Black History Month, which had its origins in Chicago during the summer of 1915, According to the Black History Month  founding organization, Association for the Study of African-American Life and History, “the 2025 Black History Month theme, African Americans, and Labor, focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, a federal holiday since 1983, honors the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights leader whose most well-known areas of advocacy include civil rights and racial equality, voting rights, nonviolent resistance, economic justice, fair housing, and opposition to militarism and poverty. We have numerous books about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Click “read more” to see the list of titles we have available in our adult collection. If you would like books from the children’s collection, we encourage you to visit our Youth and Family Services department to find titles suitable for your child’s reading ability.