MSC’s Library Contains Nearly 3,000 Titles in Black History, Community Organizing, and Movement Building
The air in Oakland, Calif., vibrates with the community’s diversity, along with its storied commitment to social justice movements. The 2020 Bay Area Census revealed a diverse population consisting of 29% Latine, 27% white, 21% Black or African American, and 16% Asian. During World War II, thousands of Black individuals relocated to the Bay Area; “West Oakland blossomed into a vibrant cultural and social hub, where churches, clubs, and corner stores served as the heartbeat of everyday life.” The Black Panther Party for Self Defense was founded here in 1966. The city is home to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Equal Justice Society, and Urban Peace Movement (a former fiscally sponsored project of MSC). Since our founding in 2001, MSC has proudly counted ourselves among the network of social justice organizations who call Oakland home.
While many of our staff work remotely, we maintain a physical space in the city where Oakland-based or visiting staff, friends, and/or partners can gather. The space, which is also used for meetings and events, is home to the MSC library. What began as MSC co-founder Taj James’ personal library has grown to include nearly 3,000 (mostly nonfiction) books — many of which are hard to find or out of print.
We’re in an era characterized by mis- and disinformation and threats to open flow of knowledge. An era where books bans are normalized; where libraries and librarians are seen as “dangerous.” In 2025, PEN America reported 23,000 cases of banning in public schools since 2021. We’re committed to reading freely and widely, preserving history, and understanding the full scope of the past and its effects on our present moment. Among our thousands of titles, you’ll find books on Black history, Critical Race Theory, gender studies, Indigenous culture, community organizing, and dozens of other topics.
MSC intern KC Cunningham organized and cataloged the collection we’ve grown and stewarded since 2001. Below, we’ve shared just a few highlights from shelves bursting with stories of liberation, interdependence, and radical resilience.
Images and descriptions via Bookshop.org, excepting “Resistance and Revolution” (image/description from Rutgers University Press).
Democracy on Trial: Social Movements and Cultural Politics in Postauthoritarian Taiwan (Ya-Chung Chuang): “Writing ‘an ethnography of democracy,’ Ya-Chung Chuang masterfully describes and analyzes a multifaceted Taiwanese society … [tracing] a genealogy of pivotal concepts, such as sovereignty, identity, and locality, at the heart of Taiwan’s democratic discourse and relates the experience of democracy as ‘a way of life’ from the viewpoints of a variety of subjects, including social movement participants, urban community members, and ethnic activists. His book explores the loaded meaning of democracy.”
The Shadow of Slavery (Pete Daniel): Peonage is a “largely ignored form of 20th-century slavery … [that] grew out of labor settlements following emancipation, when employers forbade croppers to leave plantations because of debt (often less than $30). At the turn of the century the federal government acknowledged that the ‘labyrinth of local customs and laws’ binding men in debt was peonage. They outlawed debt servitude and slowly moved against it, but with no large success.”
Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (Vine Deloria Jr.): “The author observes, ‘The Indian world has changed so substantially since the first publication of this book that some things contained in it seem new again.’ Indeed, it seems that each generation of whites and Indians will have to read and reread Vine Deloria’s Manifesto for some time to come, before we absorb his special, ironic Indian point of view and what he tells us, with a great deal of humor, about U.S. race relations, federal bureaucracies, Christian churches, and social scientists. This book continues to be required reading for all Americans, whatever their special interest.”
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (Eduardo Galeano): This text “set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx. Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, [Galeano organized] the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation … These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe. Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people.”
Between Resistance and Revolution: Cultural Politics and Social Protest (Edited by Richard G. Fox and Orin Starn): “Peasants in India hugging trees to protest logging, Brazilian feminists marching to impeach a president, Okinawan television comedians joke-starting ethnic activity. All are instances of social protest that exist in the charged territory between the cataclysmic upheaval of revolutionary war and the everyday acts of private resistance. Yet these movements ‘in between’ resistance and revolution have remained invisible to scholars of politics, culture, and society. Leading scholars in anthropology, political science, history, sociology, and ethnomusicology examine dissent and direct action in Australia, Brazil, Germany, Colombia, India, Korea, Peru, and the United States and demonstrate the importance of looking beyond these poles of protest to the midways of mobilization.”
The Fatal Harvest Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture (Edited by Andrew Kimbrell): This “an unprecedented look at our current ecologically destructive agricultural system … demonstrates that industrial food production is indeed a ‘fatal harvest’ — fatal to consumers, fatal to our landscapes, fatal to genetic diversity, and fatal to our farm communities. … Designed to aid the movement to reform industrial agriculture, ‘Fatal Harvest’ informs and influences the activists, farmers, policymakers, and consumers who are seeking a safer and more sustainable food future.
Finding Freedom: How Death Row Broke and Opened My Heart (Jarvis Jay Masters): “There are many forms of liberation — some that exist at the mercy of circumstance and others that can never be taken away. In this stirring and timely collection of stories, essays, poems, and letters, Jarvis Jay Masters … reveals his life as a young African American man surrounded by violence, his entanglement in the criminal justice system, and — following an encounter with Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche — an unfolding commitment to nonviolence and peacemaking.”
Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Trinh T. Minh-Ha): A book “located at the juncture of a number of different fields and disciplines … pushing the boundaries of these disciplines further. It is one of the very few theoretical attempts to grapple with the writings of women of color … Highly recommended for anyone struggling to understand voices and experiences of those ‘we’ label ‘other.’”
Racially Mixed People in America (Maria P.P. Root): While “America has been the breeding ground of a ‘biracial baby boom’ … there has been a dearth of information regarding how racially mixed people identify and view themselves and how they relate to one another. ‘Racially Mixed People in America’ steadily bridges this gap and offers a comprehensive look at the social and psychological adjustment of mixed-race people, models for identity development, contemporary immigration and marriage patterns, and methodological issues involved in conducting research with mixed-race people, all in the context of America′s mixed race past and present.”
If you’re local to Oakland, the African American Museum and Library at Oakland is “dedicated to the discovery, preservation, interpretation, and sharing of historical and cultural experiences of African Americans in California and the West.” The Black Panther Party Museum maintains the largest archival collection on the Black Panther Party worldwide. West Oakland Cultural Action Fund founders David and Jacqueline Peters offer Black Liberation Walking Tours through Oakland that explore the history, culture, and lived experiences of folks in the neighborhood. Can’t get to Oakland? Check out our online resources!
