Fiction about Civil Rights and Race Relations

Askew, Rilla. Fire in Beulah, 2001.

The relationship between a white woman and her black maid during the Tulsa race riot of 1921.

Baldwin, James. Another Country,

Eight people become entangled in a web of interpersonal relationships, doomed to become as savage and destructive as the society which oppresses them.

Bigsby, C. W. E. Beautiful Dreamer, 2006.

A violent and harrowing Faulknerian tale of race relations in Tennessee in the early part of the century.

French, Albert. Billy, 1993.

An anonymous observer narrates the tale of ten-year-old Billy Lee, a black boy who is convicted and executed for the murder of a white girl in Barnes, Mississippi in the 1930s.

Gaines, Ernest J. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, 1972.

A dying woman of 110 years of age reminisces about her childhood on a plantation when both Confederate and Union soldiers arrived.

Gaines, Ernest J. A Gathering of Old Men, 1983.

Sheriff Mapes tries to identify the killer of a white Cajun farmer when both a white overseer and a group of black farmers all claim responsibility.

Gaines, Ernest J. In My Father's House, 1978.

The arrival of a newcomer results in confrontation with the Rev. Philip Martin, the town's most respected black man.

Himes, Chester B. If He Hollers Let Him Go, 1986.

Robert Jones, a charming, educated black man, enjoys the comfort and privileges of middle class life until an embittered white woman accuses him of rape.

Johnson, Charles. Middle Passage,

A newly freed slave in New Orleans stows away on an Africa bound slave ship.

Lester, Julius. And All Our Wounds Forgiven, 1994.

Fictional recreation of the 1960s civil rights movement and Martin Luther King's personal struggle with his role as leader.

Naslund, Sena Jeter. Four Spirits, 2003

In 1960s Alabama a sheltered white college student participates in a freedom movement and finds her life changed when she develops friendships with local African Americans.

Styron, William. The Confessions of Nat Turner, 1967.

A fictional examination of the mind of the man who led the most violent slave rebellion in American history.

Toomer, Jean. Cane, 1923.

Often credited with being the first major work of the Harlem Renaissance, these stories and poems explore issues of race and identity in the 1920s.

Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885.

A young boy living in mid-nineteenth century Missouri relates the many adventures that he and his friend Jim, an escaped slave, experience as they travel down the Mississippi River on a raft. One of the most important novels ever written on race in America.

Wright, Richard. Native Son, 1940.

One of the most powerful novels about racism in America. The novel traces the fall of a young black man in 1930s Chicago as his life loses all hope of redemption after he kills a white woman.

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