Reading List

Listed below are the sources used to create this website and recommended for additional information.

Books for Students

Non-Fiction

  • Aronson, Marc and Marina Budhos.Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom, and Science . New York: Clarion Books, 2017 (Grades 6-8)
  • Berry, Daina Ramey and Kali Nicole Gross.A Black Women’s History of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press, 2021 (Grades 8-12)
  • Cameron, Ann. The Kidnapped Prince: The Life of Olaudah Equiano. New York: Yearling Books, 2020 (Grades 6-8)
  • Conkling, Winifred.Passenger on the Pearl: The True Story of Emily Edmonson’s Flight from Slavery. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Young Readers, 2015 (Grades: 6-8)
  • Dunbar, Erica Armstrong and Kathleen Van Cleeve.Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge: George and Martha Washington’s Courageous Slave Who Dared to Run Away (Young Readers Edition). New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 2020 (Grades 4-8)
  • Smith, Mark M., editor.Stono: Documenting and Interpreting a Southern Slave Revolt. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005. (Grades 9-12)
  • Weatherford, Carole Boston and R. Gregory Christie.Freedom in Congo Square. New York: Little Bee Books, 2016 (Grades 4-6)
  • Woelfle, Gretchen and R. Gregory Christie.Answering the Cry for Freedom: Stories of African Americans and the American Revolution. Honesdale: Calkins Creek, 2016 (Grades 4-6)

Fiction

  • Anderson, Laurie Halse. Chains. New York: Atheneum, 2008 (Grades 6-8)
  • Mosley, Walter. 47. New York: Little Brown , 2008 (Grades 9-12)
  • Myers, Walter Dean. The Glory Field. New York: Scholastic, 2008 (Grades 6-8)

Other Graphic Novels

  • Hall, Rebecca and Hugo Martinez.Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts.. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022 (Grades 9-12)
  • Lester, David, Paul Buhle, and Marcus Redliker.Prophet Against Slavery: Benjamin Lay, a Graphic Novel.. Boston: Beacon Press, 2021 (Grades 9-12)
  • Rediker, Marcus and David Lester.Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates of the Atlantic, a Graphic Novel. (Grades 9-12)

Scholarly Readings

  • Clark-Pujara, Christy. Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island. New York: NYU Press, 2016
  • Farrow, Anne.Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged and Profited from Slavery. New York: Ballantine Books, 2005
  • Harris, Leslie M.In the Shadow of Slavery: African-Americans in New York City, 1626-1863. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2003
  • Harris, Leslie M. and Ira Berlin. Slavery in New York. New York: The New Press, 2005
  • Hodges, Graham Russell.Root & Branch: African-Americans in New York and East Jersey. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1999
  • Lepore, Jill.New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth Century Manhattan. New York: Vintage, 2006
  • Maskiell, Nicole Saffold. Bound by Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of a Northern Gentry. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2022
  • Melish, Joanne Pope. Disowning Slavery. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2000 
  • Mosterman, Andrea.Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2021
  • Mustakeem, Sowande.Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage. Champaign: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2016
  • Ross, Marc Howard.Slavery in the North: Forgetting History and Recovering Memory. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2018
  • Sinha, Manish. The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition. New Haven: Yale UP, 2017 
  • Smith, Clint.How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America. New York: Little Brown, 2021
  • Warren, Wendy. New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America.  New York: Liveright, 2017 
  • White, Shane. Somewhat More Independent. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1991