Library
The AbolitionistLibrary
A curated collection of books, articles, archival sources, and educational resources that have shaped this work — for readers interested in history, democracy, cooperative economics, race, restorative justice, and building institutions rooted in dignity and shared power.
Start Here
New to the Abolitionist Challenge?
If you're just beginning, these five works provide the strongest foundation for the ideas explored across all workshop sessions.
Black Reconstruction in America — W. E. B. Du Bois
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution — Eric Foner
Collective Courage — Jessica Gordon Nembhard
We Do This 'Til We Free Us — Mariame Kaba
Emergent Strategy — adrienne maree brown
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Black History & Reconstruction
Black Reconstruction in America — W. E. B. Du Bois
Reconstruction — Eric Foner
A Nation Under Our Feet — Steven Hahn
I Saw Death Coming — Kidada E. Williams
Out of the House of Bondage — Thavolia Glymph
Bound in Wedlock — Tera W. Hunter
They Were Her Property — Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
Vanguard — Martha S. Jones
Racecraft — Barbara Fields & Karen Fields
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Black Women's History
Ar'n't I a Woman? — Deborah Gray White
Closer to Freedom — Stephanie M. H. Camp
The Price for Their Pound of Flesh — Daina Ramey Berry
Reckoning with Slavery — Jennifer L. Morgan
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments — Saidiya Hartman
Dispossessed Lives — Marisa Fuentes
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Democracy & Political Thought
Democracy in America — Alexis de Tocqueville
Our Declaration — Danielle Allen
The Fire Next Time — James Baldwin
Teaching to Transgress — bell hooks
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Cooperative Economics
Collective Courage — Jessica Gordon Nembhard
For All the People — John Curl
Governing the Commons — Elinor Ostrom
Everything for Everyone — Nathan Schneider
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Restorative Justice
The Little Book of Restorative Justice — Howard Zehr
The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice — Fania E. Davis
Until We Reckon — Danielle Sered
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Organizational Leadership
Boards That Make a Difference — John Carver
Organizational Culture and Leadership — Edgar Schein
The Fifth Discipline — Peter Senge
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Food Justice
Freedom Farmers — Monica M. White
Farming While Black — Leah Penniman
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Articles & Essays
"Letter from Birmingham Jail" — Martin Luther King Jr.
Black Marxism (selections) — Cedric Robinson
"The Case for Reparations" — Ta-Nehisi Coates
"Developing a Liberatory Consciousness" — Barbara J. Love
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Primary Sources
Report of the Joint Select Committee to Inquire into the Condition of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States (1872) — 42nd U.S. Congress
Freedmen's Bureau Records — Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands
Congressional Globe — U.S. Congress
Federal Writers' Project Slave Narratives — Works Progress Administration
Selected Reconstruction-era newspapers — Various
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