Articles

The New York Times’ 1619 Project — observing the 400th anniversary of American slavery and its implications:

• Our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written. Black Americans have fought to make them true. — Nikole Hannah-Jones
• If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation — Matthew Desmond
• Myths about physical racial differences were used to justify slavery — and are still believed by doctors today. — by Linda Villarosa
• America holds onto an undemocratic assumption from its founding: that some people deserve more power than others. — Jamelle Bouie
• For centuries, black music has been the sound of artistic freedom. No wonder everybody’s always stealing it. — Wesley Morris
• What does a traffic jam in Atlanta have to do with segregation? Quite a lot. — Kevin Kruse
• Why doesn’t the United States have universal health care? The answer begins with policies enacted after the Civil War. — Jeneen Interlandi
• Slavery gave America a fear of black people and a taste for violent punishment. Both still define our prison system. — Bryan Stevenson
• The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the ‘white gold’ that fueled slavery. — Khalil Gibran Muhammad
• A vast wealth gap, driven by segregation, redlining, evictions and exclusion, separates black and white America. — Trymaine Lee
• Their ancestors were enslaved by law. Today, they are graduates of the nation’s preeminent historically black law school. — Djeneba Aduayom

“The Slave Who Sued For Freedom” — American Heritage

“A Slave Named Gordon” — New York Times

“The Making of Asian America” — New York Times

“A Northern Family Confronts Its Slaveholding Past” — Smithsonian

“The Profound Significance of ‘High on the Hog’” — New York Times

Books

• A People’s History of the United States — Howard Zinn
• 12 Years a Slave — Solomon Northup
• Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South — Stephanie Camp
• Roots — Alex Haley
• Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History — Yunte Huang
• The Great Negro Plot: A Tale of Conspiracy and Murder in Eighteenth-Century New York — Mat Johnson
• Uncle Tom’s Cabin — Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas — Frederick Douglass
• Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” — Zora Neale Hurston
• Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl — Harriet Jacobs
• The Making of Asian America: A History — Erika Lee
• Four Hundred Souls — Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N Blain
• Strangers From a Different Shore — Ronald Takaki
• Slaves in the Family — Edward Ball
• The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story — Nikole Hannah-Jones
• Caste — Isabel Wilkerson
• The Chinese in America: A Narrative History — Iris Chang
• Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination — Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter S. Onuf
• The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family — Annette Gordon-Reed

Documentaries

• Enslaved — Simcha Jacobovici
• Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North — Katrina Browne
• High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America — Roger Ross Williams

Film/Television

• Roots: The Complete Television Miniseries — Alex Haley
• Amistad —  Steven Spielberg
• 12 Years a Slave — Steve McQueen
• Harriet — Kasi Lemmons

Websites

• Dred Scott Case also known as Dred Scott v. Sandford
• Fortune’s Story in 18th Century Waterbury, Connecticut
• Hidden Museum Treasures: Fortune’s Bones18th-Century Slave Gets New Life, New Recognition
• “The American Colonization Society”
• Tracing Center
• “How a Movement to Send Freed Slaves to Africa Created Liberia”
• “Building the White House”
• “Enslaved Workers on the White House Grounds”
• Websites on Benjamin Banneker — Biography.com and WhiteHouseHistory.org
• “Witchhunt in New York: The 1741 rebellion”

Video

• Frederick Douglass’ Descendants Deliver His ‘Fourth Of July’ Speech

Books

• Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln — John Stauffer
• The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery — Eric Foner
• Lincoln on Race and Slavery — Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Film/Television

• Glory — Edward Zwick
• Lincoln — Steven Spielberg
• Gone with the Wind — David O. Selznick

Books

• Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy — Eric Foner
• On Juneteenth — Annette Gordon-Reed
• Andrew Johnson — Annette Gordon-Reed

Documentaries

• 13th — Ava DuVernay

Websites

• Emancipation Day in Washington, D.C.
• 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Abolition of Slavery (1865)

Articles

• “100 Years Later, What’s The Legacy Of ‘Birth Of A Nation’?” —  NPR
• “The Worst Thing About “Birth of a Nation” Is How Good It Is” — Richard Brody; The New Yorker
• “How ‘The Birth of a Nation’ Revived the Ku Klux Klan: D.W. Griffith’s controversial epic 1915 film about the Civil War and Reconstruction depicted the Ku Klux Klan as valiant saviors of a post-war South ravaged by Northern carpetbaggers and freed blacks” — Alexis Clark

Books

• Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 — W.E.B. DuBois
• Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow — Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
• Nothing But Freedom — Eric Foner

Documentaries

• Reconstruction: America After the Civil War — Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
• Slavery by Another Name — Samuel D. Pollard
• The Birth of a Nation (1915) — D. W. Griffith

Websites

• “The White House and Reconstruction”
• The Reconstruction (13th, 14th & 15th) Amendments
• The Civil Rights Bill of 1866

Articles

• Plessy v Ferguson — C. Vann Woodward
• “Pauli Murray Should Be a Household Name. A New Film Shows Why.” — New York Times

Books

• The Souls of Black Folk — W.E.B. DuBois
• Song in a Weary Throat — Pauli Murray

Film/Television

• The Great White Hope — Jack Johnson
• Imitation of Life (1934) — John M. Stahl
• Imitation of Life (1959) — Douglas Sirk
• Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner — Stanley Kramer

PubArticles

• “How racism in Silicon Valley stops many Asian-Americans achieving their potential”

Books

• When Affirmative Action Was White — Ira Katznelson
• White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf — Aaron Bobrow-Strain
• Seattle in Black and White — Joan Singler, Jean Durning, Bettylou Valentine, Maid Adams
• Hum Bows, Not Hot Dogs — Bob Santos
• Bernie Whitebear: An Urban Indian’s Quest for Justice — Lawney L. Reyes
• The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans – and How We Can Fix It — Dorothy A. Brown
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America — Richard Rothstein
• The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together — Heather McGhee
• The Alchemy of Race and Rights – Patricia J. Williams
• No No Boys — John Okada

Documentaries

• Eyes on the Prize — Henry Hampton
• Interviews from Eyes on the Prize
• Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People
• 4 Little Girls — Spike Lee
• Fannie Lou Hamer: Stand Up — Mississippi Public Broadcasting
  
• John Lewis: Good Trouble — Dawn Porter
• I am not your Negro — Raoul Peck
• The House I live In — Eugene Jarecki

Film/Television

• Selma — Ava DuVernay
• Sounder — Martin Ritt

Website

• “We’re On Our Way” speech — Fannie Lou Hamer

Articles

• “The pernicious myth of a Caucasian race” — Joel Dinerstein, LA Times
• “John Boyega: ‘I’m the only cast member whose experience of Star Wars was based on their race’” — Jimi Famurewa, GQ Magazine British Edition, September 2, 2020
• Black With (Some) White Privilege — Anna Holmes, New York Times

Books

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents — Isabel Wilkerson
• The History of White People — Nell Irwin Painter
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness — Michelle Alexander
• White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race — Ian Haney López
• When She Was White: The True Story of a Family Divided by Race — Judith Stone
• Passing — Nella Larsen

Documentaries

• The Loving Generation — Lacy Schwartz and Mehret Mandefro
• Lenox Hill – Season 1

Articles

• “Give small, make a big difference” — Bill Clinton, The Guardian
• “Shifting Philanthropy From Charity to Justice” — Dorian O. Burton and Brian C.B. Barnes, Stanford Social Innovation Review

Books

• Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Resource Balance — Edgar Villanueva
• Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian England — Seth Koven

Websites

• “African American Philanthropy: A Culture of Generosity” — Stanford Social Innovation Review

Articles

• “Why my “good intentions” aren’t enough to dismantle white superiority” — Francesca Moroney
• “5 Phrases Your Black Friend Wishes You’d Stop Saying: If you start practicing now, you can probably eliminate these words from your vocabulary by Black History Month” — Ajah Hales
• “What is intersectionality, and what does it have to do with me?” — YW Boston Blog

Books

• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism — Robin DiAngelo
• So You Want to Talk About Race — Ijeoma Oluo
• How To Be An Antiracist — Ibram X. Kendi

Video

• The Urgency of Intersectionality — Kimberlé Crenshaw
  

Websites

• Critical Racial & Social Justice Education — Robin DiAngelo
• Boston University Center for Antiracist Research — Ibram X. Kendi