Anthony Burns: the Defeat and Triumph of a Fugitive Slave, by
Virginia Hamilton. Knopf, 1997
A biography of the slave who escaped to Boston in 1854, was arrested at
the instigation of his owner, and whose trial caused a furor between abolitionists
and those determined to enforce the Fugitive Slave Acts.
Scholastic, 1999
Biography of the African princess saved from execution and taken to England where Queen Victoria oversaw her upbringing and where she lived for a time before marrying an African missionary. Reading Level: 6.2; Accelerated Reader: 7.1
Hyperion Books for Children, 1997
A biography of Bayard Rustin, a skillful organizer behind the scenes of the American civil rights movement whose ideas strongly influenced Martin Luther King, Jr. Reading Level: 6.2
Black hands, white sails : the story of African-American whalers,
by Pat McKissack
Scholastic Press, 1999
A history of African-American whalers between 1730 and 1880, describing
their contributions to the whaling industry and their role in the abolitionist
movement.
Reading Level: 6.0; Accelerated Reader: 8.0
Bound for America: The Forced Migration of Africans to the New World,
by James Haskins.
Lothrup Lee & Shepard Books, 1999
Discusses the European enslavement of Africans, including their capture,
branding, conditions on slave ships, shipboard mutinies, and arrival in
the Americas. Reading Level: 8.2; Accelerated Reader: 8.4
Scholastic Press, 2003
Uses slave narratives, letters, diaries, military orders, and other documents to chronicle the various stages leading to the emancipation of slaves in the United States.
Reading Level: 7.6; Accelerated Reader: 8.2
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2000
A scrapbook kept by a young black girl details her experiences and those of the older white woman, "Miss Bet," who had freed her and her family, sent her north from Richmond to get an education, and then worked to bring an end to slavery. Based on the life of Elizabeth Van Lew. Reading Level: 5.9; Accelerated Reader: 5.6
Dear Mrs. Parks: A Dialogue With Today's Youth, by Rosa Parks.
Lee & Low Books, 1996
Presents correspondence between Rosa Parks and various children in which
the "Mother of the Modern Day Civil Rights Movement" answers
questions and encourages young people to reach their highest potential.
Reading Level: 4.8; Accelerated Reader: 5.6
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, 2004
Presents an illustrated poem in which Ntozake Shange recalls her childhood growing up in the company W.E.B. Du Bois, Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Robeson, and other great African-American men who were instrumental in changing American culture and society.
Reading Level: 5.0
Front Street, 2004
A series of poems on the life of Fortune, an eighteenth-century African-American slave in New England whose skeleton came to be an exhibit at Connecticut's Mattatuck Museum; includes notes and archival photos.
Candlewick Press, 2004
Describes the experiences of African Americans in the South, from the Emancipation in 1863 to the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared school segregation illegal. Reading Level: 2.9; Accelerated Reader: 5.9
Dial Books for Young Readers, 2005
The 1960 civil rights sit-ins at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, are seen through the eyes of a young Southern black girl.
Reading Level: 4.3; Accelerated Reader: 3.5
Freedom River, by Doreen Rappaport
Jump at the Sun/Hyperion Books for Children, 2000
Describes an incident in the life of John Parker, an ex-slave who became
a successful businessman in Ripley, Ohio, and who repeatedly risked his
life to help other slaves escape to freedom. Reading Level 3.2; Accelerated
Reader: 3.3
Freedom Summer, by Debbie Wiles
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2001.
"An Anne Schwartz book." In 1964, Joe is pleased that a new
law will allow his best friend John Henry, who is African-American, to
share the town pool and other public places with him, but he is dismayed
to find that prejudice still exists. Reading Level: 2.7; Accel. Reader:
3.2
Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons: The Story of Phillis Wheatley,
by Ann Rinaldi. Harcourt Brace and Company, 1996
A fictionalized biography of the eighteenth-century African woman who,
as a child, was brought to New England to be a slave, and after publishing
her first poem when a teenager, gained renoun throughout the colonies
as an important African-American poet. Reading Level: 4.8; Accelerated
Reader: 4.0
In the time of the drums, by Kim L. Siegelson
Jump at the Sun, 1999
Mentu, an American-born slave boy, watches his beloved grandmother, Twi,
lead the insurrection at Teakettle Creek of Ibo people arriving from Africa
on a slave ship.
Reading Level: 4.2; Accelerated Reader: 4.6
Let it shine : stories of Black women freedom fighters,
Andrea Davis Pinkney
Harcourt, 2000
Presents profiles of ten African-American women whose efforts on behalf
of racial justice and freedom have influenced the course of history.
Reading Level: 4.8; Accelerated Reader: 7.2
Puffin Books, 2002, c.1993
When the school in Mayfield Crossing is closed, the students are sent to larger schools, where the black children encounter racial prejudice for the first time. Only baseball seems a possibility for drawing people together. Reading Level: 5.1; Accelerated Reader: 4.3
Minty: A Story of Young Harriet Tubman, by Alan Schroeder
Puffin Books, 2000
Young Harriet Tubman, whose childhood name was Minty, dreams of escaping
stavery on the Brodas plantation the late 1820's. Reading Level: 3.9;
Accelerated Reader: 3.6
Holt, 2005
"Drawing on her childhood memories of Mr. Williams telling stories, Barbour has put together a picture-book biography that combines her handsome paintings with Williams'direct, first-person narrative about growing up African American in Arcadia, Louisiana, in the 1930s and '40s." (Booklist) Accelerated Reader: 4.0
Houghton Mifflin, 2004
Presents a selection of archival photographs that document events surrounding the integration of U.S. schools following the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, and includes captions in which Toni Morrison imagines what the people in the pictures must have been thinking and feeling. Reading Level: 2.4; Accelerated Reader: 5.0
Holt, 2004
Celebrated African-American author Nikki Giovanni provides treatment to this pioneering time and biographical note on Rosa Parks, the woman whose brave stand served as the catalysit for a national Civil Rights movement. Beautifully illustrated, Caldecott Award winning volume aimed at 4-8 year olds.
of being young and Black in America, by Tonya Bolden.
Photographs, illustrations, and text describe the experiences of African-American children growing up in the United States from the first African-American baby born in the Jamestown colony through the children growing up in the middle of gang wars at the dawn of the 21st century. Reading Level: 6.3; Accelerated Reader: 7.7
Knopf, 2004; c.1985
"The stirring title story in the late Virginia Hamilton's 1985 collection of American black folktales is an unforgettable slave escape fantasy, retold here in terse, lyrical prose that stays true to the oral tradition Hamilton knew from her family and her scholarly research."(Booklist) Reading Level: 3.1; Accelerated Reader: 2.9
Clarion Books, 2002
Explores the history of the colony, later the independent nation of Liberia, which was established on the west coast of Africa in 1822 as a haven for free African Americans.
Reading Level: 7.3; Accelerated Reader: 8.9
Through My Eyes, by Ruby Bridges
Scholastic Press, 1999
Ruby Bridges recounts the story of her involvement, as a six-year-old,
in the integration of her school in New Orleans in 1960. Readomg :eve;"
6/2' Accerated Reader: 5.9
Alfred A. Knopf , Distributed by Random House, 2002
Samuel, an eleven-year-old Kentucky slave, and Harrison, the elderly slave who helped raise him, attempt to escape to Canada via the Underground Railroad.
Reading Level: 5.2; Accelerated Reader: 4.8
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2001
A young girl flees from the farm where she has been worked as a slave and uses the Underground Railroad to escape to freedom in the north.
Reading Level: 2.9; Accelerated Reader: 3
Clarion, 2004
Tells the life story of singer Marian Anderson, describing her famous 1939 Lincoln Memorial performance and explaining how she helped end segregation in the American arts after being refused the right to perform at Washington's Constitution Hall because of the color of her skin. Reading Level: 6.3; Accelerated Reader: 8.2
