PuLSE: Book Recommendations for Black History Month

For Black History Month, The PuLSE Institute, is recommending ten fascinating and classic titles from renowned authors, historians and notable leaders who have defined the long running Black experience. Some of these authors and thinkers may be among your favorites  and their work evokes both the struggle and achievements of African Americans in our evolving democratic experiment.

1. My Song: A Memoir Of Art, Race and Defiance: The book is about the groundbreaking life of the legendary civil rights hero, actor and global humanitarian and anti-apartheid activist Harry Belafonte, who was a close confidant of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

   

2. In The Matter Of Color: Race And The American Legal Process: The Colonia Period: The book is about the perspectives and thoughts of the legal giant and civil rights leader A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., former Chief Judge of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

   

3. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents: The book written by former New York Times correspondent and Pulitzer Prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson is about how racism in the United States is part of a larger caste system.

   

4. What Manner of Man: The book written by Lerone Bennett Jr., the prominent historian, author and former executive editor of Ebony Magazine is a biography of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the height of the Civil Rights Movement when he founded and led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

   

5. How to Succeed in Business Without Being White: The book written by Earl G. Graves, the founder and former publisher and CEO of Black Enterprise Magazine, is about the lessons and challenges in building a Black business empire.

   

6. Groundwork: Written by the eminent historian and professor Genna Rae McNeil, the book tells the remarkable story and life of the legal trailblazer Charles Hamilton Houston, who is largely credited for establishing the legal strategies that destroyed Jim Crow.

   

7. Fiery Conscience: A Treatise on Two Decades of the Impactful Journalism of Bankole Thompson: The book is about the impactful and penetrating work of Bankole Thompson, the nationally acclaimed journalist, standard-bearer for economic justice and founding dean of The PuLSE Institute, and how he courageously championed specific causes for disenfranchised and marginalized communities.

   

8. The Cross And The Lynching Tree: The book written by one of the 20^th century’s greatest Black theologians James H. Cone, provides a history of lynching in the United States and its impact on Black lives while discussing the hypocrisy of White Christianity in confronting racism.

   

9. A Baptist Preacher’s Buddhist Teacher: How My Interfaith Journey with Daisaku Ikeda Made Me a Better Christian: The book written by Rev. Dr. Lawrence Carter, the internationally respected scholar, historian and founding dean of the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel at Morehouse College, is about the essential role of interfaith dialogue, the primacy of education, and the value of a living faith to create a human revolution and realize at last Dr. King’s truest dream of a global world house.

   

10. Lift Every Voice: Turning A Civil Rights Setback Into A New Vision Of Social Justice: The book, part memoir and an insider’s account of what really happened behind the closed doors of the Oval Office, the Justice Department, and the U.S. Senate, when leading civil rights lawyer Lani Guinier’s nomination to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights by his former classmate President Bill Clinton fell apart, and the setback it created for civil rights in the nation.