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BLS Library Digital Book Displays

Juneteenth (June 19, 2025) - Explore BLS Library's Resources

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019 (2021)

Excerpt from book's description: "Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume "community" history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a brief period of that four-hundred-year-span. "

The History of Juneteenth (June 12, 2024)

Article by Derrick Bryson Taylor available at NYTimes.com.

Registration instructions for BLS students, faculty and staff to create NYTimes.com accounts appear in guides.brooklaw.edu/news

How the Word Is Passed (2021)

Excerpt from book's description @ Goodreads: "How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods—like downtown Manhattan—on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted.  Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, Clint Smith’s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark work of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in understanding our country."

Juneteenth

Engaging website of the National Museum of African American History and Culture includes: The First Juneteenth and Juneteenth Today.  Also provides a Digital Toolkit and Juneteenth Reading List.

Juneteenth: Fact Sheet (updated June 13, 2024)

Publicly accessible fact sheet created and updated by the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Juneteenth: The Promise of Freedom (2025)

Excerpt from this book's description here: "When Dr. Charles Taylor wrote the original Juneteenth book, it became the official resource used by the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation in their successful campaign to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. Now, this expanded edition delves even deeper into our shared history."

Juneteenth: The Story Behind the Celebration (2021)

Excerpt from a press release: Historian Edward T. Cotham, Jr. "spent decades conducting research in archives across the nation to help separate myth from reality and tell the full story of the [Juneteenth] holiday."

On Juneteenth (2021)

Excerpt from book's description @ Goodreads: "Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, [Professor] Annette Gordon-Reed’s On Juneteenth provides a historian’s view of the country’s long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond."

See also Michael Davis, National Archives News: Noted Historian Discusses Juneteenth’s Place in American History (June 9, 2021) + U.S. National Archives video presentation (streamed live on June 2, 2021): Annette Gordon-Reed discusses her book On Juneteenth.

 

7 Juneteenth Foods and Traditions (June 7, 2024)

Publicly accessible article by Colette Coleman available at HISTORY.com.