From the library collection of the National Women's History Alliance 

African American History Collection

Growing Up in The Ville in St. Louis, MO Paperback 
by Pauline E Merry (Author), John M Goodman (Designer)

Five mostly autobiographical short stories are about a little colored girl who grew up in St Louis during the 1940s and 50s, with her observations about her safe, middle-class upbringing in a segregated city that allowed her to develop the intellectual and social skills that served her so well as an adult. These personal insights into the life of a smart, curious, adventuresome little girl who wanted never to be "ordinary" are augmented by the author's social commentary about how people of color were treated during those years and how white control and dominance dictated the behaviors of everyone, blacks and whites alike.
Paper, 127 pages, pub. 2022

We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century
by Dorothy Sterling (Editor),

Including oral history, letters, and excerpts from diaries, this is a documentary study of 2 million black slave women and 200,000 free black women in the 19th century.)
"A remarkable documentary and the first in-depth record of many black women, slave and free."--Dorothy B. Porter, curator emeritus, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University
Paper, 535 pages. pub. 1984

African American Life on the Southern Hunting Plantation
Compiled by Titus Brown and James "Jack" Hadley 

Within these pages are the stories of fifteen African Americans who were closely involved in plantation life in the first half of the century. Explored are the unique relationships between the plantation owners and their employees, and between black and white families. 
Paper,  128 pages. pub. 2000