious benefactor from her past shows up demanding she rescue a man from slavers, her first reaction is to say “NO!” And then to remember that she sort of promised to repay the loan. But she doesn’t remember signing up to tangle with pirates and slavers over a space elf prince....

Book 1 of the Her Instruments trilogy is a space operatic adventure set in the Peltedverse, and kicks off your adventure into…


Book cover of Muscadine Wine

Kyoko M. Author Of The Black Parade

From my list on books to celebrate Juneteenth that aren’t about black pain.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am passionate about Juneteenth as a way to celebrate black and African voices, but without it always having to do with the Civil Rights movement or with slavery. Black and African voices deserve to be heard, but they also deserve to write about what they’re passionate about and what they love rather than being constantly pigeonholed into writing about the Civil Rights movement or slavery. I decided to pick books that celebrate black and African voices that still have conflict and an impact on the reader but don’t veer into the often overused black pain trope.

Kyoko's book list on books to celebrate Juneteenth that aren’t about black pain

Kyoko M. Why did Kyoko love this book?

Muscadine Wine is a love letter to the South and to romance. It’s a collection of stories that really show the charm and complications of living in the South. Someone once called it supernatural soul and I think that’s a great way to describe it.

I’ve lived in Georgia my whole life, so it was really nice to see landmarks and other things that I know even though this is set in decades past, as plenty of things endure through time. It also has some great folklore to it, which is one of Milton J. Davis’ specialties in his books.  

By Milton J. Davis,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Lightning bugs on a summer evening. A lazy river filled from a spring rain. The taste of honeysuckles. The aroma of wild grapes ripe on the vine. A collection of fantasy and contemporary fiction stories set in Southwest Georgia based on the experiences of author Milton J. Davis, Muscadine Wine is a personal homage to the land and Black people of South Georgia.


Book cover of Blackened Roots

Kyoko M. Author Of The Black Parade

From my list on books to celebrate Juneteenth that aren’t about black pain.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am passionate about Juneteenth as a way to celebrate black and African voices, but without it always having to do with the Civil Rights movement or with slavery. Black and African voices deserve to be heard, but they also deserve to write about what they’re passionate about and what they love rather than being constantly pigeonholed into writing about the Civil Rights movement or slavery. I decided to pick books that celebrate black and African voices that still have conflict and an impact on the reader but don’t veer into the often overused black pain trope.

Kyoko's book list on books to celebrate Juneteenth that aren’t about black pain

Kyoko M. Why did Kyoko love this book?

Blackened Roots is an excellent collection of bloody, messy, intrigue. Often, we don’t get to see zombies from the lens of people of color (ex. Michonne from The Walking Dead) so this collection is worth its weight in gold. It has so many different perspectives on the classic horror monster that I certainly think should be read as a thriller on Juneteenth.

The stories are all very well-written by indie and traditionally published authors alike, so it’s very diverse and I really enjoyed the voices of each author. One doesn’t have to be a horror fan to enjoy it (though I’m certain it helps!) as there is also plenty of humor, dark and otherwise, to have fun with too. 

By Brandon Massey, Nicole Givens Kurtz (editor), Tonia Ransom (editor)

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Mocha Memoirs Press and Nightlight Podcast are proud to present Blackened Roots: An Anthology of the Undead - a groundbreaking anthology celebrating nontraditional zombie stories from the African diaspora. The anthology is co-edited by Stoker-nominated and award-winning editor and writer Nicole Givens Kurtz and 2022 World Fantasy Award(R) Winner and 2022 Ignyte(R) Winner, producer, and editor Tonia Ransom at NIGHTLIGHT.


Blackened Roots is a unique collection and will be a must-have for zombie lovers. Blackened Roots takes the zombie mythos back to its roots. Drawing from a variety of cultural backgrounds, Blackened Roots imagines a world of horror and wonder…


Book cover of Better Angels

Kyoko M. Author Of The Black Parade

From my list on books to celebrate Juneteenth that aren’t about black pain.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am passionate about Juneteenth as a way to celebrate black and African voices, but without it always having to do with the Civil Rights movement or with slavery. Black and African voices deserve to be heard, but they also deserve to write about what they’re passionate about and what they love rather than being constantly pigeonholed into writing about the Civil Rights movement or slavery. I decided to pick books that celebrate black and African voices that still have conflict and an impact on the reader but don’t veer into the often overused black pain trope.

Kyoko's book list on books to celebrate Juneteenth that aren’t about black pain

Kyoko M. Why did Kyoko love this book?

This book is a fantastic story that’s a throwback to noir and espionage. I loved the vibrant voice and the distinct characters, as well as the storyline itself. It has one of my favorite voices in the narration, often witty, vulgar, and insightful. It’s definitely a book of mystery and intrigue with plenty of humor to make it enjoyable, too. 

By Geoffrey Thorne,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

THE PLAN: Scam the Russians out of some loot and drugs; skip town before they know they’ve been fleeced.THE PROBLEM: Your partner pulls a double cross. Your girlfriend is totally useless. The Russians comingfor their property, ahead of schedule. THE SNAG: This guy Max shows up with his Hard Guy attitude and quick fists. Better remember the first rule in GRAY HARBORMAKE SURE THE GUY HOLDING THE GUN IS YOU.


Book cover of On Juneteenth

Nina Silber Author Of This War Ain't Over: Fighting the Civil War in New Deal America

From my list on the ongoing legacy of the American Civil War.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having grown up visiting lots of historic sites – and hearing my father sing old Civil War tunes (frequently off-key!) on long car trips – I gravitated pretty quickly to studying the Civil War, and its aftermath, when I was in college and then in graduate school. I was particularly interested in the way Americans experienced the Civil War after it was over: the sentimental novels they read; the romantic movies they watched; the reconstructed battlefields they visited. In my work as a professor at Boston University, I try to get students to think about the stories that do, and do not, get told about the Civil War and other events from the past. I suppose the question that always piqued my interest was why people might find the often wildly inaccurate versions of the past so appealing.

Nina's book list on the ongoing legacy of the American Civil War

Nina Silber Why did Nina love this book?

In this brief and powerful book, esteemed historian Annette Gordon-Reed focuses on “Juneteenth”, the day (June 19, 1865) when enslaved workers in Texas were declared free by the Union Army following the conclusion of the Civil War. For Gordon-Reed, a black Texas woman, Juneteenth, recently declared a federal holiday, offers a starting point for pondering the legacy of slavery and emancipation for Afro-Texans and for thinking more broadly about the tension between history and myth. In the course of all this, Gordon-Reed tells her own personal story about navigating the often fraught terrain of her state’s legacy of racial exploitation.

By Annette Gordon-Reed,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Interweaving American history, dramatic family chronicle and searing episodes of memoir, On Juneteenth recounts the origins of the holiday that celebrates the emancipation of those who had been enslaved in the United States. A descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas in the 1850s, Annette Gordon-Reed, explores the legacies of the holiday.

From the earliest presence of black people in Texas-in the 1500s, well before enslaved Africans arrived in Jamestown-to the day in Galveston on 19 June 1865, when General Gordon Granger announced the end of slavery, Gordon-Reed's insightful and inspiring essays present the saga of a "frontier" peopled by…


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