100 Essential Black Books

[Tair]

Bumping this thread again.

@OfTheCross

 

[OfTheCross]

I remember this thread. The Schomburg Center came out with a list recently. Maybe it came out last Summer, but I just read a BHM article that mentioned it.

Your thoughts and how many of your faves made the list?

Dope. I'ma print this out and make it a goal

 

[get these nets]

Great list. Thank god its not a ranking just listed alphabetically.

I have some more to add but they are about the black diasopra in the carribean.

I don't think you ever listed them.

 

[LevelUp]

Repping everyone.

 

[DonRe]

I don't think you ever listed them.

I Must have forgotten. Im at work so its off the top of the dome

Cambridge by caryl phillips
Any writing by Jamaica Kincaid especially

Also any writing from edward brathwaite

Discourse on Colonialism by cesaire. Try to fijd the english version. Written in french.

Theres more. I have to look at my book shelf

 

[KingsOfKings]

Salute

 

[get these nets]

Up

 

[get these nets]

It Happened in Harlem: Recommended Reading | The New York Public Library

These titles offers a short introduction to that extraordinary time a century ago when Harlem became the epicenter of global Black culture.

www.nypl.org

04/22/25

 

[get these nets]

Black Poetry Day to Honor Jupiter Hammon on Long Island​

October 16, 2025



Black Poetry Day is observed each year on the birthday of Jupiter Hammon (1711–before 1806), America’s first published Black poet. Enslaved by the Lloyd family, Hammon lived and wrote at Joseph Lloyd Manor (c. 1767) in what is now Huntington, Long Island. There he composed some of his most significant works on the moral conflicts of slavery and freedom in the early United States.
Preservation Long Island will host a celebration of Black Poetry Day and Hammon’s life at Joseph Lloyd Manor Saturday, October 18, 2025.
The program will feature a presentation by author and professor James G. Basker, entitled “The Black Presence in the Founding Era.” Joseph Lloyd Manor will open at 3 pm for self-guided tours and light refreshments. Professor Basker’s talk will begin at 4 pm.
Drawing on the hundreds of lives represented in his recent book Black Writers of the Founding Era (Library of America, 2023), James G. Basker, president and CEO of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and Richard Gilder Professor of Literary History at Barnard College, Columbia University, will talk about the rich variety of life stories and contributions to the American founding made by such people as Jupiter Hammon, Lemuel Haynes, Phillis Wheatley, James Forten, Benjamin Banneker, and many others whose names were almost lost to history.
Hammon’s known works include at least six poems and three essays published during his lifetime. At Joseph Lloyd Manor in 1786, he penned “An Address to the Negroes of the State of New-York” and “An Essay on Slavery.”
This event will take place on Saturday, October 18, 2025, from