Don’t Miss a Thing

Get our latest essays, archival selections, reading lists, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.

Reading List June 17, 2022

No Struggle, No Progress

A Juneteenth reading list on racial capitalism, resistance, and remaking the world.

For as long as slavery has existed, there have been those who’ve resisted it, foremost enslaved people themselves. As Frederick Douglass often said, “Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.” That spirit of resistance led not only to the abolition of slavery but also to the defeat of Jim Crow, and it continues to animate today’s struggles against slavery’s legacy of persistent racism and inequality.

In honor of Juneteenth, we have compiled a list of readings that explores this spirit of resistance, from the eighteenth century to the present. With essays about the Atlantic slave rebellions of the Age of Revolution, Nat Turner’s revolt in 1831, the overlooked foundations of post-Reconstruction abolition democracy, the civil rights movement, and this century’s movements for racial justice, our Juneteenth reading list charts the perennial struggle for freedom.

The readings on this list touch on some of the most urgent political questions of our moment: How crucial was slavery to the foundation of the United States? To what extent did the birth of capitalism depend upon the labor of the enslaved? And what can the history of resistance to slavery and white supremacy teach today’s movements about how to effect lasting change?


Walter Johnson
What if we use the history of slavery as a standpoint from which to rethink our notion of justice today?
David Waldstreicher
Critics of the New York Times’s 1619 Project insist the facts don’t support its proslavery reading of the American Revolution. But they obscure a longstanding debate within the field of U.S. history over that very issue.
Steven Hahn
Several recent books offer a more complete, bottom-up picture of the role sailors and Black political actors played in making the Atlantic world.
Peter James Hudson

Recent histories of slavery and capitalism ignore radical black scholarship.

Paul Gowder

The language of universal rights can be a powerful tool for advancing social justice.

Robin D. G. Kelley
While W. E. B. Du Bois praised an expanding penitentiary system, T. Thomas Fortune called for investment in education and a multiracial, working-class movement.
Randal Maurice Jelks

Long before the Civil War, black abolitionists shared the consensus that violence would be necessary to end slavery. Unlike their white peers, their arguments were about when and how to use political violence, not if.

Michael Reagan

Sixty years ago, a pathbreaking jazz album from Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln, and Oscar Brown, Jr., fused politics and art in the fight for Black liberation. Black artists are taking similar strides today.

Alberto Toscano
Frightened slaveowners cast the rebel leader as a monster. Scholars have misunderstood his religiosity. A new creative history comes closer than ever to giving us access to Turner’s visionary life.
Britt Rusert

History has tended to sanitize the lives of abolitionists, many of whom were involved in other radical movements as well, including Free Love, which promoted women’s independence and an end to traditional marriage.

Our weekly themed Reading Lists compile the best of Boston Review’s archive. Previews are delivered to members every Sunday. Become a member to receive them ahead of the crowd.

Boston Review is nonprofit and reader funded.

Contributions from readers enable us to provide a public space, free and open, for the discussion of ideas. Join this effort – become a supporting reader today.

Sign Up for Our
Newsletter

Vital reading on politics, literature, and more in your inbox. Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter, Monthly Roundup, and event notifications.

While we have you...

…we need your help. Confronting the many challenges of COVID-19—from the medical to the economic, the social to the political—demands all the moral and deliberative clarity we can muster. In Thinking in a Pandemic, we’ve organized the latest arguments from doctors and epidemiologists, philosophers and economists, legal scholars and historians, activists and citizens, as they think not just through this moment but beyond it. While much remains uncertain, Boston Review’s responsibility to public reason is sure. That’s why you’ll never see a paywall or ads. It also means that we rely on you, our readers, for support. If you like what you read here, pledge your contribution to keep it free for everyone by making a tax-deductible donation.

Donate Today

Most Recent

Real democratic participation in foreign policy is almost unimaginable today—but this wasn’t always the case.

Daniel Bessner

Family policing is deeply unjust. The nuclear family is too.

Will Holub-Moorman

Workers will benefit from technology when they control how it’s used.

Brishen Rogers

Supporter Membership

$100 / year

If you love Boston Review, support us with this biggest yearly membership.

Membership at this level includes:

  • Print subscription to Boston Review
    (4 issues/year)
  • Digital subscription to Boston Review
    (4 issues/year)
  • Access to our member portal and entire digital archive
  • Curated weekend Reading List
  • Weekly From the Archive newsletter

Digital Membership

$25 / year

Get even more out of Boston Reviewwith our digital membership.

Membership at this level includes:

  • Digital subscription to Boston Review
    (4 issues/year)
  • Access to our member portal and entire digital archive
  • Curated weekend Reading List
  • Weekly From the Archive newsletter

Print Membership

$50 / year

Turn the pages of Boston Review with our best value membership. 

Membership at this level includes:

  • Print subscription to Boston Review
    (4 issues/year)
  • Digital subscription to Boston Review
    (4 issues/year)
  • Access to our member portal and entire digital archive
  • Curated weekend Reading List
  • Weekly From the Archive newsletter