Celebrating Black History Month: Essential Reads

February is Black History Month, a time to honor the legacy, achievements, and contributions of African Americans throughout history and to amplify Black voices shaping our present and future. Since our founding in 1922 UNC Press has made a commitment to publishing in the field of African American studies. In fact, we were the first scholarly publisher to develop an ongoing program of books by and about African Americans, beginning in the late 1920s. By 1950, we had published nearly 100 books, including famed historian John Hope Franklin’s first book, The Free Negro in North Carolina, 1790–1860, published in 1943.

African American studies remain cornerstones of our publishing program today. This month, we’re highlighting a selection of our best-selling African American studies titles that explore the rich tapestry of Black history. Join us as we celebrate Black History Month and delve into these important works that illuminate the past, challenge perspectives, and offer a deeper understanding of the Black experience and make sure to stay tuned on the blog for more guest posts and reading lists all month long.

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Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (Revised and Updated Third Edition) by Cedric J. Robinson, with a new preface by Damien Sojoyner and Tiffany Willoughby-Herard and a new foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley

“[Black Marxism] has become an unlikely handbook for a new generation of radicals and activists.”—London Review of Books

“A profound mediation on the importance of history.”—Black Perspectives

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

Justice, Power, and Politics Series

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

“A groundbreaking new book.”—The New Yorker

“Details bungling mismanagement, gross corruption, distorted incentives, civil rights regulations that went unheeded and unenforced—what Taylor calls a system of ‘predatory inclusion’ that was distinct yet not entirely free from the racist system of exclusion that preceded it.”—The New York Times

From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century (Second Edition) by William A. Darity Jr. , A. Kirsten Mullen

2021 Lillian Smith Book Award
2021 Association for the Study of African American Life and History Book Prize
2020 Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction, North Carolina Literary and Historical Association
2021 Best Book Awards in Social Change Category, American Book Fest
2023 Outstanding Book Award, Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility, American Sociological Association

“Darity and Mullen challenge the United States to bear the moral weight of the legacies of slavery and deeply entrenched racism: to reject trifling, half-hearted measures and to approach—and perhaps even achieve—wholeness through reparations.”—New York Review of Books

“Darity and Mullen provide a detailed analysis of the deep disparities in wealth, income, education, and other measures of well-being that have persisted since emancipation.”—The Nation

Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depressio (Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition) by Robin D. G. Kelley, with a new preface by the author

Elliott Rudwick Prize, Organization of American Historians
Outstanding Book Award, Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America
Francis Butler Simkins Award, Southern Historical Association

“A fascinating and indispensable contribution to the history of American radicalism and to black history.”—Nation

“Should serve as a model for historians seeking to recapture the untold story of other southern radicals during the 1930s.”—Journal of Southern History

Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement by Monica M. White, with a foreword by LaDonna Redmond, Founder of the Campaign for Food Justice Now

Justice, Power, and Politics Series

2019 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Book Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems, Division on Racial and Ethnic Minorities
2020 Association for the Study of Food and Society First Book Award

“Writing consciously with an eye on the uses of the past for understanding the present and influencing the future, White recovers the lost stories of black activists who worked to ensure access to adequate and nutritious food for low-income communities, promoted alternatives to capitalist economic exploitation, and demanded a voice in the decisions affecting their lives. Scholars of African American history, agricultural history, and urban history will find much value in this book.”—Journal of Southern History

“Freedom Farmers is an excellent model of using the past to inform the present.”—H-Environment

Capitalism and Slavery (Third Edition) by Eric Williams, with a foreword by William A. Darity Jr. and an introduction by Colin A. Palmer

“[This] new edition of Capitalism and Slavery, published by the University of North Carolina Press with a foreword by the economist William Darity, reminds us in particular of Williams’s independent political and intellectual spirit and how his scholarship upended the historiographical consensus on slavery and abolition.”—The Nation

“In 1944 Eric Williams published his classic Capitalism and Slavery which sparked a scholarly conversation that has yet to die down. In many ways, the debates it generated are more vibrant now than ever and promise to be a lasting touchstone for historians well into the future.”—Black Perspectives