The Black Midwest: A Bibliography

​​Compiled by the Black Midwest Initiative

For the purposes of this bibliography, the “Midwest” consists of the twelve states designated as part of the Midwest census region by the United States Census Bureau, as well as other heavy manufacturing centers that are typically considered part of the “Rust Belt.” The bibliography is not meant to be a compilation of black authors from the Midwest but, rather, identifies books that principally concern black people and are centrally set in the region. It is also a work-in-progress that will be updated periodically. Contact us at theblackmidwest@gmail.com if you have entries to submit.

NONFICTION

CHICAGO

• Absher, Amy. The Black Musician and the White City: Race and Music in Chicago, 1900-1967. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2014.
• Agyepong, Tera Eva. The Criminalization of Black Children: Race, Gender, and Delinquency in Chicago’s Juvenile Justice System, 1899-1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018.
• Alkalimat, Abdul, Romi Crawford, and Rebecca Zorach, eds. The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960s Chicago. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2017.
• Allen, Joe. People Wasn’t Made to Burn: A True Story of Housing, Race, and Murder in Chicago. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2011.
• Baldwin, Davarian L. Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the Great Migration, and Black Urban Life. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
• Balto, Simon. Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019.
• Bates, Beth Tompkins. Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
• Black Jr., Timuel D. Bridges of Memory: Chicago’s First Generation of Black Migration. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005.
• ---. Bridges of Memory: Chicago’s Second Generation of Black Migration. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008.
• Blair, Cynthia M. I’ve Got to Make My Livin’: Black Women’s Sex Work in Turn-of-the Century Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
• Bone, Robert and Richard A. Courage. The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932-1950. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011.
• Boyd, Michelle R. Jim Crow Nostalgia: Reconstructing Race in Bronzeville. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
• Cain, Mary Ann. South Side Venus: The Legacy of Margaret Burroughs. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018.
• Chaskin, Robert J. and Mark L. Joseph. Integrating the Inner City: The Promise and Perils of Mixed-Income Public Housing Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
• Chatelain, Marcia. South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.
• Cooley, Will. Moving Up, Moving Out: The Rise of the Black Middle Class in Chicago. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2018.
• Deppe, Martin L. Operation Breadbasket: An Untold Story of Civil Rights in Chicago, 1966- 1971. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017.
• Diamond, Andrew J. Chicago on the Make: Power and Inequality in a Modern City. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017.
• Dolinar, Brian, ed. The Negro in Illinois: The WPA Papers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013.
• Drake, St. Clair. Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945.
• Duneier, Mitchell. Slim’s Table: Race, Respectability, and Masculinity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
• Ewing, Eve L. Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018.
• Finley, Mary Lou, Bernard LaFayette Jr., James R. Ralph Jr., and Pam Smith. The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2016.
• Garb, Margaret. Freedom’s Ballot: African American Political Struggles in Chicago from Abolition to the Great Migration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.
• Green, Adam. Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940-1955. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
• Grimshaw, William J. Bitter Fruit: Black Politics and the Chicago Machine, 1931-1991. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
• Grossman, James R. Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.
• Hancock, Black Hawk. American Allegory: Lindy Hop and the Racial Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
• Hayner, Don. Binga: The Rise and Fall of Chicago’s First Black Banker. Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 2019.
• Helgeson, Jeffrey. Crucibles of Black Empowerment: Chicago’s Neighborhood Politics from the New Deal to Harold Washington. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.
• Hine, Darlene Clark and John McCluskey Jr., eds. The Black Chicago Renaissance. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012.
• Hirsch, Arnold R. Making the Second Ghetto: Race & Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.
• Hunt, D. Bradford. Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
• Kimble Jr., Lionel. A New Deal for Bronzeville: Housing, Employment & Civil Rights in Black Chicago, 1935-1955. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015.
• Kotlowitz, Alex. An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago. New York: Doubleday, 2019.
• ---. There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America. New York: Anchor Books, 1991.
• Knupfer, Anne Meis. The Chicago Black Renaissance and Women’s Activism. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.
• Levin, Josh. The Queen: The Forgotten Life Behind an American Myth. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2019.
• McCammack, Brian. Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.
• Michaeli, Ethan. The Defender: How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing, 2016.
• Moore, Natalie Y. The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2016.
• Mullen, Bill V. Popular Fronts: Chicago and African-American Cultural Politics, 1935-46. University of Illinois Press, 1999.
• Mumford, Kevin J. Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.
• Pattillo, Mary. Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
• ---. Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril Among the Black Middle Class. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
• Petty, Audrey, ed. High Rise Stories: Voices from Chicago Public Housing. San Francisco: McSweeney’s Books, 2013.
• Pruter, Robert. Chicago Soul. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1991.
• ---. Doowop: The Chicago Scene. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
• Ralph, James. Northern Protest: Martin Luther King, Jr., Chicago, and the Civil Rights Movement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
• Ralph, Laurence. Renegade Dreams: Living Through Injury in Gangland Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.
• Reed, Christopher Robert. “All the World Is Here!”: The Black Presence at White City. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000.
• ---. The Chicago NAACP and the Rise of Black Professional Leadership, 1910-1966. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
• Sandburg, Carl. The Chicago Race Riots: July, 1919. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, 1919.
• Scarborough, William, Iván Arenas, and Amanda E. Lewis. “Between the Great Migration and Growing Exodus: The Future of Black Chicago?” Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy. University of Illinois at Chicago, 2020. Available at irrpp.uic.edu.
• Seligman, Amanda I. Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005.
• Shabazz, Rashad. Spatializing Blackness: Architectures of Confinement and Black Masculinity in Chicago. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.
• Spear, Allan H. Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890-1920. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967.
• Travis, Dempsey. An Autobiography of Black Chicago. Chicago: Agate Bolden, 1981.
• Tuttle, Jr. Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919. New York: Atheneum, 1970.
• Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi. American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
• ---. Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
• Weems Jr., Robert E. and Jason P. Chambers. Eds. Building the Black Metropolis: African American Entrepreneurship in Chicago. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017.
• Williams, Jakobi. From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalitional Politics in Chicago. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013.
• Young, Jr. Alford A. The Minds of Marginalized Black Men: Making Sense of Mobility, Opportunity, and Future Life Chances. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.
• Zorach, Rebecca. Art for People’s Sake: Artists and Community in Black Chicago, 1965-1975. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019.

DETROIT

• Bailey, Marlon M. Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013.
• Bates, Beth Tompkins. The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.
• Bergmann, Luke. Getting Ghost: Two Young Lives and the Struggle for the Soul of an American City. New York: The New Press, 2008.
• Bjorn, Lars. Before Motown: A History of Jazz in Detroit, 1920-1960. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001.
• Boggs, James. The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1963.
• Boyd, Herb. Black Detroit: A People’s History of Self-Determination. New York: HarperCollins, 2017.
• Boyd, Melba Joyce. Wresting with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003.
• Boyle, Kevin. Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2004.
• Bridge Magazine and The Detroit Journalism Cooperative. The Intersection: What Detroit Has Gained, and Lost, 50 Years After the Uprisings of 1967. Traverse City, MI: Mission Point Press, 2017.
• Cox, Aimee Meredith. Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015.
• Darden, Joe T., Richard Child Hill, June Thomas, and Richard Thomas. Detroit: Race and Uneven Development. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.
• Early, Gerald. One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture. New York: Ecco Press, 1995.
• Fine, Sidney. Violence in the Model City: The Cavanagh Administration, Race Relations, and the Detroit Riot of 1967. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2007.
• Georgakas, George and Marvin Surkin. Detroit: I Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution. 3rd ed. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2012.
• Hamera, Judith. Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, and the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
• Hersey, John. The Algiers Motel Incident. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968.
• Kinney, Rebecca J. Beautiful Wasteland: The Rise of Detroit as America’s Postindustrial Frontier. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.
• Kurashige, Scott. The Fifty-Year Rebellion: How the U.S Political Crisis Began in Detroit. Oakland: University of California Press, 2017.
• Lewis-Colman, David M. Race Against Liberalism: Black Workers and the UAW in Detroit. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008.
• Locke, Herbert G. The Detroit Riot of 1967. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1969.
• Meier, August and Elliott Rudwick. Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW. Oxford University Press, 1979.
• Miles, Tiya. The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits. New York: The New Press, 2017.
• Moon, Elaine Latzman. Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes: An Oral History of Detroit’s African American Community, 1918-1967. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993.
• Rich, Wilbur C. Coleman Young and Detroit Politics: From Social Activist to Power Broker. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1989.
• Robinson, Julia Marie. Race, Religion, and the Pulpit: Rev. Robert L. Bradby and the Making of Urban Detroit. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015.
• Smith, Suzanne E. Dancing in the Street: Motown and the Cultural Politics of Detroit. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
• Stone, Joel, ed. Detroit 1967: Origins, Impacts, Legacies. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017.
• Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996.
• Thompson, Heather Ann. Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001.
• Thompson, Julius E. Dudley Randall, Broadside Press, and the Black Arts Movement in Detroit, 1960-1995. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005.
• Triece, Mary E. Urban Renewal and Resistance: Race, Space, and the City in the Late Twentieth to Early Twenty-First Century. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016.
• Williams, Jeremy. Detroit: The Black Bottom Community. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009.
• Wolcott, Victoria W. Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

ILLINOIS

• Barr, Mary. Friends Disappear: The Battle for Racial Equality in Evanston. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.
• Cha-Jua, Sundiata Keita. America’s First Black Town: Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830-1915. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
• Fleisher Mark S. Living Black: Social Life in an African American Neighborhood. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015.
• Hamer, Jennifer. Abandoned in the Heartland: Work, Family, and Living in East St. Louis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.
• Hendricks, Wanda A. Gender, Race, and Politics in the Midwest: Black Club Women in Illinois. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.
• Lumpkins, Charles L. American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Race Riot and Black Politics. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008.
• Turner, Glennette Tilly. The Underground Railroad in Illinois. Newman Educational Publishing, 2001.
• Williamson, Joy Ann. Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 1965-75. Champaign: University of Illinois, 2003.
• Williamson, Terrion L. Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life. New York: Fordham University Press, 2017.

Indiana

• Barnes, Sandra L. The Cost of Being Poor: A Comparative Study of Life in Poor Urban Neighborhoods in Gary, Indiana. Albany: State University of New York Press, Albany, 2005.
• Bigham, Darrel E. We Only Ask a Fair Trial: A History of the Black Community in Evansville, Indiana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987.
• Brewer-Trotter, Eunice. Black in Indiana. 2020.
• Carr, Cynthia. Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006.
• Debono, Paul. The Indianapolis ABCs: History of a Premier Team in the Negro Leagues. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2007.
• Lassiter, Luke Eric, Hurley Goodall, Elizabeth Campbell, and Michelle Natasya Johnson. The Other Side of Middletown: Exploring Muncie’s African American Community. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004.
• Madison, James H. A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001.
• Pearsey, Patrick R. Guardians of the Avenue: African-American Officers with the Indianapolis Police Department. 2017.
• ---. Guardians of the Avenue 2: Biographies of African-American Legends of the Indianapolis Police Department. 2017.
• Pierce, Richard B. Polite Protest: The Political Economy of Race in Indianapolis, 1920-1970. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005.
• Poinsett, Alex. Black Power Gary Style: The Making of Richard Gordon Hatcher. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Company, 1970.
• Robinson, Gabrielle. Better Homes of South Bend: An American Story of Courage. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2015.
• Thornbrough, Emma Lou. Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2000.
• ---. The Negro in Indiana before 1900: A Study of a Minority. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993.
• Vincent, Stephen A. Southern Seed, Northern Soil: African-American Farm Communities in the Midwest, 1765-1900. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
• Wallis, Don. All We Had Was Each Other: The Black Community of Madison, Indiana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.
• Williams, Gregory Howard. Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black. New York: Plume, 1996.

Iowa

• Barnes, Charlene J. and Floyd Bumpers. Iowa’s Black Legacy. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2000.
• Chase, Rachelle. Creating the Black Utopia of Buxton, Iowa. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2019.
• ---. Lost Buxton. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Press, 2017.
• Dykstra, Robert R. Bright Radical Star: Black Freedom and White Supremacy on the Hawkeye Frontier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993.
• Gradwohl, David M. and Nancy M. Osborn. Buxton: Work and Racial Equality in a Coal Mining Community. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1987.
• ---. Exploring Buried Buxton: Archaeology of an Abandoned Iowa Coal Mining Town with a Large Black Population. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1990.
• Gutsche, Jr., Robert E. A Transplanted Chicago: Race, Place and the Press in Iowa City. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014.
• Hill, Lena M. and Michael D. Hill. Invisible Hawkeyes: African Americans at the University of Iowa during the Long Civil Rights Era. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2016.
• Parker, Honesty. African Americans of Des Moines and Polk County. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2011.
• Schweider, Dorothy, Joseph Hraba, and Elmer Schweider. Buxton: A Black Utopia in the Heartland. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2003.
• Soike, Lowell J. Necessary Courage: Iowa’s Underground Railroad in the Struggle against Slavery. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2013.

Kansas

• Athearn, Robert G. In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879-80. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1978.
• Campney, Brent M. S. This Is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.
• Cunningham, Roger D. The Black Citizen-Soldiers of Kansas, 1864-1901. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008.
• Painter, Nell Irvin. Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.
• Spurgeon, Ian Michael. Soldiers in the Army of Freedom: The 1st Kansas Colored, the Civil War’s First African American Combat Unit. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014.
• Warren, Kim Cary. The Quest for Citizenship: African American and Native American Education in Kansas, 1880-1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010.

Michigan

• Clark, Anna. The Poisoned City: Flint’s Water and the American Urban Tragedy. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2018.
• Cox, Anna-Lisa. A Stronger Kinship: One Town’s Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006.
• Hammond, Rose Louise. Idlewild and Woodland Park, Michigan: An African American Remembers. Run With It, 1994.
• Highsmith, Andrew R. Demolition Means Progress: Flint, Michigan and the Fate of the American Metropolis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
• Stephens, Ronald J. Idlewild: The Black Eden of Michigan. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2001.
• ---. Idlewild: The Rise, Decline, and Rebirth of a Unique African American Resort Town. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013.
• Walker, Lewis and Ben C. Wilson. Black Eden: The Idlewild Community. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2002.

​Midwest/Rust Belt Region

• Blocker, Jack S. A Little More Freedom: African Americans Enter the Urban Midwest, 1860- 1930. Athens: Ohio State University Press, 2008.
• Cox, Anna-Lisa. The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America’s Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality. New York: Hachette, 2018.
• Glasrud, Bruce A. and Charles Braithwaite, eds. African Americans on the Great Plains: An Anthology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.
• Hagedorn, Ann. Beyond the River: The Untold Story of the Heroes of the Underground Railroad. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002.
• Lehman, Christopher P. Slavery in the Upper Mississippi Valley, 1787-1865: A History of Human Bondage in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2011.
• Schwalm, Leslie A. Emancipation’s Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
• Suggs, Henry Lewis. The Black Press in the Middle West, 1865-1985. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Minnesota

• Cavett, Kate. Voices of Rondo: Oral Histories of St. Paul’s Historic Black Community. Minneapolis: Syren Book Company, 2005.
• Fairbanks, Evelyn. The Days of Rondo: A Warm Reminiscence of St. Paul’s Thriving Black Community in the 1930s and 1940s. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1990.
• Fedo, Michael. The Lynchings in Duluth. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1979.
• Glanton, John. Double Exposure: Images of Black Minnesota in the 1940s. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2018.
• Green, William D. A Peculiar Imbalance: The Fall and Rise of Racial Equality in Minnesota, 1837-1869. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
• ---. Degrees of Freedom: The Origins of Civil Rights in Minnesota, 1865-1912. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
• Ibrahim, Hudda. From Somalia to Snow: How Central Minnesota Became Home to Somalis. Edina, MN: Beaver’s Pond Press, 2017.
• Lehman, Christopher P. Slavery’s Reach: Southern Slaveholders in the North Star State. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2019.
• Swensson, Andrea. Got to Be Something Here: The Rise of the Minneapolis Sound. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
• Taylor, David Vassar. African Americans in Minnesota. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002.
• White, Frank M. They Played for the Love of the Game: Untold Stories of Black Baseball in Minnesota. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2016.
• Yusef, Ahmed Ismail. Somalis in Minnesota. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012.

Missouri

• Anderson, Kristen Layne. Abolitionizing Missouri: German Immigrants and Racial Ideology in Nineteenth-Century America. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2016.
• Burke, Diane Mutti. On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Small Slaveholding Households, 1815- 1865. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010.
• Clamorgan, Cyprian. The Colored Aristocracy of St. Louis. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999.
• Coulter, Charles E. Take Up the Black Man's Burden: Kansas City's African American Communities, 1865-199. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006.
• Early, Gerald, ed. “Ain’t But a Place”: An Anthology of African American Writings about St. Louis. Missouri Historical Society Press, 1999.
• Ervin, Keona K. Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2017.
• Frazier, Harriet C. Lynchings in Missouri, 1803-1981. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009.
• Gordon, Colin. Citizen Brown: Race, Democracy, and Inequality in the St. Louis Suburbs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.
• Jack, Bryan M. The St. Louis African American Community and the Exodusters. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007.
• Johnson, Walter. The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States. New York: Basic Books, 2020.
• Jolly, Kenneth S. Black Liberation in the Midwest: The Struggle in St. Louis, Missouri, 1964- 1970. New York: Routledge, 2006.
• Ladner, Joyce. Tomorrow’s Tomorrow: The Black Woman. 1971.
• Lang, Clarence. Grassroots at the Gateway: Class Politics and Black Freedom Struggle in St. Louis, 1936-75. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.
• Lawrence, David Todd and Elaine J. Lawless. When They Blew the Levee: Race, Politics, and Community in Pinhook, Missouri. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2018.
• Norwood, Kimberly Jade, ed. Ferguson’s Fault Lines: The Race Quake that Rocked a Nation. Chicago: American Bar Association, 2016.
• Prince, Vida “Sister” Goldman. That’s the Way It Was: Stories of Struggle, Survival and Self-Respect in Twentieth-Century Black St. Louis. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2013.
• Rogers, Jamala. Ferguson is America: Roots of Rebellion. St. Louis: Mira Digital Publishing, 2015.
• Smith, Dale Edwyna. African American Lives in St. Louis, 1763-1865: Slavery, Freedom, and the West. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2017.
• Smith, Jeff. Ferguson in Black and White. Kindle, 2014.
• Wright Sr., John A. Kinloch: Missouri’s First All Black Town. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2000.
• ---. St. Louis: Disappearing Black Communities. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2004.
• ---. The Ville: St. Louis. Chicago: Arcadia Publishing, 2001.

Nebraska

• Forss, Amy Helene. Black Print with a White Carnation: Mildred Brown and the Omaha Star Newspaper, 1938-1989. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013.
• Holland, Matt. Ahead of Their Time: The Story of the Omaha Deporres Club. North Charleston, NC: CreateSpace, 2014.
• Marantz, Steve. The Rhythm Boys of Omaha Central: High School Basketball at the ’68 Racial Divide. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.

New York (Western)

• Kraus, Neil. Race, Neighborhoods, and Community Power: Buffalo Politics, 1934-1997. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000.
• Overacker, Ingrid. The African American Church Community in Rochester, New York, 1900-1940. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1998.
• Williams, Lillian Serece. Strangers in the Land of Paradise: The Creation of an African American Community, Buffalo, New York, 1900-1940. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

North Dakota

• Dunkel, Tom. Color Blind: The Forgotten Team That Broke Baseball’s Color Line. New York: Grove Press, 2013.
• Newgard, Thomas P., William C. Sherman, and John Guerrero. African Americans in North Dakota: Sources and Assessments. 1994.

Ohio

• Alkalimat, Abdul and Rubin Patterson, eds. Black Toledo: A Documentary History of the African American Experience in Toledo, Ohio. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2019.
• Bigham, Darrel E. On Jordan’s Banks: Emancipation and Its Aftermath in the Ohio River Valley. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006.
• Griffin, William W. African Americans and the Color Line in Ohio, 1915-1930. Athens: Ohio State University Press, 2017.
• Griffler, Keith P. Front Line of Freedom: African Americans and the Forging of the Underground Railroad in the Ohio Valley. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004.
• Kusmer, Kenneth L. A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978.
• Michney, Todd M. Surrogate Suburbs: Black Upward Mobility and Neighborhood Change in Cleveland, 1900-1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
• Middleton, Stephen. The Black Laws: Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005.
• Moore, Dan Méndez. Six Days in Cincinnati: A Graphic Account of the Riots That Shook the Nation a Decade Before Black Lives Matter. Portland, OR: Microcosm Publishing, 2017.
• Phillips, Kimberley L. AlabamaNorth: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915-45. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
• Stradling, David. Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015.
• Taylor, Nikki M. Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2016.
• ---. Frontiers of Freedom: Cincinnati’s Black Community, 1802-1868. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005.
• VanHorne-Lane, Janice. Safe Houses and the Underground Railroad in East Central Ohio. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2010.

Pennsylvania (Western)

• Brewer Jr., John M. African Americans in Pittsburgh. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006.
• Crouch, Stanley. One Shot Harris: The Photographs of Charles “Teenie” Harris. New York: Abrams, 2002.
• Dickerson, Dennis C. Out of the Crucible: Black Steel Workers in Western Pennsylvania, 1875- 1980. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986.
• Finley, Cheryl, Laurence Glasco, and Joe W. Trotter. Teenie Harris Photographer: Image, Memory, History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011.
• Frazier, LaToya Ruby. The Notion of Family. New York: Aperture, 2014.
  
• Lester, Larry and Sammy J. Miller. Black Baseball in Pittsburgh. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2001.
• Trotter Jr. Joe William. And Eric Ledell Smith, eds. African Americans in Pennsylvania: Shifting Historical Perspectives. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997.
• Whitaker, Mark. Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018.

​South Dakota

• VanEpps-Taylor, Betti. Forgotten Lives: African Americans in South Dakota. Pierre: South Dakota State Historical Society Press, 2008.

Wisconsin

• Baker, H. Robert. The Rescue of Joshua Glover: A Fugitive Slave, the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2006.
• Black, Ivory Abena. Bronzeville: A Milwaukee Lifestyle. The Publishers Group, 2006.
• Cooper, Zachary. Black Settlers in Rural Wisconsin. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1977.
• Dahlk, Bill. Against the Wind: African Americans and the Schools in Milwaukee, 1963-2002. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2010.
• Desmond, Matthew. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. New York: Crown, 2016.
• Dougherty, Jack. More Than One Struggle: The Evolution of Black School Reform in Milwaukee. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
• Geenen, Paul H. Civil Rights Activism in Milwaukee: South Side Struggles in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014.
• ---. Milwaukee’s Bronzeville, 1900-1950. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2006.
• Jackson, Ruby West and Walter T. McDonald. Finding Freedom: The Untold Story of Joshua Glover, Runaway Slave. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 2007.
• Jones, Patrick D. The Selma of the North: Civil Rights Insurgency in Milwaukee. Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
• McManus, Michael J. Political Abolitionism in Wisconsin, 1840-1861. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1998.
• Mouser, Bruce L. For Labor, Race, and Liberty: George Edwin Taylor, His Historic Run for the White House, and the Making of Independent Black Politics. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.
• Nelsen, James K. Educating Milwaukee: How One City’s History of Segregation and Struggle Shaped Its Schools. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2015.
• Simms, Muriel. Settlin': Stories of Madison's Early African American Families. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2018.
• Trotter Jr., Joe William. Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45. 2nd ed. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
• Witt, Andrew. The Black Panthers in the Midwest: The Community Programs and Services of the Black Panther Party in Milwaukee, 1966-1977. New York: Routledge, 2007.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR/ESSAYS

• Black Jr., Timuel D. Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019.
• Cameron, James. A Time of Terror: A Survivor’s Story. 1982.
• Carruthers, Charlene A. Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018.
• Carter Jr., Melvin. Diesel Heart: An Autobiography. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2019.
• Davis, Bridgett M. The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2019.
• Dunham, Katherine. A Touch of Innocence: A Memoir of Childhood. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959.
• Fisher, Antwone Quenton. Finding Fish: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
• Ford, Tanisha C. Dressed in Dreams: A Black Girl’s Love Letter to the Power of Fashion. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2019.
• Gartz, Linda. Redlined: A Memoir of Race, Change, and Fractured Community in 1960s Chicago. Berkeley, CA: She Writes Press, 2018.
• Gibson, Vivian. The Last Children of Mill Creek. Cleveland, OH: Belt Publishing, 2020.
• Gooch, U. L. ‘Rip’ with Glen Sharp. Black Horizons: One Aviator’s Experience in the Post- Tuskegee Era. Newton, KS: CreateSpace, 2015.
• Hartfield, Ronne. Another Way Home: The Tangled Roots of Race in One Chicago Family. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
• Jefferson, Margo. Negroland: A Memoir. New York: Vintage, 2015.
• Johnson, Arthur L. Race and Remembrance: A Memoir. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008.
• Love, Laura. You Ain’t Got No Easter Clothes: A Memoir. New York: Hyperion, 2004.
• Lyles, Charlise. Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? From the Projects to Prep School: A Memoir. Cleveland: Gray & Company, 1994.
• McSpadden, Lezley with Lyah Beth LeFlore. Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil: The Life, Legacy, and Love of My Son Michael Brown. New York: Regan Arts, 2016.
• Parks, Gordon. A Choice of Weapons. 1966.
• Pate, Alexs, with Pamela R. Fletcher and J. Otis Powell. Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2015.
• Smith, Otis Milton and Mary M. Stolberg. Looking Beyond Race: The Life of Otis Milton Smith. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2000.
• Thompson, Era Bell. American Daughter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1946.
• Walker, Jerald. Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption. New York: Bantam Books, 2010.
• Wideman, John Edgar. Brothers and Keepers. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984.
• Young, Coleman and Lonnie Wheeler. Hard Stuff: The Autobiography of Mayor Coleman Young. New York: Viking, 1994.
• Young, Damon. What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker. New York: HarperCollins, 2019.

FICTION/DRAMA/POETRY

• ​Brooks, Gwendolyn. Maud Martha. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953.
• Brown, Frank London. Trumbull Park. Washington, D.C.: Henry Regnery Company, 1959.
• Bulawayo, NoViolet. We Need New Names. New York: Reagan Books, 2013.
• Bump, Gabriel. Everywhere You Don't Belong. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2020.
• Clair, Maxine. Rattlebone. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994.
• Cleage, Pearl. I Wish I Had a Red Dress. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
• ---. What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day. New York: Avon Books, 1997.
• Davis, Bridgett M., Into the Go-Slow. New York: Feminist Press, 2014.
• Farah, Nuruddin. Crossbones. New York: Penguin Books, 2011.
• Flournoy, Angela. The Turner House: A Novel. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015.
• Forrest, Leon. Divine Days. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995.
• Goodman, Eric. Twelfth & Race: A Novel. Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 2012.
• Greenlee, Sam. The Spook Who Sat by the Door. 1969.
• Hannaham, James. Delicious Foods: A Novel. New York: Little Brown and Company, 2016.
• Hansberry, Lorraine. A Raisin in the Sun. New York: Random House, 1958.
• Hughes, Langston. Not Without Laughter. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1930.
• Johnson, Javon and Kevin Coval, eds. The End of Chiraq: A Literary Mixtape. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2018.
• Johnson, Leah. You Should See Me in a Crown. New York: Scholastic Books, 2020.
• Lauren, E’mon. Commando. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2017.
• Lowe, Janice A. Leaving CLE: Poems of Nomadic Dispersal. Oxford, OH: Miami University Press, 2016.
• Marshall, Nate. Wild Hundreds. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015.
• Messner, Susan. Grand River and Joy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.
• Morisseau, Dominique. Detroit ’67. London: Oberon Books, 2013.
• Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.
• ---. The Bluest Eye. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970.
• ---. Song of Solomon. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.
• ---. Sula. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973.
• Parks, Gordon. The Learning Tree. New York: Fawcett Books, 1963.
• Pitts, Jr. Leonard. Grant Park. Chicago: Agate Bolden, 2015.
• Shange, Ntozake. Betsey Brown. New York: Picador, 1985.
• Tyree, Omar. Sweet St. Louis. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999.
• Verdelle, A.J. The Good Negress: A Novel. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 1995.
• Webster, Chaun. GeNtry!fication or the Scene of the Crime. Blacksburg, VA: Noemi Press, 2018.
• Wideman, John Edgar. Damballah. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.
• ---. Hiding Place. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.
• ---. Sent for You Yesterday. New York: Avon Books, 1983.
• ---. Two Cities. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998.
• Wilson, August. Fences. New York: Plume, 1986.
• ---. Gem of the Ocean. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2003.
• ---. Jitney. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2008. Written in 1979.
• ---. Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. New York: Plume, 1988.
• ---. King Hedley II. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 1999.
• ---. Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. New York: Plume, 1981.
• ---. The Piano Lesson. New York: Plume, 1990.
• ---. Radio Golf. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2007.
• ---. Seven Guitars. New York: Plume, 1996.
• ---. Two Trains Running. New York: Plume, 1992.
• Wright, Richard. Native Son. New York: Harper & Brothers,1940.
• Zoboi, Ibi. American Street. New York: HarperCollins, 2017.