Historical Fiction about African Americans
Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker
Since her birth, Truly has endured constant embarrassment for her large size. Her sister Serena has always been a timeless beauty. But beauty comes with a price when Serena finds herself mixed up with the wrong guy. When Serena leaves town, Truly is left to care for her nephew, and her life leads her into some unexpected places.
We Are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg
It is the summer of 1964. In Tupelo, Mississippi, tensions are mounting over Civil Rights demonstrations occurring ever more frequently - and violently - across the state. But in Paige Dunn's small, ramshackle house, there are more immediate concerns. Challenged by the effects of the polio she contracted during her last month of pregnancy, Paige is nonetheless determined to live as normal a life as possible and to raise her daughter in the way she sees fit - with the support of her tough-talking black caregiver, Peacie.
Big Girls Don’t Cry by Connie Briscoe
Naomi Jefferson, who experiences her fair share of loss, betrayal, and addiction, believes that the weight of the world lies on her shoulders, until Joseph, her deceased brother's illegitimate teenage son, enters her life and teaches her a lesson in courage and self-love.
The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy
Will McLean spends four years at a Carolina military academy where he is responsible for shepherding the first black cadet.
The Summer We Got Saved by Pat C. Devoto
Embracing the belief systems of her Southern hometown, Tab witnesses changes in the attitudes throughout the course of a 1960s gubernatorial campaign, which is marked by the establishment of a voting school for church members.
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines
A young illiterate African American man witnesses two black robbers kill a white store owner in Louisiana in the late 1940s, and he is the one convicted.
Bombingham by Anthony Grooms
A soldier in Vietnam becomes sucked into the Civil Rights movement through a letter written home to the parents of a friend killed in Birmingham's early 1960s wave of racially motivated violence.
The Queen of Palmyra by Minrose Gwin
Florence, a young white girl in 1960s Mississippi, watches the Civil Rights movement unfold through two lenses: one her own family, tied up with the Ku Klux Clan, and the other the family of her grandparents’ black maid Zenie. When Zenie’s college-bound niece comes to town both sides of the small town are thrown into uproar.
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
Relegated to the care of an eccentric great-aunt after her mentally unbalanced mother's accidental death, 12-year-old CeeCee is quickly surrounded by the strong women and cultural elements of her new Savannah community.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Janie Crawford manages to grow and evolve into a heroine for all women in spite of being black and female in the South of the 1930s. Follow her quest for identity through three marriages on a journey to her roots.
Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
Ten years after leaving, Arlene Fleet finds she still has not escaped Possett, Alabama, when an old classmate turns up asking questions about a crime Arlene committed in her youth, forcing her into a confrontation with her past.
Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
Recently married, Laura McAllan moves from her refined Memphis home to a struggling farm in Mississippi’s Delta region shortly after World War II. Faced with primitive conditions and a rocky relationship with her husband, Laura turns to the companionship of her black tenant farmer’s wife. But with racial tensions at a high point and the arrival of Laura’s unattached brother-in-law from Europe, events are set for a gripping conclusion.
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
After a run-in with Southern racists puts Lily Owens and her beloved caretaker Rosaleen in jeopardy, they flee to South Carolina. There they meet the remarkable Boatwright sisters, whose skill at beekeeping help Lily come to grips with a family tragedy.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The classic Pulitzer-prize winning tale about a young black man who is accused of raping a white girl in Depression-era Alabama and his upstanding attorney Atticus Finch.
In the Fall by Jeffrey Lent
An interracial relationship between a Union soldier from Vermont and a runaway slave at the end of the Civil War initiates a haunting family legacy of war, racism, and secrets that follows three generations from the end of the Civil War to the Great Depression.
Right as Rain by Bev Marshall
The story of Tee Wee and Icey – a cook and a housekeeper working side-by-side in rural Mississippi – as well as their children and the family that employs the two women is a prism through which we view the universal: racial strife, shattered ties, secrets, and redemption.
Sula by Toni Morrison
At the heart of Sula is a bond between two women, a friendship whose intensity first sustains, then injures. Sula and Nel are both black, both smart, and both poor. Through their girlhood years, they share everything. All this changes when Sula gets out of the Bottom, the hilltop neighborhood where there hides a fierce resentment at the invisible line that cannot be overstepped.
Four Spirits by Sena Jeter Naslund
College student Stella Silver has enjoyed a life of privilege, in spite of losing her parents at a young age. When the bombings at Birmingham open her eyes to the depth of the hate fueling racism, she determines to join the Civil Rights movement, with memorable consequences.
The Persia Café by Melany Neilson
The disappearance of a black boy in a small Mississippi town in 1962 plunges young Fannie, who dreams of cooking her way to a better life, into her town's own heart of darkness.
I’ll Take You There by Joyce Carol Oates
In a novel set in the early 1960s, a young white woman falls in love with a black philosophy student and then must face a person from her past who she believed had died.
Wench by Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Lizzie has been her master’s mistress for years, bearing his only two offspring and loving him as a husband. When he takes her to an Ohio resort for Southern men and their black mistresses, Lizzie meets free blacks for the first time, and begins consider her family’s fate if she were free.
Downtown by Anne River Siddons
Maureen Smoky O'Donnell goes to Atlanta to write for a magazine in the 1960s, and after writing about the city's war on poverty, she falls in love with a man who leaves for Vietnam.
Angels of Morgan Hill by Donna Van Liere
In 1947, the small town of Morgan Hill, Tennessee, and the lives of its inhabitants are turned upside down by the arrival of the Turners, the area's first black family.
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Color Purple is the story of two sisters - one a missionary to Africa and the other a child wife living in the South - who remain loyal to one another across time, distance, and silence.