Black History Month Reading List Curated by Dawn Durante

To celebrate Black History Month we are sharing reading lists of relevant black history titles for you to enjoy all month long. This reading list is curated by Assistant Editorial Director, Dawn Durante, who acquire’s books on topics that span history and cultural studies, with commitments to African American history and Black studies, women’s history, and particularly Black women’s history, as well as general history since the 1900s. Dawn is the sponsoring editor of the following UNC Press series: Justice, Power, and Politics, Black Women’s History, and Boundless South.

The UNC Press catalog is filled with tremendous books, and these five titles have particularly impacted my own knowledge of Black history. These books and their contributions have also influenced my acquisitions commitments, even in the years before I joined UNC Press. More than deserving of each award and accolade these authors have received, they have written books that have proven to be foundational, with immeasurable influence on the field and the work of other scholars.

Dawn Durante

If you’re interested in purchasing any of these titles, you can get 30% off plus free shipping on orders over $75 with code 01UNCP30.

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Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era by Ashley D. Farmer

Honorable Mention, Darlene Clark Hine Award, Organization of American Historians

Finalist, 2018 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award

Honorable Mention, 2018 Letitia Woods Brown Prize, Association for Black Women Historians

“Outstanding and nuanced. . . . Farmer traces the relationships between black women’s intellectual, artistic, and activist work.”—Journal of Southern History

“An in-depth scholarly analysis of Black Nationalist movements, feminism, and art.”—Library Journal

No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity by Sarah Haley

Selected for the National Book Foundation’s 2020-2021 Literature for Justice Reading List

2017 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, American Historical Association

2017 Lora Romero First Book Publication Prize, American Studies Association

2016 Letitia Woods Brown Book Award, Association of Black Women Historians

2016 Sara A. Whaley Prize, National Women’s Studies Association

Willie Lee Rose Prize, Southern Association for Women Historians

Julia Cherry Spruill Prize, Southern Association for Women Historians

Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South by Talitha L. LeFlouria

2015 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize, Association of Black Women Historians

2016 Darlene Clark Hine Award, Organization of American Historians

2015 Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Book Prize

2016 Philip Taft Labor History Award, Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations / Labor and Working-Class History Association

2016 Malcolm Bell, Jr. and Muriel Barrow Bell Award, Georgia Historical Society

Ida B. Wells Tribute Award, Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History

Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Finalist, 2020 Pulitzer Prize in History

2019 National Book Award Finalist

2020 Ellis W. Hawley Prize, Organization of American Historians

2020 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award, Organization of American Historians

2020 James A. Rawley Prize, Organization of American Historians

2020 Pauli Murray Book Prize, African American Intellectual History Society

Finalist, 2019 Hooks National Book Award, Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change at the University of Memphis

Finalist, 2020 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award

A 2020 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s by Elizabeth Todd-Breland

2019 Pauli Murray Book Prize, African American Intellectual History Society

2019 Outstanding Book Award, American Educational Research Association

Co-winner of the 2018 Kenneth Jackson Award, Urban History Association

Honorable Mention, 2019 Liberty Legacy Foundation Award, Organization of American Historians

Honorable Mention, New Scholar’s Book Award, Division F, American Educational Research Association

Shortlisted, 2019 Museum of African American History Stone Book Award