The Washington and Lee University Library stands with the Black Caucus of the American Library Association in condemning racial injustice. Read full BCALA statement.
The library is working toward purchasing ebook versions of print-only titles listed within this guide to ensure immediate, non-location specific, and simultaneous access for current members of the W&L community.
If you are a public patron and cannot access the physical library during 2021, take advantage of our carry-out service. Send desired titles and call numbers to library@wlu.edu. Requested books will be available for pickup within 24-48 hours (weekdays).
Non-fiction books are categorized according to topic. Scroll to find your desired topic or click one of the below subject headings to jump directly to that section.
Subjects:
The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century by 
From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by Activism & Contemporary Movements | Bias | Civil Rights Movement History | Examining Whiteness |
Residential Disparities, Discrimination & Segregation | Policing, Law & Incarceration | Racism & Anti-racism | Racism in the Academy |
Scientific & Medical Racism | Voter Suppression | Women, Gender & Sexuality
Biased by
... With a perspective that is at once scientific, investigative, and informed by personal experience, Dr. Jennifer Eberhardt offers us the language and courage we need to face one of the biggest and most troubling issues of our time. She exposes racial bias at all levels of society--in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and criminal justice system. Yet she also offers us tools to address it. Eberhardt shows us how we can be vulnerable to bias but not doomed to live under its grip. Racial bias is a problem that we all have a role to play in solving.
Algorithms of Oppression by Activism & Contemporary Movements | Bias | Civil Rights Movement History | Examining Whiteness |
Residential Disparities, Discrimination & Segregation | Policing, Law & Incarceration | Racism & Anti-racism | Racism in the Academy |
Scientific & Medical Racism | Voter Suppression | Women, Gender & Sexuality
A More Beautiful and Terrible History by
Print (Leyburn)
Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America by Activism & Contemporary Movements | Bias | Civil Rights Movement History | Examining Whiteness |
Residential Disparities, Discrimination & Segregation | Policing, Law & Incarceration | Racism & Anti-racism | Racism in the Academy |
Scientific & Medical Racism | Voter Suppression | Women, Gender & Sexuality
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by 
White Fragility by
Print (Leyburn & Law) & Ebook
The White Racial Frame by 
White Rage by Activism & Contemporary Movements | Bias | Civil Rights Movement History | Examining Whiteness |
Residential Disparities, Discrimination & Segregation | Policing, Law & Incarceration | Racism & Anti-racism | Racism in the Academy |
Scientific & Medical Racism | Voter Suppression | Women, Gender & Sexuality
The Color of Law by 
Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental quality by 
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by 
The Origins of the Urban Crisis by
Print & Ebook
Toxic Communities: Environmental Racism, Industrial Pollution, and Residential Mobility by 
Won't You Be My Neighbor by
... In Won't You Be My Neighbor?, sociologist Camille Zubrinsky Charles explores how modern racial attitudes shape and are shaped by the places in which people live. Using in-depth survey data and information from focus groups with members of L.A.'s largest racial and ethnic groups, Won't You Be My Neighbor? explores why Los Angeles remains a segregated city ...
Activism & Contemporary Movements | Bias | Civil Rights Movement History | Examining Whiteness |
Residential Disparities, Discrimination & Segregation | Policing, Law & Incarceration | Racism & Anti-racism | Racism in the Academy |
Scientific & Medical Racism | Voter Suppression | Women, Gender & Sexuality
Are Prisons Obsolete? by
Print (Leyburn) & Ebook
The Condemnation of Blackness by 
From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime by
... Challenging the belief that America's prison problem originated with the Reagan administration's War on Drugs, Elizabeth Hinton traces the rise of mass incarceration to an ironic source: the social welfare programs of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society at the height of the civil rights era. Johnson's War on Poverty policies sought to foster equality and economic opportunity. But these initiatives were also rooted in widely shared assumptions about African Americans' role in urban disorder, which prompted Johnson to call for a simultaneous War on Crime. The 1965 Law Enforcement Assistance Act empowered the national government to take a direct role in militarizing local police. Federal anticrime funding soon incentivized social service providers to ally with police departments, courts, and prisons. Under Richard Nixon and his successors, welfare programs fell by the wayside while investment in policing and punishment expanded. Anticipating future crime, policymakers urged states to build new prisons and introduced law enforcement measures into urban schools and public housing, turning neighborhoods into targets of police surveillance. By the 1980s, crime control and incarceration dominated national responses to poverty and inequality. The initiatives of that decade were less a sharp departure than the full realization of the punitive transformation of urban policy implemented by Republicans and Democrats alike since the 1960s.
Locking up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by 
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by 
They Can't Kill Us All by Activism & Contemporary Movements | Bias | Civil Rights Movement History | Examining Whiteness |
Residential Disparities, Discrimination & Segregation | Policing, Law & Incarceration | Racism & Anti-racism | Racism in the Academy |
Scientific & Medical Racism | Voter Suppression | Women, Gender & Sexuality
The Fire Next Time by 
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race by 
How to Be an Antiracist by 
Racism Without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America by 
So You Want to Talk about Race by 
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by 
Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race by
Print (Leyburn) & Ebook
Activism & Contemporary Movements | Bias | Civil Rights Movement History | Examining Whiteness |
Residential Disparities, Discrimination & Segregation | Policing, Law & Incarceration | Racism & Anti-racism | Racism in the Academy |
Scientific & Medical Racism | Voter Suppression | Women, Gender & Sexuality
Invisible Founders by 
The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology by 
Upending the Ivory Tower by Activism & Contemporary Movements | Bias | Civil Rights Movement History | Examining Whiteness |
Residential Disparities, Discrimination & Segregation | Policing, Law & Incarceration | Racism & Anti-racism | Racism in the Academy |
Scientific & Medical Racism | Voter Suppression | Women, Gender & Sexuality
Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-create Race in the Twenty-first Century by 
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by 
Medical Apartheid by
From the era of slavery to the present day, the first full history of black America’s shocking mistreatment as unwilling and unwitting experimental subjects at the hands of the medical establishment. Medical Apartheidis the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge—a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It reveals how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks, and the view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government’s notorious Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less-well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, prisons, and private institutions. The product of years of prodigious research into medical journals and experimental reports long undisturbed,Medical Apartheidreveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. At last, it provides the fullest possible context for comprehending the behavioral fallout that has caused black Americans to view researchers—and indeed the whole medical establishment—with such deep distrust. No one concerned with issues of public health and racial justice can afford not to readMedical Apartheid, a masterful book that will stir up both controversy and long-needed debate.
Activism & Contemporary Movements | Bias | Civil Rights Movement History | Examining Whiteness |
Residential Disparities, Discrimination & Segregation | Policing, Law & Incarceration | Racism & Anti-racism | Racism in the Academy |
Scientific & Medical Racism | Voter Suppression | Women, Gender & Sexuality
One Person, No Vote by Activism & Contemporary Movements | Bias | Civil Rights Movement History | Examining Whiteness |
Residential Disparities, Discrimination & Segregation | Policing, Law & Incarceration | Racism & Anti-racism | Racism in the Academy |
Scientific & Medical Racism | Voter Suppression | Women, Gender & Sexuality
Ain't I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism by
Print (Leyburn & Law) & Ebook
Black Feminist Archaeology by
Print (Leyburn) & Ebook
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment by
Print (Leyburn) & Ebook
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty by 
Pushout: The criminalization of Black girls in schools by 
Sister Outsider by 
This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color by 
Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994 by When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America by Activism & Contemporary Movements | Bias | Civil Rights Movement History | Examining Whiteness |
Residential Disparities, Discrimination & Segregation | Policing, Law & Incarceration | Racism & Anti-racism | Racism in the Academy |
Scientific & Medical Racism | Voter Suppression | Women, Gender & Sexuality
