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This video that gives an overview of the death of Emmett Till which provides context to the short read aloud of the excerpt as he is referenced throughout Ghost Boys. This video also exemplifies one of many cases throughout our history of racial injustices and relates it back to current events in our society where racial injustice is still prevalent today. This can spark another conversation and a mini research activity where students can take the opportunity to investigate other past or current occurrences of racial injustice and police brutality.

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The Body Of Emmett Till | 100 Photos | TIME

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This is a short video of the author of another novel called Ghost Boys which depicts the same themes and a similar plot. She does a read aloud of an excerpt that can easily connect to the anchor text, All American Boys. This can spark a conversation about how the message in this particular excerpt connects with the novel and relate back to past and current events.

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Jewell Parker Rhodes reads an excerpt from Ghost Boys

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This is an interview with both authors of the book as they discuss race and the novel's intent or purpose from their perspective.

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Writing About Race: New Book "All American Boys" Encourages Honest Conversation

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The new book "All American Boys" tells the story of two teenagers, one black and one white, after an incident of police brutality. Authors Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely discuss the book and with NBCBLK editor, Amber Payne.

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This article provides some context on the history of police brutality in America. This will provide some background information to enhance their understanding of the events taking place in the novel.

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Introduction
As part of their jobs, police officers sometimes use force when detaining or arresting people. If the police use more force than is reasonably required to perform their duties safely, this excessive force is considered police brutality. Police brutality is always unwarranted and is often illegal. Forms of police brutality have ranged from beatings and other physical assaults to torture and murder.

In the United States people of all races, ethnicities, ages, classes, and genders have been subjected to police brutality. However, police brutality has most often been directed against the poor and working classes and minorities, including Hispanics, Muslims, LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, transgender, and queer) people, and especially African Americans.

Whitney Curtis-The New York Times/Redux

The great majority of victims of police brutality in the United States have been African American. According to most experts, a key factor explaining this fact is racism among members of mostly white police departments. Similar prejudices are thought to have played a role in police brutality committed against other historically oppressed or marginalized groups.

In addition to racism, other factors underlying police brutality include the unique culture of urban police departments. This culture stresses group solidarity, loyalty, and a "show of force" approach to any challenge to an officer's authority. For rookie officers, acceptance and success within the department depend upon adopting the attitudes, values, and practices of the group. Historically, these attitudes, values, and practices have been infused with anti-Black racism.

The Great Migration
The racism underpinning U.S. police brutality has a long history, dating back hundreds of years to the institution of slavery. Interactions between African Americans and modern urban police departments were initially shaped in the 20th century, during what is known as the Great Migration. From 1916 to 1970 several million African Americans from the rural South moved to urban areas of the North and West. They sought better jobs and wages and hoped to escape racial oppression, which was entrenched in the South.

In the North most white communities, including white police departments, were not used to the presence of African Americans. They reacted to the increasing numbers of Black people in their areas with fear and hostility. Influenced by deeply ingrained racist stereotypes, many white people thought that African Americans-especially Black men-had a natural tendency to commit crimes. Urban police departments acted on this belief. They thought that African Americans needed to be watched all the time and that their movements needed to be restricted in order to keep white people safe. By the mid-1950s, many urban police departments viewed their missions as essentially protecting whites from Blacks.

This situation gave rise to police brutality against African Americans in many forms, including physical assaults and excessive use of force. The brutality also included unlawful arrests, racial slurs and other verbal abuse, threats, and police homicides-murders of civilians by police.

For a variety of reasons, police brutality increased after World War II. White people from rural areas increasingly began moving to cities. They were used to lynchings-a form of mob violence in which groups of whites attacked Black people. The lynchings were supposedly carried out to punish Black people for committing crimes. In reality, white people used the attacks to terrorize and oppress the Black population. The police in urban areas viewed their own violence against African Americans as a more acceptable way to control Black people than the mob hysteria of the rural whites. In effect, police brutality replaced lynchings as a means of oppressing Blacks. During this period, white supremacist and terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan operated openly in Southern cities. There, police brutality against African Americans was abetted by government and political leaders, district attorneys, and judges, among others.

In many cities, especially in the North, large numbers of white people left the cities for the suburbs. The growing population of African Americans in the cities was thus more visible. Such demographic changes made African Americans as a group appear more threatening to white police officers.

Beginning in the 1970s, many African Americans joined local police forces. Many of the Black officers themselves committed serious acts of brutality against African American civilians, in part because they wished to be seen as "good cops" and to be otherwise accepted within their departments.

Finally, urban crime rates increased greatly in the 1970s and '80s, including in predominantly African American and other minority neighborhoods. This strengthened the perception among white police officers and whites generally of African Americans as inherently criminal.

Police brutality against African Americans had become a serious problem in many urban areas by the mid-20th century. However, most whites remained unaware of it until about the mid-1960s. This was in large part because policy brutality was not often reported in the media. Most big-city newspapers (whose readerships were primarily white) did not consider police brutality against Black people to be newsworthy.

Police Brutality and Race Riots
From the 1960s, many "race riots," or riots caused by racial discord, broke out in urban America. Police brutality-and the failure to hold police offers accountable for brutality-sparked many of the riots. Among them were riots in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, in 1965 and in Detroit, Michigan, in 1967. In 1980 the Liberty City section of Miami, Florida, erupted over the police killing of an unarmed African American man.

Twelve years later Los Angeles police officers severely beat Rodney King, an African American man who had been pulled over for speeding and had tried to escape-and the beating was caught on videotape. The police officers were arrested, but at trial they were acquitted of almost all charges. This triggered the Los Angeles Riots of 1992. During a period of six days, more than 50 people were killed and more than 2,300 were injured. Property damage was estimated at about $1 billion.

In 2014 a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, shot an unarmed African American teenager, Michael Brown. After a grand jury decided not to indict the officer on criminal charges, rioting broke out in Ferguson. Later race riots-along with peaceful demonstrations-followed the deaths in police custody of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2015 and George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2020, both of whom were African American.

Antibrutality Campaigns
Most victims of police brutality, including not only African Americans but also whites and other ethnic groups, have come from the ranks of the poor and low-income working classes. As a result, they have lacked significant political influence or financial resources. These factors often made it difficult for them to publicize complaints of police brutality. Nevertheless, African Americans and others have established antibrutality campaigns in nearly every major U.S. city with a sizable Black population. In sometimes large demonstrations, members of victimized communities have demanded an end to police brutality. They have also called for accountability for guilty officers and major reforms, including the hiring of more Black police officers and the placement of more Black officers in supervisory positions. Demonstrators have also demanded racially integrated patrols or Black-only patrols in African American neighborhoods, civilian review boards, and federal investigation of certain cases of police brutality. Some people have called for defunding police departments, or reducing police budgets and reallocating the money to community social services, such as mental health, conflict resolution, education, and health care services.

The tactics of those fighting against police brutality have included street protests, sit-ins, boycotts, and close monitoring of police activity. From the late 20th century, witnesses have captured videos of police brutality with handheld cameras and cell phones.

In 2013-14 antibrutality activists started a powerful social movement called Black Lives Matter. In 2013 it began as an online movement using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter. The movement grew in the wake of the deaths of Brown and Eric Garner in 2014. Garner, a Black man from New York, died after a white police officer held him in a prolonged illegal choke hold. The Black Lives Matter movement came to play a prominent role in nationwide protests following other extreme acts of police brutality against African Americans. Notably, Black Lives Matter activists organized massive and highly influential protests after the death of Floyd in 2020. Floyd was killed while being restrained by a white police officer, with the officer kneeling on his neck for several minutes. The protests lasted for weeks, spread to cities throughout the country and internationally, and drew widespread attention to the issues of anti-Black police violence and entrenched racism in society.

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Introduction As part of their jobs, police officers sometimes use force when detaining or arresting people. If the police use more force than is reasonably required to perform their duties safely, this excessive force is considered police brutality. Police brutality is always unwarranted and is often illegal.

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This article explore the Black Lives Matter movement which ties in with the events that follow Rashad's attack. This brings awareness to the purpose and message that the BLM movement represents which connects really well with how various members of the community and a few key characters choose to cope and advocate for justice. This can spark up a conversation about the significance of this movement in particular and how it relates to the theme(s) and messages depicted in the novel. This can also be related to current events.

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Updated June 2, 2020

Black Lives Matter: An Activist Movement

Black Lives Matter is an activist movement which began as a hashtag (#BlackLivesMatter) after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American teenager killed in Florida in July 2013. The movement became more widely known and popularized after two high-profile deaths in 2014 of unarmed African-American men (Eric Garner in Staten Island, NY and Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO). Neither of the police officers involved in their deaths were indicted (i.e., formally charged with a crime).

Violence against African Americans

There is a larger context and history of African American men and boys who were killed at the hands of the police, many of whom, like George Floyd (2020), were unarmed. Since 2014, other high-profile deaths include Tamir Rice (2014), Laquan McDonald (2014), John Crawford (2014) Freddie Gray (2015), Walter Scott (2015), Alton Sterling (2016), Philando Castile (2016), Terence Crutcher (2016), Antwon Rose (2018) and others. Black women and girls are also targets of police violence, a reality that sparked the "Say Her Name" movement to highlight how this violence often goes unnoticed. Women who have died as a result of police interactions include Sandra Bland (2015), Deborah Danner (2016), Atatiana Jefferson (2019) and Breonna Taylor (2020).

From Protests to Policy Solutions

Ongoing local and national protests and other actions-often sparked by the deaths of other unarmed African Americans-have brought the Black Lives Matter movement to the public consciousness and conversation. Black Lives activists released "Campaign Zero," which includes ten policy solutions developed in conjunction with activists, protestors and researchers across the country, integrating community demands, input from research organizations and the President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing.

On March 4, 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the findings in two separate investigations related to Ferguson. One report found a pattern of civil rights violations on the part of the Ferguson Police Department. A second report determined that "the evidence examined in its independent, federal investigation into the fatal shooting of Michael Brown does not support federal civil rights charges against Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson." Two weeks later, on March 17, the Department and the city of Ferguson formally announced an agreement "aiming to remedy the unconstitutional law enforcement conduct that the Justice Department found during its civil pattern-or-practice investigation." The announcement resolved a pending federal lawsuit against Ferguson, and addressed a range of issues including bias-free police and court practices, protecting all individuals' First Amendment rights, and reorienting Ferguson's use of force policies.

Black Lives Matter continues to pursue policy solutions beyond the events of Ferguson.

About the Lesson Plan

This high school lesson provides an opportunity for students to learn more about Black Lives Matter and the activists involved, explore the controversy about using the term "All lives matter," and posit their point of view in writing to a person of their choice.
Learning Objectives:

Students will learn about the history of the Black Lives Matter movement and how it evolved.

Students will analyze the controversy around politicians and other people using the term "All lives matter" instead of or in addition to "Black lives matter."

Students will reflect on their perspective of Black Lives Matter and write a letter to a person of their choice which reflects their new knowledge and point of view.

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Black Lives Matter: From Hashtag to Movement

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Updated June 2, 2020 Black Lives Matter is an activist movement which began as a hashtag (#BlackLivesMatter) after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African-American teenager killed in Florida in July 2013.

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All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely

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Social Justice Topic/Theme: Police Brutality, Racial Profiling, and Racial Injustice
Grade level: 9-12
Synopsis: All American Boys is a young adult novel that focuses on police brutality as one boy named Rashad is beaten and wrongfully accused by a cop one night. Told from the perspectives of both Quinn and Rashad, this story explores the aftermath and effects of police brutality and racism as they both struggle to grapple with how to cope with the social injustice taking place in their community.