Audiobooks that honor Juneteenth

Sleeping with the Ancestors

How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery

By: Joseph McGill Jr. & Herb Frazier
Narrated by: Joseph McGill Jr. & Herb Frazier
Length: 10 hours 27 minutes

In this enlightening personal account, one man tells the story of his groundbreaking project to sleep overnight in former slave dwellings that still stand across the country—revealing the fascinating history behind these sites and shedding light on larger issues of race in America. Joseph McGill Jr., a historic preservationist and Civil War... Read more

Juneteenth for Mazie

By: Floyd Cooper
Narrated by: Rhett Samuel Price & Tyla Collier
Length: 7 minutes

Mazie is ready to celebrate liberty. She is ready to celebrate freedom. She is ready to celebrate a great day in American history: the day her ancestors were no longer slaves. Mazie remembers the struggles and the triumph as she gets ready to celebrate Juneteenth. Read more

Ordinary Notes

By: Christina Sharpe
Narrated by: Christina Sharpe
Length: 7 hours 8 minutes

This program is read by the author.

The critically acclaimed author of In the Wake, "Christina Sharpe is a brilliant thinker who attends unflinchingly to the brutality of our current arrangements . . . and yet always finds a way to beauty and possibility" (Saidiya Hartman).

A singular achievement, Ordinary Notes explores profound questions about... Read more

Fear of Black Consciousness

By: Lewis R. Gordon
Narrated by: Landon Woodson & Lewis R. Gordon
Length: 9 hours 7 minutes

Lewis R. Gordon's Fear of Black Consciousness is a groundbreaking account of Black consciousness by a leading philosopher

In this original and penetrating audiobook, Lewis R. Gordon, one of the leading scholars of Black existentialism and anti-Blackness, takes the reader on a journey through the historical development of racialized Blackness, the... Read more

King: A Life

By: Jonathan Eig
Narrated by: Dion Graham
Length: 20 hours 45 minutes

This program is narrated by Dion Graham, narrator of over 300 audiobooks and an AudioFile Golden Voice. Dion has won multiple Earphones and Audie Awards.

"Dion Graham superbly narrates this riveting audiobook, emulating the majestic cadence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, speeches. He captures the Civil Rights leader's deep, resonant tone;... Read more

The ABCs of Black History

By: Rio Cortez
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 55 minutes

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER“In rhyming couplets, Cortez leads readers on a journey through Black life that acknowledges pain and struggle while building confidence with examples of triumph. It’s a tricky maneuver when writing for children, but Cortez pulls it off.” – The New York Times"A uniquely crafted ABC book that portrays some of the most... Read more

Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free

The True Story of the Grandmother of Juneteenth

By: Alice Faye Duncan
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 18 minutes

Booklist starred reviewBlack activist Opal Lee had a vision of Juneteenth as a holiday for everyone. This true story celebrates Black joy and inspires children to see their dreams blossom. Growing up in Texas, Opal knew the history of Juneteenth, but she soon discovered that many Americans had never heard of the holiday. Join Opal on her... Read more

Negroland

A Memoir

By: Margo Jefferson
Narrated by: Robin Miles
Length: 7 hours 59 minutes

At once incendiary and icy, mischievous and provocative, celebratory and elegiac—here is a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, and American culture through the prism of Margo Jefferson’s rarefied upbringing and education among a black elite concerned with distancing itself from whites and the black generality while tirelessly measuring itself... Read more

The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

A Biography of a Slave Woman

By: Olive Gilbert
Narrated by: Bobbie Frohman
Length: 3 hours 49 minutes

The Narrative of Sojourner Truth is a poignant biography as told to Olive Gilbert by Isabella Bomefree—a slave born at the end of the eighteenth century who later took the name of Sojourner Truth. She recounts the harshness of life under slavery, as well as what transpired after she won her freedom, when she became a vociferous abolitionist, a... Read more

The Defender

How the Legendary Black Newspaper Changed America; from the Age of the Pullman Porters to the Age of Obama

By: Ethan Michaeli
Narrated by: William Hughes
Length: 22 hours 8 minutes

Giving voice to the voiceless, the Chicago Defender condemned Jim Crow, catalyzed the Great Migration, and focused the electoral power of black America. Robert S. Abbott founded the Defender in 1905, smuggled hundreds of thousands of copies into the most isolated communities in the segregated South, and was dubbed a “Modern Moses,” becoming one... Read more

Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil

The Life, Legacy, and Love of My Son Michael Brown

By: Lezley McSpadden
Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
Length: 10 hours 28 minutes

This revelatory memoir by the mother of Michael Brown, the African American teenager killed by the police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, sheds light on one of the landmark events in recent history.“I wasn’t there when Mike Mike was shot. I didn’t see him fall or take his last breath, but as his mother, I do know one thing... Read more

Policing the Black Man

Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment

By: Angela J. Davis
Narrated by: Robin Miles & Kevin Kenerly
Length: 10 hours 11 minutes

A comprehensive analysis of the key issues of the Black Lives Matter movement, this thought-provoking and compelling anthology features essays by some of the nation’s most influential and respected criminal justice experts and legal scholars.Contributing authors include Bryan Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Initiative, NYU Law... Read more

No Name in the Street

By: James Baldwin
Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly
Length: 5 hours

This stunningly personal document and extraordinary history of the turbulent sixties and early seventies displays James Baldwin’s fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works.In vivid detail he remembers the Harlem childhood that shaped his early consciousness, the later events that scored his heart with pain—the murders of Martin... Read more

So You Want to Talk about Race

By: Ijeoma Oluo
Narrated by: Bahni Turpin
Length: 7 hours 41 minutes

In this #1 New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a revelatory examination of race in AmericaA current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today’s racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that readers of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divideIn So You Want to Talk about Race,... Read more

Smoketown

The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance

By: Mark Whitaker
Narrated by: Prentice Onayemi
Length: 13 hours 30 minutes

The other great Renaissance of black culture, influence, and glamour burst forth joyfully in what may seem an unlikely place—Pittsburgh, PA—from the 1920s through the 1950s.Today black Pittsburgh is known as the setting for August Wilson’s famed plays about noble but doomed working-class strivers. But this community once had an impact on... Read more

The Great Stain

Witnessing American Slavery

By: Noel Rae
Narrated by: Steven Crossley
Length: 24 hours 48 minutes

Comprising personal accounts from an intensely consequential chapter in human history, the transatlantic slave trade, The Great Stain takes listeners from the depths of suffering to the heights of human dignity.There have been numerous books about the why, when, and where of slavery in America, but there is a dearth of material exposing what... Read more

An American Quilt

Unfolding a Story of Family and Slavery

By: Rachel May
Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
Length: 12 hours 39 minutes

When we think of slavery, most of us think of the American South. We think of back-breaking fieldwork on plantations. We don’t think of slavery in the North, nor do we think of the grueling labor of urban and domestic slaves. Rachel May’s rich new book explores the far reach of slavery, from New England to the Caribbean, the role it played in... Read more

To Make Our World Anew

Volume I: A History of African Americans to 1880

By: Robin D.G. Kelley & Earl Lewis
Narrated by: Terrence Kidd
Length: 14 hours 13 minutes

The two volumes of Kelley and Lewis's To Make Our World Anew integrate the work of eleven leading historians into the most up-to-date and comprehensive account available of African American history, from the first Africans brought as slaves into the Americas, right up to today's black filmmakers and politicians. This first volume begins with the... Read more

To Make Our World Anew

Volume II: A History of African Americans from 1880

By: Robin D.G. Kelley & Earl Lewis
Narrated by: Terrence Kidd
Length: 17 hours 49 minutes

Here is a panoramic view of African American life, rich in gripping first-person accounts and short character sketches that invite readers to relive history as African Americans experienced it. We begin in Africa, with the growth of the slave trade, and follow the forced migration of what is estimated to be between ten and twenty million people,... Read more

Behind the Scenes

Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House

By: Elizabeth Keckley
Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
Length: 6 hours 48 minutes

Born in Virginia in 1818, Elizabeth Keckley grew up enslaved until she was able to purchase her and her son's freedom with money made from working as a seamstress. As she continued to perfect her craft, her styles caught the attention of the elite in Washington D.C. It wasn't until the day of Abraham Lincoln's inauguration that she crossed paths... Read more