National

• Roxane Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (2015)
• Nikole-Hannah Jones, The 1619 Project (2019)
• Stephanie Jones-Rogers, They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (2020)
• Maulana Karenga, Introduction to Black Studies (4th edition 2010)
• Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (2017)
• See also the remixed version of this book in collaboration with Jason Reynolds, aimed at YA readers but recommended for everyone: Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-Winning Stamped from the Beginning (2020)
• Paul Ortiz, An African American and Latinx History of the United States (2018)
• Richard Rothstein, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America (2018)
• Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2011)

Personal

• James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)
• Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (2015)
• Jesmyn Ward, ed. The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race (2017)
• Austin Channing Brown, I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness (2018)
• Saeed Jones, How We Fight for Our Lives (2019)
• Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick, and Other Essays (2019)
• Claudia Rankine, Citizen (2014)
• Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (2015)
• Jesmyn Ward, Men We Reaped (2014)