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August 28: A Day In The Life Of A People

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August 28: A Day In The Life Of A People

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Ava DuVernay: Writer, Producer, Director and Distributor of Independent Film.

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Knowing the Past Opens the Door to the Future: The Continuing Importance of Black History Month

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Knowing the Past Opens the Door to the Future: The Continuing Importance of Black History Month

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Lonnie Bunch, Founding Director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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This impatience led Woodson to create Negro History Week in 1926, to ensure that school children be exposed to black history. Woodson chose the second week of February in order to celebrate the birthday of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It is important to realize that Negro History Week was not born in a vacuum. The 1920s saw the rise in interest in African American culture that was represented by the Harlem Renaissance where writers like Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglass Johnson, Claude McKay-wrote about the joys and sorrows of blackness, and musicians like Louie Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Jimmy Lunceford captured the new rhythms of the cities created in part by the thousands of southern blacks who migrated to urban centers like Chicago. And artists like Aaron Douglass, Richard Barthe, and Lois Jones created images that celebrated blackness and provided more positive images of the African American experience.

Woodson hoped to build upon this creativity and further stimulate interest through Negro History Week. Woodson had two goals. One was to use history to prove to white America that blacks had played important roles in the creation of America and thereby deserve to be treated equally as citizens. In essence, Woodson-by celebrating heroic black figures-be they inventors, entertainers, or soldiers-hoped to prove our worth, and by proving our worth-he believed that equality would soon follow. His other goal was to increase the visibility of black life and history, at a time when few newspapers, books, and universities took notice of the black community, except to dwell upon the negative. Ultimately Woodson believed Negro History Week-which became Black History Month in 1976-would be a vehicle for racial transformation forever.

The question that faces us today is whether or not Black History Month is still relevant? Is it still a vehicle for change? Or has it simply become one more school assignment that has limited meaning for children. Has Black History Month become a time when television and the media stack their black material? Or is it a useful concept whose goals have been achieved? After all, few-except the most ardent rednecks - could deny the presence and importance of African Americans to American society or as my then-14 year old daughter Sarah put it, "I see Colin Powell everyday on TV, all my friends-black and white-are immersed in black culture through music and television. And America has changed dramatically since 1926-Is not it time to retire Black History Month as we have eliminated white and colored signs on drinking fountains?" I will spare you the three hour lesson I gave her.

I would like to suggest that despite the profound change in race relations that has occurred in our lives, Carter G. Woodson's vision for black history as a means of transformation and change is still quite relevant and quite useful. African American history month, with a bit of tweaking, is still a beacon of change and hope that is still surely needed in this world. The chains of slavery are gone-but we are all not yet free. The great diversity within the black community needs the glue of the African American past to remind us of not just how far we have traveled but lo, how far there is to go.

While there are many reasons and examples that I could point towards, let me raise five concerns or challenges that African Americans - in fact - all Americans - face that black history can help address:

The Challenge of Forgetting

You can tell a great deal about a country and a people by what they deem important enough to remember, to create moments for - what they put in their museum and what they celebrate. In Scandinavia - there are monuments to the Vikings as a symbol of freedom and the spirit of exploration. In Germany during the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis celebrated their supposed Aryan supremacy through monument and song. While America traditionally revels in either Civil War battles or founding fathers. Yet I would suggest that we learn even more about a country by what it chooses to forget - its mistakes, its disappointments, and its embarrassments. In some ways, African American History month is a clarion call to remember. Yet it is a call that is often unheeded.

Let's take the example of one of the great unmentionable in American history - slavery. For nearly 250 years slavery not only existed but it was one of the dominant forces in American life. Political clout and economic fortune depended on the labor of slaves. And the presence of this peculiar institution generated an array of books, publications, and stories that demonstrate how deeply it touched America. And while we can discuss basic information such as the fact that in 1860 - 4 million blacks were enslaved, and that a prime field hand cost $1,000, while a female, with her childbearing capability, brought $1,500, we find few moments to discuss the impact, legacy, and contemporary meaning of slavery.

In 1988, the Smithsonian Institution, about to open an exhibition that included slavery, decided to survey 10,000 Americans. The results were fascinating - 92% of white respondents felt slavery had little meaning to them - these respondents often said "my family did not arrive until after the end of slavery." Even more disturbing was the fact that 79% of African Americans expressed no interest or some embarrassment about slavery. It is my hope that with greater focus and collaboration Black History Month can stimulate discussion about a subject that both divides and embarrasses.

As a historian, I have always felt that slavery is an African American success story because we found ways to survive, to preserve our culture and our families. Slavery is also ripe with heroes, such as slaves who ran away or rebelled, like Harriet Tubman or Denmark Vessey, but equally important are the forgotten slave fathers and mothers who raised families and kept a people alive. I am not embarrassed by my slave ancestors; I am in awe of their strength and their humanity. I would love to see the African American community rethink its connection to our slave past. I also think of something told to me by a Mr. Johnson, who was a former sharecropper I interviewed in Georgetown, SC:

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Knowing the Past Opens the Door to the Future: The Continuing Importance of Black History Month

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This impatience led Woodson to create Negro History Week in 1926, to ensure that school children be exposed to black history. Woodson chose the second week of February in order to celebrate the birthday of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. It is important to realize that Negro History Week was not born in a vacuum.

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Selected and presented by Yiska Agoussi (1ère)

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"Why must we always talk about race anyway?"

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"Why must we always talk about race anyway?"

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“Why must we always talk about race anyway? Can’t we just be human beings? And Professor Hunk replied – that is exactly what white privilege is, that you can say that. Race doesn’t really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don’t have that choice.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah (novel), 2013.

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Ted Talk by Anthony Peterson (2014)

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What I am learning from my white grandchildren -- truths about race | Anthony Peterson | TEDxAntioch

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Le Black History month fête cette année en France sa quatrième édition

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Le Black History month fête cette année en France sa quatrième édition

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Le Journal de l'Histoire (France Culture, 2021)
Programme 2021: http://memoiresetpartages.com/black-history-month-2021-le-programme-athletes-engage-e-s-dans-quatre-villes-francaises/

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Carter G. Woodson, "le père de l'histoire noire" aux États-Unis.

Le Black History month, le mois de l'histoire noire, se termine ce week-end. L'historien Nicolas Martin-Breteau revenait en 2015 sur le site de La Vie des Idées sur cet événement devenu une institution du calendrier états-unien. Avant un mois, il y a eu une semaine, la Negro History Week créée en 1926 pour valoriser et diffuser l'histoire de la diaspora sur le sol américain. Son fondateur Carter G. Woodson ancien combattant nordiste pendant la Guerre de Sécession, est considéré comme le " père de l'histoire noire ". Deuxième homme noir, après le célèbre W. E. B. Du Bois, et premier né de parents affranchis à soutenir une thèse, en l'occurrence à Harvard, en 1912, Woodson contribue à fonder les études noires aux Etats-Unis et à les diffuser à travers le Journal of Negro History, aujourd'hui devenu Journal of African American History, alors que cette histoire n'était pas enseignée. En 1922, il publie The negro in our History, un ouvrage devenu très populaire et bien seul sur le sujet jusqu'à la fin de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. L'ouvrage de Woodson est alors le manuel de référence sur l'histoire des Africains-Américains, avec l'intention militante et savante, les deux ne sont pas contradictoire, de mettre en valeur leur parcours des anciens royaumes d'Afrique à la Première Guerre mondiale et aux luttes pour l'égalité civique.

Reconnaître la place et l'héritage des citoyens noirs à la vie et à la culture de la nation

La population noire états-unienne dans les années 1920 anime et vit ce qu'on a appelé la Harlem Renaissance, une période d'effervescence où les arts et la recherche se consacrent à la revalorisation de l'identité noire, une politique d' " élévation de la race " pour restaurer confiance et fierté au sein d'une communauté perpétuellement infériorisée. " Si vous faites sentir à un homme qu'il est inférieur ", affirmait Woodson, " vous n'avez pas à le forcer à accepter un statut inférieur, car il le recherchera de lui-même ". Dans ce contexte, la Negro Week rencontre un succès grandissant au sein des écoles noires au moment où la ségrégation raciale franchit des seuils de violence extrême. Nicolas Martin-Breteau rappelle qu'entre la Première Guerre mondiale et le milieu des années 1920 un Africain-Américain avait été lynché chaque semaine. Une nouvelle génération étend la Negro Week, stimulée par les succès du mouvement pour les droits civiques, à partir des années 1950, jusqu'en 1975, date à laquelle le président Gerald Ford appelle officiellement tous les Américains à participer à la Black History Week et à reconnaître la place et l'héritage des citoyens noirs à la vie et à la culture de la nation. La semaine est devenue mois de l'histoire noire en 1976 et déclaré événement national par le Congrès en 1986. Institutionnalisé, le Black History Month fait l'objet de critiques en tant que fête annuelle à succès, mais à usage périodique, un prétexte à la vente de goodies, une entreprise lucrative sans impact politique réel, enfermé dans le mois le plus court de l'année. L'initiative se diffuse malgré tout, le Black History Month est aujourd'hui célébré également au Royaume-Uni, au Canada, en Irlande et en Afrique. En France, il est célébré modestement depuis trois ans dans les villes marquées par le commerce d'esclaves : Bordeaux, La Rochelle, Bayonne et Le Havre.
Carter G. Woodson aurait probablement apprécié la diffusion de cet événement qu'il n'imaginait que comme un point de départ dans la valorisation de l'histoire avec comme objectif, toujours à conquérir, le changement social et le dépassement des lignes de couleur.
Lien :
Programme de la 4e édition du Black History Month en France. Le thème, pour cette année 2021, est " Athlètes engagé-e-s ".

Nicolas Martin-Breteau, Le Black History Month. Réhabilitation historique, reconnaissance politique, La Vie des idées, 27/02/2015.

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C'est la dernière semaine du Black History Month

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Le Black History month fête cette année en France sa quatrième édition. Il nous vient des États-Unis ou il a déjà une longue histoire. Cette manifestation qui a pour but de réhabiliter les populations noires dans l'histoire se fête désormais aussi en dehors de son pays d'origine.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Talking about race, although hard, is necessary. We are here to provide tools and guidance to empower your journey and inspire conversation.

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Collage by Diarra Ndiaye (1ère)

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A project about American history, Black life, and the resilience of memory

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A project about American history, Black life, and the resilience of memory

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Download from Harvard University Press website (linked here).

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With a Foreword by Annette Gordon-Reed

Racism in America: A Reader is an invitation to understand anti-Black racism through the eyes of our most incisive commentators. This anthology is for all curious readers, teachers, and students who wish to discover for themselves the complex and rewarding intellectual work that has sustained our national conversation on race and will continue to guide us in future years. The book can be downloaded for free here and on most eBook platforms.

For further reading, view our extensive collection of books on racism.

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This anthology, culled from the works of our most incisive commentators, invites readers to explore racism in diverse fields. From descriptions of the world's largest slave markets to an exposition of artwork by incarcerated people, this collection offers a path to constructive conversation that will guide the national dialogue for years to come.

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Subscribe to the https://soundslikehate.org/">Sounds Like Hate podcast to learn more about hate groups like the Proud Boys.​

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ALL IN: THE FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY examines the issue of voter suppression in the US. The film interweaves personal experiences with activism and historical insight to expose a problem that has corrupted our country from the beginning. With the expertise of Stacey Abrams, the film offers an insider's look into the barriers to voting.

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Resources for Coping With and Addressing Racial Injustice

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Resources for Coping With and Addressing Racial Injustice

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A list of resources for students and parents curated by Rochambeau's guidance counselors

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Resources for Coping With and Addressing Racial Injustice

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The Economist Placing Value on Black Women’s Overlooked Work

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The Economist Placing Value on Black Women’s Overlooked Work

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The New York Times (Feb. 2021)

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Nina Banks, who became president of the National Economic Association this week, has studied the work done by women that provided services to predominantly Black communities. Credit... Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

Tracing community activism back a hundred years, Nina Banks says this labor by Black women should be counted as part of the economy.

Nina Banks, who became president of the National Economic Association this week, has studied the work done by women that provided services to predominantly Black communities. Credit... Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

Every year women do trillions of dollars' worth of unpaid household work. In the United States alone, that total amounted to roughly $1.2 trillion in 2019, a figure nearly the size of the New York State economy.

In Britain, the statistics agency has a calculator that lets you learn the value of chores like doing laundry, providing child care and taking others where they need to go. Thirty-five hours of child care and five hours of cooking is valued at about 570 pounds ($779) a week.

The fact that the economics establishment counts these chores as work - work still done disproportionately by women - and assigns them value is a win for feminist economists who spent decades arguing that much of women's contribution to society was economically invisible.

Now Nina Banks, an associate professor of economics at Bucknell University, is taking that idea another step. She argues there is another form of work that has been historically overlooked and uncounted: community activism by Black and other marginalized women.

"Not only are we doing paid work for our communities and unpaid work in our households," Dr. Banks said. "We are also doing a third layer of community work - we're exhausted." Recognizing this collective activism as work reveals the extra burden Black and brown women are under, she said.

In an article published in the December issue of The Review of Black Political Economy, Dr. Banks traces this unpaid community work to the early 20th century and the creation of cooperatives and other associations to provide services governments neglected.

She argues that these activities outside the market economy - with no buying or selling of goods and services, and no paid labor - were incorrectly considered political activity. But the grass-roots organizations behind the community work improved the environment, housing and access to food. Simply put, if someone else had been paid to do it, it would have been counted as work, and a contribution to the economy.

Dr. Banks has spent years trying to right the historical record on behalf of Black women, a mostly lonely endeavor in economics. While she has been scouring archives, much of the rest of the economics profession has followed the trend toward more math- or data-based research in other topics.

Dr. Banks's interest in revisiting history is less surprising when you consider her most distinctive early memory of economics: When she was an undergraduate at Hood College in Maryland in the 1980s, an adjunct professor explained the gender and racial wage gap with theories about human capital and worker productivity, suggesting that white men are simply more productive.

She was the only Black student in the class, and during a break she went to the basement and cried by the vending machines. "I was so startled and hurt by what he was saying, and I knew it wasn't true," Dr. Banks said. "But I didn't have the tools to be able to confront him."

Dr. Banks, 57, grew up in Chambersburg in southern Pennsylvania and earned her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, choosing the department specifically for its unorthodox approach.

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Dr. Banks said she had wanted her doctoral dissertation to be on a topic meaningful to her, "something that honored the long history of Black women engaging in work for the African-American community." Credit... Hannah Yoon for The New York Times

This week, she took over the presidency of the National Economic Association, which has promoted minority economists in the profession for half a century. Former leaders of the group include Lisa Cook, Darrick Hamilton and Olugbenga Ajilore, whose policy ideas and expertise have been sought in Washington. It is a milestone in a career fraught with hurdles, and in a profession where women and people of color have confronted discrimination and harassment.

Two years ago, Dr. Banks said, she felt like an "island of one" in economics because she didn't know others pursuing similar research on collective action as unpaid work and her other historical studies. She had struggled to get her research published, finding that the economists tasked with reviewing her work didn't have the right expertise. It happened again with her recent paper on unpaid work, she said. The Review of Black Political Economy, which is affiliated with the National Economic Association but has all articles peer-reviewed, was the third publication she submitted the paper to.

Publishing academic papers is a notoriously slow and frustrating process. But there is a broader concern that the lack of diversity in economics also means certain ideas don't get as much attention. (And proportionate representation is still far off; just 4 percent of economics doctorates awarded in 2019 to American citizens and permanent residents went to African-Americans.)

It's partly why some prominent Black economists study economic history, especially those working toward present-day policy ideas to reduce inequality. They first needed to uncover the evidence of systemic disparities.

Dr. Cook, a professor at Michigan State University, spent 10 years getting her research on innovation theory published. She had found that violence toward African-Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries led to fewer patents filed in the United States, causing a long-term drag on economic growth.

"So much Black economic research," she said on the NPR podcast "Planet Money," "is about first proving that Black people are coming from a historic disadvantage."

Since Dr. Banks's 1999 dissertation on African-American women migrating to Pittsburgh in the 1920s, her career has been devoted to uncovering the experiences of overlooked Black women. And so she is particularly well known for charting the life of a fellow Pennsylvanian, Sadie T.M. Alexander, who received a doctoral degree in economics in 1921, the first African-American woman to do so.

Dr. Alexander couldn't find work as an economist and went on to become a lawyer, notching up another first - the first Black woman to be admitted to the Pennsylvania bar. But she still considered herself to be an economist, Dr. Banks said, and delivered speeches on the working conditions of Black men and women, using her research skills to defy the dominant ideology of the time of racial inferiority as a legitimate reason for the denial of civil rights. This summer, Dr. Banks will publish a book on the life and speeches of Dr. Alexander.

Sadie T.M. Alexander in 1948, at a civil rights conference in Philadelphia. She was the first African-American woman to earn a doctorate in economics, and later to be admitted to the Pennsylvania bar. Credit... Bettmann/Contributor

Today there are more Black economists, but navigating the profession still poses challenges. Over time, support systems have developed, including the National Economic Association and The Review of Black Political Economy, established 50 years ago to be a "hospitable arena" for Black economists to study inequality, Robert Browne, the founding editor, said at the time.

The journal is still where research about race, "especially if you are pushing the envelope," is published, said Rhonda Sharpe, a co-editor.

The American economics profession has begun to grapple with the diversity problems in its field. In June, when Black Lives Matter protests swept across the United States and then the world, the American Economic Association - the establishment voice for economists - acknowledged "that our professional climate is a hostile one for Black economists."

More diversity and inclusion initiatives, research avenues and high-profile promotions have sprung up since a 2019 survey by the association found that experiences of sexual harassment and assault were "not rare" for women, and Asian, Black and Latino economists reported "substantially worse experiences" of discrimination than their white colleagues.

Dr. Banks's career bears these scars, too. Her study of Dr. Alexander is the result of a career knocked off course. She originally planned to become a development economist, a field that studies the growth of low-income economies. But in the 1990s, during an internship at a U.S. government agency focused on development, she was sexually harassed by an economist.

"I decided not to pursue development economics as a result of that experience," she said. Only a little more than two years ago, emboldened by the #MeToo movement, Dr. Banks complained to that workplace.

"When it came time to write a dissertation, I really wanted to focus on something meaningful to me," she said. "Something that honored the long history of Black women engaging in work for the African-American community."

The legacy of this switch is apparent in her latest paper. Her goal is to develop a theory "to elevate the community" as a site of production that deserves as much scrutiny as other work. And to highlight the long-lasting impact of these women.

She goes all the way back to 1908, when the Atlanta Neighborhood Union was founded, led by Black women to survey the needs of their community and provide basic social and health services that the city failed to give. It inspired the Women's Political Council in Montgomery, Ala., which worked to increase voter registration and later engaged in political protests, including the Montgomery bus boycott. It resembles some of the work done today by Black women, such as those in Georgia, to register voters in service of improving their communities and reducing inequality, with remarkable consequences.

In 1985, a group of Black women in Los Angeles came together to stop the construction of a toxic waste incinerator in their neighborhood, enlisting professors and health officials to their cause. Two years later, the city dropped its plans. The group, Concerned Citizens of South Central Los Angeles, still exists as a nonprofit, developing affordable housing, running youth programs and cleaning streets.

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The Economist Placing Value on Black Women's Overlooked Work

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Tracing community activism back a hundred years, Nina Banks says this labor by Black women should be counted as part of the economy. Nina Banks, who became president of the National Economic Association this week, has studied the work done by women that provided services to predominantly Black communities. Credit...

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She created vivid new worlds to reveal truths about our own. Here's where to start with her books.

Octavia Butler walked a singular path. A writer from her poverty-stricken childhood to her death in 2006 at the age of 58, she committed her life to turning speculative fiction into a home for Black expression. In her hands, the genre felt capacious and infinite. "I wrote myself in," she told The New York Times in 2000.

Her ink was permanent. Weathering rejections, dead-end jobs and her own persistent doubts, Butler rose to international prominence. She became the first science fiction author to be granted a MacArthur fellowship, and the first Black woman to win Hugo and Nebula awards. Today her influence spans literature, genres and media.

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Octavia Butler Credit... Joshua Trujillo/seattlepi.com, via Associated Press

The plaques and firsts are the least interesting part of her story, though. Above all, Butler was an observer and ponderer. The probing mind that animates her novels, short stories and essays is obsessed with the viability of the human enterprise. Will we survive our worst habits? Will we change? Do we want to?

These questions led Butler to explore settings banal and fantastical, brutal and tender. Her peculiar, unsettling worlds, rendered in prose trimmed of sentiment and ornament, overflow with desperation and tragedy. She deeply distrusted utopias, saviors, power brokers and escapism. Accordingly, her works are heavy and bleak, full of warnings and catastrophic failures to heed them.

Yet Butler was neither a pessimist nor a didact. Her recurring character archetype is the survivor, a figure of endurance, resourcefulness and compromise. To read her works and follow her wearied protagonists through badlands is to experience the treachery of change, its capacity to snatch away gains and proffer flashes of relief. There are few refuges in her 14 books, but there are always insights, always futures.

KINDRED will change your mind. Butler takes time travel, one of speculative fiction's oldest and most overdone premises, and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, "Kindred" is controlled and precise.

Butler stages slavery as a site of pain and violation as well as community and resilience. Dana, the protagonist, slips back and forth against her will between her life in 1976 Los Angeles and a Maryland plantation before the Civil War. In Butler's hands, the slaves and slave owners Dana meets - and befriends, nurtures, protects and betrays - become individuals rather than historical abstractions. The book is a marvel of imagination, empathy and detail, speculative fiction at its best.

Butler didn't write many short stories, and many of them mirror the themes of her novels. But the short form served her economic writing style well. The stories collected in BLOODCHILD move quickly, often laying out their premises and conflicts in a single exchange or sequence.

Even better, each piece is followed by an afterword, offering insights into Butler's inspirations and writing process. She doesn't waste a word.

Golden age sci-fi conceits like alien encounters and superpowered beings abound in Butler's work, especially the Patternist series, which spans five books (one, "Survivor," remains out of print at her behest). But the constant presence of drama shows she read penny romances as well as comics and pulp novels. Many of the tensest, most hair-raising moments in her books occur in conversations between romantic partners.

Spanning continents and centuries, WILD SEED details a tense courtship between two African immortals, one a psychic parasite who can switch bodies, and the other a shapeshifter. They traverse present-day Nigeria, the Atlantic Ocean and then colonial and antebellum North America, seducing and conning each other the whole way like competing spies. The book draws upon the extensive research on chattel slavery that Butler conducted for "Kindred," expanding on the institution's horrors - and forms of resistance - beyond the plantation.

PATTERNMASTER takes place in the same milieu as "Wild Seed," but is set far into the future, when the descendants of the immortals have overtaken the world through a psychic network known as the pattern. Their ascension pitches much of society into slavery, and Butler follows two superpowered brothers as they vie to become the Patternmaster, the virtually omnipotent puppeteer of the pattern.

This is Butler's first book, and it lacks the range and gravitas of her later works. People without psychic powers, or mutes, are pawns at best and furniture at worst. And the mutant Clayarks, a third party seeking to usurp the pattern, are narrative fodder. But Butler's clash of titans is briskly plotted and starkly rendered. Though her books would turn pensive and philosophical, she could pulp with the best of them.

"Parable of the Sower," the first in a two-book series, is a slog. Lauren Oyamina, the teenage protagonist, offers few insights into the nightmarish setting of an America burning itself down, and the story is too shaped by her stilted, dry voice. PARABLE OF THE TALENTS is the masterpiece. The sequel retains the brutal atmosphere of its predecessor - severe economic inequality, climate disaster, lawless mayhem - without sacrificing momentum or texture.

By refining Lauren's voice, Butler found others scarred by the American apocalypse, from a rising fascist who wants to "make America great again" to new-age slave traders to children who are forcibly separated from their families - and are happy about it. The Parable series is known for its discomfiting prescience. But "Talents" shows that the series' true strength is its attention to the lives destroyed by fascism. There's less spectacle and inferno than "Sower," but far more sweat and anguish.

I appreciate your honesty. Lilith's Brood, a trilogy first published as Xenogenesis, details the long and seedy seduction of humanity by the Oankali, sluglike aliens that delight in genetic trade with other species. The story is set hundreds of years after the Cold War turns hot and obliterates the superpowers and most of humanity. The Oankali arrive after the war, abduct and resuscitate war-ravaged humans and plan to send us back to Earth - at the cost of merging our biochemistry with theirs.

DAWN is the core of the series, setting the stage for the Oankali's protracted and perverse colonization. Many critics read the Oankali as benevolent saviors and Butler certainly does not make them outright villains, but the first book renders clearly their manipulation. Chemical essentialists, the Oankali see reality in narrow terms that ignore verbal consent and are always patronizing. Despite the condescension of her captors, Lilith, a resilient Black woman, comes to accept a future with them, a fraught choice that Butler characterizes with haunting nuance. The book, researched in Peru, also features her most scenic writing.

Butler's vampires are an unusual bunch. They are nocturnal and they drink blood, yes, but they also worship a goddess, own vineyards and farms, and form intimate harems with humans. Butler's vampires are more cultured than monstrous, and FLEDGLING, an action-packed whodunit that builds into a riveting legal battle, teems with ideas about the creatures as well as the mechanics of relationships. In charged, erotic prose, Butler weaves a mystery that's as titillating as it is disturbing. Fledgling is a work of fantasy, but it explores many of the ideas of consent and desire that Butler broaches in Lililth's Brood. Even when she wasn't writing about aliens, she was.

UNEXPECTED STORIES features two stories that went unpublished in Butler's lifetime. One, "Childfinder," was supposed to be Butler's big break. She sold it at a writing workshop for an anthology that was never released, a false start that haunted her early in her career as rejection slips accumulated. The other story, "A Necessary Being," takes place in the world of "Survivor," Butler's out-of-print third book, and was one of her many rejected stories. Both stories demonstrate how early she discovered her voice as a writer.

Butler's private papers are collected at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif. Drawing from the Huntington's archives, OCTAVIA E. BUTLER, by Gerry Canavan, covers Butler's career, life and works, teasing out the many overtones and themes in her books. Canavan is an excellent critic and formidable researcher, and this book, written in accessible, quick-moving prose, is rich with perspectives and ideas. The best sections detail the stories Butler didn't publish or complete, using those fragments to dive deeper into the texts that she finished. Like all good criticism, the book is both authoritative and invitational. Read it and you'll marvel at the arguments and feel invited to develop your own.

Stephen Kearse is a contributing writer at The Nation. He has contributed to Pitchfork, The Baffler and The Atlantic, among other publications.

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She created vivid new worlds to reveal truths about our own. Here's where to start with her books. Octavia Butler walked a singular path. A writer from her poverty-stricken childhood to her death in 2006 at the age of 58, she committed her life to turning speculative fiction into a home for Black expression.

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The Three Mothers Who Raised Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin

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The Three Mothers Who Raised Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin

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NPR podcast of show 1A with author Anna Malaika Tubbs.

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The Three Mothers Who Raised Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin | 1A

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Most of us know very little about the three mothers who raised these icons. Scholar Anna Malaika Tubbs wants to change that with her new book.

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Jillian Teaching Introduction to Implicit bias and the Brain

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Watch here Robin DiAngelo's longer presentation (22 minutes).

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Jillian Teaching Step One Awareness of Whiteness

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What is implicit bias? NYT/POV's Saleem Reshamwala unscrews the lid on the unfair effects of our subconscious.

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Race does not biologically exist, yet how we identify with race is so powerful, it influences our experiences and shapes our lives. In a society that privileges white people and whiteness, racist ideas are considered normal throughout our media, culture, social systems, and institutions. Historically, racist views justified the unfair treatment and oppression of people of color (including enslavement, segregation, internment, etc.). We can be led to believe that racism is only about individual mindsets and actions, yet racist policies also contribute to our polarization. While individual choices are damaging, racist ideas in policy have a wide-spread impact by threatening the equity of our systems and the fairness of our institutions. To create an equal society, we must commit to making unbiased choices and being antiracist in all aspects of our lives.

Being antiracist is fighting against racism. Racism takes several forms and works most often in tandem with at least one other form to reinforce racist ideas, behavior, and policy. Types of racism are:

Individual racism​ refers to the beliefs, attitudes, and actions of individuals that support or perpetuate racism in conscious and unconscious ways. The U.S. cultural narrative about racism typically focuses on individual racism and fails to recognize systemic racism.
Examples include believing in the superiority of white people, not hiring a person of color because "something doesn't feel right," or telling a racist joke.

Interpersonal racism​ occurs between individuals. These are public expressions of racism, often involving slurs, biases, or hateful words or actions.

Institutional racism​ occurs in an organization. These are discriminatory treatments, unfair policies, or biased practices based on race that result in inequitable outcomes for whites over people of color and extend considerably beyond prejudice. These institutional policies often never mention any racial group, but the intent is to create advantages.
Example: A school system where students of color are more frequently distributed into the most crowded classrooms and underfunded schools and out of the higher-resourced schools.

Structural racism​ is the overarching system of racial bias across institutions and society. These systems give privileges to white people resulting in disadvantages to people of color.
Example: Stereotypes of people of color as criminals in mainstream movies and media. ​

No one is born racist or antiracist; these result from the choices we make. Being antiracist results from a conscious decision to make frequent, consistent, equitable choices daily. These choices require ongoing self-awareness and self-reflection as we move through life. In the absence of making antiracist choices, we (un)consciously uphold aspects of white supremacy, white-dominant culture, and unequal institutions and society. Being racist or antiracist is not about who you are; it is about what you do.

To be antiracist is a radical choice in the face of history, requiring a radical reorientation of our consciousness. Ibram Kendi "How to be an Antiracist"

The quality or state of being aware especially of something within oneself.

Being Antiracist at the Individual and Interpersonal Level
When we choose to be antiracist, we become actively conscious about race and racism and take actions to end racial inequities in our daily lives. Being antiracist is believing that racism is everyone's problem, and we all have a role to play in stopping it. In " The Racial Healing Handbook," Dr. Anneliese A. Singh reminds us of the importance of being purposeful: "You need the intentional mindset of Yep, this racism thing is everyone's problem-including mine, and I'm going to do something about it."

Being antiracist is different for white people than it is for people of color. For white people, being antiracist evolves with their racial identity development. They must acknowledge and understand their privilege, work to change their internalized racism, and interrupt racism when they see it. For people of color, it means recognizing how race and racism have been internalized, and whether it has been applied to other people of color.

All racial groups struggle under white supremacy. People of color groups are not always united in solidarity. People of color can act by challenging internalized white supremacy and interrupting patterns of prejudice against other racial groups. For everyone, it is an ongoing practice and process.
As a White Person or a Person of Color, Read More About Becoming Antiracist

Stop and Think!

Why do you want to be antiracist? Considering the breadth and depth of racism, committing to being antiracist may feel overwhelming yet small choices made daily can add up to big changes. Reflect on choices you make in your daily life (i.e., who you build relationships with, what media you follow, where you shop). How do these choices reflect being antiracist?

A Questioning Frame of Mind
A commitment to being antiracist manifests in our choices. When we encounter interpersonal racism, whether obvious or covert, there are ways to respond and interrupt it. Asking questions is a powerful tool to seek clarity or offer a new perspective. Below are some suggestions to use in conversations when racist behavior occurs:

Seek clarity: "Tell me more about __________."

Offer an alternative perspective: "Have you ever considered __________."

Speak your truth: "I don't see it the way you do. I see it as __________."

Find common ground: "We don't agree on __________ but we can agree on __________."

Give yourself the time and space you need: "Could we revisit the conversation about __________ tomorrow."

Set boundaries. "Please do not say __________ again to me or around me.

A trigger is something that causes an emotional and or physical reaction which impacts how you respond and or interact with another person or group of people.

As you practice, take note of your responses and ask: How am I processing the experience? What body sensations do I have? What is my emotional reaction? Notice what triggers your response and how it manifests in your body.

Another practical step is to uncover your own bias. In the video below, Verna Myers talks about acknowledging your biases in her Ted Talk:

Being antiracist on the individual and interpersonal levels is only part of the work. To end racism, we must also work to dismantle racist policies at the structural and institutional levels.

Example of Being Antiracist at the Institutional Level
Institutional racism is the policies and practices within institutions that benefit white people to the disadvantage of people of color. An example of institutional racism is how children of color are treated within the U.S. education system. On average, children of color are disciplined more harshly than their white peers. They are also less likely to be identified as gifted and have less access to quality teachers. Racism in schools can and does have severe consequences for students and our future.

When I say antiracist education, I am talking about equipping students, parents, and teachers with the tools needed to combat racism and ethnic discrimination, and to find ways to build a society that includes all people on an equal footing.

Antiracist education is a theory of learning and action to help us do the important work of dismantling racism in schools. It explicitly highlights, critiques, and challenges institutional racism. It addresses how racist beliefs and ideologies structure one-on-one interactions and personal relationships. It also examines and challenges how institutions support and maintain disadvantages and advantages along racial lines.

Antiracist education, while considering class, race, and gender inequity, places race at the center of its analysis. Focusing on race exposes direct links to unequal power, a system of oppression and privilege, and institutional practices.

One of the early formulations of antiracist education was developed by social science researchers, Carol Tator and Frances Henry, in Canada. It lists nine key traits.

Developing routines to make antiracist choices is a daily commitment that must be carried out with intention. The continued efforts of each of us individually can add up to a lasting change in our society. Since racism operates at multiple levels, we have to make antiracist choices at the various levels - individual, interpersonal, and institutional - to eradicate racism from the structures and fabric of our society. In "How to Be an Antiracist," Dr. Ibram Kendi writes, "[We must] believe in the possibility that we can strive to be antiracist from this day forward. Believe in the possibility that we can transform our societies to be antiracist from this day forward. Racist power is not godly. Racist policies are not indestructible. Racial inequities are not inevitable. Racist ideas are not natural to the human mind."

Let's Think

How have racist ideas impacted your daily life? Reflect and process - you may choose to sit in quiet reflection or write in your journal.

EDUCATORS: Read "The Urgent Need for Anti-Racist Education," by Christina Torres. She writes that antiracist education has an important role to play in fighting against hatred and violence. What benefits do you think could result from having discussions with young people about current events involving race and racism?

Let's Talk

The Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University contends that racist policies fuel racist beliefs and behaviors and keep us divided in society.

By yourself, divide two pieces of paper into 4 sections. Write the following categories, one in each section, on the page: Education, Healthcare Treatment, Neighborhoods/Housing, Criminal Justice. Do this for both pages.

On the first sheet, jot down 2-3 racial groups of people you think get the best service/experience/outcomes in America for each category. You can repeat groups.

On the second sheet, jot down 2-3 racial groups of people you think get the worst service/experience/outcomes in America for each category. You can repeat groups.

Now, with a partner discuss what old and newer, you believe might account for these groups' experiences.

With your partner, return to each racial group you've listed, one at a time. Search the internet, look up the racial group, one of the four categories, and the word "policy" (limit your search to U.S. policies and seek out fact-based sources). Browse through the results for things that strike you.

Discuss with your partner:

Was it easy or difficult to find useful information on policies in these categories having to do with race? Why do you think that was?

For those racial groups that you thought had the best service/experience/outcomes, were you able to identify specific policies that helped them? Why yes? Or why not?

How do you think policies can be hidden or difficult to see in operation?

What did you discover that was new to you?

Were you wrong about anything you thought? How did you find out?

Was there anything uncomfortable about this exercise? Why yes? Or why not?

How can our learning about policies, racial groups, and outcomes help support anti-racism efforts?

Let's Act

Watch these two videos on Implicit Bias:

How can you hang out authentically with folks of some common interest, across racial lines?

EDUCATORS: Consider your current classroom or academic space. What one small shift can you do to strive to be more antiracist?

Visit the "Antiracism and America" web series developed by American University's Antiracist Research and Policy Center and The Guardian news outlet.

Pick a story to read. As you reflect on the story, think about what you learned that was new, how the story made you feel, how race shaped the experience of the storyteller and your response. You may choose to process this mentally, with a friend or in writing.

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No one is born racist or antiracist; these result from the choices we make. Being antiracist results from a conscious decision to make frequent, consistent, equitable choices daily. These choices require ongoing self-awareness and self-reflection as we move through life.

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Podcast by Klara Drees-Gross (1ère)

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Racial Inequalities in Medicine and Healthcare (1)

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Racial Inequalities in Medicine and Healthcare (1)

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Infographics by Nikole Irigaray and Salomé Crenn (1ère - Rochambeau Medical Club)

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Racial Inequalities in Medicine and Healthcare (2)

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Racial Inequalities in Medicine and Healthcare (2)

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Infographics by Florence Boucher (2nde - Rochambeau Medical Club)

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Contemporary Black creatives discuss their work and share advice for future generations.

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In conversation: Contemporary Black creatives discuss their work and share advice for future generations.

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by Racial Equity Tools

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This section includes four sub-sections: Core Concepts offers information on how racism has been constructed and maintained, including defining terms like structural racism, white privilege, and internalized racism, and elaborating on key theories including racial identity development and targeted universalism.

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History of racial injustice and the justice system

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History of racial injustice and the justice system

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Article by Katy Fall and Antonia Spivak (2nde)

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History of racial injustice and the justice system

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Painting by Daniela Piñeda-Iriarte (2nde)

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With photos and artefacts from the collections of 87 cultural institutions

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Black History and Culture - Google Arts & Culture

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The past, present, and future of the Black experience in the United States

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Museums and Institutions that focus on Black history, culture, and experience

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Museums and Institutions that focus on Black history, culture, and experience

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Google Arts & Culture features content from over 2000 leading museums and archives who have partnered with the Google Cultural Institute to bring the world's treasures online.

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Informative (and comedic) podcast by Maya Ghazzaoui-Chelle and Sabine Ocaña (2nde)

Our sources:

General:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/13/do-the-right-thing-how-black-cinema-rose-again

Cicely Tyson: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/29/groundbreaking-emmy-and-tony-winner-actress-cicely-tyson-dies

Astronomy Club:

https://youtu.be/SUsZUlW5jwQ and https://youtu.be/J89WcKaI-l8

#oscarssowhite:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/movies/oscarssowhite-history.html

Statistics:

https://venngage.com/blog/oscar-racism-interactive-infographic/

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Classic literature (fiction and nonfiction) by non-white authors

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Classic literature can teach us so much about the past-how people lived, what they thought, and what they wanted to change. But the literary canon tends to be dominated by white men. I have nothing against Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Orwell, and the like, but there's so much more for lovers of classics to read. We can expand the canon to include classics by people of color from all over the world, and I've assembled this list to help us all do just that.

For the purposes of this list, I've defined a classic as a book that's at least 50 years old. Some of these classics by people of color are well-known and others are known only to scholars of the period they're from. There are novels, plays, poetry, and nonfiction from around the world-something for everyone. If you're doing the Read Harder Challenge, you'll find lots of options for a classic by a person of color.

If you're looking for classics by women, check out my previous list, and you'll find more classics by people of color on Rebecca's list for the Read Harder Challenge. There is some overlap between the three lists, but I've tried to keep this to a minimum. I've also avoided giving authors more than one slot on this list.

Books on this list are arranged in chronological order, and descriptions are from Goodreads. Take a look. See any of your favorites? Any classics by people of color that you'd add?

The Analects by Confucius (476). "A collection of Confucius' sayings, compiled by his pupils shortly after his death in 497 B.C., and they reflect the extent to which Confucius held up a moral ideal for all men."

One Thousand and One Nights by Anonymous (800). "These are the tales that saved the life of Shahrazad, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage."

The Pillow Book by Sei Shōnagon (1002). "Moving elegantly across a wide range of themes including nature, society, and her own flirtations, Sei Shōnagon provides a witty and intimate window on a woman's life at court in classical Japan."

The Diary of Lady Murasaki by Murasaki Shikibu (1008-1010). "The Diary recorded by Lady Murasaki (c. 973 c. 1020), author of The Tale of Genji, is an intimate picture of her life as tutor and companion to the young Empress Shoshi."

Theologus Autodidactus by Ibn Al-Nafis (1277). "This work, written sometime between 1268 and 1277, is one of the first Arabic novels, may be considered an early example of a science fiction, and an early example of a coming of age tale and a desert island story."

The Confessions of Lady Nijō by Lady Nijō (1307). "A tale of thirty-six years (1271-1306)in the life of Lady Nijō, starting when she became the concubine of a retired emperor in Kyoto at the age of fourteen and ending, several love affairs later, with an account of her new life as a wandering Buddhist nun."

On Love and Barley by Bashō Matsuo (late 1600s). "Bashō's haiku are the work of an observant eye and a meditative mind, uncluttered by materialism and alive to the beauty of the world around him."

Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio by Pu Songling (1740). "In his tales of shape-shifting spirits, bizarre phenomena, haunted buildings, and enchanted objects, Pu Songling pushes the boundaries of human experience and enlightens as he entertains."

Phyllis Wheatley, Complete Writings by Phyllis Wheatley (1761). "This volume collects both Wheatley's letters and her poetry: hymns, elegies, translations, philosophical poems, tales, and epyllions-including a poignant plea to the Earl of Dartmouth urging freedom for America and comparing the country's condition to her own."

Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano by Olaudah Equiano (1789). "The first slave narrative to attract a significant readership reveals many aspects of the eighteenth-century Western world through the experiences of one individual."

The Golden Days (The Story of the Stone, part 1) by Cao Xueqin (1791). "This rich, magical work sets worldly events-love affairs, sibling rivalries, political intrigues, even murder-within the context of the Buddhist understanding that earthly existence is an illusion and karma determines the shape of our lives."

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1845). "Dumas' epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialised in the 1840s."

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass (1845). "Douglass' own account of his journey from slave to one of America's great statesmen, writers, and orators is as fascinating as it is inspiring."

Narrative of Sojourner Truth by Sojourner Truth (1850). "Truth recounts her life as a slave in rural New York, her separation from her family, her religious conversion, and her life as a traveling preacher during the 1840s."

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup (1853). "Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history."

Clotel; or, The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown (1853). "A fast-paced and harrowing tale of slavery and freedom, of the hypocrisies of a nation founded on democratic principles, Clotel is more than a sensationalist novel."

Biography of an American Bondman, By His Daughter by Josephine Brown (1855). "Josephine Brown (1839-?).was the youngest child of the abolitionist and author William Wells Brown (1814-1862).and his wife Elizabeth. She was moved to finish the book when she discovered that her father's autobiography was out of print."

Our Nig by Harriet E. Wilson (1859). "The tale of a mixed-race girl, Frado, abandoned by her white mother after the death of the child's black father."

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (1861). "A rare firsthand account of a courageous woman's determination and endurance, this inspirational story also represents a valuable historical record of the continuing battle for freedom and the preservation of family."

The Curse of Caste, or The Slave Bride by Julia C. Collins (1865). "The first novel ever published by a black American woman, it is set in antebellum Louisiana and Connecticut, and focuses on the lives of a beautiful mixed-race mother and daughter."

Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House by Elizabeth Keckley (1868). "Traces Elizabeth Keckley's life from her enslavement in Virginia and North Carolina to her time as seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln in the White House during Abraham Lincoln's administration."

Life Among the Paiutes: Their Wrongs and Claims by Sarah Winnemucca (1883). "Sarah Winnemucca, daughter of a Paiute chief, presents in her autobiography a Native American viewpoint on the impact of whites settling in the West."

Wynema: A Child of the Forest by S. Alice Callahan (1891). "The first novel known to have been written by a woman of American Indian descent. ... it tells the story of a lifelong friendship between two women from vastly different backgrounds-Wynema Harjo, a Muscogee Indian, and Genevieve Weir, a Methodist teacher from a genteel Southern family."

Iola Leroy by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (1892). "The story of the young daughter of a wealthy Mississippi planter who travels to the North to attend school, only to be sold into slavery in the South when it is discovered that she has Negro blood."

A Chinese Ishmael and Other Stories by Sui Sin Far (1896). "Fictional stories about Chinese Americans, first published in 1896, were a reasoned appeal for her society's acceptance of working-class Chinese at a time when the United States Congress maintained the Chinese Exclusion Act."

Hawai'i's Story by Hawai'i's Queen by Queen Lili'uokalani (1898). "Possibly the most important work in Hawai'ian literature, Hawai'i's Story is a poignant plea from Hawai'i's queen to restore her people's kingdom."

Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South by Pauline Hopkins (1900). "Like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Pauline Hopkins writes of the injustices suffered by blacks at the hands of whites. But her novel penetrates deeper than Uncle Tom's Cabin."

Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington (1900). "Washington reveals his inner most thoughts as he transitions from ex-slave to teacher and founder of one of the most important schools for African Americans in the south, The Tuskegee Industrial Institute."

The Heart of Hyacinth by Onoto Watanna (1903). "The coming-of-age story of Hyacinth Lorrimer, a child of white parents who was raised from infancy in Japan by a Japanese foster mother and assumed to be Eurasian."

The Souls of Black Folk by WEB Du Bois (1903). "Du Bois penned his epochal masterpiece ... in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work; its insights into life at the turn of the 20th century still ring true."

I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki (1905). "The chronicle of an unloved, unwanted, wandering kitten who spends all his time observing human nature-from the dramas of businessmen and schoolteachers to the foibles of priests and potentates."

The Soul of the Indian by Charles Alexander Eastman (1911). "Brings to life the rich spirituality and morality of the Native Americans as they existed before contact with missionaries and other whites."

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson (1912). "Narrated by a man whose light skin allows him to 'pass' for white, the novel describes a pilgrimage through America's color lines at the turn of the century."

The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore (1916). "Set on a Bengali noble's estate in 1908, this is both a love story and a novel of political awakening. The central character, Bimala, is torn between the duties owed to her husband, Nikhil, and the demands made on her by the radical leader, Sandip."

The Plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson by Georgia Douglas Johnson (1920s). "This volume collects twelve of Georgia Douglas Johnson's one-act plays. ... As an integral part of Washington, D.C.'s, thriving turn-of-the-century literary scene, Johnson hosted regular meetings with Harlem Renaissance writers and other artists, including Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, May Miller, and Jean Toomer, and was herself considered among the finest writers of the time."

American Indian Stories by Zitkala-Sa (1921). "One of the most famous Sioux writers and activists of the modern era, Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Bonnin) recalled legends and tales from oral tradition and used experiences from her life and community to educate others about the Yankton Sioux."

A Dark Night's Passing by Naoya Shiga (1921). "Tells the story of a young man's passage through a sequence of disturbing experiences to a hard-worn truce with the destructive forces within himself."

The Real Story of Ah-Q and Other Tales of China by Lu Xun (1921). "Lu Xun is arguably the greatest writer of modern China, and is considered by many to be the founder of modern Chinese literature. Lu Xun's stories both indict outdated Chinese traditions and embrace China's cultural richness and individuality."

Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral by Gabriela Mistral (1922). "Poems by the late Chilean poet who, in 1945, became the first Latin American author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature."

Cane by Jean Toomer (1923). "A literary masterpiece of the Harlem Renaissance, Cane is a powerful work of innovative fiction evoking black life in the South."

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1923). "A collection of poetic essays that are philosophical, spiritual, and, above all, inspirational."

There Is Confusion by Jessie Redmon Fauset (1924). "Traces the lives of Joanna Mitchell and Peter Bye, whose families must come to terms with an inheritance of prejudice and discrimination as they struggle for legitimacy and respect."

Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Or, Africa for the Africans by Marcus Garvey (1924). "The most famous collection of Garvey's speeches and essays."

The New Negro edited by Alain Locke (1925). "From the man known as the father of the Harlem Renaissance comes a powerful, provocative, and affecting anthology of writers who shaped the Harlem Renaissance movement and who help us to consider the evolution of the African American in society."

Chaka by Thomas Mofolo (1925). "Tells the classic story of the Zulu hero Chaka."

The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes (1926). "Hughes spoke directly, intimately, and powerfully of the experiences of African Americans, at a time when their voices were newly being heard in our literature."

Rashomon and Other Stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa (1927). "Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa created disturbing stories out of Japan's cultural upheaval."

Quicksand by Nella Larsen (1928). "Larsen's powerful first novel has intriguing autobiographical parallels and at the same time invokes the international dimension of African American culture of the 1920s."

Some Prefer Nettles by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1928). "It is a tale of sexual passion and disorientation that explores modern Japan's conflict between the values of Western culture and Occidental tradition."

Home to Harlem by Claude McKay (1928). "With sensual, often brutal accuracy, Claude McKay traces the parallel paths of two very different young men struggling to find their way through the suspicion and prejudice of American society."

My People the Sioux by Luther Standing Bear (1928). "A landmark in Indian literature, among the first books about Indians written from the Indian point of view by an Indian."

The Blacker the Berry by Wallace Thurman (1929). "One of the most widely read and controversial works of the Harlem Renaissance, The Blacker the Berry was the first novel to openly explore prejudice within the Black community."

My Soul's High Song: The Collected Writings of Countee Cullen by Countee Cullen (1920s-1940s). "A generous introduction to new readers of Countee Cullen and a more than generous offering to those of us who hold the poet dear."

Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells by Ida B. Wells (1930s). "This engaging memoir tells of her private life as mother of a growing family as well as her public activities as teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight against attitudes and laws oppressing blacks."

Black No More by George S. Schuyler (1931). "What would happen to the race problem in America if black people turned white? Would everybody be happy? These questions and more are answered hilariously in Black No More, George S. Schuyler's satiric romp."

Jonah's Gourd Vine by Zora Neale Hurston (1934). "Tells the story of John Buddy Pearson, 'a living exultation' of a young man who loves too many women for his own good."

Native Son by Richard Wright (1940). "Tells the story of a young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic."

Love in a Fallen City by Eileen Chang (1943). "Written when Chang was still in her twenties, these extraordinary stories combine an unsettled, probing, utterly contemporary sensibility, keenly alert to sexual politics and psychological ambiguity, with an intense lyricism that echoes the classics of Chinese literature."

Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (1944). "The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the whirlwind of Borges's genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his skepticism, and his obsession with fantasy."

Where There's Love, There's Hate by Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares (1946). "Both genuinely suspenseful mystery fiction and an ingenious pastiche of the genre, the only novel co-written by two towering figures of Latin American literature."

The Street by Ann Petry (1946). "The poignant, often heartbreaking story of Lutie Johnson, a young black woman, and her spirited struggle to raise her son amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s."

The President by Miguel Ángel Asturias (1946). "A story of a ruthless dictator and his schemes to dispose of a political adversary in an unnamed Latin American country usually identified as Guatemala."

The Living Is Easy by Dorothy West (1948). "One of only a handful of novels published by black women during the forties, the story of ambitious Cleo Judson is a long-time cult classic."

The Tunnel by Ernesto Sabato (1948). "Sabato's first novel is framed as the confession of the painter Juan Pablo Castel, who has murdered the only woman capable of understanding him."

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai (1948). "The poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas."

Nisei Daughter by Monica Sone (1952). "A Japanese American woman tells how it was to grow up on Seattle's waterfront in the 1930s and to be subjected to 'relocation' during World War II."

The Palm-Wine Drinkard by Amos Tutuola (1952). "Drawing on the West African (Nigeria), Yoruba oral folktale tradition, Tutuola described the odyssey of a devoted palm-wine drinker through a nightmare of fantastic adventure."

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (1952). "As he journeys from the Deep South to the streets and basements of Harlem, from a horrifying 'battle royal' where black men are reduced to fighting animals, to a Communist rally where they are elevated to the status of trophies, Ralph Ellison's nameless protagonist ushers readers into a parallel universe that throws our own into harsh and even hilarious relief."

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin (1953). "With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's discovery of the terms of his identity as the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935."

The Dark Child by Camara Laye (1954). "A distinct and graceful memoir of Camara Laye's youth in the village of Koroussa, French Guinea."

The Sound of Waves by Yukio Mishima (1954). "A timeless story of first love. It tells of Shinji, a young fisherman and Hatsue, the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village."

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz (1956). "The first novel in Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz's magnificent Cairo Trilogy, an epic family saga of colonial Egypt that is considered his masterwork."

The Waiting Years by Fumiko Enchi (1957). "In a series of colorful, unforgettable scenes, Enchi brilliantly handles the human interplay within the ill-fated Shirakawa family."

Memoirs of a Woman Doctor by Nawal El Saadawi (1958). "Rebelling against the constraints of family and society, a young Egyptian woman decides to study medicine, becoming the only woman in a class of men."

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1958). "Tells two overlapping, intertwining stories, both of which center around Okonkwo, a 'strong man' of an Ibo village in Nigeria."

Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburō Ōe (1958). "Recounts the exploits of 15 teenage reformatory boys evacuated in wartime to a remote mountain village where they are feared and detested by the local peasants."

The Guide by R. K. Narayan (1958). "Formerly India's most corrupt tourist guide, Raju-just released from prison-seeks refuge in an abandoned temple. Mistaken for a holy man, he plays the part and succeeds so well that God himself intervenes to put Raju's newfound sanctity to the test."

Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall (1959). "This beloved coming-of-age story set in Brooklyn during the Depression and World War II follows the life of Selina Boyce, a daughter of Barbadians immigrants."

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (1959). "Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America-and changed American theater forever."

Down Second Avenue by Es'kia Mphahlele (1959). "A landmark book that describes Mphahlele's experience growing up in segregated South Africa. Vivid, graceful, and unapologetic, it details a daily life of severe poverty and brutal police surveillance under the subjugation of an apartheid regime.."

God's Bits of Wood by Ousmane Sembène (1960). "In 1947-48 the workers on the Dakar-Niger railway came out on strike. This novel is an imaginative evocation of how those long days affected the lives of people who lived along the hundreds of miles of track."

The Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane (1961). "This long-unavailable classic tells the tale of young Samba Diallo, a devout pupil in a Koranic school in Senegal whose parents send him to Paris to study philosophy."

A House for Mr Biswas by V.S. Naipaul (1961). "When he marries into the domineering Tulsi family on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on an arduous-and endless-struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own."

The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe (1962). "After missing the last bus home following a day trip to the seashore, an amateur entomologist is offered lodging for the night at the bottom of a vast sand pit. But when he attempts to leave the next morning, he quickly discovers that the locals have other plans."

Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks (1963). "Showcases an esteemed artist's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world."

A Backward Place by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1965). "Six colourful, comic characters inhabit A Backward Place. All but one are Westerners who have come to Delhi to experience an alternative way of life."

The Interpreters by Wole Sowinka (1965). "The Nobel Laureate's first novel spotlights a small circle of young Nigerian intellectuals living in Lagos."

The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley (1965). "In this riveting account, he tells of his journey from a prison cell to Mecca, describing his transition from hoodlum to Muslim minister."

The River Between by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (1965). "Christian missionaries attempt to outlaw the female circumcision ritual and in the process create a terrible rift between the two Kikuyu communities on either side of the river."

Efuru by Flora Nwapa (1966). "Efuru, beautiful and respected, is loved and deserted by two ordinary undistinguished husbands."

A Handful of Rice by Kamala Markandaya (1966). "The novel depicts the hard struggle of life in a modern city and its demoralization. Ravi , son of a peasant, joins in the general exodus to the city, and, floating through the indifferent streets, lands into the underworld of petty criminals."

The Doctor's Wife by Sawako Ariyoshi (1966). "This novel is really two stories: on the one hand, the successful medical career of Hanaoka Seishu, the first doctor in the world to perform surgery for breast cancer under a general anesthetic; on the other hand, the lives of his wife and his mother, who supported him with stoic resignation, even to the extent of finally volunteering to be used as guinea pigs in his experiments."

Jubilee by Margaret Walker (1966). "Tells the true story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress. Vyry bears witness to the South's antebellum opulence and to its brutality, its wartime ruin, and the promises of Reconstruction."

The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa (1966). "Set among a community of cadets in a Lima military school, it is notable for its experimental and complex employment of multiple perspectives."

Black Rain by Masuji Ibuse (1966). "The story of a young woman who was caught in the radioactive 'black rain' that fell after the bombing of Hiroshima."

Houseboy by Ferdinand Oyono (1966). "Toundi Ondoua, the rural African protagonist of Houseboy, encounters a world of prisms that cast beautiful but unobtainable glimmers, especially for a black youth in colonial Cameroon."

Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih (1966). "A rich and sensual work of deep honesty and incandescent lyricism. In 2001 it was selected by a panel of Arab writers and critics as the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century."

Silence by Shūsaku Endō (1966). "Father Rodrigues is an idealistic Portuguese Jesuit priest who, in the 1640s, sets sail for Japan on a determined mission to help the brutally oppressed Japanese Christians and to discover the truth behind unthinkable rumours that his famous teacher Ferreira has renounced his faith."

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Márquez (1967). "Tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of a mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family."

Thousand Cranes by Yasunari Kawabata (1967). "While attending a traditional tea ceremony in the aftermath of his parents' deaths, Kikuji encounters his father's former mistress, Mrs. Ota. At first Kikuji is appalled by her indelicate nature, but it is not long before he succumbs to passion."
What are your favorite diverse classic books?
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100 Must-Read Classics by People of Color

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Classic literature can teach us so much about the past-how people lived, what they thought, and what they wanted to change. But the literary canon tends to be dominated by white men. I have nothing against Charles Dickens, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Orwell, and the like, but there's so much more for lovers of classics to read.

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Historical moments and/or realistic fiction

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These movies offer jumping-off points for conversations about injustice. Advice from Common Sense Media editors.

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Shirley Chisholm left her mark on history when she became the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968 and the first Black woman to run for President in 1972.  If you want to learn more, watch the documentary "Unbought and Unbossed."

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Shirley Chisholm's Story As The First Black Woman To Run For President | #SeeHer Story | PeopleTV

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This TED Talk discusses "whitewashing" history.

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The Dangers of Whitewashing Black History | David Ikard | TEDxNashville

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This gives a very clear explanation of how racism affects generations.

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Before Obama And Maxine Waters There Was Shirley Chisholm

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Before Obama And Maxine Waters There Was Shirley Chisholm

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The Root

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Before Obama And Maxine Waters There Was Shirley Chisholm

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Here’s a link to the 1619 podcasts on everything from economy to the evolution and birth of American music (I recommend the music one!)

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Listen to ‘1619,’ a Podcast From The New York Times (Published 2020)

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An audio series on how slavery has transformed America, connecting past and present through the oldest form of storytelling.

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Many states have now made Juneteenth (the celebration of the end of slavery) an official holiday. Here is a PHOTO collection of Juneteenth celebrations. Additionally, watch Season 4 episode 1 of Black-ish titled "Juneteenth."

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It took two whole years after President Abraham Lincoln declared the abolition of slavery on January 1, 1863, for the end of one of the darkest chapters in American history to take hold.

The Emancipation Proclamation marked the end of the legalized institution of slavery in America, but in the small town of Galveston Island, Texas, black slaves had been carrying on their lives of bondage and subjugation, oblivious to the fact that they were actually free.

On June 19th, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger and his band of Union soldiers (who had been traveling throughout the South for two years spreading the word) arrived at Galveston Island to tell the last remaining slaves in the United States that they were finally free.

The day became known as "Juneteenth," a kind of Independence Day for African-Americans, a day of celebration and remembrance. Juneteenth is a state holiday in Texas, and is officially celebrated in 43 states in America, usually with parades, barbecues and memorial ceremonies.

But Juneteenth isn't recognized as a federal holiday (though attempts have been made), and for that reason few people get to publicly celebrate it or are even aware of its existence and legacy. And that's a shame, because Juneteenth is an opportunity for black people to truly celebrate all that they've overcome through the power of community.

Below are photos of Juneteenth celebrations across the country, over the years, that capture the beauty of the holiday:

BEFORE YOU GO

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These Photos Show Why You Should Celebrate Juneteenth

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It took two whole years after President Abraham Lincoln declared the abolition of slavery on January 1, 1863, for the end of one of the darkest chapters in American history to take hold.

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Reference center

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A selection of multicultural and social justice books for children, YA, and educators.

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Multicultural and Social Justice Books - Social Justice Books

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Curated Booklists Teaching for Change has carefully selected the best multicultural and social justice books for children, YA, and educators on 70+ topics. Reviews of Children's Literature Critical reviews of children's books from a variety of sources, compiled by See What We See. Anti-Bias Book Talk Explore children's literature through an anti-bias, anti-racist lens in this [...]

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Teachers and staff recommendations

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Making Black Lives Matter: A Retrospective

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Making Black Lives Matter: A Retrospective

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In commemoration of Trayvon Martin's death, by Facing History and Ourselves

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It was on this day nine years ago that 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman. After spending the evening relaxing and playing video games with his brothers, Martin ventured out to a convenient store to purchase some snacks. He would not make it home after Zimmerman deemed him a suspicious presence and proceeded to shoot him dead, later claiming self-defense. The fact that we live in a society in which the worth and humanity of a young Black man is so quickly eclipsed and negated by his dark skin is a source of Black suffering that is difficult to soothe. When the jury refused to convict Zimmerman for killing Martin, outrage followed and would catalyze the development of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2013. In the years that have elapsed since then, a growing number of people and organizations have become affiliated with the movement as Black people continue to be killed by law enforcement and vigilantes at disproportionate rates . As the movement expands, complex questions have emerged about what it means to assert that "Black Lives Matter" and to stand behind that claim in meaningful ways within our own spheres of influence.

"Black Lives Matter" is a label for a broad but decentralized movement that has been guided, though not controlled, by the BLM organization . Its stated mission is to "eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes." Further, BLM explains that "[b]y combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centering Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives."

Since the emergence of BLM in 2013, the movement has provided a space for Black people to voice rage, engage in collective action, and establish political platforms driven by their own experiences. In addition, the BLM movement has also raised awareness about the depth of violence that has long assaulted Black communities but that has only recently entered the awareness of many non-Black people. From the widely publicized killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Walter Scott to those of Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, and so many more, it seems that a wider array of non-Black people have begun gaining an understanding of the threats to the safety, dignity, and sheer mattering of Black people on the public stage.

Nowhere have these contemporary threats to Black life been as prominent in the national consciousness than during the summer of 2020 when Darnella Frazier's recording of the murder of George Floyd further awakened the nation, prompting more people than ever before and from of all racial backgrounds to join the BLM movement. Despite the wide array of responses to these events, this cultural touchpoint seems to have left an indelible mark on prevailing understandings of systemic racism in the U.S. In addition to massive protests around the country, we also witnessed various monuments connected to legacies of white supremacy and colonial expansion being defaced and taken down, reflecting a desire to reframe the story of our nation and respective communities with an analysis of racism and colonialism at the fore. Alongside this have been an array of artistic campaigns that assert the richness and worthiness of Black humanity through a combination of Black joy and Black resistance.

In response to this unprecedented movement, countless organizations and consumer-facing brands also began to emblazon "Black Lives Matter" on their websites, issue positioning memos, create entirely new positions for diversity professionals, and take unprecedented steps to highlight the contributions of Black leaders and creators within their spheres of influence.

Despite the apparent shift in consciousness that these events provoked, one must also ask where these events have left us in terms of tangible gains for Black lives. Due to the tireless civic engagement of various activists and political figures, some cities have banned chokeholds and neck restraints while others reimagine local safety measures within and beyond the framework of policing. What's more, a study conducted at the University of Massachusetts Amherst reveals that communities with BLM protests have seen a 15-20% reduction in police homicides during the five years that followed.

Other data suggest , however, that murder of Black people by police continues to outpace that of other groups even amidst these recent gains. And when one considers the display of white nationalism present during the insurrection that was permitted to overtake the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, it could not be more clear that antiblack racism and threats to Black life remain firmly embedded in our political systems and consciousness.

Despite the gains we have witnessed over the last year, we must realize that the declarative statement "Black Lives Matter" that a growing number of people have begun invoking really ought to be framed as a question that compels one and one's community to transform. In a world where antiblack racism continues to run deep and asserting #BlackLivesMatter is more trendy than genuinely disruptive, how do we re-engage "Black lives matter" as a provocation and a challenge? The antiblack violence and racism that the Black Lives Matter movement is responding to will not be meaningfully redressed by corporate sloganeering or any other superficial strategy that fails to attend to the actual lived experiences of Black people, the systems that sustain antiblack violence, and the abiding need for profound change.

For everyone ranging from Black activists to scholars, the question of how to truly eradicate antiblack violence remains the subject of eternal debate, but we don't need a definitive, sweeping plan of social transformation to begin responding to the core insight that BLM has planted in the national consciousness. We can start by taking the mere concept that Black lives matter fully into our individual consciousness and determining what it would mean to act from that place within our own spheres of influence. Regardless of our racial backgrounds and the particular roles we play-from teacher to community leader to parent-there is something for everyone.

Beyond all of the slogans and hashtags, we can ask: Do Black lives actually matter within my school, workplace, or other community spaces in which I am active? How do Black students, colleagues, and community members-and even I, if I am a Black person-actually experience these worlds? How might the truths of Black people, if embraced, radically alter what each of us does within our own spheres of influence every day? What ways of relating to ourselves and others simply have no place once we believe that Black lives do indeed matter? What systems may we need to challenge or even dismantle to do right by those truths?

--

Facing History invites educators to use our Black History Resource Collection in the classroom all year.

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Making Black Lives Matter: A Retrospective

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It was on this day nine years ago that 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman. After spending the evening relaxing and playing video games with his brothers, Martin ventured out to a 7-11 to purchase some snacks.

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A collection of photographs by Kris Graves

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New York based photographer for landscape, portrait, event, interior, travel, and more

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Annotations and scholarly reviews of children’s and young adult books that focus on Africa.

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Africa Access, a 501 c (3) organization was founded in 1989 to help schools, public libraries, and parents improve the quality of their K-12 collections on Africa. Africa Access Review, Read Africa and Children's Africana Book Awards (CABA) have been effective initiatives in our efforts to inform the public about quality K-12 books on Africa.

To access the comprehensive Africa Access Review database click: Africa Access Review Database

For a Word Press version of recent reviews enter the title of the book into the SEARCH BOX on this page. You are invited to: A dd your comments and ratings for a book.

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Africa Access, a 501 c (3) organization was founded in 1989 to help schools, public libraries, and parents improve the quality of their K-12 collections on Africa. Africa Access Review, Read Africa and Children's Africana Book Awards (CABA) have been effective initiatives in our efforts to inform the public about quality K-12 books on Africa.

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Video Books and Cafe

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Sankofa | Black-owned Bookstore | Washington DC

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Sankofa is a Black filmmaker-family-owned and operated bookstore and cafe specializing in books, movies and programming about people of African descent since '98.

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Schomburg Center's Black Liberation Reading Lists

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Schomburg Center's Black Liberation Reading Lists

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Schomburg Center's Black Liberation Reading List for Adults

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Explore essential titles selected by the Schomburg Center as it marks 95 years of collecting and preserving Black history, arts, and culture. Available on SimplyE and from the Schomburg Shop.

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Remembering Bayard Rustin: The Man Behind the March on Washington

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Remembering Bayard Rustin: The Man Behind the March on Washington

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NPR Throughline (2021)

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August 28th, 1963 promised to be a warm summer morning in Washington D.C. As the sun began to peek over the horizon, it was quiet on the National Mall. Too quiet for organizers of the historic March On Washington.

"Nobody knew exactly how many people would come," recalls Norman Hill, a young activist and labor leader at the time.

Organizer and transportation director Rachelle Horowitz estimated 90,000 people would be there based on the number of buses that had been chartered.

By the end of the day, an estimated 250,000 people from across the country had marched on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr delivered his iconic " I Have a Dream" speech.

Hill, Horowitz, and Joyce Ladner, then a coordinator for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), spoke with Throughline, to remember their days working on the march under the leadership of Bayard Rustin, the civil rights pioneer behind the March on Washington.

Those who knew Rustin remember his charisma, his kindness, his slight British accent, and his tendency to break out in song. And they remember him as a master strategist. For decades before the march, Rustin had been organizing protests, marches and sit-ins, spreading the gospel of nonviolent resistance long before Dr. King came on the national stage. In fact, Rustin's surviving partner, Walter Naegle, describes him as a "mentor" to Dr. King.

Rustin's belief in nonviolence began when he was a child growing up with his grandmother, a Quaker, in Pennsylvania in the 1920s. It solidified in adulthood after he discovered the work of Indian revolutionary, Mahatma Gandhi. For most of his life, Rustin was the person behind-the-scenes, dreaming up transformative moments like the March On Washington. He wanted others, including Dr. King, to be the face of that dream.

Nearly 60 years later, Hill, Horowitz, and Ladner still remember waking up that August morning. They remember walking across the grass of the National Mall, hearing Bob Dylan - or Bobby, as Ladner calls him - perform. They remember the sound of the speeches over the loudspeaker system, which Horowitz says cost them a fortune. They remember watching John Lewis rewrite his speech up until the time he took the stage. And they remember watching as bus after bus pulled up, and one person became five, then a thousand, then tens of thousands.

"They were singing, they were happy and we knew it was going to be a success," says Horowitz.

Ladner came from a small town in Mississippi, and when she looked out at the crowd she said she felt "a sense of awe and pride. It still feels a certain way, and I still get it."

What Hill holds on to is that it was a march for jobs and freedom. "I think what is overlooked is that the thrust of the march had a class dimension as well as a civil rights dimension," he says.

The crowd marched peacefully and without disturbance that day. It was an incredible feat of organizing that almost didn't happen.

Just a few weeks before the march, Rustin had come under attack. He was an easy target: a socialist, a pacifist who'd refused to fight in WWII and went to prison for it, and a gay Black man at a time of intense homophobia. He'd been attacked before for being gay, each time forcing him to retreat out of the spotlight.

This time, the attacks came on the floor of the U.S. Senate. The segregationist senator Strom Thurmond accused Rustin of being a "sex-pervert" and "draft-dodger." He hoped by discrediting Rustin he'd also put a stop to the march. But soon after, the director of the march and prominent leader of the civil rights movement, A. Philip Randolph, gave a press conference defending Rustin. And the march went on as planned.

For the remainder of his life, Rustin turned his attention toward issues like economic injustice, gay rights, and anti-colonialism. He received criticism from some within the civil rights movement for his political views, namely, his tepid opposition to the Vietnam War, his conservative stance on things like affirmative action, and his support for Israel. He died in New York City in 1987 on the outskirts of the movement.

Bayard Rustin was the sum of many, sometimes contradictory parts. And while his contributions are often overlooked, he was instrumental in the movement and the architect of one of the most influential protests in American history. In a way, that was his greatest gift: the ability to imagine a different world and rally everyday people to build that world with him.
If you would like to learn more about Bayard Rustin: We love to hear from our listeners! Tweet at us Contributors: Ramtin Arablouei, Julie Caine, Jamie York, Laine Kaplan-Levenson, Lawrence Wu, Parth Shah, Victor Yvellez@throughlineNPR, send us an , or leave us a voicemail at (872) 588-8805.

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Remembering Bayard Rustin: The Man Behind the March on Washington : Throughline

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Bayard Rustin, the man behind the March on Washington, was one of the most consequential architects of the civil rights movement you may never have heard of. Rustin imagined how nonviolent civil resistance could be used to dismantle segregation in the United States.

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The New York Times (2019)

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Podcast by Diarra Ndiaye (1ère)

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Washington Post (Jan. 2021)

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Rep. Shirley Chisholm (N.Y.) speaks before the panel drafting the platform for the Democratic National Convention in 1972, the year she ran for president. (James Palmer/AP)

Annie Lee Cooper, one of those extraordinary Black women whose name is often left out of the history books, stood in line on Jan. 25, 1965, to register to vote at the courthouse in Selma, Ala.

Black people had been systematically stopped from voting by Southern White voting registrars, but Cooper, dressed in one of her finest suits, was persistent. Civil rights legend John Lewis would later describe her as "upfront, pleasant and absolutely fearless," and Oprah Winfrey would portray her character in the movie "Selma," capturing Cooper and her determination that would exemplify the history of Black women fighting against racism, oppression and for political power in the United States.

"I went down to register in 1963," Cooper recalled in a 1965 interview with Jet magazine. "The next day I was fired from my job as a practical nurse at a rest home. I've tried to register several times, even before Dr. Martin Luther King came. They rejected me once and told me I failed the registration test. The other times, they never let me in the place. Once I stood in line from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., but never got in to register."

Decades before Stacey Abrams, these black women risked their lives to register Black voters

As Cooper, 54, waited that warm winter day in Alabama, the local sheriff, James G. Clark, and his deputies arrived outside the courthouse to break up the line. Clark poked Cooper in the neck with his billy club, according to a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) account. "He came up behind me and jerked me," Cooper recalled. "I jerked loose, pushed him back and told him not to twist my arm the way he was doing."

Then Clark made the mistake of hitting Cooper. She spun around and landed a hard right hook, knocking the sheriff to the ground.

"He hit me. Then I lit into him," Cooper later explained. "I guess I just got delirious or something, so I won't deny that I hit him. I probably hit those other deputies, too. They hit me with that billy stick in the eye. In an alley away from the crowd and while I was handcuffed, they pushed me again, and jugged me with those clubs. I had bruises all over and a bad cut in my head."

During her victory speech, Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris acknowledged the generations of women "who fought and sacrificed so much for equality and liberty and justice for all, including the Black women, who are often - too often - overlooked, but so often prove that they are the backbone of our democracy ... I stand on their shoulders."

Kamala Harris, a daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, has made history as first woman of color elected vice president

Many scholars and historians agree that Harris is standing on the shoulders of many unsung superwomen of racial justice.

"So many Black women have laid the groundwork for this moment and for the vice president-to-be," said Judith Browne Dianis, executive director of Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington. "Because they did kick down the doors and they laid the groundwork, they were the ones who were the architects of the voting rights movement. There are lessons to be learned from what they did and how they showed up."

Black women played critical roles in organizing, strategizing and putting their lives on the line for political freedom. Black women - even during slavery - planned resistance movements and organized for freedom.

"Each woman is like a step in a staircase that continues to go up. Each step rises," said CeLillianne Green, an author, poet, lawyer and historian. "There are so many women whom we never heard of. But for them, there is no Kamala D. Harris. It's the quiet power and dignity of Black women who you don't know about who paved the way."

Harris will be sworn in as vice president more than 170 years after abolitionist Sojourner Truth traveled the country preaching against slavery and injustice and advocating for women's rights, even when White women in the suffrage movement resisted being connected to the anti-slavery movement.

In 1851, at the Women's Rights Convention in Ohio, Truth took on those who had the audacity to believe that women were less than equal. "If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone," she proclaimed, "these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right-side-up again."

A stand for the race

Black women challenged the notion of a country that once claimed it was a democracy but counted Black people as three-fifths of a person.

"History has its own power and black women more than ever before need its truths to challenge hateful assumptions, negative stereotypes, myths, lies and distortions about our own role in the progress of time," Darlene Clark Hine wrote in the preface to " Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia."

Consider the courage and audacity of Ida B. Wells, born enslaved in 1862 near Holly Springs, Miss., six months before President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Wells became an author, newspaper owner and anti-lynching crusader.

In 1913, Wells, who openly criticized racism among White women in the suffrage movement, created a suffrage group focused on Black women in Chicago. "When I saw that we were likely to have a restricted suffrage and the white women of the organization were working like beavers to bring it about, I made another effort to get our women interested," she wrote in her autobiography " Crusade for Justice." The women who joined her "were extremely interested when I showed them that we could use our vote for the advantage of ourselves and our race."

'Fearless' Ida B. Wells honored by new lynching museum for fighting racial terrorism

Months later, she went to Washington to attend a parade organized by suffragists Lucy Burns and Alice Paul, who wanted the parade segregated by race. When the women stepped out on March 3, 1913, a day before the inauguration of President Woodrow Wilson, they were jeered.

Wells had no intention of marching in the back. She stood on the sideline until the Illinois delegation approached, then stepped to the front.

"I am not taking this stand because I personally wish for recognition," she wrote later. "I am doing it for the future benefit of my whole race."

Mississippi challenge

In August, when Joe Biden delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he began by acknowledging Ella Baker, a phenomenal political strategist and organizer.

"Ella Baker, a giant of the civil rights movement, left us with this wisdom: Give people light and they will find a way," Biden recalled. "Give people light. Those are words for our time."

Baker, often called a social architect of the civil rights movement, was a field secretary for the NAACP. King recruited her to help run and organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and then she helped form SNCC, which organized Freedom Rides to challenge segregated interstate transportation; and Freedom Summer, a campaign to register Black people in the South to vote. Baker helped organize the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party, which challenged the all-White Democratic Party delegation from Mississippi.

"The major job was getting people to understand that they had something within their power that they could use," Baker said, "and it could only be used if they understood what was happening and how group action could counter violence."

One example was provided by Fannie Lou Hamer, a SNCC community organizer, who co-founded the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Black-and-white footage from the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City shows her making her way through a crowd of men. She wore a print summer dress and carried a white purse on her left arm.

Civil rights crusader Fannie Lou Hamer defied men - and presidents - who tried to silence her

When she arrived at the witness chair, Hamer put her purse on the table and without notes proceeded to speak for 13 riveting minutes, telling the credentials committee and the world about the injustices suffered by Black people. Hamer recounted being stopped by police after trying to register to vote, being fired as a sharecropper, about 16 bullets shot into the home of friends where she slept. She described the beating she endured in a Mississippi jail after attending a voter registration workshop in South Carolina.

"After I was placed in the cell," Hamer said, "I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, 'Can you say, "Yes, sir," nigger? Can you say, "Yes, sir?" ' "

It was Annell Ponder, a teacher, librarian and voting rights worker from Georgia, who also attended the workshop. "They beat her, I don't know how long. And after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people." Ponder refused to say "Yes, sir."

When the men came for Hamer, they forced her to lie face down on a bunk and beat her with a blackjack.

"All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America," Hamer said. "Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?"

Then she got up, dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, grabbed her purse and made her way out of the convention. Her party was not seated. But a year later Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, outlawing voter suppression and discrimination.

The Selma-to-Montgomery march was planned in the living room of Civil Rights activist Amelia Boynton in 1965, after Boynton asked King to come to Selma.

On March 7, 1965, Boynton and more than 600 people, including Lewis, gathered to march, according to the National Park Service. Determined, they began to peacefully walk from Selma to Montgomery. But on the edge of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, local police and state troopers attacked them, spraying tear gas and hitting them with billy clubs. "Police beat Amelia unconscious for refusing to retreat," according to the NPS. "Television and newspaper cameras recorded the violence. Over seventy marchers were beaten and seventeen hospitalized. The event became known as Bloody Sunday."

The photo of Boynton, beaten unconscious and a state trooper looming over her, went viral, published in newspapers around the world to show the hypocrisy of American justice, according to an SNCC account.

In 1964, Boynton became the first Black woman in Alabama to run for U.S. Congress. Her campaign motto: "A voteless people is a hopeless people," according to SNCC history. "Despite being defeated, she earned eleven percent of the local vote, where only five percent of Blacks were registered."

In 2015, Boynton died at age 104, only months after she crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge with President Barack Obama on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

Sit-in, kneel-in, lie-in

Some Black women freedom fighters are unknown by history and some listed only by first names - such as Angela, one of the first Black women to appear in records in the colony that would become Virginia. Some are famous, like Mary McLeod Bethune, one of the first Black women to serve as a college president. Bethune later became an adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Some Black women were simply unintimidated by threats of violence.

Diane Nash was a founding member of SNCC, "and few were more militant than she," according to SNCC history. "When violence stopped the first Freedom Ride in Alabama," she was insistent rides continue.

"The students have decided that we can't let violence overcome," she told a movement leader, the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, according to SNCC. "We are coming into Birmingham to continue the Freedom Ride."

How Recy Taylor's brutal rape has become a symbol of #MeToo and #TimesUp

Another courageous Black woman was Daisy Bates, the only woman to speak on the platform during the official program at the 1963 March on Washington. Bates took the podium in a couture hat and cat-eyed shades: "We will kneel-in; we will sit-in until we can eat in any corner in the United States," she intoned. "We will walk until we are free, until we can walk to any school and take our children to any school in the United States. And we will sit-in and we will kneel-in and we will lie-in if necessary until every Negro in America can vote."

On Sept. 20, 1964, the home of Aylene Quin was bombed, after Quin opened her restaurant in McComb, Miss., to SNCC workers and freedom fighters.

In an affidavit collected by SNCC, Quin wrote that in May 1964, she began receiving threatening telephone calls. "A lady used to call me and say things like, 'Do you think the civil rights bill will do you any good?' I said, 'It will do me no harm.' And then she said, 'If I knew where you lived, I would come and kick your black ass.' "

Days later, on a Sunday night, "while my two children were asleep in the bedroom and a pregnant babysitter was there, my home was bombed," Quin wrote. "The bomb tore up my whole house and all the furniture. My two children, luckily, were only slightly injured." The babysitter also survived. The bomb had been planted underneath the porch.

"One day after the bombing," according to SNCC history, Quin traveled to D.C., where she met privately with President Lyndon B. Johnson "and demanded increased federal protection for Black people in McComb and the South."

Seeking higher office

On Jan. 25, 1972, Rep. Shirley Chisholm of New York, the first Black woman elected to Congress, stood on a platform in a Baptist church in her district in Brooklyn. She waved to the crowd and declared her bid for the Democratic nomination for president.

"I am not the candidate for Black America, although I am Black and proud," said Chisholm, the first Black woman to run for president on a major party ticket. "I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman and I'm equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or fat cats or special interests. ... I am the candidate of the people of America."

Shirley Chisholm blazed the way for Kamala Harris to be Biden's VP pick

Chisholm ran against Sen. George McGovern (S.D.), who would go on to win the Democratic nomination but lose in a landslide to Republican Richard Nixon.

Nixon would face another Black woman during his impeachment hearing, when Rep. Barbara Jordan (D-Tex.) gave a speech seared into the pages of history.

Jordan became the first Black women in U.S. history "to preside over a legislative body when she was elected president pro tem of the Texas Senate in 1972," according to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture. "In 1972, Jordan was one of two African Americans elected to the U.S. House of Representatives."

Jordan delivered the opening remarks at Nixon's impeachment hearing. "My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total," she said. "I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution."

If members of Congress could not find enough evidence for impeachment, she said, "then perhaps the 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder."

Nixon resigned before the full House could vote to impeach him.

Updated January 20, 2021

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Annie Lee Cooper, one of those extraordinary Black women whose name is often left out of the history books, stood in line on Jan. 25, 1965, to register to vote at the courthouse in Selma, Ala. Black people had been systematically stopped from voting by Southern White voting registrars, but Cooper, dressed in one of her finest suits, was persistent.

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Black Women’s 200 Year Fight for the Vote

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Black Women’s 200 Year Fight for the Vote

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PBS

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Black Women's 200 Year Fight for the Vote

For two centuries, black women have linked their ballot access to the human rights of all.

Black women suffragists holding sign reading "Head-Quarters for Colored Women Voters," in Georgia, 1910-1920, NYPL

The 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment is a chance to recover less well-known histories of women and the vote. If we take away little else, the suffrage centennial can teach us how the Black women leaders of 2020 - from Stacey Abrams and Ayanna Pressley to Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris - have emerged out of a centuries-long struggle for political power, in movements led by Black women themselves.

The 1913 women's parade marked a critical turn in the road to the 19th Amendment. Alice Paul and the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) set aside older models of women's politics that relied upon persuasion, partisanship and patronage. In their place, parade organizers placed confrontation front and center. The women seized the national stage - on the eve of a presidential inauguration no less - and put their bodies on the line in what turned out to be a raucous scene: Suffragists clashed with their critics and the curious for all the nation to see. Behind the scenes, Alice Paul and her collaborators in Washington had inherited the anti-Black racism that had always run through suffrage associations. When given her opportunity to remedy how white supremacy threatened to taint her parade, Paul faltered. She evidenced neither clarity nor conviction and the message to Black suffragists was clear. On March 3, they would not be excluded. Nor however would they be welcomed. A pointed awkwardness ran through the day's events as a few dozen Black women took their places among thousands of marchers. The women stepped into a new phase of the suffrage movement, but they failed to leave racism behind.

There among the thousands of women marchers were leading Black women like Ida B. Wells, Carrie W. Clifford and Mary Church Terrell. They were joined by teachers, pharmacists, artists and members of the Howard University chapter of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority. These women's routes to the parade were paved with a distinct struggle over voting rights in America. Black women marchers had not been active in NAWSA. They were not among the many volunteers who supported Alice Paul and NAWSA's Congressional Committee as they planned for the parade. Black women suffragists arrived that day carrying their independent experiences of conventions, manifestos and organizing. On March 3, 1913, two women's movements met up. And, as The Vote explains, it was an uneasy occasion.

When I began the research for Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, I wanted to learn what was on the minds of those Black women who marched in the 1913 parade. If they hadn't helped to plan the parade and they never joined NAWSA, where had their commitments to women's votes taken hold? What sorts of experiences had brought them to the parade? What did they hope to achieve by being there and how did they persist in their commitment to a cause when coalitions with white women suffragists proved to be too strained? I learned that Black women marchers were suffragists so committed to women's votes that they endured awkwardness and slights on that March day. I also learned that their women's movement happened elsewhere. The 1913 parade was but one brief chapter in their two-hundred-year long battle for political power. Black women were activists in their own women's movement, one that aimed to win the vote while also insisting on the defeat of racism and sexism. Their story forever changes how we think about the history of women and the vote.

Black women fought for voting rights, not suffrage. The campaign for the 19th Amendment, often termed women's suffrage, was one part of Black women's broader advocacy for the voting rights of all African Americans, women and men. Women like Ida B. Wells came to the 1913 parade as veterans of the fight against lynching. Terrorist-style violence - along with poll taxes, understanding and literacy tests and grandfather clauses - had kept Black men from voting since the 1890s. Wells knew that the same would be true for Black women even if they won a constitutional amendment. In the year that followed the 1913 parade, US senators from the South spearheaded an effort to repeal the 15th Amendment, which in 1870 had prohibited states from using race to deny the vote. Black women watched as lawmakers attempted to trade support for passing a 19th Amendment in exchange for erasing the 15th Amendment. Black women knew they needed both.

Black women rarely worked through suffrage associations. But they always worked to win the vote. Their fight for rights began in the 19th century, with claims to power within anti-slavery societies, churches and political conventions. In these places, women's striving for power mixed with their interest in building and sustaining community institutions. Black women's claims for voting rights grew up in the 20th century within civil rights organizations. In 1915, scholar, activist and editor WEB DuBois ran a special issue on "Votes for Women" in the NAACP's magazine, . Twenty-six women and men weighed in, among them Carrie W. Clifford and Mary Church Terrell, both leaders of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW) and marchers in the women's parade of 1913. The NACW, founded in 1896, and later the National Council of Colored Women, founded in 1935, were the backbone of Black women's voting rights campaigns. But Black suffragists always made their homes in many sorts of associations: sororities, the professions, college alumnae groups, church conferences and high school faculties.

Black women's campaign for the vote stretched across 200 years. It began before the women's convention in 1848 Seneca Falls, New York, and it continued long after ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920. For Black women, the road to voting rights began in the 1820s and 1830s. Maria Stewart, for example, in 1832 became the first American woman, a Black woman, to speak publicly to audiences of men and women about politics. Her view - that women's political power should not be limited by either racism or sexism - was adopted by the next generations of Black women activists. For them, the 19th Amendment did not go far enough because anti-Black racism still kept too many Black women from the polls. 1920 marked the start a new chapter in the story of voting rights. Across the country, Black women turned out on registration day and confronted officials in a movement that persisted for another forty-five years. Their victory came 1965 with the signing of the Voting Rights Act. Today, with that law's most forceful provisions sidelined in 2013 by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder, Black women continue to be champions of voting rights for themselves and for all.

Black women insisted that the vote was a defense against sexual violence. From the memoirs of enslaved women to the #MeToo movement, across 200 years, Black women have linked their access to the ballot to their ability to defend against rape. In her 1861 narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs confessed to how as a girl of 14 she had barely escaped the insistence of the man who headed the household in which she worked. Mary Church Terrell recounted the many occasions on which she was assaulted, threatened and seized by fear when traveling alone on the nation's railroads. Fannie Lou Hamer, voting rights champion and leader of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, related how the same violence plagued women during the modern civil rights movement. Hamer was sexually assaulted in a Winona, Mississippi, jail after she attempted to register to vote. In 2006, Tarana Burke reintroduced the nation to the link between sexual violence and Black women's political power with a phrase that launched a movement, "Me Too." In 2017, the entire nation was drawn into Burke's way of thinking as men in entertainment, politics, education, industry and more were charged with sexual harassment and assault. If the hashtag activism of #MeToo was new in 2017, the view that women's political power might protect their privacy and bodily integrity was as old as Black women's activism.

Black women demanded dignity along with equality, for all humanity. Anna Julia Cooper's 1892 book, A Voice from the South, was a pathbreaking explication of why Black women aimed to vote, hold office and otherwise wield political power. They aspired to self-governance, free from subordination: "Only the Black woman can say when and where I enter." They were driven by a quest for dignity that encompassed equality, access and mutual esteem: "The quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood." Black women's power would not come at the expense of others. Nor would it be won by gamesmanship: "Without violence and without suing or special patronage." Cooper made plain that her ultimate aim was dignity for both men and women. No one would be left behind. When a Black woman took her seat in a convention or cast her ballot, Cooper explained, "the whole Negro race enter[s] with me." Black women's power was a route to dignity for all. In the years after World War II, many Americans would begin to speak in terms of human rights, while Black women had been for generations pegging their work to the needs of all humanity.

One thread runs through these many stories, and it is the view that neither racism nor sexism have a rightful place in American politics. Such differences must be banished from how our nation approaches who votes, who holds office and who determines the law and policy that govern all our lives. The history of Black women and the vote is one about foremothers who set a high bar for the nation - past, present, and future. They have been a vanguard, claiming women's voting rights and leading by holding our nation to its highest ideals.

Martha S. Jones

Martha S. Jones is a historian and the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and a co-President of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. She is the author of Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All.

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Black Women's 200 Year Fight for the Vote | American Experience | PBS

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For two centuries, black women have linked their ballot access to the human rights of all. The 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment is a chance to recover less well-known histories of women and the vote.

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Podcast. In Black America is a syndicated program produced at KUT (Austin's NPR station) and hosted by John L. Hanson Jr.

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Produced at KUT, In Black America is a long-running, nationally syndicated program dedicated to all facets of the African American experience. John Hanson profiles a diverse selection of current and historically significant figures whose stories help illuminate life in Black America.

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NPR

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subscribe to TED Radio Hour podcast February is Black History Month - a time to remember more than 400 years of Black heritage. To celebrate the achievements of the community, we created a playlist of our favorite conversations. Featured Speakers LaToya Ruby Frazier: What Is The Human Cost Of Toxic Water And Environmental Racism?

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How Black women have continued the fight to vote 100 years after suffrage

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How Black women have continued the fight to vote 100 years after suffrage

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NBC News (Aug. 2020)

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The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which barred states from considering a voter's sex in determining eligibility, is commonly credited with expanding the right to vote to women, but the amendment didn't actually guarantee all women the right to vote. Although the amendment, which was ratified 100 years ago Tuesday, eased the obstacles some women faced at the ballot box, Black women still faced legal barriers.

"For Black women, our right to vote is only secured with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965," said Valethia Watkins, an associate professor of Africana studies at Howard University. "Black women have only had the legal protected vote for half the time of some other women."

The centennial, coming the same year as the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and the 150th anniversary of the 15th Amendment - the amendment that granted Black men the right to vote - marks just one of several major anniversaries in America's complex voting rights history. But to Watkins and other Black women, the high-profile nature of this particular anniversary also serves as a reminder of the ways the suffrage movement fell short for women of color, many of whom found themselves facing discrimination from the very women alongside whom they were hoping to secure rights.

The anniversary also comes the same year in which Black women are running for office in record numbers, Black organizers continue to protest and demand racial justice across the country and Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., is making a historic run for vice president. The fight of Black suffragists stands as a reminder of how Black women's fight for the ballot has been and continues to be about a more fundamental issue: access to political power.

Black women have only recently begun to receive credit and mainstream attention for their outsize political and voting power, and their work within the suffrage movement and the broader fight for Black voting rights is a part of history that has often gone unrecognized. While history recalls contributions of women suffragists like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the efforts of Black women like Mary Church Terrell, the first president of the pro-suffrage National Association of Colored Women, or writer and suffragist Adella Hunt Logan of the Black Tuskegee Women's Club have not received as much attention.

The work of other figures, like journalist and anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells-Barnett and abolitionist Harriet Tubman, is earning more attention for helping secure the vote for Black women. That work was often done separately from more mainstream white organizations unwilling to consider the unique needs of Black women and their communities.

Watkins said that comparing Black and white suffragists, "the why we fight and how we fight are not the same. For white suffragists, they want to fight for a single issue, and that is the vote. Ultimately, they were fighting for themselves alone."

But for Black women, the fight for suffrage was a multifaceted effort closely linked to other fights for equality within Black communities, including opposition to sexual violence, Jim Crow laws and lynching. As Logan, the Black suffragist and writer, wrote in the 1912 issue of the NAACP's magazine The Crisis, "Not only is the colored woman awake to reforms that may be hastened by good legislation and wise administration, but where she has the ballot she is reported as using it for the uplift of society and for the advancement of the State."

That message was lost on organizations like the predominantly white National American Woman Suffrage Association. When the group organized a 1913 national women's suffrage parade in Washington, D.C., organizer Alice Paul argued that "the participation of negros would have a most disastrous effect" by angering white Southerners doubly leery of women's suffrage and an enfranchised Black population.

According to The Washington Post, when Black women, including Wells-Barnett and members of Howard University's founding chapter of Delta Sigma Theta sorority, arrived at the march, they were told that the procession would be segregated. As the procession continued, Wells-Barnett, who had founded the Alpha Suffrage Club earlier that year, broke from the segregated rear to march with the white members of her Illinois delegation.

Black women continued to raise concerns about their unequal access to the franchise in the years after the 19th Amendment was ratified. While women in some states had been able to cast ballots before 1920, the amendment marked the first time that others would be able to participate in elections. And for others still, particularly Black women, the amendment ushered in a new wave of efforts to suppress Black voters, such as poll taxes, literacy tests and other barriers.

The obstacles would spark a decadeslong push for equal access to the ballot in Black communities, with civil rights activists making voting rights key to their fight for racial justice. And much as with the larger suffrage movement, Black women continued to take a leading role pushing for unfettered access to the vote, with women like Amelia Boynton Robinson and Fannie Lou Hamer working alongside figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis to secure voting rights. The efforts would culminate in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, legislation that finally secured the vote for Black people.

"Women were literally the ones sitting at the table creating the vision, the policy and the mobilization plans for us to actually gain access to the ballot," said Glynda Carr, the president and CEO of Higher Heights for America, a group focused on supporting Black women running for office.

With their votes now protected under law, Black voters began to have a larger impact on elections, culminating in the national contests in 2008 and 2012, when the especially high turnout of Black women cemented their status as the most loyal Democratic Party voters. Fast-forward to 2020, and Black women are demanding a return on their investment, calling for party leaders like former Vice President Joe Biden to support policies that improve their communities and for Black women to be treated as viable candidates for political office.

This year has also brought heightened attention to renewed fights over voting rights in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision, which weakened a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that allowed the federal government to oversee the creation of voting laws in states and counties with histories of discrimination. Since then, several states, like Texas, North Carolina and Wisconsin, have enacted laws, including voter ID measures, that voting rights advocates argue disproportionately make voting harder for communities of color, intensifying concerns about voter suppression a half-century after access to the franchise was expanded.

Given Black women's especially high voting rates, advocates fear that they will be particularly affected, and the concerns have only intensified because of the coronavirus pandemic's impact on Black communities, as well as a wave of misinformation about mail-in voting that has been furthered by the Trump administration.

"If we look at who is running voting rights organizations right now, we see Black women," said Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, a group focused on engaging with and mobilizing Black voters. "And that is precisely because our most fundamental right as citizens is under threat."

Black advocates say a new group of Black-oriented voting rights and political organizations, many of them led by Black women, stands ready to face these issues and protect voting rights. But as the centennial of suffrage approaches, bringing with it new opportunities to reflect on the ways Black communities fought for and seized civil rights even when other groups overlooked them, advocates say they continue to look to the legacies of the Black women who preceded them.

"Even when Black women did not win all that they should be able to, they continued to fight and continued to struggle in service of this more perfect union that we are all striving for," Shropshire said. "It is important to understand who is making those contributions and working towards the sort of multiracial democracy that we are all striving for."

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How Black women have continued the fight to vote 100 years after suffrage

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The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which barred states from considering a voter's sex in determining eligibility, is commonly credited with expanding the right to vote to women, but the amendment didn't actually guarantee all women the right to vote.

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The roles of African American women in the fight to vote 

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The roles of African American women in the fight to vote 

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2020

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In a pair of three-story brick row houses on an avenue in northwest Baltimore, two women, Margaret Hawkins and Augusta Chissell, lived side by side.

Driven to the same city block by the forces of residential segregation, they were united by a common ambition - the push for racial and women's equality.

Streets away lived another activist with similar sentiments. A teacher and mother, Estelle Young was eager to see Black women, including one day her own daughter, earn a spot at the polls. Young befriended the two women down the road.

Together they became a neighborly powerhouse, leading the campaign for suffrage from their own living rooms.

Their names aren't familiar to most, suppressed by a century of fragmented history, but their activism mirrors a movement across the country.

More than 100 years ago, as a groundswell of momentum pushed toward giving women the right to vote, Black women nationwide stood up to join the cause.

Even when racism tore through the movement - undercutting their efforts and severing the strength of a united female front - they were undeterred.

What Black suffragists achieved greatly shaped the fight for women's rights.

In the wake of the centennial celebration of the 19th Amendment, a history once silenced is slowly resurfacing. Stories of the relentless efforts of women of color have found a new platform, providing a chance to elevate what has been untold.

Earnestine Jenkins, a professor of art and researcher of African American history at the University of Memphis

The traditional narrative does often leave out large groups of women who don't fit into the white, middle-class story of women's rights.

"The traditional narrative does often leave out large groups of women who don't fit into the white, middle-class story of women's rights," said Earnestine Jenkins, a professor of art and researcher of African American history at the University of Memphis. "You have to be honest about the racism in the movement and the extent they kept women of color out of the movement. ... You have to look for those hidden histories because otherwise, you are not going to get the complete story."

The movement didn't begin divided.

In the throes of the Civil War, as the North and South raged over Black rights, the strong parallels between the situations of slaves and the situations of women became evident.

Convinced that freedom for one would be victory for both, white women such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton became devoted abolitionists.

When the war ended, the alignment did not last.

After the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments, which gave voting rights to Black men but not to women, Anthony - a former stationmaster for the Underground Railroad - became infuriated.

Susan B. Anthony

I will cut off this right arm of mine before I ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.

"I will cut off this right arm of mine before I ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman," Anthony said.

The intemperance alienated some suffragists, and by 1875, when Anthony drafted the amendment that would bear her name, the movement had split.

The aftershocks of abolition shook the South. Many feared any push for a law that would give not only white women, but also Black women, a place at the polls. A new reality set in.

"They realized that there really wasn't as much common ground between African American suffragists and white, middle-class suffragists as there might have been in a society that wasn't so polarized in questions of race," said Susan Ware, author of " Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote."

Unlike the predominantly white suffrage leaders - whose social privilege allowed them to look at voting rights through the lens of gender alone - Black suffragists had more to consider.

Jim Crow laws in the South undermined voting rights won by Black men.

They were made to use separate drinking fountains, sit in segregated seats at restaurants and on trains. They even swore on separate Bibles in court.

Susan Ware, author of "Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote"

They didn't have the luxury to just be working for their own vote. They were trying to improve conditions for their race and community. It was a broader vision.

Literacy tests and high poll taxes prevented many from casting their ballots. Though Black women fervently wanted a place at the polls, they wanted to ensure that Black men could be there, too.

"They didn't have the luxury to just be working for their own vote," Ware said. "They were trying to improve conditions for their race and community. It was a broader vision."

They knew having the vote would help empower them against discrimination. So they took up the campaign alongside the white women of higher class and social status.

For a time, they were allies in the movement -

hailed for voices they elevated.

Among the most eloquent of those was Frances E.W. Harper.

An orphan and young poet, Harper was inspired to take up the abolitionist cause when her home state of Maryland passed a fugitive slave law, allowing even free Blacks such as Harper to be arrested and sold into slavery.

She formed alliances with strong figures in the suffrage movement, including Anthony, and began giving anti-slavery speeches throughout the northern USA. Through her powerful prose and poetry, she elevated issues of racism, feminism and class.

Frances E.W. Harper

The ballot in the hands of woman means power added to influence. How well she will use that power I can not foretell.

"The ballot in the hands of woman means power added to influence," Harper said in an address before the World's Congress of Representative Women at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893. "How well she will use that power I can not foretell."

In this battle, like many others to come, the women were not equals.

In 1890, the two largest rival women's suffrage organizations - once divided over issues such as race - decided the only way to win the vote was with a united front. They merged, forming the National American Woman Suffrage Association.

It was the dominant white suffrage organization of the time, known at times to hold conventions that excluded Black women.

Still women of color persevered in a fight seemingly separate - and yet the same.

In west Baltimore, Hawkins, Chissell and Young found kindred spirits in each other, using their neighborhood connections to pioneer for equal voting rights.

As leaders in The DuBois Circle - an African American women's club founded in 1907 - they brought women of their race together for change.

At first, the group "focused on literature, the arts and famous Negroes, as they called it," said Beverly Carter, historian and archivist for the DuBois Circle.

They sought knowledge and a way to connect it to the community, and through it, they expanded scope. "They participated in political activities, civic activities ... and as a group, they addressed the suffrage issue," Carter said.

They built influence through community, establishing social groups and engaging churches to spearhead change. They developed robust grassroots networks.

It wasn't long before Young founded the Progressive Women's Suffrage Club, in which Hawkins became the vice president and Chissell was the secretary.

They joined a collaboration of Black women nationwide, many who organized under the National Association of Colored Women, the largest federation of Black women's clubs.

Their collective effort, said Sally Roesch Wagner, editor of " The Women's Suffrage Movement" anthology, was both "brilliant and politically savvy."

Holding to the motto "Lifting as We Climb," Mary Church Terrell became the first president of the National Association of Colored Women, which endorsed the women's suffrage movement in 1912.

An influential educator and activist, Terrell was born to former slaves in Memphis, Tennessee. Her parents used their freedom to become small-business owners.

Terrell, hardworking and ambitious, became one of the first African American women to earn a college degree.

She moved to Washington, becoming the first Black woman to earn a position on the board of education.

Terrell traveled nationwide, quoted in papers from East to West on polarizing topics of "the Negro women" and "the race problem." When it came to suffrage, she could not ignore her Southern roots.

In her visits back to Tennessee and neighboring states, she noted the disenfranchisement of Blacks - and the tactics used by white suffragists there.

The South decried the idea of suffrage. Many argued that the plea rallied against their Southern sensibilities and attacked the sanctity of a woman's place in the home. In truth, that was more of a red herring.

"The No. 1 reason the South was not going to touch suffrage was race," said Carole Bucy, a county historian in Nashville, Tennessee. "The position of the woman was relatively inconsequential."

Despite early unity with abolitionists and the "votes for all" rhetoric, when it came to the final push for suffrage, gender equality superseded racial equality for the movement's upper-middle-class white leaders.

If the women's vote was to be won, Black women could not stand in the spotlight.

Many refused to be silenced. Among them, Ida B. Wells spoke louder than most.

A journalist and newspaper editor, Wells founded the Alpha Suffrage Club for African American women, the first for Black women in Illinois.

The efforts were not contained to the city limits. In 1913, Wells and other activists traveled from Illinois to Washington to participate in the Woman Suffrage Procession - the first major national event held for the movement.

At first, Black suffragists had been rejected from joining, but Wells and others wrote letters asking to allow Black women to participate. Eventually, organizers acquiesced, with one condition - Black suffragists would march in the back.

It was meant to assuage the feelings of Southern white women, but Wells refused the terms. Poised to forcibly insert herself in the procession, she and a select few others, including Terrell, marched alongside the white women from their delegations.

"Either I go with you or not at all," Wells said. "I am not taking this stand because I personally wish for recognition. I am doing it for the future benefit of my whole race."

There was still work to be done.

After 41 years of debate, Congress approved the 19th Amendment on June 4, 1919.

By the summer of 1920, 35 of the nation's 48 states had voted for ratification. Eight states, six of them Southern, rejected it. Three refused to weigh in.

Only two states remained undecided: North Carolina and Tennessee.

Just one needed to vote in favor to make women's suffrage the law of the land.

On May 18, 1920, three months before Tennessee lawmakers were to consider passing the 19th Amendment, Juno Frankie Pierce spoke at the first meeting of the newly formed League of Women Voters of Tennessee.

As the only African American female to speak that day, Pierce addressed the convention for the women of her race.

"What will the Negro women do with the vote?" she asked those gathered in the House chamber of the state Capitol. "We will stand by the white women."

She told those at the meeting that Black women sought suffrage to receive "a square deal."

Suffragists saw Tennessee as their last hope. And their worst nightmare.

Within the state, three factions emerged. Two groups of suffragists - one more extreme than the other - sought ratification, while one vocal contingent of anti-suffragists amplified the vicious opposition.

"The antis waved the race card mightily," Bucy said. "And so did the suffragists in a less flamboyant way."

White suffragists often avoided integrating issues of race into their campaigns. If they did speak of it, it came in the form of assurance that Black women would not upend the balance at the ballot box.

"They used the accepted fare of racial prejudice," Bucy said. "They said: 'Look there are already laws that keep African American men from voting. Those will still be intact. So if you are afraid women voting will bring in all these Black people voting, it won't.'

"You can't say the suffragists were racially tolerant people."

When it became clear that in the final fight for the vote, hard-won civil rights might be undermined, it was black suffragists who chose tolerance.

"They asked: How do we hold back our anger? How do we hold back our frustration for the greater cause?" Wagner said. "They negotiated the racism that was endemic in the movement to move the cause forward."

The battle had been longer and uglier than anyone expected, but in the end, Tennessee came through, becoming the 36th and final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment.

After the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, Chissell wrote a recurring column in the Baltimore Afro-American called "A Primer for Women Voters".

It was "for the benefit of women who wish to inform themselves in regard to their newly acquired duties and privileges as voters and citizens." Readers were urged to send Chissell questions, and she'd answer them in her column.

The Progressive Women's Suffrage Club started teaching voter education classes.

But the reality was, though women finally secured the right to vote nationwide, black women would be routinely turned away from the ballot box for decades to come.

It wasn't until 1965, after the Voting Rights Act and subsequent court decisions, that tools of disenfranchisement that targeted people of color - including poll taxes and literacy tests - became outlawed.

Understanding the racial and class dynamics of this historical moment does not diminish the significance of the amendment or the activism that led to its ratification

"In 2020, we have an opportunity to celebrate the vote," Wagner said, "and also take accountability, to rethink our history."

Fully realizing gender equality, racial justice and voter fairness means understanding the past - and giving credit to the neighborly powerhouses of women who won it.

Sally Roesch Wagner, editor of "The Women's Suffrage Movement" anthology.

In 2020, we have an opportunity to celebrate the vote and also take accountability, to rethink our history.

In front of the three-story houses where Chissell and Hawkins lived stands a new historic marker, highlighting the suffrage efforts that transpired in and around the homes.

It's one of 11 that will commemorate Maryland women, events and sites associated with the suffrage movement.

And, with new vigilance, the markers probably won't be the last.

There are still records to read, transcribe and document. There are still more hidden histories of the suffrage movement to be revealed.

Jessica Bliss is a columnist at The Tennessean. Reach her at 615-259-8253 and jbliss@tennessean.com or on Twitter @jlbliss and please support local journalism. Jasmine Vaughn-Hall is a trends reporter with the York Daily Record. Contact her at 717-495-1789 and jvaughnhal@ydr.com and follow her @jvaughn411.
More coverage

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'Brilliant and politically savvy:' The roles of African American women in the fight to vote 100 years ago

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In a pair of three-story brick row houses on an avenue in northwest Baltimore, two women, Margaret Hawkins and Augusta Chissell, lived side by side. Driven to the same city block by the forces of residential segregation, they were united by a common ambition - the push for racial and women's equality.

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More to the Movement: Women of Color in the Suffrage Movement

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More to the Movement: Women of Color in the Suffrage Movement

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NCHE (National Council for History Education) and Library of Congress (Aug. 2020)

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More to the Movement: Women of Color in the Suffrage Movement

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Fannie Lou Hamer: Unsung Woman of the Civil Rights Movement

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Fannie Lou Hamer: Unsung Woman of the Civil Rights Movement

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Facing History and Ourselves

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Facing History Cleveland recently offered a riveting professional development webinar to Ohio-based educators called "Standing on Their Shoulders: Unsung Women of the Civil Rights Movement." There, Program Director Pamela Donaldson and Senior Program Associate Lisa Lefstein-Berusch provided educators with strategies and frameworks they can use to broaden students' knowledge of the contributions Black women made to the movement, as well as deepen students' understanding of specific strategies that have driven social change. As we teach about histories of oppressionincluding the events of the Reconstruction and Jim Crow Eras-making space for stories of agency is critically important. At Facing History, we believe it's vital that students not only learn how Black women have been acted upon by outside forces, but also how Black women have taken action to shape the world and their own lives.

A key figure from the Civil Rights Movement who exemplifies this strength of leadership is Fannie Lou Hamer who came to prominence during Freedom Summer of 1964 in Mississippi. Though the movement that coalesced during Freedom Summer resulted from the efforts of a multi-gender and multi-racial coalition, her leadership was a driving force that brought their work onto the national stage.

Hamer was born in 1917 in the Mississippi Delta to a large family of sharecroppers . Despite sustaining permanent injuries from police brutality and forced sterilization, her fighting spirit and commitment to advancing justice would leave a lasting mark on the country. Hamer worked tirelessly for many years picking cotton until she was fired from her job and put out of her home when she tried to register to vote. Despite the immense bravery that this required, her attempt to register to vote would only be one step in her fight to change the political landscape of Mississippi.

Hamer was not alone in not being able to register to vote due to the depth of systemic racism that prevailed in Mississippi at the time. In the 1960s, Black citizens made up 40% of the population of Mississippi but fewer than 7% of Black Mississippians were registered to vote compared to between 50-70% in other southern states . And even amongst those registered in Mississippi, many were not able to cast a ballot due to various voter suppression tactics. These staggering statistics and efforts to undermine Black political participation prompted Hamer to co-found the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), a political party that was unique in its openness to people of any race.

Energized by the MFDP's cause, a coalition of organizations including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Congress of Racial Equity (CORE), and Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) would organize what came to be known as Freedom Summer . Their vision was to register as many Black voters as possible in Mississippi. As a result of their combined efforts, a multi-racial cast of over 700 volunteers from around the United States would travel to Mississippi to help Black residents register to vote. In the end, 17,000 Black Mississippians attempted to register to vote but only 1,600 were successful.

In an effort to ensure that the voices of their community would be heard, the MFDP would petition to be seated at the Democratic National Convention in place of the all-white Democratic delegation. Hamer delivered an iconic testimony before the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to make the argument for why the DNC should seat the MFDP. Aware of her exceptional oratorical abilities , President Lyndon B. Johnson held a simultaneous, impromptu press conference to prevent her testimony from being televised. Despite this deliberate act of silencing, Hamer's testimony would ultimately reach audiences at a later date and would become known as one of the most powerful speeches of the Civil Rights Era.

Though Hamer's vision of integrated Democratic delegations was not realized until 1968 , the agitation of the MFDP continued to drive vital, incremental change in the region in the meantime. The visibility of the Freedom Summer movement would also be instrumental in raising national consciousness about the experiences of Black Mississippians and the need for systems change across the United States. It was not long before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed , establishing a new standard to which citizens could begin holding their states and municipalities accountable.

In addition to Fannie Lou Hamer, there are countless other Black women who made significant contributions to the Civil Rights Movement and the world we now inhabit. They include the likes of Mamie Clark, Septima Clark, Mamie Till, Ella Baker, Johnnie Carr, and so many more. Despite their unique paths to service and ultimate contributions, they all employed key levers of power to drive social change. These levers included government, social-sector organizations, for-profit companies, media outlets, educational institutions, and individual influencers.

As we think about how to bring these lessons into the classroom, we can look to these stories of agency and see how the steps that these courageous women took set the stage for change that would outlive them. Tell us how you are engaging these histories and stories of agency in your own work in the comments.

--

Facing History invites educators to use our study guide for the documentary series Eyes on Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement in which help teachers and students take a deeper dive into Freedom Summer.

Pictured above: Fannie Lou Hamer at the Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey, August 1964.

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Fannie Lou Hamer: Unsung Woman of the Civil Rights Movement

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Facing History Cleveland recently offered a riveting professional development webinar to Ohio-based educators called "Standing on Their Shoulders: Unsung Women of the Civil Rights Movement." There, Program Director Pamela Donaldson and Senior Program Associate Lisa Lefstein-Berusch provided educators with strategies and frameworks they can use to broaden students' knowledge of the contributions Black women made to the movement, as well as deepen students' understanding of specific strategies that have driven social change.

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Research and presentation by Mateo Roig-Gicquel (Terminale)

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Podcast (France Culture)
Série documentaire de François-Xavier Trégan, réalisée par Rafik Zénine (2020)

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Black America : Cette fois le feu - série de podcasts à écouter - France Culture

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Une série documentaire de François-Xavier Trégan, réalisée par Rafik Zénine Le 18 septembre 2016, tout ce que la communauté afro-américaine compte de personnalités et d'associations défile dans les rues de New York. De la 111ème à la 136ème rue, les...

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Women's Suffrage at 100: The Key Role of Black Sororities

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Women's Suffrage at 100: The Key Role of Black Sororities

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Interview with Dr. Tara White, Professor of History at Wallace Community College in Selma, Alabama (Facing History and Ourselves)

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Women’s Suffrage at 100: The Key Role of Black Sororities

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In this recent interview, I had an opportunity to speak with Dr. Tara White, public historian and Professor of History at Wallace Community College in Selma, Alabama concerning the lesser-known role of black sororities in the women’s suffrage movement in the United States. Here we discuss the origin…

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This resource was compiled by Autumn Gupta with Bryanna Wallace's oversight for the purpose of providing a starting place for individuals trying to become better allies.

Choose how much time you have each day to become more informed as step one to becoming an active ally to the black community. On this document are links to the learning resources and a schedule of what to do each day. Click on the following to jump directly to that info:

Additional Resources:
Most of the links compiled here were pulled from: Anti-Racism Resources and 75 Things White People Can Do For Racial Justice

Important Note: This should just be the beginning. Please do not stop learning after you complete this month. Each section (10/25/45 minutes) has somewhat different material and the links under "Additional Resources" also include new content, so go above and beyond to educate yourself.

Want to increase your impact? Find a friend, create a group, and share this content with others.

If you have additional resource recommendations or see any errors in the links listed, please send them to justiceinjuneofficial@gmail.com.

Find this useful? Check out our Go Fund Me page to learn more on how we want to make this more accessible, more permanent and more of a lifestyle.

10 Minutes/Day

Over the course of the month, you will have spent 5 hours intentionally learning how to be an active ally of the black community. (That's less than the amount of time it takes to watch all of Tiger King ~ 5.5 hours.) Remember, the black community lives the reality of the information you will learn- they have a lifetime of fearing for their well being versus 5 hours of you being uncomfortable. All the action items listed in the calendar have linked information below the weekly schedule (see sections Watch, Read, Listen, and Act).

Daily

Weekly

Watch

"How Studying Privilege Systems Can Strengthen Compassion" TED Talk

"Let's Get to the Root of Racial Injustice" TED Talk

"How to Overcome Our Biases? Walk Boldly Towards Them" TED Talk

"How We're Priming Some Kids for College and others for prison" TED Talk

Read

"Who Gets to Be Afraid in America?" by Ibram X. Kendi and "America's Racial Contract is Killing Us" by Adam Serwer

The 1619 Project from the New York Times

"The Intersectionality Wars" by Jane Coaston and "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack" by Peggy McIntosh

"The Case for Reparations" by Ta-Nehisi Coates and "Tips for Creating Effective White Caucus Groups" developed by Craig Elliot

Listen
"Your Body Being Used" "When Civility is Used as a Cudgel Against People of Color" "The Power of Martin Luther King Jr.'s Anger"
"Opinion: My Father Stood for the National Anthem for the Same Reason Colin Kaepernick Sits" and "When Calling the Po-Po is a No-No"

Act

Help reallocate city budgets by defunding the police. The following link leads to Defund12.org which generates an email template pre-populated with elected officials emails. Simply fill in some of your information and the body of the message (advocating for defunding the police in that city) is automatically filled in for you. Automatic Email Template Link

Register to vote! If you are serious about real change, your individual vote does matter. Use this link to register to vote, check your registration, vote by mail, get election reminders, pledge to register if you are <18, find the nearest polling place, and fill out your 2020 census form. Take today's action a step further by sharing this link with friends and planning time into your schedule to vote in the closest upcoming election - city, state, or national. (Thanks to Pamela Duncan for this suggestion!)

¹ Google whether your city or town currently employs evidence-based police de-escalation training. Write to your city or town government representative and police chief and advocate for it. The racial make-up of your town doesn't matter - This needs to be standard everywhere.

²Donate to anti-white supremacy work such as your local Black Lives Matter Chapter, the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, the NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, United Negro College Fund, Black Youth Project 100, Color of Change, The Sentencing Project, Families against Mandatory Minimums, A New Way of Life, and Dream Defenders.

³If you or a friend is an educator, buy said friend books that feature POC as protagonists and heroes, no matter the racial make-up of the class. A few good lists are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And/or purchase educational toys that feature POC, such as finger puppets, Black History Flashcards, etc for their classroom. Use these items year-round, not just in February.

All the links:

Watch

Read

Act

Help reallocate city budgets by defunding the police. The following link leads to Defund12.org which generates an email template pre-populated with elected officials emails. Simply fill in some of your information and the body of the message (advocating for defunding the police in that city) is automatically filled in for you. Automatic Email Template Link

Register to vote! If you are serious about real change, your individual vote does matter. Use this link to register to vote, check your registration, vote by mail, get election reminders, pledge to register if you are <18, find the nearest polling place, and fill out your 2020 census form. Take today's action a step further by sharing this link with friends and planning time into your schedule to vote in the closest upcoming election - city, state, or national. (Thanks to Pamela Duncan for this suggestion!)

Google whether your city or town currently employs evidence-based police de-escalation training. The racial make-up of your town doesn't matter - This needs to be standard everywhere. Write to your city or town government representative and police chief and advocate for it. Multiply your voice by soliciting others to advocate as well, writing on social media about it, writing op-eds, etc.

Donate to anti-white supremacy work such as your local Black Lives Matter Chapter, the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, the NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, United Negro College Fund, Black Youth Project 100, Color of Change, The Sentencing Project, Families against Mandatory Minimums, A New Way of Life, and Dream Defenders.

If you or a friend is an educator, buy said friend books that feature POC as protagonists and heroes, no matter the racial make-up of the class. A few good lists are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And/or purchase educational toys that feature POC, such as finger puppets, Black History Flashcards, etc for their classroom. Use these items year-round, not just in February. The racial make-up of students doesn't matter - kids of every race need to know American history and be exposed to people from different races, religions, and countries. If the friend is interested, buy them for your pal's classroom. Don't be shy to ask Facebook friends that you haven't actually talked to in ten years.

25 Minutes/Day

Over the course of the month, you will have spent 12.5 hours intentionally learning how to be an active ally of the black community. (That's less than the amount of time it takes to watch Season 24 of the Bachelor in 2020 ~ 18 hours.) Remember, the black community lives the reality of the information you will learn- they have a lifetime of fearing for their well being versus you being uncomfortable for half a day. All the action items listed in the calendar have linked information below the weekly schedule (see sections Watch, Read, Listen, and Act).

Daily

1st Read pg. 36-53 in "White Fragility"

2nd Read pg. 54-71 in "White Fragility"

3rd Read pg. 72-89 in "White Fragility"

4th Read pg. 90-107 in "White Fragility"

5th Listen to podcast: A Decade of Watching Black People Die

6th & 7th Watch first half of 13th (Ava DuVerny) AND help reallocate city budgets by defunding the police Automatic Email Template Link

8th Read pg. 108-125 in "White Fragility"

9th Read pg. 126-143 in "White Fragility"

10th Read pg. 144-161 in "White Fragility"

11th Read pg. 162-179 in "White Fragility"

12th Listen to podcast: Anger: The Black Woman's "Superpower"

13th & 14th Watch second half of 13th (Ava DuVerny) AND Register to vote! If you are serious about real change, your individual vote does matter. Use this link to register to vote, check your registration, vote by mail, get election reminders, etc.

15th Read pg. 180-197 in "White Fragility"

16th Read pg. 198-215 in "White Fragility"

17th Read pg. 216-233 in "White Fragility"

18th Read pg. 234-251 in "White Fragility"

19th Listen to podcast: "The Limits of Empathy"

20th & 21st Watch first half of King in the Wilderness (Peter Kunhardt) AND write/call local gov rep & police chief advocating for police de-escalation training. The racial make-up of your town doesn't matter - This needs to be standard everywhere.

22nd Read pg. 252-269 in "White Fragility"

22nd Read pg. 252-269 in "White Fragility"

24th Read pg. 288-305 in "White Fragility"

25th Read pg. 306-323 in "White Fragility"

26th Listen to podcast: Ask Code Switch - What about your friends? 50 minute episode

27th & 28th Watch second half of King in the Wilderness (Peter Kunhardt) AND Donate to anti-white supremacy work (see below links)

29th Read pg. 324-333 (end) in "White Fragility"

30th Buy books, materials, supplies for educator friends featuring POC (see below links)

Weekly

Watch

13th (Ava DuVerny) 13th Documentary (Full Length) YouTube

Available with Netflix subscription

13th (Ava DuVerny) 13th Documentary (Full Length) YouTube

Available with Netflix subscription

King in the Wilderness (Peter Kunhardt) Free on YouTube

Available on HBO Go & Hulu subscription

King in the Wilderness (Peter Kunhardt) Free on YouTube

Available on HBO Go & Hulu subscription

Read

Pg. 36- 107 in "White Fragility"

Pg. 107- 179 in "White Fragility"

Pg. 180 - 251 in "White Fragility"

Pg. 252 - 323 in "White Fragility"

Pg. 324 - 333 (end) in "White Fragility"

Listen

A Decade of Watching Black People Die: CodeSwitch Podcast from NPR

Anger: The Black Woman's "Superpower" CodeSwitch Podcast from NPR

"The Limits of Empathy" CodeSwitch Podcast from NPR

Ask Code Switch - What about your friends? 50 minute episode Podcast from NPR

Act

Help reallocate city budgets by defunding the police. The following link leads to Defund12.org which generates an email template pre-populated with elected officials emails. Simply fill in some of your information and the body of the message (advocating for defunding the police in that city) is automatically filled in for you. Automatic Email Template Link

Register to vote! If you are serious about real change, your individual vote does matter. Use this link to register to vote, check your registration, vote by mail, get election reminders, pledge to register if you are <18, find the nearest polling place, and fill out your 2020 census form. Take today's action a step further by sharing this link with friends and planning time into your schedule to vote in the closest upcoming election - city, state, or national. (Thanks to Pamela Duncan for this suggestion!)

Google whether your city or town currently employs evidence-based police de-escalation training. Write to your city or town government representative and police chief and advocate for it. The racial make-up of your town doesn't matter - This needs to be standard everywhere.

Donate to anti-white supremacy work such as your local Black Lives Matter Chapter, the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, the NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, United Negro College Fund, Black Youth Project 100, Color of Change, The Sentencing Project, Families against Mandatory Minimums, A New Way of Life, and Dream Defenders.

If you or a friend is an educator, buy said friend books that feature POC as protagonists and heroes, no matter the racial make-up of the class. A few good lists are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And/or purchase educational toys that feature POC, such as finger puppets, Black History Flashcards, etc for their classroom. Use these items year-round, not just in February. The racial make-up of students doesn't matter - kids of every race need to know American history and be exposed to people from different races, religions, and countries. If the friend is interested, buy them for your pal's classroom. Don't be shy to ask Facebook friends that you haven't actually talked to in ten years.

All the links:

Watch

Read

"White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism" by Robin DiAngelo

Act

Help reallocate city budgets by defunding the police. The following link leads to Defund12.org which generates an email template pre-populated with elected officials emails. Simply fill in some of your information and the body of the message (advocating for defunding the police in that city) is automatically filled in for you. Automatic Email Template Link

Register to vote! If you are serious about real change, your individual vote does matter. Use this link to register to vote, check your registration, vote by mail, get election reminders, pledge to register if you are <18, find the nearest polling place, and fill out your 2020 census form. Take today's action a step further by sharing this link with friends and planning time into your schedule to vote in the closest upcoming election - city, state, or national. (Thanks to Pamela Duncan for this suggestion!)

Google whether your city or town currently employs evidence-based police de-escalation training. The racial make-up of your town doesn't matter - This needs to be standard everywhere. Write to your city or town government representative and police chief and advocate for it. Multiply your voice by soliciting others to advocate as well, writing on social media about it, writing op-eds, etc.

Donate to anti-white supremacy work such as your local Black Lives Matter Chapter, the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, the NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, United Negro College Fund, Black Youth Project 100, Color of Change, The Sentencing Project, Families against Mandatory Minimums, A New Way of Life, and Dream Defenders.

If you or a friend is an educator, buy said friend books that feature POC as protagonists and heroes, no matter the racial make-up of the class. A few good lists are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And/or purchase educational toys that feature POC, such as finger puppets, Black History Flashcards, etc for their classroom. Use these items year-round, not just in February. The racial make-up of students doesn't matter - kids of every race need to know American history and be exposed to people from different races, religions, and countries. If the friend is interested, buy them for your pal's classroom. Don't be shy to ask Facebook friends that you haven't actually talked to in ten years.

45 Minutes/Day

Over the course of the month, you will have spent 22.5 hours intentionally learning how to be an active ally of the black community. (That's less than the amount of time it takes to watch all of Avatar: The Last Airbender ~ 30 hours.) Remember, the black community lives the reality of the information you will learn- they have a lifetime of fearing for their well being versus you being uncomfortable for less than a day. All the action items listed in the calendar have linked information below the weekly schedule (see sections Watch, Read, Listen, and Act).

Daily

1st Read pg. 7-31 in "How to be an Antiracist"

2nd Read pg. 32-56 in "How to be an Antiracist"

3rd Read pg. 57-81 in "How to be an Antiracist"

4th Read pg. 82- 106 in "How to be an Antiracist"

5th Read pg. 107-131 in "How to be an Antiracist"

6th & 7th Combine daily time to watch 13th documentary AND help reallocate city budgets by defunding the police Automatic Email Template Link

8th Read pg. 132-156 in "How to be an Antiracist"

9th Read pg. 157-181 in "How to be an Antiracist"

10th Read pg. 182-206 in "How to be an Antiracist"

11th Read pg. 207-231 in "How to be an Antiracist"

12th Read pg.232-256 in "How to be an Antiracist"

13th & 14th Combine daily time to watch King in the Wilderness AND Register to vote! If you are serious about real change, your individual vote does matter. Use this link to register to vote, check your registration, vote by mail, get election reminders, etc.

15th Read pg. 257- 281 in "How to be an Antiracist"

16th Read pg. 282-306 in "How to be an Antiracist"

17th Read pg. 307-331 in "How to be an Antiracist"

18th Read pg. 332-356 in "How to be an Antiracist"

19th Read pg. 357-381 in "How to be an Antiracist"

20th & 21st Combine daily time to watch I Am Not Your Negro AND write/call local gov rep & police chief advocating for police de-esclation training. The racial make-up of your town doesn't matter - This needs to be standard everywhere.

22nd Read pg. 382- 406 in "How to be an Antiracist"

23rd Read pg. 407-431 in "How to be an Antiracist"

24th Read pg. 432-456 in "How to be an Antiracist"

25th Read pg. 457-481 in "How to be an Antiracist"

26th Read pg. 482-506 in "How to be an Antiracist"

27th & 28th Combine daily time to watch Just Mercy AND Donate to anti-white supremacy work (see below links)

29th Read pg. 506-521 (end) in "How to be an Antiracist"

30th Buy books, materials, supplies for educator friends featuring POC (see below links)

Weekly

Watch

13th (Ava DuVerny) 13th Documentary (Full Length) YouTube

Available with Netflix subscription

King in the Wilderness (Peter Kunhardt) Free on YouTube

Available on HBO Go & Hulu with subscription

I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck) Kanopy Link Free with Amazon Prime Link

Just Mercy (Destin Daniel Cretton)Just Mercy Free Amazon Link

Read

Pg. 7 - 131 in "How to be an Antiracist"

Pg. 132 - 256 in "How to be an Antiracist"

Pg. 256 - 381 in "How to be an Antiracist"

Pg. 382 - 506 in "How to be an Antiracist"

Pg. 506 - 521 (end) in "How to be an Antiracist"

Listen
**this will exceed 45 minutes

Side Effects of White Women 53 min

Side Effects of Communication 1 hr 1 min

Side Effects of Being Misunderstood 1 hr

Side Effects of Professionalism 53 min

Side Effects of Being a Black Intellectual 1 hr 31 min

Act

Help reallocate city budgets by defunding the police. The following link leads to Defund12.org which generates an email template pre-populated with elected officials emails. Simply fill in some of your information and the body of the message (advocating for defunding the police in that city) is automatically filled in for you. Automatic Email Template Link

Register to vote! If you are serious about real change, your individual vote does matter. Use this link to register to vote, check your registration, vote by mail, get election reminders, pledge to register if you are <18, find the nearest polling place, and fill out your 2020 census form. Take today's action a step further by sharing this link with friends and planning time into your schedule to vote in the closest upcoming election - city, state, or national. (Thanks to Pamela Duncan for this suggestion!)

Google whether your city or town currently employs evidence-based police de-escalation training. Write to your city or town government representative and police chief and advocate for it. The racial make-up of your town doesn't matter - This needs to be standard everywhere.

Donate to anti-white supremacy work such as your local Black Lives Matter Chapter, the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, the NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, United Negro College Fund, Black Youth Project 100, Color of Change, The Sentencing Project, Families against Mandatory Minimums, A New Way of Life, and Dream Defenders.

If you or a friend is an educator, buy said friend books that feature POC as protagonists and heroes, no matter the racial make-up of the class. A few good lists are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And/or purchase educational toys that feature POC, such as finger puppets, Black History Flashcards, etc for their classroom. Use these items year-round, not just in February. The racial make-up of students doesn't matter - kids of every race need to know American history and be exposed to people from different races, religions, and countries. If the friend is interested, buy them for your pal's classroom. Don't be shy to ask Facebook friends that you haven't actually talked to in ten years.

All the links:

Watch

I Am Not Your Negro (Raoul Peck)

Just Mercy (Destin Daniel Cretton)

Read

"How to Be An Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi

Listen

This will exceed 45 minutes, but still good content. Maybe choose to listen to this instead of the radio or Spotify on some days.

Act

Help reallocate city budgets by defunding the police. The following link leads to Defund12.org which generates an email template pre-populated with elected officials emails. Simply fill in some of your information and the body of the message (advocating for defunding the police in that city) is automatically filled in for you. Automatic Email Template Link

Register to vote! If you are serious about real change, your individual vote does matter. Use this link to register to vote, check your registration, vote by mail, get election reminders, pledge to register if you are <18, find the nearest polling place, and fill out your 2020 census form. Take today's action a step further by sharing this link with friends and planning time into your schedule to vote in the closest upcoming election - city, state, or national. (Thanks to Pamela Duncan for this suggestion!)

Google whether your city or town currently employs evidence-based police de-escalation training. The racial make-up of your town doesn't matter - This needs to be standard everywhere. Write to your city or town government representative and police chief and advocate for it. Multiply your voice by soliciting others to advocate as well, writing on social media about it, writing op-eds, etc.

Donate to anti-white supremacy work such as your local Black Lives Matter Chapter, the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, the NAACP, Southern Poverty Law Center, United Negro College Fund, Black Youth Project 100, Color of Change, The Sentencing Project, Families against Mandatory Minimums, A New Way of Life, and Dream Defenders.

If you or a friend is an educator, buy said friend books that feature POC as protagonists and heroes, no matter the racial make-up of the class. A few good lists are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And/or purchase educational toys that feature POC, such as finger puppets, Black History Flashcards, etc for their classroom. Use these items year-round, not just in February. The racial make-up of students doesn't matter - kids of every race need to know American history and be exposed to people from different races, religions, and countries. If the friend is interested, buy them for your pal's classroom. Don't be shy to ask Facebook friends that you haven't actually talked to in ten years.

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Justice in June cultivates a community rooted in truth, inspires action and is committed to awareness.

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The blog of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS).

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Since March, I've been teaching an introductory social sciences seminar which has the thematic focus of "race and democracy." We ...
Read More

This post is part of our blog series that announces the publication of selected new books in African American History ...
Read More

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Since March, I've been teaching an introductory social sciences seminar which has the thematic focus of "race and democracy." We ... Read More This post is part of our blog series that announces the publication of selected new books in African American History ... Read More

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Podcast (NPR).

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NAAMHC

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National Museum of African American History and Culture

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Juneteenth is a time to gather as a family, reflect on the past and look to the future. Discover ways to celebrate this African American cultural tradition of music, food and freedom.

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Learning for Justice

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The history of Juneteenth acknowledges hard history while also empowering students to be advocates for change.

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Facing History and Ourselves

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Described as a second independence day, June 19th or Juneteenth marks the day that emancipation reached slaves in the furthest reaches of the South. While the Emancipation Proclamation proclaimed that all slaves held within the rebellious states were freed, plantation life continued as though no change had occurred in many parts of the slaveholding South until this day. Juneteenth is a time to reflect upon this history, including the steps toward freedom that have been achieved and the forces that continue to undermine the freedom of African Americans. Juneteenth entered public consciousness recently when it was announced that the Trump campaign would hold a rally on that date in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the site of what is considered the worst race massacre in American history-one in which white mobs murdered over 300 African Americans. These plans were amended after provoking a wave of criticism about the insensitivity and even threat contained in such a decision in these times of ongoing unrest. These events provoke a number of questions but one thing is certain: finding the gumption to face our history, connect it to current events, and take action is perhaps more crucial now than ever before.

Facing History invites you to learn more about the continuing significance of Juneteenth and the legacies of slavery in contemporary society with the following resources:
On Juneteenth
On the Impact of Slavery and its Contemporary Legacies
The 1619 Project (special issue) by The New York Times Magazine
" The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative." -The New York Times Magazine

The Fire Next Time (book) by James Baldwin
"An intensely personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain. It consists of two 'letters' written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as 'sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle...all presented in searing, brilliant prose,' The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of literature." ⁠-Vintage

13TH (documentary) by Ava DuVernay
"In this thought-provoking documentary, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom." ⁠-Netflix

When They See Us (TV show) by Ava DuVernay
"Five teens from Harlem become trapped in a nightmare when they're falsely accused of a brutal attack in Central Park. Based on the true story." ⁠-Netflix

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (book) by Bryan Stevenson
"Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system... Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer's coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice." ⁠-One World

--

Facing History invites educators to use our resource collection The Reconstruction Era and the Fragility of Democracy to explore the immediate aftermath of antebellum slavery and its continuing impact on contemporary life in the United States.

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Described as a second independence day, June 19th or Juneteenth marks the day that emancipation reached slaves in the furthest reaches of the South. While the Emancipation Proclamation formally freed all slaves in the United States, plantation life continued as though no change had occurred in many parts of the slaveholding South until this day.

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The Growth of an African American Holiday

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The Growth of an African American Holiday

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BlackPast

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In the article below, historian Quintard Taylor describes the origins and evolution of the Juneteenth holiday sine 1865.

Any bright high schooler or Constitutional law expert would say that African Americans were formally liberated when the Georgia legislature ratified the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865, guaranteeing its addition to the U.S. Constitution. Yet freedom came in varied ways to the four million enslaved African Americans long before the end of the Civil War. Some fortunate black women and men were emancipated as early as 1861 when Union forces captured outlying areas of the Confederacy such as the Sea Islands of South Carolina, the Tidewater area of Virginia (Hampton and Norfolk) or when enslaved people escaped from Missouri, Indian Territory, and Arkansas into Kansas. Other black slaves emancipated themselves by exploiting the disruption of war to run away to freedom, which in some instances was as close as the nearest Union Army camp. President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation liberated all African Americans residing in territory captured from the Confederates after January 1, 1863. These slaves did not have to run for their freedom, they merely had to wait for the arrival of Federal troops.

Emancipation for still more African Americans came in April 1865 when Confederate commander Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Federal forces at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. With that surrender the rebellion was over. News of Lee's surrender spread within days through the former slave states east of the Mississippi River. With that news came the realization by both the former slaves and former slaveowners that freedom would now be the permanent status for African Americans.

Texas, however, was another matter. Isolated from both Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War and thus spared horrific battles on its soil, Texas has become a place of refuge for slaveholders seeking to insure that their "property" would not hear of freedom. Through April, May, and part of June, 1865, they did not.

Finally on June 19, 1865, freedom officially arrived in Texas. One day before, on June 18, Union General Gordon Granger and 2,000 federal troops landed on the beach at Galveston to take control of the last unoccupied Confederate state. The following day on June 19, Granger read the contents of General Order No. 3 from the balcony of Ashton Villa in Galveston. His proclamation announced in part:
"The People of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and property rights between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere."
Word of emancipation gradually spread over the vast state despite the efforts of some slaveholders to maintain slavery. African Americans, however, would not be denied the liberty that had eluded them so long. When the news came entire plantations were deserted. Many blacks brought from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Missouri during the War returned home while Texas freedpersons headed for Galveston, Austin, Houston, and other cities where Federal troops were stationed.

The freedpeople created a number of poems that reflected their new status including the following:

Slavery chain don broke at last!
Broke at last, broke at last!
Slavery chain don broke at last!
Gonna praise God till I die!

Emancipation news often arrived with Union troops who fanned out across Texas. Felix Haywood, a North Carolina-born Texan, recalled the summer day in 1865 when he heard of his emancipation while working on a cattle ranch near San Antonio:
"Soldiers, all of a sudden, was everywhere-coming in bunches, crossing and walking and riding. Everyone was a-singing. We was all walking on golden clouds. Hallelujah!....Nobody took our homes away, but right off colored folks started on the move. They seemed to want to get closer to freedom, so they'd know what it was like it was a place or a city."
Even in his celebration Haywood also mused on the meaning of that freedom.
"We knowed freedom was on us but we didn't know what was to come with it. We thought we was going to get rich like the white folks. We thought we was going to be richer than the white folks, 'cause we was stronger and knowed how to work, and the whites didn't, and they didn't have us to work for them any more. But it didn't turn out that way. We soon found out that freedom could make folks proud, but it didn't make 'em rich."
Although news of emancipation came at different times during that Texas summer and autumn 1865, local blacks gradually settled on June 19 (Juneteenth) as their day of celebration. Beginning in 1866 they held parades, picnics, barbecues, and gave speeches in remembrance of their liberation. By 1900 the festivities had grown to include baseball games, horse races, street fairs, rodeos, railroad excursions, and formal balls. Two distinct trends emerged with these early celebrations. First the oldest of the surviving former slaves were often given a place of honor. That place of honor rose direct proportion to the dwindling numbers of survivors with each passing year. Secondly, black Texans initially used these gatherings to locate missing family members and soon they became staging areas for family reunions.

By 1900, Juneteenth had unofficially become Texas Emancipation Day and was sponsored by black churches and civic organizations. By that point it was so prominent that white politicians including various Texas governors addressed the largest gatherings (which sometimes included upwards of 5,000 people) in Houston and Dallas. Juneteenth had surpassed the Fourth of July as the biggest holiday of the year for Texas African Americans.

With the migration of African Americans from Texas to the West Coast, especially during World War II, Juneteenth simultaneously declined in Texas and grew in the emerging black communities of Los Angeles, San Diego, and Oakland in California; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington. But by the 1970s many blacks, including those in Texas, had forgotten the holiday's origins and its significance in African American history.

In the 1980s a number of local community activists rediscovered Juneteenth and persuaded public officials to embrace the holiday. Not surprisingly, Texas in 1980 became the first state to declare Juneteenth an official state holiday. Other states in the West began to recognize the holiday as well. In 1994 the "Modern Juneteenth Movement" began when advocates from across the country gathered in New Orleans where they pledged to work for national recognition of the holiday. A number of holiday promotion organizations emerged after that meeting including the National Association of Juneteenth Lineage (NAJL), the National Juneteenth Celebration Organization (NJCA), and the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation (NJOF). In 1997 the U.S. Congress passed a resolution officially recognizing June 19 at Juneteenth Independence Day in the United States. Three years later the first annual Washington Juneteenth National Holiday Observance took place in the nation's capital. By June 2020, 47 states and the District of Columbia had established either full or partial recognition of the holiday. Only Hawaii, North Dakota, and South Dakota have not.

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Juneteenth: The Growth of an African American Holiday (1865- ) *

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In the article below, historian Quintard Taylor describes the origins and evolution of the Juneteenth holiday sine 1865. Any bright high schooler or Constitutional law expert would say that African Americans were formally liberated when the Georgia legislature ratified the 13th Amendment on December 6, 1865, guaranteeing its addition to the U.S.

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The NYT (2021)

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On June 19, 1865, enslaved African Americans in Texas were told they were free. A century and a half later, people across the U.S. continue to celebrate the day, which is now a federal holiday.

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By Henry Louis Gates Jr.

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The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

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The First Juneteenth

"The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere." -General Orders, Number 3; Headquarters District of Texas, Galveston, June 19, 1865

When Maj. Gen. Gordon Granger issued the above order, he had no idea that, in establishing the Union Army's authority over the people of Texas, he was also establishing the basis for a holiday, "Juneteenth" ("June" plus "nineteenth"), today the most popular annual celebration of emancipation from slavery in the United States. After all, by the time Granger assumed command of the Department of Texas, the Confederate capital in Richmond had fallen; the "Executive" to whom he referred, President Lincoln, was dead; and the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery was well on its way to ratification.

But Granger wasn't just a few months late. The Emancipation Proclamation itself, ending slavery in the Confederacy (at least on paper), had taken effect two-and-a-half years before, and in the interim, close to 200,000 black men had enlisted in the fight. So, formalities aside, wasn't it all over, literally, but the shouting?

It would be easy to think so in our world of immediate communication, but as Granger and the 1,800 bluecoats under him soon found out, news traveled slowly in Texas. Whatever Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered in Virginia, the Army of the Trans-Mississippi had held out until late May, and even with its formal surrender on June 2, a number of ex-rebels in the region took to bushwhacking and plunder.

That's not all that plagued the extreme western edge of the former Confederate states. Since the capture of New Orleans in 1862, slave owners in Mississippi, Louisiana and other points east had been migrating to Texas to escape the Union Army's reach. In a hurried re-enactment of the original Middle Passage, more than 150,000 slaves had made the trek west, according to historian Leon Litwack in his book Been in the Storm So Long: The Aftermath of Slavery. As one former slave he quotes recalled, " 'It looked like everybody in the world was going to Texas.' "

When Texas fell and Granger dispatched his now famous order No. 3, it wasn't exactly instant magic for most of the Lone Star State's 250,000 slaves. On plantations, masters had to decide when and how to announce the news - or wait for a government agent to arrive - and it was not uncommon for them to delay until after the harvest. Even in Galveston city, the ex-Confederate mayor flouted the Army by forcing the freed people back to work, as historian Elizabeth Hayes Turner details in her comprehensive essay, "Juneteenth: Emancipation and Memory," in Lone Star Pasts: Memory and History in Texas.

Those who acted on the news did so at their peril. As quoted in Litwack's book, former slave Susan Merritt recalled, " 'You could see lots of niggers hangin' to trees in Sabine bottom right after freedom, 'cause they cotch 'em swimmin' 'cross Sabine River and shoot 'em.' " In one extreme case, according to Hayes Turner, a former slave named Katie Darling continued working for her mistress another six years (She " 'whip me after the war jist like she did 'fore,' " Darling said).

Hardly the recipe for a celebration - which is what makes the story of Juneteenth all the more remarkable. Defying confusion and delay, terror and violence, the newly "freed" black men and women of Texas, with the aid of the Freedmen's Bureau (itself delayed from arriving until September 1865), now had a date to rally around. In one of the most inspiring grassroots efforts of the post-Civil War period, they transformed June 19 from a day of unheeded military orders into their own annual rite, "Juneteenth," beginning one year later in 1866.

" 'The way it was explained to me,' " one heir to the tradition is quoted in Hayes Turner's essay, " 'the 19th of June wasn't the exact day the Negro was freed. But that's the day they told them that they was free ... And my daddy told me that they whooped and hollered and bored holes in trees with augers and stopped it up with [gun] powder and light and that would be their blast for the celebration.' "

Other Contenders

There were other available anniversaries for celebrating emancipation, to be sure, including the following:

* Sept. 22: the day Lincoln issued his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation Order in 1862

* Jan. 1: the day it took effect in 1863

* Jan. 31: the date the 13th Amendment passed Congress in 1865, officially abolishing the institution of slavery

* Dec. 6: the day the 13th Amendment was ratified that year

* April 3: the day Richmond, Va., fell

* April 9: the day Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant at Appomattox, Va.

* April 16: the day slavery was abolished in the nation's capital in 1862

* May 1: Decoration Day, which, as David Blight movingly recounts in Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory, the former slaves of Charleston, S.C., founded by giving the Union war dead a proper burial at the site of the fallen planter elite's Race Course

* July 4: America's first Independence Day, some "four score and seven years" before President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation

Each of these anniversaries has its celebrants today. Each has also had its share of conflicts and confusion. July 4 is compelling, of course, but it was also problematic for many African Americans, since the country's founders had given in on slavery and their descendants had expanded it through a series of failed "compromises," at the nadir of which Frederick Douglass had made his own famous declaration to the people of Rochester, N.Y., on July 5, 1852: "What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity."

The most logical candidate for commemoration of the slave's freedom was Jan. 1. In fact, the minute Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect at the midpoint of the war, Northern black leaders like Douglass led massive celebrations in midnight jubilees; and on its 20th anniversary in 1883, they gathered again in Washington, D.C., to honor Douglass for all that he and his compatriots had achieved.

Yet even the original Emancipation Day had its drawbacks - not only because it coincided with New Year's Day and the initiation dates of numerous other laws, but also because the underlying proclamation, while of enormous symbolic significance, didn't free all the slaves, only those in the Confederate states in areas liberated by Union troops, and not those in the border states in which slavery remained legal until the ratification of the 13th Amendment. (Historians estimate that about 500,000 slaves - out of a total of 3.9 million - liberated themselves by escaping to Union lines between 1863 and the end of the war; the rest remained in slavery.)

Because of its partial effects, some scholars argue that perhaps the most significant aspect of the Emancipation Proclamation was the authorization of black men to fight in the war, both because their service proved to be crucial to the North's war effort, and because it would be cited as irrefutable proof of the right of blacks to citizenship (which would be granted by the 14th Amendment).

No one in the post-Civil War generation could deny that something fundamental had changed as a result of Lincoln's war measure, but dwelling on it was a separate matter, David Blight explains. Among those in the 'It's time to move on' camp were Episcopal priest and scholar Alexander Crummell, who, in a May 1885 address to the graduates of Storer College, said, "What I would fain have you guard against is not the memory of slavery, but the constant recollection of it, as the commanding thought of a new people." On the other side was Douglass, who insisted on lighting a perpetual flame to "the causes, the incidents, and the results of the late rebellion." After all, he liked to say, the legacy of black people in America could "be traced like that of a wounded man through a crowd by the blood."

Hard as Douglass tried to make emancipation matter every day, Jan. 1 continued to be exalted - and increasingly weighed down by the betrayal of Reconstruction. (As detailed in Plessy v. Ferguson: Who Was Plessy?, the Supreme Court's gift to the 20th anniversary of emancipation was striking down the Civil Rights Act of 1875.) W.E.B. Du Bois used this to biting effect in his Swiftian short story, "A Mild Suggestion" (1912), in which he had his black main character provide a final solution to Jim Crow America's obsession with racial purity: On the next Jan. 1 ("for historical reasons" it would "probably be best," he explained), all blacks should either be invited to dine with whites and poisoned or gathered in large assemblies to be stabbed and shot. "The next morning there would be ten million funerals," Du Bois' protagonist predicted, "and therefore no Negro problem."

Juneteenth Endures

While national black leaders continued to debate the importance of remembering other milestone anniversaries, the freed people of Texas went about the business of celebrating their local version of Emancipation Day. For them, Juneteenth was, from its earliest incarnations, as Hayes Turner and others have recorded, a past that was "usable" as an occasion for gathering lost family members, measuring progress against freedom and inculcating rising generations with the values of self-improvement and racial uplift. This was accomplished through readings of the Emancipation Proclamation, religious sermons and spirituals, the preservation of slave food delicacies (always at the center: the almighty barbecue pit), as well as the incorporation of new games and traditions, from baseball to rodeos and, later, stock car races and overhead flights.

Like a boxer sparring with his rival, year after year Juneteenth was strengthened by the contest its committee members had to wage against the Jim Crow faithful of Texas, who, in the years following Reconstruction, rallied around their version of history in an effort to glorify (and whitewash) past cruelties and defeats. When whites forbade blacks from using their public spaces, black people gathered near rivers and lakes and eventually raised enough money to buy their own celebration sites, among them Emancipation Park in Houston and Booker T. Washington Park in Mexia.

When white leaders like Judge Lewis Fisher of Galveston likened the black freedman ("Rastus," he called him) to "a prairie colt turned into a feed horse [to eat] ignorantly of everything," Juneteenth celebrants dressed in their finest clothes, however poor, trumpeting the universal concerns of citizenship and liberty, with hero-speakers from the Reconstruction era and symbols like the Goddess of Liberty on floats and in living tableaux. And when Houston refused to close its banks on Memorial Day in 1919 (only to do so four days later on Jefferson Davis Day, honoring the former Confederate president), Juneteenth celebrants still did their own remembering, in Hayes Turner's words, to project "identification with American ideals" in "a potent life-giving event ... a joyful retort to messages of overt racism ... a public counter-demonstration to displays of Confederate glorification and a counter-memory to the valorization of the Lost Cause."

Strengthening the holiday's chances at survival was its move across state lines - one person, one family, one carload or train ticket at a time. As Isabel Wilkerson writes in her brilliant book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, "The people from Texas took Juneteenth Day to Los Angeles, Oakland, Seattle, and other places they went." As it spread, the observance was also changing. This was especially true in the 1920s, Turner explains, with the Consumer Age infiltrating black society with advertisements for fancier Juneteenth getups and more elaborate displays of pomp and circumstance.

This did not mean that Juneteenth's advances remained unbroken, however. Despite local committees' best efforts, with each new slight, with each new segregation law, with each new textbook whitewashing and brutal lynching in the South, African Americans felt increasingly disconnected from their history, so that by the time World War II shook the nation, they could no longer faithfully celebrate freedom in a land that still rendered them second-class citizens worthy of dying for their country but not worthy of being honored or treated equally for it. Hence, the wartime Double V campaign.

It is possible that Juneteenth would have vanished from the calendar (at least outside of Texas) had it not been for another remarkable turn of events during the same civil rights movement that had exposed many of the country's shortcomings about race relations. Actually, it occurred at the tail end of the movement, two months after its most prominent leader had been shot down.

As is well-known, Martin Luther King Jr. had been planning a return to the site of his famous "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington, this time to lead a Poor People's March emphasizing nagging class inequalities. Following his assassination, it was left to others to carry out the plan, among them his best friend, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, and his widow, Coretta Scott King. When it became clear that the Poor People's March was falling short of its goals, the organizers decided to cut it short on June 19, 1968, well aware that it was now just over a century since the first Juneteenth celebration in Texas.

As William H. Wiggins Jr., a scholar of black folklore and cultural traditions, explained in a 2009 interview with Smithsonian magazine: "[T]hese delegates for the summer took that idea of the [Juneteenth] celebration back to their respective communities. [F]or example, there was one in Milwaukee." Another in Minnesota. It was, in effect, another great black migration. Since then, Wiggins added, Juneteenth "has taken on a life of its own."

Juneteenth Today

Responding to this new energy, in 1979 Texas became the first state to make Juneteenth an official holiday. (Ironically, the bill was passed on June 7, the anniversary of Homer Plessy's arrest on the East Louisiana line, as covered in Plessy v Ferguson: Who Was Plessy.) Leading the charge was Rep. Al Edwards of Houston, often referred to as "the father of the Juneteenth holiday," who framed it as a "source of strength" for young people, according to Hayes Turner. (As a concession to Lost Cause devotees, Texas reaffirmed its commitment to observing Jan. 19 as Confederate Heroes Day.)

Since then, 41 other states and the District of Columbia have recognized Juneteenth as a state holiday or holiday observance, including Rhode Island earlier this year. "This is similar to what God instructed Joshua to do as he led the Israelites into the Promised Land," Al Edwards told Yahoo in 2007. "A national celebration of Juneteenth, state by state, serves a similar purpose for us. Every year we must remind successive generations that this event triggered a series of events that one by one defines the challenges and responsibilities of successive generations. That's why we need this holiday."

You can follow Edwards' efforts and others' worldwide at juneteenth.com, founded in 1997 by Clifford Robinson of New Orleans. Another organization, the National Juneteenth Observance Foundation, founded and chaired by the Rev. Ronald Meyers, is committed to making Juneteenth a federal holiday on a par with Flag and Patriot days. (Note: They are not calling for Juneteenth to be a paid government holiday, like Columbus Day.) "We may have gotten there in different ways and at different times," Meyers told Time magazine in 2008, "but you can't really celebrate freedom in America by just going with the Fourth of July." You can follow his organization's activities at nationaljuneteenth.com.

These days, Juneteenth is an opportunity not only to celebrate but also to speak out. Last year, for example, reported that the U.S. Department of State leveraged the holiday for releasing its 2012 Trafficking in Persons Report, with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noting, "Today we are celebrating what's called 'Juneteenth' ... But the end of legal slavery in the United States, and in other countries around the world, has not, unfortunately, meant the end of slavery. Today it is estimated as many as 27 million people around the world are victims of modern slavery."

As further proof that Juneteenth is back on the rise, this Wednesday, June 19, Washington, D.C., will be abuzz during the unveiling of a Frederick Douglass statue in the famed U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, thanks to the work of D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton. (Douglass will join three other African Americans in the hall: Rosa Parks, Sojourner Truth and Martin Luther King Jr.) No doubt Douglass would be surprised to learn that such an honor had not been scheduled for Jan. 1 (the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation), but glad nevertheless that the country is still finding ways to remember "the causes, the incidents, and the results of the late rebellion."

Postscript

I grew up in West Virginia, many miles from the site of the first Juneteenth, and I never heard of the holiday until I went off to college. But I have come to see the beauty in its unexpected past and persistence. Besides, June 19 is generally a more comfortable day for outdoor family fun - for fine jazz music and barbecue - than Jan. 1, a day short on sunlight. In my article " Should Blacks Collect Racist Memorabilia?" I quoted W.E.B. Du Bois' summation of Black Reconstruction: " The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery." At the time I failed to appreciate just how apt a description it was.

Of all Emancipation Day observances, Juneteenth falls closest to the summer solstice (this Friday, June 21), the longest day of the year, when the sun, at its zenith, defies the darkness in every state, including those once shadowed by slavery. By choosing to celebrate the last place in the South that freedom touched - reflecting the mystical glow of history and lore, memory and myth, as Ralph Ellison evoked in his posthumous novel, Juneteenth - we remember the shining promise of emancipation, along with the bloody path America took by delaying it and deferring fulfillment of those simple, unanticipating words in Gen. Granger's original order No. 3: that "This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves."

My hope this Juneteenth is that we never forget it.
Fifty of the 100 Amazing Facts will be published on The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross website. Read all 100 Facts on The Root.

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What Is Juneteenth? African American History Blog | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross

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Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explains the origins of Juneteenth, the celebration of the end of slavery.

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Educational Videos for Students (Cartoons on Bullying, Leadership & More)

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What is Juneteenth? Watch a Juneteenth Cartoon (Fun Facts about Juneteenth)

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Why all Americans should honor Juneteenth

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Why all Americans should honor Juneteenth

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Why all Americans should honor Juneteenth

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Described as a second independence day, June 19th or Juneteenth marks the day that emancipation reached enslaved people in the furthest reaches of the American South. Though the Emancipation Proclamation established that all enslaved people held within the rebellious states were freed, plantation life continued as though no change had occurred in many parts of the slaveholding South until this day. And just yesterday, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved a bill to make Juneteenth a legal public holiday. Juneteenth is a time to reflect upon this history, as well as the steps toward freedom that have been achieved and the forces that continue to undermine the freedom of African Americans.

Below are 7 books that Facing History staff are reading and/or revisiting this year to deepen their learning and reflection on the many meanings of Black freedom, progress, and resistance.

On Juneteenth
By Annette Gordon-Reed

From the publisher: "Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed's On Juneteenth provides a historian's view of the country's long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have endured in the century since, from Reconstruction through Jim Crow and beyond.

All too aware of the stories of cowboys, ranchers, and oilmen that have long dominated the lore of the Lone Star State, Gordon-Reed--herself a Texas native and the descendant of enslaved people brought to Texas as early as the 1820s--forges a new and profoundly truthful narrative of her home state, with implications for us all...

In its concision, eloquence, and clear presentation of history, is both an essential account and a stark reminder that the fight for equality is exigent and ongoing." -Liveright Publishing Corporation On Juneteenth vitally revises conventional renderings of Texas and national history. As our nation verges on recognizing June 19 as a national holiday, On Juneteenth

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
By Clint Smith

Staff comment: "Clint Smith's evocative prose makes you feel like you are standing in these historically resonant places and experiencing them through him."
-Lisa Lefstein-Berusch, Associate Program Director, Cleveland

From the publisher: "Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks-those that are honest about the past and those that are not-that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves...

A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith's debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be."
-Little Brown and Company

How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America
By Heather Cox Richardson

Staff comment: " How the South Won the Civil War takes a deep dive into our nation's founding paradox and how it continues to shape our current dilemmas. Richardson traces the ideal that 'all men are created equal' with the reality of how power has accumulated in the hands of a few who then actively work against the ideals of equality and self-determination." -Jeremy Nesoff, Director of District Partnerships

From the publisher: " While the North prevailed in the Civil War, ending slavery and giving the country a new birth of freedom, Heather Cox Richardson argues in this provocative work that democracy's blood-soaked victory was ephemeral. The system that had sustained the defeated South moved westward and there established a foothold.

It was a natural fit. Settlers from the East had for decades been pushing into the West, where the seizure of Mexican lands at the end of the Mexican-American War and treatment of Native Americans cemented racial hierarchies. The South and West equally depended on extractive industries-cotton in the former and mining, cattle, and oil in the latter-giving rise a new birth of white male oligarchy, despite the guarantees provided by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, and the economic opportunities afforded by expansion.

To reveal why this happened, How the South Won the Civil War traces the story of the American paradox, the competing claims of equality and subordination woven into the nation's fabric and identity... Richardson's searing book seizes upon the soul of the country and its ongoing struggle to provide equal opportunity to all. Debunking the myth that the Civil War released the nation from the grip of oligarchy, expunging the sins of the Founding, it reveals how and why the Old South not only survived in the West, but thrived." -Oxford University Press

Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
Eds. Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain
Staff comment: "A pleasure to read all the way through or dip into and out of as the spirit moves you!"
-Alison Feldman, Director of Foundation of Relations

From the publisher: " The story begins in 1619-a year before the Mayflower -when the White Lion disgorges 'some 20-and-odd Negroes' onto the shores of Virginia, inaugurating the Africa n presence in what would become the United States.

It takes us to the present, when African Americans, descendants of those on the White Lion and a thousand other routes to this country, continue a journey defined by inhuman oppression, visionary struggles, stunning achievements, and millions of ordinary lives passing through extraordinary history.

Four Hundred Souls is a unique one-volume 'community' history of African Americans. The editors, Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain, have assembled ninety brilliant writers, each of whom takes on a five-year period of that four-hundred-year span. The writers explore their periods through a variety of techniques: historical essays, short stories, personal vignettes, and fiery polemics.

They approach history from various perspectives: through the eyes of towering historical icons or the untold stories of ordinary people; through places, laws, and objects. While themes of resistance and struggle, of hope and reinvention, course through the book, this collection of diverse pieces from ninety different minds, reflecting ninety different perspectives, fundamentally deconstructs the idea that Africans in America are a monolith-instead it unlocks the startling range of experiences and ideas that have always existed within the community of Blackness.

This is a history that illuminates our past and gives us new ways of thinking about our future, written by the most vital and essential voices of our present." -One World

Eds. Tarana Burke and Brene BrownYou Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience
Staff comment: "I could not put this down and I recommend the audio version so you can hear the authors read their vignettes."
-Pamela Donaldson, Associate Director for Diversity and Inclusion

"This has been affirming, critical, and life-giving."
-Dr. Erika Henderson, Associate Program Director for Regional Growth

From the publisher: " It started as a text between two friends. Tarana Burke, founder of the 'me too.' Movement, texted researcher and writer Brené Brown to see if she was free to jump on a call... Burke and Brown are the perfect pair to usher in this stark, potent collection of essays on Black shame and healing. Along with the anthology contributors, they create a space to recognize and process the trauma of white supremacy, a space to be vulnerable and affirm the fullness of Black love and Black life." -Random House

By Robin D.G. KelleyFreedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Staff comment: "This is...one of my all-time favorites from Robin D.G. Kelley. The book highlights the Black radical imagination throughout the 20th century and emphasizes the importance of naming and 'dreaming' the world we want, rather than just offering critiques of the world we don't." -Rachel Johnson, Curriculum Developer

From the publisher: " Kelley unearths freedom dreams in this exciting history of renegade intellectuals and artists of the African diaspora in the twentieth century. Focusing on the visions of activists from C. L. R. James to Aime Cesaire and Malcolm X, Kelley writes of the hope that Communism offered, the mindscapes of Surrealism, the transformative potential of radical feminism, and of the four-hundred-year-old dream of reparations for slavery and Jim Crow. From 'the preeminent historian of black popular culture' (Cornel West), an inspiring work on the power of imagination to transform society."
-Beacon Press

Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own By Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

Glaude draws on James Baldwin's writing and thinking, his life, and his example. He asks us to imagine what it will require of each of us to do this work and whether we are prepared for what is, among other things, a profoundly moral challenge." Staff comment: "
- Dr. Karen Murphy, Director of International Strategy

From the publisher: " Begin Again is one of the great books on James Baldwin and a powerful reckoning with America's ongoing failure to confront the lies it tells itself about race. Just as in Baldwin's 'after times,' argues Eddie S. Glaude Jr., when white Americans met the civil rights movement's call for truth and justice with blind rage and the murders of movement leaders, so in our moment were the Obama presidency and the birth of Black Lives Matter answered with the ascendance of Trump and the violent resurgence of white nationalism.

In these brilliant and stirring pages, Glaude finds hope and guidance in Baldwin as he mixes biography-drawn partially from newly uncovered Baldwin interviews-with history, memoir, and poignant analysis of our current moment to reveal the painful cycle of Black resistance and white retrenchment. As Glaude bears witness to the difficult truth of racism's continued grip on the national soul, Begin Again is a searing exploration of the tangled web of race, trauma, and memory, and a powerful interrogation of what we must ask of ourselves in order to call forth a new America."
-Crown Publishing Group

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Facing History and Ourselves invites you to use our featured collection The Reconstruction Era and the Fragility of Democracy.

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Described as a second independence day, June 19th or Juneteenth marks the day that emancipation reached slaves in the furthest reaches of the American South. Though the Emancipation Proclamation established that all slaves held within the rebellious states were freed, plantation life continued as though no change had occurred in many parts of the slaveholding South until this day.

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The NYT (June 17, 2021)

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In the early 1970's, Toni Morrison and Middleton A. Harris, along with a team of collectors, sought to combine images, artifacts and documents into one narrative that might somehow capture the depth and breadth of what it has meant to be Black in America.