Jacobin’s Racial Justice Reading List
The point of a reading list should be to understand the world in order to change it. Here are ten essential books that can help inform the struggle for racial justice today.
An R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company supervisor watches workers during a 1947 strike by Local 22.
A reading list is no substitute for political action. But it can inform the steps we take to win a more just world. As the late Detroit activist General Baker put it, “We have to turn thinkers into fighters and fighters into thinkers.”
With that in mind, here’s a list with an eye toward better understanding the history of the black freedom struggle — and carrying that struggle forward today.