Black history is American history

If you walk into the library this month, you'll see a display centered on our Black History Month 2025 theme: Black History Is American History. The books featured on our shelves are designed to highlight the vital role Black Americans have played in shaping our country.

This display isn’t just about history though—it’s about recognition, celebration, and connection. We’re showcasing stories of resistance, innovation, art, leadership, and everyday life to show how Black history is deeply interwoven into every chapter of the American experience. Students are encouraged to explore, reflect, and see themselves—and their classmates—in the stories that define us all.

Below is a list of selected books. Please encourage your student to check these stories out at the library this month!

• Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Boy: Racism, Injustice, and How You Can Be a Changemaker By Emmanuel Acho

• The Undefeated By Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson

• A Weed Is a Flower: The Life of George Washington Carver By Aliki

• Chains, Forge, and Ashes (The Seeds of America Trilogy)
  By Laurie Halse Anderson

• Whoosh!: Lonnie Johnson's Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions
  By Chris Barton and Don Tate

• Life Doesn’t Frighten Me By Maya Angelou and Jean-Michel Basquiat

• Through My Eyes By Ruby Bridges

• Above the Rim: How Elgin Baylor Changed Basketball
  By Jen Bryant and Frank Morrison

• Martin Luther King Jr. (10 Days) By David Colbert

• The ABCs of Black History By Rio Cortez and Lauren Semmer

• Lifting as We Climb: Black Women's Battle for the Ballot Box
  By Evette Dionne

• Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge By Erica Armstrong Dunbar

• Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass: The Story Behind an American Friendship By Russell Freedman

• The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights By Russell Freedman

• The Underground Abductor by Nathan Hale

• Dear Dr. King: Letters From Today's Children to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. By Ann McMillan Harms, Jan Colbert, Ann M. Harms

• Patricia's Vision: The Doctor Who Saved Sight (Volume 7 of People Who Shaped Our World) By Michelle Lord and Alleanna Harris

• March (Books One, Two, and Three) By John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

• Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary By Walter Dean Myers

• Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don't You Grow Weary By Elizabeth Partridge

• Freedom Summer: The 1964 Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi
  By Susan Goldman Rubin

• Harriet Tubman By Maria Isabel Sanchez Vegara

• Brown Girl Dreaming By Jacqueline Woodson