History of anti-black racism: the reading list

From the archives of the New York Times, "A History of Race and Racism in 24 Chapters" in which Ibram X. Kendi proposes one book a decade from the 1770s to the 2000s on the black experience in the United States.

No list can ever be comprehensive, and “most influential” by no means signifies “best.” But I would argue that together, these works tell the history of anti-black racism in the United States as painfully, as eloquently, as disturbingly as words can. In many ways, they also tell its present.

Frederick Douglass, Thomas Jefferson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Herbert Spencer, Margaret Mitchell, Gunnar Myrdal, Malcolm X  -- it's some list