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​This page features books written about black people in the region that were published in the past several years. This compilation is meant to be representative rather than exhaustive.

Javon Johnson & Kevin Coval

The End of Chiraq
(2018)
Abdul Alkalimat & Rubin Patterson
​
Black Toledo
​​(2019)
Janice Lowe
​
Leaving CLE
​​(2016)
Eve Ewing
​
Ghosts in the Schoolyard
​(2018)
Melvin Carter Jr.​

Diesel Heart
(2019)
Brian McCammack
​
Landscapes of Hope
​(2017)
John Glanton
​
Double Exposure
​(2018)
Anna-Lisa Cox
​
THE BONE AND SINEW OF THE LAND: America's Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality
​(2018)

​Here, we spotlight essays That detail the experiences of black people living in the region.

Black & Midwestern: On the Mississippi and Sites of Memory

Vanessa Taylor
"Within this imagined landscape of white blue-collar life, there’s the dismissal of Black people that shaped Midwestern cultures. Cities with rich Black culture and history, like Chicago and St. Louis, get pushed into their own class. But if there’s something unique and differentiating about white people from the Midwest versus white people from the Coasts, then why isn’t there recognition for the complexities of Blackness?"

The Reality of Being Black in Iowa

Wylliam Smith
"After my first year, I started to embrace my Blackness, and there was a massive backlash. Whenever I tried to speak out both in my classes and when I wrote for the DI, I was met with hate mail and bigotry."

Hip Hop in Peoria: A Photo Essay

Josh Birnbaum
"Nevertheless, hip hop is thriving in Peoria, albeit on a very underground and, well, middling level. And before you dismiss Peoria rappers as having little to rap about, consider that nearly half of the city’s black residents live below the poverty line and that Peoria’s violent crime rate is the fourth highest in Illinois."

Pittsburgh is a progressive city,
​but I’m still waiting for it to be pro-Black

Felicity Williams
"I started having conversations with my remaining friends and family in the city about how this multigenerational, deeply ingrained identity of Pittsburgh was ever going to change if no Black people stayed in the city. Two months later, I made the decision to move back to Pittsburgh with no job and to dedicate my career to changing that identity​ [...]"

​​​Living LGBT in the Midwest in the Time of Trump

Aaron Foley
"I don’t want to say we’re stagnant. But being set in your ways, I guess, doesn’t always make for fruitful conversation. Especially here in Detroit. Each time I go out as a black male, I always have to prepare myself for the following​ [...]"

Notes on Summer (Or, Black Girlhood Is a Thing)

Britt Julious
"Black girlhood is summer. It arrives quick and dies just as fast. Suddenly we are young women, even if we don’t feel it, even if we know intrinsically there is life left to live​ [...]"

SLAVERY, FREEDOM AND AFRICAN AMERICAN VOICES IN THE MIDWEST

Melissa Stuckey
"What, I wondered, about the timeless and award-winning work of Toni Morrison? Morrison, like other African American literary luminaries (Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison and Gwendolyn Brooks, to name just a few) was born in the Midwest, and like them she has devoted a significant portion of her career to examining African American lives in the cities, small towns, hills, valleys and rivers of the region. We miss out on much that is important about the Midwest when we fail to consider the complex narratives of African Americans here."

The Ghosts of 808 East Lewis Street

Tanisha C. Ford
"This crime was Fort Wayne’s first triple homicide in more than a decade. Adam was Christian, so the police quickly ruled out the possibility of an anti-Muslim hate crime. But immigration, Muslim rights, and Black Lives Matter activists demanded a full police investigation, and for a few days, #ourthreeboys trended on Twitter."

What it's like to be black in Naperville, America

Brian Crooks
"[...] people can be totally cool for years and years but suddenly decide that they need to be super racist because they want to hurt you. They'll say they're sorry, they'll explain how you misinterpreted what they said, but the fact is, they reach for racism because they think it'll emotionally and psychologically destroy you, and that's what they want to do at that moment."

Christina Long Is Opening Up the Mosh Pit for Black Women

Amirah Mercer
"Because in the metal community, especially out in the Midwest, the racism is a little different. People are not afraid to be vocal when they see something they don’t like. So we would walk into a show out there and a big bearded dude might say, “There’s a black person in here! I can’t believe it! What are you doing here?” [...]"

Smaller, and Smaller, and Smaller.

Marlon James
"Because we are the most northern of the north, especially in the many fucked up ways the state views and acts on issues of race, and not just in asserting that second amendment rights were only meant for white people [...]"

Coming Up ‘Down the Hill’ On Peoria’s South Side

Terrion L. Williamson
"But while Richard Pryor might seem an inordinate point of departure for me, a churchgirl-turned-college professor, it is in his brazen commentary and his obscene, autobiographical, profanity-laden stage routines that I have found something of a life I know — something that the conventions of academia can sometimes gesture toward but that, for me, have only been fully embodied in the place and the people I know of as home [...]"
Jim Crow of the North (2019)
​
Why does Minnesota suffer through some of the worst racial disparities in the nation? One answer is the spread of racist, restrictive real estate covenants in the early 20th century. Jim Crow of the North charts the progression of racist policies and practices from the advent of restrictive covenants after the turn of the last century to their final elimination in the late 1960s.
The Black Midwest Initiative is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts, the Department of African American & African Studies and the  Race, Indigeneity, Gender & Sexuality Studies Initiative at the University of Minnesota.
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