Florida's Black History
This bibliography lists some of the published works in the State Library on African-American heritage in Florida.
Materials are generally available through interlibrary loan from the circulating collection of the State Library.
Links within the bibliographies take you to information in our State Library catalog or to more information on external sites.
Books
- Baptist, Edward E. Creating an Old South: Middle Florida’s Plantation Frontier Before the Civil War. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
- Brown, Canter. Florida’s Black Public Officials, 1867-1924. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1998.
- Bush, Gregory Wallace. White Sand, Black Beach: Civil Rights, Public Space, and Miami's Virginia Key. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2016.
- Clavin, Matthew J. Battle of Negro Fort: the Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2021.
- Clemons, Mae O. Florida’s Forgotten Legacy: Segregated Black Secondary Schools. Tallahassee, FL: Mae O. Clemons, 2006.
- Daniels, Anthony Lewis. The Impact of Voter Suppression Laws on African American Participation in Florida and North Carolina From 1988 to 2012. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2015.
- Deagan, Kathleen A. Fort Mose: Colonial America's Black Fortress of Freedom. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1995.
- DeVane, Dwight, Blaine Waide, Peggy A. Bulger, Doris J. Dyen and David Evans. Drop on Down in Florida: Recent Field Recordings of African American Traditional Music 1977-1980. Atlanta, GA: Dust-to-Digital, 2012.
- Federal Writers’ Project. Florida Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in Florida From Interviews With Former Slaves. Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, 2006.
- Fortune, Timothy Thomas, and Daniel R. Weinfeld. After War Times: An African American Childhood in Reconstruction-Era Florida. Tuscaloosa, AL: The University Alabama Press, 2014.
- Fulton, Sybrina, and Tracy Martin. Rest in Power: the Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin. New York, NY: Spiegel & Grau, 2018.
- Johnson, Devon, Patricia Y. Warren, Amy Farrell, and Lawrence D. Bobo. Deadly Injustice: Trayvon Martin, Race, and the Criminal Justice System. New York, NY: New York University Press, 2015.
- McCarthy, Kevin M. African American Sites in Florida. Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press, 2007.
- Meade, Desmond. Let My People Vote: My Battle to Restore the Civil Rights of Returning Citizens. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2020.
- O'Brien, William E. Landscapes of Exclusion: State Parks and Jim Crow in the American South. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016.
- Ortiz, Paul. Emancipation Betrayed: the Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida From Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005.
- Paul, Richard, and Steven Moss. We Could Not Fail: The First African Americans in the Space Program. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2016.
- Richardson, Joe Martin. African Americans in the Reconstruction of Florida, 1865-1877. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2008.
- Rose, Chanelle N. The Struggle for Black Freedom in Miami: Civil Rights and America's Tourist Paradise, 1896-1968. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2015.
- Schweninger, Loren. Appealing for Liberty: Freedom Suits in the South. New York, NY: Oxford university press, 2019.
- Valk, Anne M., and Leslie Brown. Living With Jim Crow: African American Women and Memories of the Segregated South. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
- Warren, Dan R. If it Takes All Summer: Martin Luther King, the KKK, and States' Rights in St. Augustine, 1964. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2008.
- White, Derrick E. Blood, Sweat, & Tears: Jake Gaither, Florida A & M, and the History of Black College Football. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019.
- Williams, Randall. No Man's Yoke on My Shoulders: Personal Accounts of Slavery in Florida. Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2006.
- Winsboro, Irvin D. S. Florida's Freedom Struggle: the Black Experience From Colonial Time to the New Millennium. Cocoa, FL: Florida Historical Society Press, 2010.
- Winsboro, Irvin D. S. Old South, New South, or Down South? Florida and the Modern Civil Rights Movement. Morgantown, WV: West Virginia University Press, 2009.
CORE members during sit-in at Woolworth's lunch counter in Tallahassee.
Articles of interest
- Bartley, Abel. “Reading, Writing and Racism: The Fight to Desegregate the Duval County Public School System.” The Journal of Negro History 86, no. 3 (2001): 336–47.
- Brown, Canter. “Race Relations in Territorial Florida, 1821-1845.” Florida Historical Quarterly 73, no. 3 (1995): 287-307.
- Danese, Tracy E. “Disenfranchisement, Women’s Suffrage and the Failure of the Grandfather Clause.” Florida Historical Quarterly 74, no.2 (1995): 117-131.
- Klos, George. “Blacks and the Seminole Removal Debate, 1821-1835.”Florida Historical Quarterly 68, no.1 (1989): 55-78.
- Palmer, Kathryn. "Losing Lincoln: Black Educators, Historical Memory, and the Desegregation of Lincoln High School in Gainesville, Florida." The Florida Historical Quarterly 95, no. 1 (2016): 26-70. Accessed February 15, 2021.
- Rivers, Larry E. and Canter Brown Jr. “African Americans in South Florida: A Home and a Haven for Reconstruction-Era Leaders.”Tequesta 1, no. 56 (1996): 5-23.
- Shircliffe, Barbara J. “Rethinking Turner v. Keefe: The Parallel Mobilization of African-American and White Teachers in Tampa, Florida, 1936–1946.” History of Education Quarterly 52, no. 1 (February 2012): 99–136.
- Solomon, Irvin D. and Grace Erhart. “Race and Civil War in South Florida.” Florida Historical Quarterly 77, no. 3 (1999): 320-341.
- Winsboro, Irvin D. “Give Them Their Due: A Reassessment of African Americans and Union Military Service in Florida During the Civil War.” The Journal of African American History 92, no. 3 (2007): 327–46.
This bibliography is not an exhaustive listing of published works related to Florida African-American History. For more references, please consult the bibliographic listings of the suggested books and your local public library.
