Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010) argues that the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a racial caste system, disproportionately targeting Black and Brown communities through the War on Drugs and mass incarceration. Alexander contends that this system operates similarly to the Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The MisEducation of the Negro by Carter G Woodson belongs among the list of “must-reads” for every African American household. First published in 1933, the information in this book (sadly) is just as relevant today as it was then. At its heart this book is about the deplorable state of the educational system as it relates to African Americans, and is centered around the lack of authentic African/African American history in schools.
They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America was originally published in 1976 by Dr. Ivan Van Sertima, receiving much criticism and controversy from the scholars of the day. The book offers detailed documentation of the presence of Africans in ancient America that precedes the time of Christopher Columbus by thousands of years.
