Celebrate Black History Month 2025: New Books to Explore

One way to celebrate Black History Month is to read books by Black authors and books that can educate us about the experiences of Black Americans. To help you get started, we’re highlighting a selection of books that were published within the past year. To view the twenty titles listed below—and to explore even further—visit our Black History Month virtual display and OverDrive/Libby curated collections, which feature more than 200 books and audiobooks to choose from.

20 new titles to help you celebrate Black History Month:

• Acts of Forgiveness: A Novel by Maura Cheeks
• All We Were Promised: A Novel by Ashton Lattimore
• The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson
• The Black Box: Writing the Race by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
• Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism by Jenn M. Jackson
• Dear Black Girls: How to be True to You by A'ja Wilson,
• Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons With Racism in Medicine by Uché Blackstock
• Lovely One: A Memoir by Ketanji Brown Jackson
• Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton
• The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
• My Black Country: A Journey Through Country Music's Black Past, Present and Future by Alice Randall
• Poemhood: Our Black Revival: History, Folklore & the Black Experience by Amber McBride, Erica Martin, Taylor Byas (eds.)
• Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman's Bank by Justene Hill Edwards
• Sports and the Racial Divide:  A Legacy of African American Athletic Activism by Michael E. Lomax (ed.)
• The Stolen Wealth of Slavery: A Case for Reparations by David Montero
• Survival is a Promise: The Eternal life of Audre Lorde by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
• The Survivors of the Clotilda: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the American Slave Trade by Hannah Durkin
• The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty years of Sisterhood, and their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History by Karen Valby
• Swift River by Essie Chambers
• We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance by Kellie Carter Jackson

If you have a book to recommend to the library, please use the Suggest a Purchase form.