Sankofa Communists
5 minutes
Our approach to education is dialectical.
While we maintain a core educational program, we also recognize that no single curriculum can encompass the entirety of human knowledge and experience. For this reason, we have created the Selected Readings on History list.
This reading list is intended to encourage comrades to explore historical works, perspectives, and subjects that fall outside of our formal educational program during their own time. While comrades should continue progressing through the core curriculum, they are also encouraged to read other books outside of this list and the curriculum.
Alongside the study of Marxist theory, we study history—especially the histories of Black, Brown, Indigenous, colonized, and working-class peoples—to deepen our understanding of how class struggle has developed across different societies and historical periods. These readings do not replace Marxist theory; rather, they supplement and enrich it by providing concrete historical examples and experiences.
Comrades are encouraged to form independent reading groups around these works and engage in collective discussion and study. We recommend presenting brief summaries, lead-offs, reviews, or educational discussions on these readings at branch meetings, provided they are coordinated in advance.
These books are not mandatory. The purpose of this collection is to broaden our understanding of history, society, and struggle while fostering intellectual curiosity and independent study.
Our goal is not to read every book ever written, but to develop disciplined Marxists with a deep historical understanding, strong analytical skills, and a clear political perspective.
- The New Jim Crow — Michelle Alexander
- The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. — Martin Luther King Jr., edited by Clayborne Carson
- The Groundings with My Brothers — Walter Rodney
- The Wretched of the Earth — Frantz Fanon
- Discourse on Colonialism — Aimé Césaire
- This Nonviolent Stuff Will Get You Killed — Charles E. Cobb Jr.
- Those Who Saw the Sun: African American Oral Histories from the Jim Crow South Book by Jaha Nailah Avery
- They Were Her Property — Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
- Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party — Joshua Bloom & Waldo E. Martin Jr.
- 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus — Charles C. Mann
- Pre-Colonial Black Africa — Cheikh Anta Diop
- The African Origin of Civilization — Cheikh Anta Diop
- The Cultural Unity of Black Africa — Cheikh Anta Diop
- Born in Blood and Fire — John Charles Chasteen
- Che: A Revolutionary Life — Jon Lee Anderson
- The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano — Olaudah Equiano
- Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass — Frederick Douglass
- The Mis-Education of the Negro — Carter G. Woodson
- Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South — Keri Leigh Merritt
- The Fire Next Time — James Baldwin
- The Racial Hierarchy — C Paul grandson
- Class Struggle in the Roman Republic — Neil Faulkner
- Hood Feminism — Mikki Kendall
- Problems of Women’s Liberation — Evelyn Reed
- When Women Rebel — Evelyn Reed
- Women’s History of the World — Rosalind Miles
- India: A History — John Keay
- China: A History — John Keay
- A History of Modern Iran — Ervand Abrahamian
- Bolívar: American Liberator — Marie Arana
- Fifth Sun — Camilla Townsend
- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee — Dee Brown
- The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine — Ilan Pappé
- Congo: The Epic History of a People — David Van Reybrouck
- The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt - Toby Wilkinson
- A History of Korea — Kyung Moon Hwang
- The Color of Law — Richard Rothstein
- The Taínos: Rise and Decline of the People Who Greeted Columbus — Irving Rouse
- War Against All Puerto Ricans — Nelson A. Denis
- The Assassination of Fred Hampton — Jeffrey Haas
- The Fred Hampton Reader — Edited by Jeffrey Haas
- Mansa Musa and the Empire of Mali — P. James Oliver
- Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl — Harriet Ann Jacobs
- Thomas Sankara: The Burkina Faso Revolution — Ernest Harsch
- Blood In My Eye—George Jackson
- Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism—Harsha Walia
- Are Prisons Obsolete—Angela Davis
- African Gender Studies—Edited by Oyeronke Oyewumi
- Black Bourgeoisie- E. Franklin Frazier
- A History of the Guyanese Working People—Walter Rodney
- Capitalism and Slavery—Eric Williams
- Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life In A Northern City—St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton
- Revolutionary Suicide—Huey P. Newton
- Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals—Saidiya Hartman
- Killing The Black Body— Dorothy E. Roberts