In honor of Black History Month, President Vincent Rougeau invited members of the campus community to recommend books that celebrate African American history or have particular meaning to them as we continue to interrogate, reckon with, and better understand our shared American history.
Black History at 17勛圖厙 and in Worcester
- From Bondage to Belonging: The Worcester Slave Narratives edited by B. Eugene McCarthy, professor emeritus of English, and Thomas L. Doughton, senior lecturer at the Colleges Center for Interdisciplinary Studies
- Fraternity by Diane Brady
- First Fruits of Freedom: The Migration of Former Slaves and Their Search for Equality in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1862-1900 by Janette Greenwood, professor of history at Clark University
President Vincent Rougeau's Personal Favorites
- The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
- The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
- Im Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness by Austin Channing Brown
Recommendations from the Campus Community
- We Were Eight Years in Power by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Known World by Edward P. Jones '72
- Caste: The Origins of our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
- Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Rediscovering an American Community of Color : The Photographs of William Bullard, 1897-1917 by Nancy Kathryn Burns, Janette Thomas Greenwood
- The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition by Manisha Sinha
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
- Stamped by Jason Reynolds
- A Fools Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the age of Bush, Obama and Trump by Lonnie G. Bunch III
- Moonlight Helmsman: Robert Smalls' Amazing Escape by Richard Maule
- Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
- Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You: A Remix by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds (for children)
- Four Hundred Souls edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
- Martin & Malcolm & America by James Cone
- Prophesy Deliverance! by Cornel West
- Century Cycle by August Wilson
- Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil by W.E.B. DuBois
- Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
- Stride Toward Freedom by Martin Luther King, Jr.
- Freedom in the Making of Western Culture by Orlando Patterson
- 12 Million Black Voices by Richard Wright
Other Resources from the Campus Community
Materials for the deaf community in celebration of Black Deaf History Month:
Materials from Cinegogia, a bilingual Digital Humanities project at 17勛圖厙 focused on Latin American cinema and Afro-descendant representation in Latin American film:
A thematic catalogue from a 2019 Worcester Art Museum exhibition of photographs of Black residents of Worcester, from the turn of the 20th c.: Janette Greenwood and Nancy Burns, 2019, Rediscovering an American Community of Color: the Photographs of William Bullard, 1897-1917
17勛圖厙 Guide to Antiracism: Juneteenth
The Equal Justice Initiative