“We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society”. Angela Davis

February is Black History Month, so I turn to some of the formidable organisations and personalities who know these works of fiction and nonfiction best.

The daughter of a librarian, Janet Webster Jones began Source Booksellers in Detroit, Michigan, and is not only a proprietor of books and community services, she also creates a space for self-care discussions and virtual events that enrich your mind, body and spirit:

📚 Four Hundred Souls by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain

📚 The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X by Les Payne and Tamara Payne

📚 The Talk: Conversations About Race, Love & Truth by Wade and Virginia Hudson

📚 Our Time Is Now: Power, Purpose, and the Fight for a Fair America by Stacey Abrams

📚 Black Fortunes: The Story of the First Six African Americans Who Survived Slavery and Became Millionaires by Shomari Wills

The Innocence Project’s staff also share books that have inspired them to reflect on Black history. The powerful books they selected below touch on everything from how the legacy of slavery in the U.S. has contributed to mass incarceration to exploring what it means to be a young Black person in America today — plus some interesting reads by talented Black authors touching on other forms of injustice:

📚 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

📚 Another Country by James Baldwin

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

📚 Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools by Dr. Monique Morris

📚 Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King

Oprah’s picks of course makes the list:

📚 Kindred, by Octavia E. Butler

📚 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou

📚 The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

📚 Sister Outsider, by Audre Lorde

📚 Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

📚 The Color Purple, by Alice Walker

📚 Beloved, by Toni Morrison

📚 Becoming, by Michelle Obama

📚 Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates