King County Library System - African American Collection

Tools

This unique collection includes a variety of materials that will be of use to teens and students, as well as anyone who is interested in learning more about the achievements of African Americans. Nonfiction and biographies highlight accomplishments from colonial days to the present, Fiction titles tell stories of African American history or are authored by African Americans and DVDs feature the lives of prominent African Americans.

Research Collections for African American History and Culture:

Northwest African American Museum
New York Public Library, Schomburg Center
Unversity Of Washington Libraries
Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History and Culture
Freeman Institute Black History Collection
The African American Experience
A Digital Collection Celebrating the Founding of the Historically Black Colleges & Universities

African American Literature for Teens Booklist Find and place holds on selected titles.
	Coe Booth Tyrell Fifteen-year-old Tyrell scrambles to make money for his family, but is determined to do it legally so that he doesn't end up in jail like his drug-dealer father.

Christopher Paul Curtis

Bucking the Sarge Fifteen-year-old Luther dreams of winning the science fair, going to college and escaping “the Sarge” his domineering, slum-lord mother, who takes advantage of everyone, including Luther.

Dana Davidson

Played
To pass a clique initiation, popular, handsome Ian has three weeks to charm shy, plain Kylie into falling in love and having sex with him, but he realizes too late that Kylie may be just the girlfriend he needs.

	Sharon M. Draper Copper Sun Fifteen-year-old Amari is taken by slavers from her Ashanti village and sold to a plantation in the Carolinas where she meets an unlikely ally, white indentured servant Polly, and learns of Fort Mose, a Spanish colony that may hold the key to their freedom.
	Sharon Flake The Skin I'm In Maleeka, teased for her dark skin and homemade clothing, lets mean, popular Charlese boss her around to keep from being a total outcast until a new teacher challenges Maleeka to stand up for herself.
	Ernest J. Gaines A Lesson Before Dying In 1940s Louisiana, an African American school teacher is asked to counsel a black youth sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit.
	Nikki Grimes Dark Sons Ishmael, the biblical son of Abraham, and Sam, a modern Brooklyn teen whose father has just married a white woman, both deal with rejection and jealousy as their fathers’ new sons are born.
	Virginia Hamilton The House of Dies Drear When thirteen-year-old Thomas and his family move into the House of Dies Drear, once a stop on the Underground Railroad and rumored to be haunted, they find a mystery that may endanger their lives.
	Julian Houston New Boy Fifteen-year-old Rob, the only African American boy at a small New England private school, helps friends in Virginia fight segregation but the persecution of an Italian schoolmate shows him that prejudice comes in many forms.
	Angela Johnson First Part Last Bobby has some new rules in his life because, though just a teenager himself, he is now a single father whose life has been divided into "then" and "now".
	Julius Lester Day of Tears: a novel in dialogue In 1859 Savannah, Georgia Pierce Butler holds the largest slave auction in U.S. history to pay his gambling debts and impulsively sells Emma, the house slave who has raised his two young daughters and whom he promised never to sell.
	Janet McDonald Spellbound Sixteen-year-old Raven thought her college dreams were thing of the past after her baby was born, but a spelling bee contest with a scholarship prize may be the key to leaving the projects behind.
	Walter Dean Myers Fallen Angels Ritchie enlists in the army and quickly finds himself shipped off to war in Vietnam.
	Walter Dean Myers Monster Sixteen-year-old Steve tries to cope with his actions and his fate by writing a movie script of his life as he sits on trial, accused as an accomplice in a robbery and murder.
	Connie Porter Imani All Mine- Although surrounded by poverty, violence, and racism in her ghetto neighborhood, 14-year-old Tasha has faith in a better world for her baby daughter, Imani.
	Ann Rinaldi Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons: The Story of Phillis Wheatley Phillis Wheatly, brought to New England as a slave, finds fame as a poet but must still face the difficulties of being a black woman in the new world.
	Mildred D. Taylor The Land Paul-Edward Logan, the son of a white man and a black woman in the post-Civil War south, must leave his loving but prejudiced family behind and gain acceptance from the black community if he hopes to have the one thing he longs for: land of his own.
	Rita Williams-Garcia Like Sisters on the Homefront Fourteen-year-old Gayle gets pregnant for the second time and her mother decides to send her from New York City to the family home in Georgia where she meets her great-great-grandmother who gives her a new perspective on life.
	Diane Wilson Black Storm Comin After a gun accident, Cody's father abandons his family, leaving twelve-year-old bi-racial Cody to support them which he does by riding for the Pony Express, but to get the job he has to lie about his age and race.
	Jacqueline Woodson Miracle's Boys After his mother dies, twelve-year-old Lafayette worries that he will be separated from his older brothers, reliable Tyree, who gave up an MIT scholarship to raise them, and angry Charlie, recently returned from a correctional facility.
	Tonya Bolden Maritcha: A Remarkable Nineteenth Century American Girl This chronicles of the life of Maritcha Redmond Lyons, a free black girl born in lower Manhattan in 1848, including her experiences in the Civil War and her successful fight to attend the Providence, RI, white high school.
	Rebecca Carroll Sugar in the Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America Interviews with fifteen young African American women, ages 11 to 20 and from all walks of life, provide insight into their lives and futures as women of color.
	Sampson Davis, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt We Beat the Street: how a friendship pact helped us succeed Three young men make a pact to help each other leave their poor Newark, NJ neighborhoods and go on to medical school.
	Russell Freedman The Voice that Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the struggle for equal rights- Marian Anderson, a renowned opera singer, after being denied the right to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington DC, staged a concert at the Lincoln Memorial that helped inspire the Civil Rights Movement.
	Suzanne Tripp Jurmain The forbidden schoolhouse: the true and dramatic story of Prudence Crandall and her students In 1831, Prudence Crandall shocked her Connecticut town by allowing African American girls to attend her school.
	Nathan McCall Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America McCall relates his life from a violent and criminal adolescence in 1970s Virginia, to a 12-year prison sentence for armed robbery, to a journalistic career with the Washington Post.