BOOKS
This page features a representative compilation of books written about black people in the region that have been published over the course of the past several years. For a more comprehensive list of books that cover the region, see our Black Midwest bibliography.
Black Toledo: A Documentary History of the African American Experience in Toledo, Ohio
Abdul Alkalimat & Rubin Patterson |
The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960s Chicago
Abdul Alkalimat, Rebecca Zorach, and Romi Crawford |
Butch Queens Up in Pumps: Gender, Performance, and Ballroom Culture in Detroit
Marlon M. Bailey |
Black Detroit: A People’s History of Self-Determination
Herb Boyd |
The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America's Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality
Anna-Lisa Cox |
Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship
Aimee Meredith Cox |
Gateway to Equality: Black Women and the Struggle for Economic Justice in St. Louis
Keona K. Ervin |
Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago's South Side
Eve L. Ewing |
Manufacturing Decline: How Racism and the Conservative Movement Crush the American Rust Belt
Jason Hackworth |
Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, and the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization
Judith Hamera |
American Allegory: Lindy Hop and the Racial Imagination
Black Hawk Hancock |
The End of Chiraq: A Literary Mixtape
Javon Johnson & Kevin Coval |
Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago
Brian McCammack |
Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil: The Life, Legacy, and Love of My Son Michael Brown
Lezley McSpadden |
Surrogate Suburbs: Black Upward Mobility and Neighborhood Change in Cleveland, 1900-1980
Todd M. Michney |
The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits
Tiya Miles |
The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation
Natalie Y. Moore |
Six Days in Cincinnati: A Graphic Account of the Riots that Shook the Nation a Decade Before Black Lives Matter
Dan Méndez Moore |
Ferguson is America: Roots of Rebellion
Jamala Rogers |
Idlewild: The Rise, Decline, and Rebirth of a Unique African American Resort Town
Ronald J. Stephens |
Where the River Burned: Carl Stokes and the Struggle to Save Cleveland
David Stradling and Richard Stradling |
Got to Be Something Here: The Rise of the Minneapolis Sound
Andrea Swensson |
GeNtry!fication or the Scene of the Crime
Chaun Webster |
Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life
Terrion L. Williamson |