Summer Reading 2026: Black History at a Reading Level of 9th-12th Grade

Here are nine eBooks on African American History written at the 9th- to 12th-grade level. These free ebooks have not been banned from classrooms.  Rather, they are not available because administrators in state education departments do not believe that the volume of reading matters to high school students. They demand textbooks that students find boring and don’t read. Other administrators don’t have the budgets for books, and have not yet turned to free eBooks.

Each link provides a button to download the ebook and a short description of the content. The titles are:

The Black Napoleon by Percy Waxman: the Story of Toussaint L’Overture
Flight to Freedom by Henrietta Buckmaster: the Story of the Underground Railroad
Reconstruction: America After the Civil War by Henrietta Buckmaster: Freedmen and the Struggle for Political Rights
Freedom Ride by James Peck: Freedom Riders Challenge Segregation in the South
Harlem─People, Power and Politics, 1900-1950 by Roi Ottley: Profiles of Harlem’s Leaders
Thurgood Marshall from His Early Years to Brown by Hunter R. Clark: a Window into American History
Thurgood Marshall─His Triumph in Brown, His Years on the Supreme Court by Hunter R. Clark: Capital Punishment, Abortion, Affirmative Action, the Right to Counsel and Other Issues
Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett, Jr.: the History of the Negro in America, 1619-1962
The Lonely Warrior─The Life and Times of Robert S. Abbott by Roi Ottley: a Publisher Encourages Migration North

You can see longer descriptions of each book and other titles at History for Everyone: Build a Nation of Readers with Free Ebooks.

This epub has links to all of the ebooks above and is for your Apple and Android devices including the Send-to-Kindle feature in Amazon.

Download the mobi file for Amazon devices except the Send to Kindle feature  here.