UCI Libraries continue to grow our collections on Black history and related topics that help document and honor the works of Black Americans. To celebrate Black History Month, this guide gathers a partial list of available online resources, archival materials, and media (both fiction and nonfiction) as well as recent book additions to the Libraries. Although some online materials are only accessible to faculty, staff, and students with a valid UCInetID, many of the resources are open to the public and all are available throughout the year as part of UCI Libraries’ ongoing effort to foster learning and increase access to a wide variety of scholarship.

For research help with African American studies and related topics, contact Research Librarian for Digital Humanities and African American Studies April Urban at aprilu@uci.edu or visit guides.lib.uci.edu for a complete list of Libraries’ Research Guides.

Online Resources

• Celebrating One and All: Black History Research Guide
• African American Studies Research Guide
• Curated collection of films on Kanopy (requires UCI login)
• Curated collection of documentaries on Docuseek (requires UCI login)
• African American Authored Fiction Books ebook collection on OverDrive (requires UCI login)
• The HistoryMakers, the nation’s largest African American oral history video collection (requires UCI login)
• In Our Own Words: The UCI Black Alumni Oral History Project documents the lived experiences of UCI’s Black alumni with a focus on their time as students at UCI.

Special Collections and Archives

• Black Student Union Records: This collection comprises records of the Black Student Union at UCI from 1971 until 2015.
• Pleasant (Mary Ellen) Financial Correspondence and Notes: This collection consists of materials documenting the financial affairs of Mary Ellen Pleasant, an African American woman, abolitionist, and entrepreneur often referred to as the Mother of Civil Rights in California.
• Davenport (Mildred) Dance Programs and Dance School Materials: This collection comprises dance programs, dance school materials, photographs, and ephemera documenting the early career of the Boston-based African American dancer, dance instructor, and civic official Mildred Davenport.

Recent Additions

In addition to online resources and archival materials, recent acquisitions of books and edited monographs to the UCI Libraries' circulating collection focus on the history, literature and art, and experiences of Black Americans:

• Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights, by Dylan Penningroth, draws on astonishing new research to demonstrate how Black people used the law to their advantage long before the Civil Rights Movement.
• Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World, by Christian Cooper, tells the story of his extraordinary life leading up to the now-infamous encounter in Central Park and shows how a life spent looking up at the birds prepared him to be a gay, Black man in America today.
• By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners, by Margaret A. Burnham, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow era by exploring the relationship between formal law and background legal norms in a series of harrowing cases from 1920 to 1960.
• Creole New Orleans in the Revolutionary Atlantic, 1775-1877, by Caryn Cossé Bell, explores New Orleans’ presence at the crossroads of the revolutionary Atlantic and shows how Afro-Creole community leaders pointed to events in France and stood in the forefront of the struggle to revolutionize race relations in their own nation.
• A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing From Soil to Stars, edited by Erin Sharkey, is a volume of essays reflecting on the significance and role of nature in the lives of Black folks in the United States.
• Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History, by Ana Lucia Araujo, traces the ways in which enslaved and freed individuals have conceptualized the idea of reparations since the 18th century in petitions, correspondence, pamphlets, public speeches, slave narratives and judicial claims.
• Speak Out: The Brixton Black Women’s Group Reader, edited by Milo Miller, is a collection of writing from the Brixton Black Women’s Group, one of the first and most important Black radical organizations of the 1970s.
• Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History, adapted and illustrated by Nic Watts & Sakina Karimjee, is a graphic novel based on C.L.R. James’s play “Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History,” which when it opened in London featuring Paul Robeson in 1936, marked the first time Black actors starred on the British stage in a play written by a Black playwright.
• Under the Skin: The Hidden Toll of Racism and American Lives and the Health of our Nation, by Linda Villarosa, lays bare the forces in the American healthcare system and in American society that cause Black people to “live sicker and die quicker” compared to their white counterparts.
• “You Should Be Grateful”: Stories of Race, Identity, and Transracial Adoption, by Angela Tucker, centers the experiences of adoptees to share personal stories, researched histories, and anecdotes from mentorship sessions with adopted youth and explores the impacts of racism, classism, family, love, and belonging.

For a more complete list of new books and edited volumes on these and related topics, email partners@uci.edu.

Diversity of UCI Libraries’ Collections

UCI Libraries collect materials in all formats to support the university’s research, teaching, and public service mission.

We believe it is crucial that our collections reflect the diversity of our students, faculty, staff, and larger Orange County community. Thus, we are making an effort to collect materials that consider the needs and perspectives of historically underrepresented, marginalized, and oppressed groups. For more information, please refer to our Diversity Statement and Plan.

For additional information about UCI Libraries’ efforts to celebrate diversity in its users, staff, collections, and resources, visit the UCI Libraries Diversity webpage.