SDCC Library: Black Studies / African American Studies: Books/E-books

Just Browsing?

Try these call numbers and headings if you'd like to browse what's on our shelves. Or use the online catalog (see information box to the right).

Books you can borrow (take home), known as the Circulating Collection, are located on the third floor.

DT 1 - 3415
History of Africa

E 184.5 - 185.98
History of Afro-Americans

HM 1 -291
Sociology

HN 1 - 981
Social problems. Social history. Social reform.

HQ 1 - 2039
The family. Marriage. Woman

HT 51 - 1595
Communities. Classes. Races

HV 1 - 9960
Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology

Key Terms to Try

Use the following suggested subjects to search for books related to Black and African American Studies in the library catalog:

African American abolitionists
African Americans--Civil Rights
African diaspora
American literature--African American authors
Black arts movement
Black theology
Blacks--race identity
Harlem Renaissance
Jazz--History and criticism
Pan Africanism
Race discrimination
Rap music--History and criticism
Rhythm and blues music
Underground railroad
United States--Civilization--African American influences

Books and EBooks in the Spotlight!

San Diego City College Library has over 60,000 books in its Circulating Collection, located on the third floor. We also have over 28,000 electronic books. Use the library catalog to find books in both our print and electronic collections. Click the links below to check on their availability.

By Any Means Necessary : Malcolm X--Real, Not Reinvented ; Critical Conversations on Manning Marable's Biography of Malcolm X by Herb Boyd (Editor); Ron Daniels (Editor); Maulana Karenga (Editor); Haki R. Madhubuti (Editor)
Call Number: Circulating Collection BP223.Z8 L5763633 2012
Compiled as a response to Manning Marable's controversial new biography of Malcolm X, more than 30 noted scholars from the African American community offer their opinions on Marable's portrayal of the man whose short life still inspires speculation of what might have been.
African Migrations : Patterns and Perspectives by Abdoulaye Kane (Editor); Todd H. Leedy (Editor)
Call Number: Circulating Collection DT16.5 .A345 2013
Spurred by major changes in the world economy and in local ecology, the contemporary migration of Africans, both within the continent and to various destinations in Europe and North America, has seriously affected thousands of lives and livelihoods. The contributors to this volume, reflecting a variety of disciplinary perspectives, examine the causes and consequences of this new migration. The essays cover topics such as rural-urban migration into African cities, transnational migration, and the experience of immigrants abroad, as well as the issues surrounding migrant identity and how Africans re-create community and strive to maintain ethnic, gender, national, and religious ties to their former homes.
Africans in Global Migration : searching for promised lands
Call Number: Circulating Collection DT16.5 .A36 2012
Four overarching themes underscore the essays in this book. These are the creation of African diaspora community and institutional structures; the structured and shared relationships among African immigrants, host, and homeland societies; the construction and negotiation of diaspora spaces, and domains (racial, ethnic, class consciousness, including identity politics; and finally African migrant economic integration, occupational, and labor force roles and statuses and impact on host societies.
Knowing Mandela : a personal portrait by John Carlin
Call Number: Circulating Collection DT1974 .C37 2013
Draws on conversations with Mandela and interviews with those closest to him to provide an account of the challenges the statesman faced and the triumphs he achieved during South Africa's post-apartheid years.
African Voices of the Global Past : 1500 to the Present by Trevor R. Getz (Editor)
Call Number: Circulating Collection DT26 .A47 2013
This book explores six major historical developments of global significance--the Atlantic slave trade, industrialization, colonialism, the World Wars, decolonization, and the development of modern feminism--from an African perspective. Voices emerge throughout the text in the form of primary sources that explore the personal accounts of individuals.
Taking Sides: Clashing Views in Race and Ethnicity by Raymond D'Angelo
Call Number: Circulating Collection E184 .A1 T338 2013
Presents current controversial issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills. Each issue is thoughtfully framed with Learning Outcomes, an Issue Summary, an Introduction, and an Exploring the Issue section featuring Critical Thinking and Reflection.
The Great Black Migration : a Historical Encyclopedia of the American Mosaic by Steven A. Reich
Call Number: Circulating Collection E185.6 .E54 2014
This one-volume condensed version of the Encyclopedia of the Great Black Migration provides essential information about key people, places, organizations, and events that defined the movement of Southern African Americans to the urban North and West. It covers the first major migration between the advent of World War I and the Great Depression and the second, smaller wave from 1940 to 1970.
Selma to Saigon : the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War by Daniel S. Lucks
Call Number: Circulating Collection E185.615 .L82 2014
This powerful narrative illuminates the effects of the Vietnam War on the lives of leaders such as Whitney Young Jr., Stokely Carmichael, Roy Wilkins, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther King Jr., as well as other activists who faced the threat of the military draft along with race-related discrimination and violence.
Post Black : how a new generation is redefining African American identity by Ytasha L. Womack
Call Number: Circulating Collection E185.625 .W595 2010
Publication Date: 2010
The author takes a fresh look at the dynamics shaping the lives of contemporary African Americans. Combining interviews, opinions of experts, and extensive research, this book will open the eyes of some, validate the lives of others, and provide a realistic picture of the expanding community.
Black Stats by Monique W. Morris
Call Number: Circulating Collection E185.86 .M637 2014
This compact and useful guide skips over the assumptions, suppositions, and hypotheses about trends and patterns in our society and offers up-to-date figures on black life in the United States today. Author and advocate Monique W. Morris has compiled statistics from a broad spectrum of telling categories that illustrate the quality of life and the possibility of (and barriers to) advancement for a group at the heart of American society. With fascinating information on everything from disease trends, incarceration rates, and lending practices to voting habits, green jobs, and educational achievement, the material in this book will enrich and inform a range of public debates while challenging commonly held yet often misguided perceptions.
African American Families Today by Earl Smith
Call Number: Circulating Collection E185.86.S637 2012
From teen pregnancy to athletics, myths about African American families abound. This provocative book debunks many common myths about black families in America, sharing stories and drawing on the latest research to show the realities.
Death of a King : the real story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s final year by Tavis Smiley; David Ritz (As told to)
Call Number: Circulating Collection E185.97 .K5 S56 2014
Presents a revealing chronicle of the twelve months leading up to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, discussing how he rose above denunciations by the press and assaults on his character to address racism, poverty, and militarism.
Paul Robeson : a life of activism and art. by Lindsey R. Swindall
Call Number: Circulating Collection E185.97.R63 S948 2013
This book is the biography of an African American icon and a demonstration of historian Lindsey R. Swindall's knack for thorough, detailed research and reflection. Paul Robeson was, at points in his life, an actor, singer, football player, political activist and writer, one of the most diversely talented members of the Harlem Renaissance. Swindall centers Robeson's story around the argument that while Robeson leaned toward Socialism, a Pan-African perspective is fundamental to understanding his life as an artist and political advocate. Many previous works on Robeson have focused primarily on his involvement with the US Communist Party, paying little attention to the broader African influences on his politics and art.
Life upon these shores : looking at African American history, 1513-2008 by Henry Louis Gates
Call Number: Circulating Collection E185 .G27 2011
The author, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gives us a sumptuously illustrated landmark book tracing African American history from the arrival of the conquistadors to the election of Barack Obama. This book focuses on defining events, debates, and controversies, as well as the signal achievements of people famous and obscure. Gates takes us from the sixteenth century through the ordeal of slavery, from the Civil War and Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era and the Great Migration; from the civil rights and black nationalist movements through the age of hip-hop to the Joshua generation.
The Scorpion's Sting : antislavery and the coming of the Civil War by James Oakes
Call Number: Circulating Collection E449 .O115 2014
Publication Date: 2014
Civil War historian and two-time Lincoln Prize winner James Oakes examines the strategies abolitionists employed to discourage and eventually destroy slavery. In the book, the institution is symbolized by a scorpion which, trapped on all sides, stings itself to death.
Gateway to Freedom by Eric Foner
Call Number: Circulating Collection E450 .F66 2015
Traces the workings of the Underground Railroad in slave-dependent New York by three heroes who coordinated with black dockworkers and counterparts in other states to help thousands of fugitive slaves between 1830 and 1860.
Black Americans and Organized Labor by Paul D. Moreno
Call Number: Circulating Collection HD6490.R22 U649 2006
In this book, the author offers a radical reassessment of union-black-state relations in the U.S. from the antebellum period to the present, integrating relevant biographical details of principal figures such as Frederick Douglass and Samuel Gompers. .
W. E. B. du Bois on Africa by Eugene F, Eugene F Provenzo, Jr (Editor); Edmund Abaka (Editor)
Call Number: Circulating Collection HT1581 .D85 2012
W.E.B Du Bois stands as the preeminent Africanist and Pan-Africanist of the twentieth century, but, also, arguably the most important Black intellectual of his time. Though often lauded for his work on African Americans specifically, he was also the champion of the African continent, its peoples, and its entire diaspora throughout his life. Despite this fact, his work on Africa has been underemphasized and under theorized in much of the scholarly writing about him, particularly in the United States. This book brings together Du Bois's writings on Africa from the beginning of the twentieth century to his death in Ghana in the early 1960s.
Thurgood Marshall by Charles L. Zelden
Call Number: Circulating Collection KF8745.M34 Z45 2013
Thurgood Marshall was an Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court from 1967 to 1991. He was the first African American to hold that position, and was one of the most influential legal actors of his time. Marshall won twenty-nine of thirty-two cases before the Supreme Court - most notably the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, which held segregated public schools unconstitutional. He left a legacy of change that still affects American society today. Through this concise biography, accompanied by primary sources that present Marshall in his own words, students will learn what Marshall did (and did not do) during his life, why those actions were important, and what effects his efforts had on the larger course of American history.
Racism in American Popular Media by Brian D. Behnken; Gregory D. Smithers
Call Number: Circulating Collection P94.5 .M552 U625 2015
This book examines how the media--including advertising, motion pictures, cartoons, and popular fiction--has used racist images and stereotypes as marketing tools that malign and debase African Americans, Latinos, American Indians, and Asian Americans in the United States.
Black Broadway : African Americans on the Great White Way by Stewart F. Lane; James Earl Jones (Foreword by); Kenny Leon (Foreword by)
Call Number: Circulating Collection PN2270 .A35 L36 2015
The African-American actors and actresses whose names have shone brightly on Broadway marquees earned their place in history not only through hard work, perseverance, and talent, but also because of the legacy left by those who came before them. Like the doors of many professions, those of the theater world were shut to minorities for decades. While the Civil War may have freed the slaves, it was not until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s that the playing field began to level. In this book, theater producer and historian Stewart F. Lane uses words and pictures to capture this tumultuous century and to highlight the rocky road that black actors have travelled to reach recognition on the Great White Way.
Presenting Oprah Winfrey, Her Films, and African American Literature by Tara T. Green (Editor)
Call Number: Circulating Collection PN2287 .W495 P84 2013
Pop culture icon and media mogul Oprah Winfrey has produced or starred in ten films and telefilms. In this collection, the contributors use film, music, masculinity, black feminist, and cultural studies to examine the role Winfrey has played as actress, and in some cases producer, of films that interpret works published by African American writers between 1937 and 1996. Their essays critically examine representations of African Americans and sexuality, blues, class, inter-racial and intra-racial prejudices, and their intersection with Winfrey's influence as interpreter and mediator of African American literature and culture to diverse audiences.
Selected Letters of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes; Arnold Rampersad (Editor); David Roessel (Editor); Christa Fratantoro (Editor)
Call Number: Circulating Collection PS3515.U274 Z48 2015
A comprehensive selection from the correspondence of the canonical African-American author reflects his private struggles, intellectual relationships, and extraordinary achievements in a segregated America.
The Education of Booker T Washington by Michael Rudolph West
Call Number: Online Internet
AVAILABLE also in San Diego City College Library
CIRCULATING COLLECTION E185.97.W4 W47 2006

The author offers a major reinterpretation of one of the most complex and controversial figures in American history. West reveals the personal and political dimensions of Washington's journey "up from slavery." He explains why Washington's ideas resonated so strongly in the post-Reconstruction era and considers their often negative influence in the continuing struggle for equality in the United States. West's work also establishes a groundwork for understanding the ideological origins of the civil rights movement and discusses Washington's views on the fate of race and nation in light of those of Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and others.
W. E. B. Du Bois : a biography by Gerald C. Horne
Call Number: Online Internet
Publication Date: 2009
This biography of W.E.B. Du Bois covers all of the highlights of his entire life, including his studying at Fisk, Harvard, and Berlin, his tiff with Booker T. Washington, his role with the NAACP and Pan-Africanism, his writings, his globe trotting, and his exile in Ghana.
Kwame Nkrumah's Contribution to Pan-African Agency by Daryl Zizwe Poe
Call Number: Online Internet (EBSCOHost)
This study analyzes contributions made by Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) to the development of Pan-African agency from the 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester to the military coup d'etat of Nkrumah's government in February 1966.
The Case Against Afrocentrism by Tunde Adeleke
Call Number: Online Internet (EBSCOhost)
Publication Date: 2009
Postcolonial discourses on African Diaspora history and relations have traditionally focused intensely on highlighting the common experiences and links between black Africans and African Americans. In the last fifteen years, countervailing critical scholarship has challenged essentialist interpretations of Diaspora history. The author deconstructs Afrocentric essentialism by illuminating and interrogating the problematic situation of Africa as the foundation of a racialized worldwide African Diaspora. He attempts to fill an intellectual gap by analyzing the contradictions in Afrocentric representations of the continent. These include multiple, conflicting, and ambivalent portraits of Africa; the use of the continent as a global, unifying identity for all blacks; the de-emphasizing and nullification of New World acculturation; and the ahistoristic construction of a monolithic African Diaspora worldwide.
The Cambridge Introduction to Harriet Beecher Stowe by Sarah Robbins
Call Number: Online Internet (EBSCOhost)
Publication Date: 2007
Through the publication of her bestseller Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe became one of the most internationally famous and important authors in nineteenth-century America. Today, her reputation is more complex, and Uncle Tom's Cabin has been debated and analyzed in many different ways. This book provides a summary of Stowe's life and her long career as a professional author, as well as an overview of her writings in several different genres. Synthesizing scholarship from a range of perspectives, the book positions Stowe's work within the larger framework of nineteenth-century culture and attitudes about race, slavery and the role of women in society. Sarah Robbins also offers reading suggestions for further study. This introduction provides students of Stowe with a richly informed and accessible introduction to this fascinating author.
Kwame Nkrumah's Politico-Cultural Thought and Politics by Kwame Botwe-Asamoah
Call Number: Online Internet (EBSCOhost)
This study critically synthesizes and analyses the relationship between Kwame Nkrumah's politico-cultural philosophy and policies as an African-centered paradigm for the post-independence African revolution. It also argues for the relevance of his theories and politics in today's Africa.
Harriet Beecher Stowe by Liz Sonneborn
Call Number: Online Internet (EBSCOhost)
Harriet Beecher Stowe grew up in a family where the boys were seen as assets and the girls as second-class citizens. The lack of power for women in the 1800s fueled her outrage against slavery, and she began to write religious periodicals to support her family. Uncle Tom s Cabin appeared in weekly installments from June 1851 to April 1852 in the antislavery magazine National Era . Eventually published as a novel and a play, Uncle Tom s Cabin argued against slavery, creating a stirring effect on the abolitionist cause and angering the South, where it was banned. Upon meeting Stowe, President Lincoln was quoted as saying, So you re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war! Stowe became a celebrity and went on to write 10 adult novels, including a second antislavery novel called Dred . During the Civil War, she aided runaway slaves, and after the war, she built and established several schools and boarding homes for newly freed slaves. Although Uncle Tom s Cabin cannot be denied its importance and influence, it also has been associated with the creation and popularization of negative stereotypes of blacks.