Reading list · 13 books

Civil rights and LGBTQ New York

Books on Harlem, school integration, the Stonewall uprising and the AIDS activists of ACT UP.

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The history

Black Manhattan (opens Bookshop.org)

James Weldon Johnson · 1930

Johnson, a writer and NAACP leader, wrote this history of Black New York from the Dutch period to the Harlem of the 1920s, including its theater and music.
The history

When Harlem Was in Vogue (opens Bookshop.org)

David Levering Lewis · 1981

The writers, artists and patrons of 1920s Harlem and the political aims behind the movement, in Lewis's account.
Memoir

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (opens Bookshop.org)

Malcolm X and Alex Haley · 1965

Told to Alex Haley, Malcolm X recounts his life from Michigan through Harlem, prison and the Nation of Islam, and his break with it.
The history

Knocking at Our Own Door (opens Bookshop.org)

Milton A. Galamison and the Struggle to Integrate New York City Schools

Clarence Taylor · 1997

A biography of the Brooklyn minister who led the school boycotts of the 1960s, and of the city's fight over segregated public schools.
The history

The Strike That Changed New York (opens Bookshop.org)

Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis

Jerald E. Podair · 2002

The 1968 teachers' strikes over community control of a Brooklyn school district, and how they divided Black and Jewish New Yorkers.
The history

Gay New York (opens Bookshop.org)

Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940

George Chauncey · 1994

Chauncey documents the bars, streets, bathhouses and social networks of gay men in New York before the Second World War.
The history

Stonewall (opens Bookshop.org)

The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution

David Carter · 2004

Carter reconstructs the June 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn and the days of protest that followed, from interviews and police records.
The history

Stonewall (opens Bookshop.org)

Martin Duberman · 1993

Duberman builds the book around six people who lived in the gay New York of the time, and places the night of the riot inside their stories.
Reference

The Stonewall Riots (opens Bookshop.org)

A Documentary History

Marc Stein · 2019

Stein collects police reports, newspaper stories, movement flyers and other documents from the raid and the years around it.
Reporting

How to Survive a Plague (opens Bookshop.org)

The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS

David France · 2016

France, a New York reporter, writes about ACT UP and the activists who pressed for AIDS treatments through the mid-1990s.
The history

Let the Record Show (opens Bookshop.org)

A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993

Sarah Schulman · 2021

Schulman, a member of ACT UP, draws on hundreds of interviews to cover the group's actions, internal fights and results.
Reporting

And the Band Played On (opens Bookshop.org)

Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic

Randy Shilts · 1987

Shilts reports on the epidemic's first years in New York, San Francisco and Washington, and the slow public and government response.
Memoir

Manchild in the Promised Land (opens Bookshop.org)

Claude Brown · 1965

Brown's memoir of growing up in 1940s and 1950s Harlem takes in gangs, the reform school and how he got out.