Tom, Alasdair and I are gratified that our above-named service on March 30, 2025 was so well-received. By popular demand, we offer the following bibliography and list of sources that we relied on for this service and also for its predecessor, Uncomfortable Liberty: The Legacy of Enslavement in Morris County.
We also offer materials for further reading, listening or viewing, some courtesy of Tom Perch. Resources for children and youth are listed separately.
For Adults:
March 30th, 2025 Service:
- Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color-Blindness. New Press (2010)
- Blackmon, Douglas A. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. Random House (New York: 2008)
- Hurston, Zora Neale. Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo.” Harper-Collins (New York: 2018).
- Litwack, Leon F. Been In the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. Random House (New York: 1980).
- Litwack, Leon F. Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. Knopf (New York: 1998)
- Raines, Ben. The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning. Simon & Schuster (New York: 2022).
- Rothstein, Richard. Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Norton (2018).
- Walker, Alice. In Search of our Mother’s Gardens. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich(New Yor: 1967)
- Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns; The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. Random House (New York: 2010).
- Yetman, Norman R., Ed. Voices From Slavery: 100 Authentic Slave Narratives. 2nd Edition. Holt, Rhinehart & Winston (Garden City, New YorK: 2000).
- California Reparations Task Force – Executive Summary
- Hammer Museum forum discussion California Reparations Task Force
- New Jersey Reparations Council Health Equity Public Session
- As well as other videos under the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice (NJISJ)
- New Jersey Reparations Council: History of Slavery in New Jersey
- NJRC Public Safety and Justice Public Session
- NJRC Democracy Committee Public Session
- NJRC Economic Justice Public Session
- NJRC Environmental Justice Public Session
- NJRC Public Safety and Justice Public Session
- NJRC Segregation in New Jersey Public Session
- NY Times series: Nice White Parents
- Nikole Hannah-Jones | Modern Day Segregation
- Princeton University Study; White ex-cons chosen over blacks. CNN/Money (New York, June 2005)
- Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight. People With Criminal Records “Need Not Apply”: Criminal Background Checks and Race Discrimination (April 7, 2017).
For Children:
All books in this section are available for loan from Shari. Happy to provide more information.
- Rodman, Bella. Lions in the Way. Follett (1966).
- Fictionalized story of school integration in the South from childrens’ perspective. Intermediate.
- Taylor, Mildred. The Logan Family Saga.
- Series of 9 books, fictionalized stories of the author’s family’s life in Mississippi from around 1900 to 1965. Titles, in suggested reading order. Most are appropriate for 3rd grade through upper middle school, though All the Days Past is more of an adult story.
- The Land Sep-2001
- Song of the Trees 1975
- Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry Oct-1976 (1977 Newberry Award)
- Let the Circle Be Unbroken Jan-1981
- The Friendship Oct-1987
- The Road to Memphis Jun-1990
- Mississippi Bridge Oct-1990 (short story)
- The Well Jan-1995
- All the Days Past, All the Days to Come Jan-2020
- The Gold Cadillac – novella/short story falling after Road to Memphis Yates, Elizabeth.
- Series of 9 books, fictionalized stories of the author’s family’s life in Mississippi from around 1900 to 1965. Titles, in suggested reading order. Most are appropriate for 3rd grade through upper middle school, though All the Days Past is more of an adult story.
- Amos Fortune, Free Man. Multiple editions; originally published 1950. Newberry Award, 1951. (Biographical novel based on the life of Amos Fortune, captured in Africa around 1725 and sold in New England)
March 5, 2023 Service:
- Gigantino, James J. The Ragged Road to Abolition: Slavery and Freedom in New Jersey 1775-1865. University of Pennsylvania Press (Philadelphia: 2015).
- Greene, Lorenzo J. The Negro in Colonial New England: 1630-1776. Columbia University Press (New York: 1942).
- Mitros, David. Jacob Green and the Slavery Debate in Revolutionary Morris County, New Jersey. Morris County Heritage Commission (1993).
- Mitros, David. Slave Records of Morris County, New Jersey: 1756-1841. Morris County Heritage Commission (Morristown, NJ 1991, 2002)
Further reading:
- Heath, Sam. The 1619 Project vs. The 1776 Project, in Age of Awareness, September 20, 2020.
- Hannah-Jones, Nikole. The 1619 Project; many forms; initially published in The New York Times Magazine in August, 2019.
- 1776 Report: responsive works created by a commission appointed by then-President Donald J. Trump to respond to The 1619 Project to increase “patriotic education, initially released January 18, 2021.
Additional suggestions from Tom Perch:
- 20th And 21st Century History
- Half American: The Heroic story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad, Matthew Delmont
- Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson
- The Defender, How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America, Ethan Michaeli
- Devil in the Grove, Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys and the Dawn of a New America, Gilbert King
- I Never Had it Made, An Autobiography of Jackie Robinson
- Evicted: Property and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond
- Franchise : The Golden Arches in Black America, Marcia Chatelain
- Slavery and Reconstruction
- Master, Slave, Husband, Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom, Ilyon Woo
- Barracoon, The Story of the Last Black Cargo, Zora Neal Hurston
- Redemption, The Last Battle of the Civil War, Nicholas Lemann
- A Short History of Reconstruction, Eric Foner
- Slaves in the Family, Edward Ball
- Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy and the rise of Jim Crow, Henry Louis Gates
- New England Bound, Slavery and Colonization in Early America, Wendy Warren
- Never Caught, The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge, Erica Armstrong Dunbar