KNARRATIVE BOOK SHELF

Explore Our Virtual eBook Collection

Read and breakdown important works from The Canon with members of the Knarrative Community in a free-space designed to stimulate critical examination and open discussion. As the titles on the virtual bookshelf continue to expand, so will the discourse and engagement. 
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Black Reconstruction

An Essay Toward a History of the Part which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880
by W.E.B. Du Bois
The pioneering work in the study of the role of Black Americans during Reconstruction by the most influential Black intellectual of his time.

This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period after the Civil War, when the slaves had been freed and the attempt was made to reconstruct American society. Hailed at the time, Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880 has justly been called a classic.
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General History of Africa, Vol. I, Abridged Edition: Methodology and African Prehistory (Volume 1)

by  Joseph Ki-Zerbo  (Editor)
Volume I of this acclaimed series is now available in an abridged paperback edition. The result of years of work by scholars from all over the world, The UNESCO General History of Africa reflects how the different peoples of Africa view their civilizations and shows the historical relationships between the various parts of the continent. Historical connections with other continents demonstrate Africa's contribution to the development of human civilization. Each volume is lavishly illustrated and contains a comprehensive bibliography.
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David Walker's Appeal: 

To the Colored Citizens of the World, but In Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America
by  David Walker
David Walker's Appeal is a landmark work of American history and letters, the most radical piece of writing by an African American in the nineteenth century. Startling in its intensity, unrelenting in its attacks on slavery and white racism, it alarmed Southern slaveholders, inspired Northern abolitionists, and hastened the sectional conflicts that led to the Civil War. In this new edition of the Appeal, the distinguished historian Sean Wilentz draws on a generation of innovative research to throw fresh light on Walker's life and ideas--and their enduring importance.
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Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America

by  James Allen  (Author, Editor), John Lewis  (Foreword), Leon F. Litwack  (Contributor), Hilton Als  (Contributor)
The Tuskegee Institute records the lynching of 3,436 Black Americans between 1882 and 1950. Many times, a photographer was present to capture these events. Without Sanctuary preserves these harrowing, death-marked depictions, saving them so that we may recognize the terrorism unleashed on America’s African American community. Editor James Allen, an American antique collector, includes nearly 100 images of lynchings in America from his own collection, including battleground cases such as the 1911 murders of Laura and Lawrence Nelson in Okemah, Oklahoma the lynching of Rubin Stacy in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in 1935, and the infamous 1915 execution of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank in Marietta, Georgia. 
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Up From Slavery: An Autobiography by Booker T. Washington

with Special Commentary by Karen Hunter
Up From Slavery is an autobiography by Booker T. Washington that was first published in 1901. 

Booker T. Washington wrote Up from Slavery over the course of many years in post-Civil War America. It not only contains articles originally published in Outlook magazine, but autobiographical anecdotes written throughout Washington’s travels in the south.
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KNARRATIVE BOOKSHELF

The Groundings with My Brothers

by Walter Rodney
In this classic work published in the heady days of anti-colonial revolution, Groundings with My Brothers follows the global circulation of emancipatory ideas, from the black students of North America to the Rasta counterculture of Jamaica and beyond. The book is striking in its simultaneous ability to survey the wide and heterogeneous international context while remaining anchored in grassroots politics, as Rodney offers us first-hand accounts of mass movement organizing. Having inspired a generation of revolutionaries, this new edition will re-introduce the book to a new political landscape that it helped shape, with reflections from leading scholar-activists.
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The New Man: Twenty-nine Years a Slave, Twenty-nine Years a Free Man

by Henry Clay Bruce (1836-1902)

Henry Clay (H.C.) Bruce was born in 1836 on a tobacco plantation in Prince Edward County, Virginia, owned by Lemuel Bruce. Actual birthdates of enslaved people were rarely recorded. But his mother knew his birth year because it was the same year as a national event—the election of Martin Van Buren as President of the United States. Over the 29 years of his enslavement, Bruce and his family were sold to Missouri and their labor and bodies rented out before gaining freedom following the Civil War. A brother, Blanche K. Bruce (who was produced after the rape of their mother by the plantation owner), became the first Black United States Senator, representing Mississippi from 1875-1881. Before the Senate, Blanche K. Bruce, was the Register of the United States Treasury and got H.C. a job in the Post Office Department at a salary of $720 a year. He chronicles his life in and out of bondage in Twenty-Nine Years a Slave, Twenty-Nine Years a Free Man, which was published in 1895.
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The Negro Motorist Green Book: An International Travel Guide

The New York Public Library Digital Collection
The Negro Motorist Green Book was an annual guidebook for African American road trippers. It was originated and published by African American New York City mailman Victor Hugo Green from 1936 to 1966, during the era of Jim Crow laws, when open and often legally prescribed discrimination against African Americans especially and other non-whites was widespread.
-- Wiki
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KNARRATIVE SPECIAL EDITION

The Souls of
Black Folk

by W.E.B. Du Bois (1903)

The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches is a 1903 work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology and a cornerstone of African-American literature.The book contains several essays on race, some of which had been published earlier in The Atlantic Monthly. To develop this work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African American in American society. Outside of its notable relevance in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works in the field of sociology.  -- Wiki
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Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs

by James P. Allen

Middle Egyptian introduces the reader to the writing system of ancient Egypt and the language of hieroglyphic texts. It contains twenty-six lessons, exercises (with answers), a list of hieroglyphic signs, and a dictionary. It also includes a series of twenty-six essays on the most important aspects of ancient Egyptian history, society, religion, literature, and language.
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The Mis-Education of the Negro

by Carter G. Woodson (1933)

The Mis-Education of the Negro is a book originally published in 1933 by Dr. Carter G. Woodson. The thesis of Dr. Woodson's book is that Black people of his day were being culturally indoctrinated, rather than taught, in American schools. This conditioning, he claims, causes black people to become dependent and to seek out inferior places in the greater society of which they are a part. He challenges his readers to become autodidacts and to "do for themselves", regardless of what they were taught. -- Wiki
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Blood in My Eye

by George L. Jackson (1972)

Blood In My Eye was completed only days before its author was killed. George Jackson died on August 21, 1971, at the hands of San Quentin prison guards during an alleged escape attempt. At eighteen, George Jackson was convicted of stealing seventy dollars from a gas station and was sentenced from one year to life. He was to spent the rest of his life -- eleven years-- in the California prison system, seven in solitary confinement. In prison he read widely and transformed himself into an activist and political theoretician who defined himself as a revolutionary. -- Good Reads
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To Praise Our Bridges

by Fanny Lou Hamer (1967)

An autobiography of Mrs. Fanny Lou Hamer, Civil Rights activist from Mississippi, that was recorded on tape and edited by Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members Julius Lester and Mary Varela.

This book describes life as a sharecropper in the Deep South during the Jim Crow Era and includes black and white photographs. It is a contemporaneous account of Mrs. Hamer's Civil Rights activism. -- Good Reads
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Black World: "Africa Notebook: Views on Returning Home"

by Charlie Cobb (1972)

Africa Notebook: Views on Returning ‘Home’ by Charlie Cobb, Black World, May 1972, pp. 22-37… Featured reading from Episode 73 of In Class with Carr with Professor Karen Hunter and Dr. Greg Carr.
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