Missing Pages Of History: 31 Books To Read For Juneteenth

ACROSS AMERICA — On Saturday, the nation will celebrate its newest federal holiday: Juneteenth, the day that marks the end of slavery in the United States.

But Juneteenth, the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas finally found out they were free, is also an opportunity for Americans from all walks of life to better understand the historical significance and cultural relevance of the day — to learn how it became a celebration of the struggle, freedom and achievements of Black and African Americans.

Knowing Junenteenth’s history not only helps Americans better understand what’s happening in the present, it also helps them chart a course toward a better future, according to Lasana Kazembe, an assistant professor with the Indiana University- Purdue University Indiana’s School of Education and Africana Studies Program.

“It’s a remembrance of the past, a form of ancestor reverence and a form of education,” Kazembe said Thursday in a presentation to Patch staff. “Juneteenth helps keep the history of our people’s struggles alive … it’s a way for us to understand that we have inherited a legacy of struggle, that nothing is finished, and that all history is a current event.”

For more than three decades, Kazembe has worked as a critical Black scholar focusing on education, culture, race and arts pedagogy. He’s also a poet and a scholar of urban education, global Black arts movements and the Black intellectual tradition.

The same day President Joe Biden officially declared Juneteenth a federal holiday, Kazembe said the best way to defeat ignorance surrounding the day, as well as Black history and experiences, is to read books.

“If you don’t understand the past, everything you think you understand about the present will only confuse you,” Kazembe said Thursday during his presentation to Patch staff.

“If you do not understand what was, you cannot Interpret what is.”

This Juneteenth, here are 31 books to pick up, recommended by Kazembe.

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“On Juneteenth” by Annette Gordon Reed: This book provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African Americans and Black people have endured in the century since.

“The Broken Heart of America” by Walter Johnson: A searing portrait of the racial dynamics that lie at the heart of our nation, told through the turbulent history of the city of St. Louis.

“Black Reconstruction In America” by W.E.B. Du Bois: This book was the first full-length study of the role Black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when slavery ended and a country worked to reconstruct American society.

“There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom” by Vincent Harding: A former speech writer for Martin Luther King Jr., Harding writes of the African American struggle to achieve freedom from slavery.

“Reading this book is like sitting at the foot of your grandfather, listening to him tell your story,” Kazembe said.

“The Shaping of Black America” by Lerone Bennett Jr.: In this book, which began as essays in Ebony Magazine, Bennett explores the forces that transformed Africans into African Americans and how Black people became a nation within a nation.

“100 Years Of Lynchings” by Ralph Ginzburg: The author compiles vivid newspaper accounts from 1886 to 1960 to provide insight and understanding of the history of racial violence.

“Working Toward Whiteness” by David Roediger: The author recounts how ethnic groups considered white today — including Jewish Americans, Italian Americans and Polish Americans — were once viewed as undesirables and how they eventually became part of white America.

“An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States” by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: The author offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the U.S. empire.

“You cannot tell the story of the United States without telling the story of First Nations people,” Kazembe said.

Other titles to consider include:

• “The Crisis Of The Negro Intellectual” by Harold Cruse
• “Christopher Columbus & The African Holocaust” by John Henrik Clarke
• “From The Browder File” by Anthony T. Browder
• “Introduction To African Civilization” by John G. Jackson
• “Africans And Their History” by Joseph Harris
• “Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora” by Joseph Harris
• “Exchanging Our Country Marks” by Michael Gomez
• “The Falsification Of Afrikan Consciousness” by Amos N. Wilson
• “Criminalizing A Race: Free Blacks During Slavery” by Charshee McIntyre
• “The African Diaspora: A History Through Culture” by Patrick Manning
• “Tribes” by Joel Kotkin
• “America: The Farewell Tour” by Chris Hedges
• “American Negro Slave Revolts” by Herbert Aptheker
• “The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors” by Frances Cress Welsing
• “The Mis-Education Of The Negro” by Carter G. Woodson
• “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander
• “World's Great Men of Color” (2 volumes) by J.A. Rogers
• “Medical Apartheid” by Harriet Washington
• “The Hidden History Of American Oligarchy” by Thom Hartmann
• “Before The Mayflower” by Lerone Bennett Jr.
• “The Course of African Philosophy” by Marcus Garvey
• “The World And Africa” by W.E.B. Du Bois
• “Taking Bullets: Terrorism and Black Life In 21st Century America” by Haki Madhubuti