Juneteenth, declared a federal holiday in 2021, has long been celebrated by African American communities. Why June 19th? Juneteenth celebrates the day (June 19, 1865) that General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to announce the end of the Civil War and the end of slavery—almost three years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth reminds us that the road to freedom is long, messy and ongoing. Moments of rest, joy and celebration, such as Juneteenth, may be both opportunities to reflect on the freedoms achieved and to acknowledge that the work for freedom and justice continues.
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The Civil War has ended, and three strangers have each come to Chicago in search of a new life: Madge, who has the power to discern others’ suffering, Sadie, who can commune with the dead, and Hemp, who is searching for his missing family. All of them will be caught up in a desperate, unexpected battle for survival in a community desperate to lay the pain of the past to rest. This title is also available for checkout as an eBook on OverDrive/Libby and as an eBook and an eAudio on Hoopla.
After Emancipation, Josephine N. Leary moves to North Carolina to follow her ambition of acquiring and investing in real estate. While her marriage and family gladly take up her time and energy, she still yearns to create a legacy outside of them. This fictional account is based on true events and historical figures. This title is also available for checkout as an eBook on Overdrive/Libby and in eAudio on Overdrive/Libby.
An underwater society founded by pregnant African slave women thrown overboard from slave ships survives their traumatic history by putting their societal memory into one chosen person – the Historian. Yetu, the new Historian, can’t take the pain and flees her world, and in doing so changes it permanently. This title is also available for checkout as an eBook on OverDrive/Libby and an eAudio on Overdrive/Libby.
Renowned photographic historian Deborah Willis and historian of slavery Barbara Krauthamer share 150 photographs (from the 1850s through the 1930s), to illustrate the “seismic impact” of emancipation on African Americans born before and after the Proclamation. The photos serve as documents of engagement, action, struggle, and aspiration.
A unique one-volume “community” history of African Americans from 1619-2019. Ninety brilliant writers–each of whom takes on a five-year interval of that four-hundred-year span–explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics. This title is also available for checkout as an eBook and an eAudio on OverDrive/Libby.
“Tell me what happened while there’s still time,” demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate Negro preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss’s history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals? This title is also available for checkout as an eBook and an eAudio on OverDrive/Libby.
Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicles, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth. This title is also available for checkout as an eBook and an eAudio on OverDrive/Libby and as an eAudio on Hoopla.
Recently emancipated Bette Mayfield and her granddaughter, Eudora, carve out lives for themselves as fortune-teller and seamstress. Thus begins the Mayfield family saga, from Reconstruction to both World Wars, from the Harlem Renaissance to Vietnam and the modern day.
In the waning days of the Civil War, freed brothers Prentiss and Landry seek refuge with grieving homesteaders, the Walkers. Their relationship disgusts other white residents, leading to turmoil and chaos. This title is also available for checkout as an eBook and an eAudio on OverDrive/Libby.
Joyner’s interview, and the interviews of other formerly enslaved people, are candidly recounted in an oral history for the Federal Writers’ Project. Historian Carole Emberton compiles the deeply personal, emotional journeys of freedom’s “charter generation.”