June 15, 2023

Celebrate June 19th with these books and other resources available through the Drexel Libraries. This list is meant to foster exploration and discussion about Juneteenth and to raise awareness of the ongoing efforts of civil rights activists in the United States.

We recognize there are thousands of amazing resources not on this list, and we encourage readers to share what they’re reading  by emailing library@drexel.edu or by tagging the Libraries on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.

What is Juneteenth?

Juneteenth is a federal holiday in the United States that celebrates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. Juneteenth’s commemoration is held on the anniversary of June 19, 1865, when Army Major General Gordon Granger proclaimed freedom for enslaved people in Texas, the last state of the Confederacy with institutional slavery, due to the ratification of the Emancipation Proclamation. Originating in Galveston, Texas, Juneteenth has been celebrated annually on June 19 in various parts of the United States since 1866 as a celebration of African American culture. It became a federal holiday on June 17, 2021, the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was adopted in 1983.

Today, Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a time for reflection and celebration, for assessment, self-improvement and envisaging a more just and equitable future. 

Juneteenth Reading List

A Black Women’s History of the United States
By Daina Berry and Kali Gross

This book is a compact, exceptionally diverse introduction to the history of Black women, from the first African woman who arrived in America to the women of today. 

Beloved: A Novel
By Toni Morrison

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. 

Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans and the End of Slavery
By Barbara Krauthamer and Deborah Willis

Using photos, this book illustrates what freedom looked like for Black Americans in the Civil War era. These portraits of Black families and workers in the American South challenge perceptions of slavery.

Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States
By James Oakes

Freedom National traces the history of emancipation and its impact on the Civil War, discussing how Lincoln and the Republicans fought primarily for freeing slaves throughout the war, not just as a secondary objective in an effort to restore the country.

Juneteenth: A Novel
By Ralph Ellison

Shot on the Senate floor by a young black man, a dying racist senator summons an elderly black Baptist minister from Oklahoma to his side for a remarkable dialogue that reveals the deeply buried secrets of their shared past and the tragedy that reunites them. 

Life and Times of Frederick Douglass
By Frederick Douglass (originally published in 1881)

Raised as a plantation slave, Douglass went on to become a writer, orator, and major participant in the struggle for African American freedom and equality. In this engrossing narrative he recounts early years of abuse, his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist campaigns, and his crusade for full civil rights for former slaves.

On Juneteenth
By Annette Gordon-Reed

Texas native Gordon-Reed weaves together her American and family history into a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, from its origins in Texas to Reconstruction, through Jim Crow and beyond.

A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom: Including their own Narratives of Emancipation
By David Blight

Slave narratives are extremely rare, with only 55 post-Civil War narratives surviving. A mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives join that exclusive group. Handed down through family and friends, they tell gripping stories of escape. Historian Blight prefaces the narratives with each man's life history. Using genealogical information, Blight has reconstructed their childhoods as sons of white slaveholders, their service as cooks and camp hands during the Civil War, and their climb to black working-class stability in the North, where they reunited their families. In the stories of Wallace Turnage and John Washington, we find portals that offer a rich new answer to the question of how four million people moved from slavery to freedom. 

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson

A chronicle of the decades-long migration of Black citizens who, during the twentieth century, fled the south for northern and western cities in search of a better life. 

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy
By Ta-Nehisi Coates

A collection of Coates’ essays originally printed in The Atlantic Magazine between 2008 – 2016 over the course of the Obama administration. Each essay is introduced with the author’s reflections.