From John Robinson’s fight for African American schools in the late 1800’s to President Obama’s recent historical appointment of Staci Yandle, over 100 years of East St. Louis African American History is covered in Legendary East St. Louisans: An African American Series. Get the book here.
These first-person accounts of people born as slaves are extremely heart-breaking, unintelligible, and yet, highly informative. These narratives were collected in the 1930s as part of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) of the Works Progress Administration, later renamed Work Projects Administration (WPA). These interviews appear in their original format as recorded by the interviewer. Get the book here.