February 2025 “Leisure Reads”
“February’s “Leisure Reads” celebrates Black History Month, focusing on the theme developed by the Association for the Study of African American Life & History (ASAALH): “African Americans and labor.” This includes “work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled and unskilled, vocational and voluntary” and how work and working “intersects with the collective experience of Black people” (ASAALH). The theme is also broad enough to encompass “community building of social justice activists, voluntary workers serving others, and institution building in churches, community groups, and social clubs and organizations,” in order to demonstrate how “the work Black people do and have done have been instrumental in shaping the lives, cultures, and histories of Black people and the societies in which they live” (ASAALH). Below you will find mostly nonfiction related to this year’s theme, but we have also included some fiction, as well as a selection of TED talk videos curated by the Mission & Belonging Department at MSJ!” -Joshua Zeller
Print Books (fiction & non-fiction)
Bayard Rustin: A Legacy of Protest and Politics by Michael G. Long
Call Number: Available from OhioLINK
“While we can all recall images of Martin Luther King, Jr. giving his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech in front of a massive crowd at Lincoln Memorial, few of us remember the man who organized this watershed nonviolent protest in eight short weeks: Bayard Rustin. This was far from Rustin’s first foray into the fight for civil rights. As a world-traveling pacifist, he brought Gandhi’s protest techniques to the forefront of US civil rights demonstrations, helped build the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, led the fight for economic justice, and played a deeply influential role in the life of Dr. King by helping to mold him into an international symbol of nonviolent resistance. Rustin’s legacy touches many areas of contemporary life—from civil resistance to violent uprisings, democracy to socialism, and criminal justice reform to war resistance. Despite these achievements, Rustin was often relegated to the background. He was silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era. With expansive, searching, and sometimes critical essays from a range of esteemed writers—including Rustin’s own partner, Walter Naegle—this volume draws a full picture of Bayard Rustin: a gay, pacifist, socialist political radical who changed the course of US history and set a precedent for future civil rights activism, from LGBTQ+ Pride to Black Lives Matter.” – Publisher’s Summary
“The labor of black workers has been crucial to economic development in the United States. Yet because of racism and segregation, their contribution remains largely unknown. Spanning the 1930s to the present, Black Workers Remember tells the hidden history of African American workers in their own words.... Eloquent and personal, these oral histories comprise a unique primary source and provide a new way of understanding the Black labor experience during the industrial era. Together, the stories demonstrate how Black workers resisted racial apartheid in American industry and underscore the active role of Black working people in history....” – Publisher’s Summary
Dinner at Aunt Connie's House by Faith Ringgold
“Dinner at Aunt Connie's House [children's fiction by fabric artist Faith Ringgold] is even more special than usual when Melody meets not only her new adopted cousin but twelve inspiring African-American women, who step out of their portraits and join the family for dinner.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Gift of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois
“Although the Civil War marked an end to slavery in the United States, it would take another fifty years to establish the country’s civil rights movement. Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois was among the first generation of African-American scholars to spearhead this movement towards equality. As cofounder of the NAACP, he sought to initiate equality through social change, and as a talented writer, he created books and essays that provide a revealing glimpse into the black experience of the times. In The Gift of Black Folk—one of Du Bois' most important works—he recounts the remarkable history of African Americans and their many unsung contributions to American society.... He also highlighted the unique contributions of black women, proposing the idea that their freedom could lead to freedom for all women.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
“Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells—taken without her knowledge—became one of the most important tools in medicine: the first ‘immortal’ human cells grown in culture, which are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer, viruses, and the atom bomb’s effects; helped lead to important advances like in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks remains virtually unknown, buried in an unmarked grave. Henrietta’s family did not learn of her “immortality” until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists investigating HeLa began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. And though the cells had launched a multimillion-dollar industry that sells human biological materials, her family never saw any of the profits. As Rebecca Skloot so brilliantly shows, the story of the Lacks family—past and present—is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Living Is Easy by Dorothy West
“The first novel by Dorothy West—author of The Wedding—was one of only a handful to be published by Black women during the 1940s. The Living is Easy tells the story of Cleo Judson, daughter of Southern sharecroppers, determined to integrate into Boston's Black elite. Married to the ‘Black Banana King’ Bart Judson, Cleo maneuvers her three sisters and their children—but not their husbands—into living with her, attempting to recreate her original family in a Bostonian mansion. Written in elegant and piercing prose, The Living Is Easy is a classic of American literature by a groundbreaking African American woman writer whose work deserves widespread and enduring recognition.” – Publisher’s Summary
Shadow and Act by Ralph Ellison
“With the same intellectual incisiveness and supple, stylish prose he brought to his classic novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison examines his antecedents and in so doing illuminates the literature, music, and culture of both Black and White America. His range is virtuosic, encompassing Mark Twain and Richard Wright, Mahalia Jackson and Charlie Parker, The Birth of a Nation and the Dante-esque landscape of Harlem—‘the scene and symbol of the Negro’s perpetual alienation in the land of his birth.’ Throughout, he gives us what amounts to an episodic autobiography that traces his formation as a writer as well as the genesis of Invisible Man. On every page, Ellison reveals his idiosyncratic and often contrarian brilliance, his insistence on refuting both black and white stereotypes of what an African American writer should say or be. The result is a book that continues to instruct, delight, and occasionally outrage readers.” – Publisher’s Summary
“A sobering account of a little-known crime against African Americans, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today. From the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II, under laws enacted specifically to intimidate Blacks, tens of thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily arrested, hit with outrageous fines, and charged for the costs of their own arrests. With no means to pay these ‘debts,’ prisoners were sold as forced laborers to coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries, and farm plantations. Thousands of other African Americans were simply seized and compelled into years of involuntary servitude. Armies of "free" black men labored without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced through beatings and physical torture to do the bidding of white masters for decades after the official abolition of American slavery.” – Publisher’s Summary
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
“In this beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson presents a definitive and dramatic account of one of the great untold stories of American history: the Great Migration of six million Black citizens who fled the South for the North and West in search of a better life, from World War I to 1970. Wilkerson tells this interwoven story through the lives of three unforgettable protagonists: Ida Mae Gladney, a sharecropper’s wife, who in 1937 fled Mississippi for Chicago; sharp and quick-tempered George Starling, who in 1945 fled Florida for Harlem, and Robert Foster, a surgeon who left Louisiana in 1953 in hopes of making it in California. Wilkerson brilliantly captures their first treacherous cross-country journeys by car and train and their new lives in colonies in the New World....” – Publisher’s Summary
A Woman’s Place by Marita Golden
“The compelling story of three Black women who meet at a New England college in the late sixties and form a friendship that will guide them through the changes, the joys, and the tears of the coming years. Faith, small-boned and delicate, the daughter of a strong-willed mother and a father she no longer remembers, longs for the one experience that will show her to herself. Serena, a passionate and outspoken radical, has an intense political commitment and pride in her African roots, which will lead her to find a life on a continent far away. And Crystal, a poet from girlhood, has a long love affair with words that will be put to the ultimate test when she must explain to her father her love for a man of another race.” – Publisher’s Summary
Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (print) by Martin Luther King, Jr.
“In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which has been unavailable for more than ten years, he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering, asserting that humankind—for the first time—has the resources and technology to eradicate poverty.” – Publisher’s Summary
Ebooks (nonfiction)
African American Workers and the Appalachian Coal Industry by Joe William Trotter
“This collection brings together nearly three decades of research on the African American experience, class, and race relations in the Appalachian coal industry. It shows how, with deep roots in the antebellum era of chattel slavery, West Virginia's Black working class gradually picked up steam during the emancipation years following the Civil War and dramatically expanded during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From there, African American Workers and the Appalachian Coal Industry highlights the decline of the region's Black industrial proletariat under the impact of rapid technological, social, and political changes following World War II. It underscores how all miners suffered unemployment and outmigration from the region as global transformations took their toll on the coal industry, but emphasizes the disproportionately painful impact of declining bituminous coal production on African American workers, their families, and their communities....” – Publisher’s Summary
"A. Philip Randolph, founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was one of the most effective Black trade unionists in America. Once known as ‘the most dangerous Black man in America,’ he was a radical journalist, a labor leader, and a pioneer of civil rights strategies. His protegé Bayard Rustin noted that, ‘With the exception of W.E.B. Du Bois, he was probably the greatest civil rights leader of the twentieth century until Martin Luther King.’ Scholarship has traditionally portrayed Randolph as an atheist and anti-religious, his connections to African American religion either ignored or misrepresented. Taylor places Randolph within the context of American religious history and uncovers his complex relationship to African American religion. She demonstrates that Randolph's religiosity covered a wide spectrum of liberal Protestant beliefs, from a religious humanism on the left, to orthodox theological positions on the right, never straying far from his African Methodist roots.” – Publisher’s Summary
This eight-volume series published in 1989 is a comprehensive scholarly study of the history of Black workers in the United States. Through detailed analysis and interpretation of centuries of documentary sources, editors Philip S. Foner and Ronald L. Lewis tell the story of Black labor in detail, from the Old South to the period following the AFL-CIO merger in 1955 (up to the year 1980). All eight volumes are available in ebook form from the Internet Archive’s open access collection and JSTOR’s Open Access collection. They are also cataloged within the MSJ Library’s collection. Volumes include: Vol. 1: The Black Worker to 1869 | Vol. 2: The Black Worker during the Era of the National Labor Union | Vol. 3: The Black Worker during the Era of the Knights of Labor | Vol. 4: The Black Worker during the Era of the American Federation of Labor & the Railroad Brotherhoods |Vol. 5: The Black Worker from 1900 to 1919 | Vol. 6: The Era of Post-War Prosperity and the Great Depression, 1920-1936 | Vol. 7: The Black Worker from the Founding of the CIO to the AFL-CIO Merger, 1936-1955 | Vol. 8: The Black Worker since the AFL-CIO Merger, 1955-1980
“This volume compiles writings by and about Mary Ann Shadd Cary, a nineteenth-century Black radical feminist, an abolitionist, suffragist, and one of the first Black woman newspaper editors in North America.... Racial uplift, women's rights, and emigration first emerged as central themes in Shadd Cary's intellectual thought during the 1850s as she grappled with slavery's effects on African Americans. She was frequently mired in controversy during this era, both for her ideas and for outspokenness as a woman. Shadd Cary's support for emigration dissipated in the 1860s. During and after Reconstruction, she advocated for citizenship and economic self-determination for Black people in general and Black women in particular. By the 1880s, Shadd Cary's writings and activism prioritized Black women's needs. Shadd Cary shaped Black radical theory and praxis throughout her lifetime. She is one of many nineteenth-century Black women theorists whose intellectual contributions are often overlooked....” – Publisher’s Summary
Working People: A History of African American Workers since Emancipation by Steven A. Reich
“...From the abolition of slavery through the Civil Rights Movement and Great Recession, African Americans have faced a unique set of obstacles and prejudices on their way to becoming a productive and indispensable portion of the American workforce. Repeatedly denied access to the opportunities all Americans are to be afforded under the Constitution, African Americans have combined decades of collective action and community mobilization with the trailblazing heroism of a select few to pave their own way to prosperity. This latest installment of the African American History Series challenges the notion that racial prejudices are buried in our nation’s history, and instead provides a narrative connecting the struggles of many generations of African American workers to those felt at the present day. Reich provides an unblinking account of what being an African American worker has meant since the 1860s, alluding to ways in which we can and must learn from our past, for the betterment of all workers, however marginalized they may be.” – Publisher’s Summary
TED Talk Videos
Payton M. Wilkins on "Unions for Climate Action!" (TED talk video)
“In the long term, shutting down a coal mine means cleaner air and a healthier environment—but in the short term, it can devastate a community or family that relied on the mine's paychecks to make ends meet. Environmental justice advocate Payton M. Wilkins thinks we can protect both workers and the planet with an age-old solution: unions. He digs into the economic fallout of ditching fossil fuels and shows why unions are well-positioned to push the transition to clean energy and green jobs.” – TED Countdown Summit, July 2023
Margaret Levi - "How Labor Unions Shape Society" (TED talk video)
“The weekend. Social Security. Health insurance. What do these things have in common? They all exist thanks to the advocacy of labor unions. Political economist Margaret Levi explains how these organizations forge equality and protect worker rights, calling for a 21st-century revival of the labor movement in order to build a more equitable future.” – TEDxSeattle, November 2021
"How Labor Unions Create Worker Power" (TED talk video)
“We don't know about you, but we are fans of weekends. And social security. And health insurance. And the end of child labor! And all of these workplace protections exist because of the advocacy of labor unions. In this episode, political scientist Margaret Levi shares the long history of organizing labor and explains how unions create equality and protect worker rights. She also discusses her optimism about today's young workforce and why she believes that an equitable future requires a revival of the labor movement. This is an episode of How to Be a Better Human, a podcast from the TED Audio Collective. You can listen to more How to Be a Better Human wherever you're listening to this.” – How to Be a Better Human, A TED Original Podcast, October 2022