Resources for Exploring Race, Racism, and Racial Identity: Books for Teens

The author chronicles the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice. The book explains how voter suppression works, from photo ID requirements to gerrymandering to poll closures. AVAILABLE: WSA Library and Port Townsend Library

History texts often teach that the United States has made a straight line of progress toward Black equality. The reality is more complex: milestones like the end of slavery, school integration, and equal voting rights have all been met with racist legal and political maneuverings meant to limit that progress. We Are Not Yet Equal examines five of these moments: the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction; the promise of new opportunities in the North during the Great Migration; the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision; the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965; and the election of President Obama. Includes photographs and archival imagery and extra context, backmatter, and resources specifically for teens. AVAILABLE: WSA Library, Kitsap Regional Library, and Port Townsend Library

An examination of American slavery through the true stories of five enslaved people who were considered the property of some of our best-known presidents.

A gripping, measured account of a day at the beach in summer 1919 that precipitated a full-blown race riot in Chicago, tracing the events and forces that made the explosion inevitable.

Presents an account of fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin, an African-American girl who refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before Rosa Parks, and covers her role in a crucial civil rights case.

Comedian and activist Akilah Hughes shares everything about her journey from a childhood in the south to the big screen while dispensing invaluable big-sister-style advice to a generation of future YouTubers.

Learn about identities, true histories, and anti-racism in twenty lessons. This book is written so young people will feel empowered to stand up to the adults in their lives. This book will give them the language and ability to understand racism and a drive to undo it.

Lynda Blackmon Lowery recounts her experiences as the youngest marcher on the 1965 voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis' lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis' personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans John Lewis' youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., the birth of the Nashville Student Movement, and their battle to tear down segregation through nonviolent lunch counter sit-ins, building to a stunning climax on the steps of City Hall. AVAILABLE: WSA Library, Kitsap Regional Library and Port Townsend Library

Reynolds’s adaptation of Kendi’s National Book Award-winning title teaches readers to think critically about racism and antiracism in the United States and the Western world. Arguing that there are three mindsets—segregationist, assimilationist, and antiracist—the authors evaluate the actions of figures such as Thomas Jefferson, W.E.B. DuBois, and Angela Davis as they eloquently challenge the common narrative.

Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules, and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. This book brings to life the stories of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, who lived through the Civil Rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War, and the movement for gender equality, and whose work forever changed the face of NASA and the country.

The author, a Rhodes scholar and combat veteran, analyzes factors that influenced him as well as another man of the same name and from the same neighborhood who was drawn into a life of drugs and crime and ended up serving life in prison, focusing on the influence of relatives, mentors, and social expectations that could have led either of them on different paths.

A satirical look at race awareness in America and how African-Americans and whites deal with inter-racial harmony in a post-racial America, discussing the experiences of an African-American male on a predominantly white college campus and more. Brief chapters offer advice and clarification ranging from "Please Stop Touching My Hair" to "We Don't Know Why Kanye West Did That." Interspersed within the chapters are "Black Myth Busters," quizzes, flowcharts, and charts to help readers decipher micro-aggressions or decide whether they may use the N-word. Simien asserts repeatedly that, despite wishes to the contrary, racism is still embedded in assumptions and institutions throughout the culture.

The young adult adaptation of the original #1 bestseller, acclaimed lawyer and social justice advocate Bryan Stevenson offers a glimpse into the lives of the wrongfully imprisoned and his efforts to fight for their freedom. Stevenson's story is one of working to protect basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society--the poor, the wrongly convicted, and those whose lives have been marked by discrimination and marginalization.