RESOURCES

• Craft: An American History, 2021, Glenn Adamson

• We Are the Land: A History of Native California, 2021, Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer Jr.

• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 2010, Michelle Alexander

• White Rage, 2016, Carol Anderson

• Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest to Buy Black in America’s Racially Divided Economy, 2012, Maggie Anderson 

• The Fire Next Time, 1992, James Baldwin

• The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction, 1948-1985, James Baldwin 

• The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, 2014, Edward E. Baptist

• California Through Native Eyes: Reclaiming History, 2016, William J Bauer Jr. 

• This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror, 2015, Moustafa Bayoumi

• Black artists in America: From Civil Rights to the  Bicentennial, 2024, Celeste-Marie Bernier, Earnestine Lovelle Jenkins, Alaina Simone

• A Black Women's History of the United States, 2020, Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross

• Dawoud Bey & Carrie Mae Weems: In Dialogue, 2022, Dowoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems

• Rediscovering Black Portraiture, 2023, Peter Brathwaite

• Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post-Civil Rights America, 2014, Jeff Chang

• Asian American Histories of the United States, August 2, 2022, Catherine Ceniza Choy

• Between the World and Me, 2015; The Water Dancer, 2019, Ta-Nehisi Coates

• Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, 2009, Brittney Cooper

• Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement, 2016, Angela Y. Davis

• The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues, 2012, Angela Y. Davis

• Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad, 2022, Matthew F. Delmont, Viking / Penguin Random House

• Dreams of Africa in Alabama: The Slave Ship Clotilda and the Story of the Last Africans Brought to America, 2007, Sylviane A. Diouf, Oxford University Press.

• White Out: The Continuing Significance of Racism, 2003, Ashley W. Doane and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva

• The Souls of Black Folk, 1903, W.E.B. DuBois

• An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, 2014, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

• Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster, 2006, Michael Eric Dyson

• Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop, 2020, Sarah Eckhardt

• Juneteenth, 2021, Ralph Ellison

• The Hidden Rules of Race: Barriers to an Inclusive Economy, 2017, Flynn, Holmberg, Warren & Wong

• Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, 2018, James Forman, Jr. 

• The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth, 2023, Jermaine Fowler

• This Is the Day: The March on Washington, 2013, Leonard Freed

• Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow, 2019; Dark Sky Rising: Reconstruction and the Dawn of Jim Crow, 2020, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

• There Will Be No Miracles Here, 2019, Casey Gerald

• Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California, 2007, Ruth Wilson Gilmore

• Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul, 2016, Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

• News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media, 2011, Juan González & Joseph Torres

• On Juneteenth, 2021, Annette Gordon-Reed

• Thomas Jefferson & Sally Hemings, 2008, Annette Gordon-Reed

• The Hemings of Monticello: An American Family, 1997, Annette Gordon-Reed

• White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America, 2019, Margaret A. Hagerman

• Lakota America: A New History of Incigenous Power, 2019, Pekka Hämäläinen

• Raising White Kids, 2018, Jennifer Harvey 

• The Impending Crisis of the South. 1857, Hinton Rowan Helper

• Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond, 2016, Marc Lamont Hill

• Killing Rage: Ending Racism, 1995, by bell hooks

• A Perilous Path: Talking Race, Inequality, and the Law, 2018, Ifill, Lynch, Stevenson & Thompson 

• Regarding Paul R. Williams: A Photographer's View, 2020, Janna Ireland

• Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race, 2014, Debby Irving

• This Book is Anti-Racist: So Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work, 2020, Tiffany Jewell & Aurelia Durand

• The 1619 Project, 2021, Nikole Hannah Jones

• How to be an Antiracist, 2019, Ibram X. Kendi

• Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, 2017; Four Hundred Souls, 2021, Ibram X. Kendi

• When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, 2018, Patrisse Khan-Cullors & Asha Bandele

• Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice, 2011, Paul Kivel 

• Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools, 1991,  Jonathan Kozol

• From Inner Worlds to Outer Space, 2004, Dan Kwong

• Ebony: Covering Black America, 2021, Lavaille Lavette

• Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, 2005, Joy DeGruy Leary

• Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I, 2009, Adriane Lentz-Smith

• Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, 1984, Audre Lorde

• 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, 2011, Charles C. Mann

• The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, 2020, Published by One World, Heather McGhee

• Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution, 2023, Elie Mystal

• So You Want to Talk About Race, 2018, Ijeoma Oluo 

• An African American and Latinx History of The United States, 2018, Paul Ortiz

• Visualizing Empire: Africa, Europe, and the Politics of Representation, 2021, Rebecca Peabody, Steven Nelson, and Dominic Thomas

• South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, 2022, Imani Perry

• Politics Power, 2022, Faith Ringgold

• The Lost World of the Old Ones: Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest, 2015, David Roberts

• How Race Survived History: From Settlement and Slavery to the Obama Phenomenon, 2008, David Roediger 

• Gordon Parks: The Flavio Story, 2018, Paul Roth

• Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor, 2020, Layla F Saad

• How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America, 2021, Clint Smith

• North of Dixie: Civil Rights Photography Beyond the South, 2016, Mark Speltz

• Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, 2014, Bryan Stevenson 

• The 272: The Families Who Were Enslaved And Sold to Build The American Catholic Church, 2023, Rachel L. Swarns

• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race, 2017, Beverly Daniel Tatum, PhD

• From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, 2016, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

• Black and White: Negro and English Society, 1555 - 1945, [winner of the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize], 1973, James Walvin

• A Short History of Slavery, 2007, James Walvin

• The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks about Race, 2017, Jesmyn Ward

• Race Matters, 1994, Cornel West

• The Underground Railroad, 2016, Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize-winning novel

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, 2020, Isabel Wilkerson

• The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, 2011, Isabel Wilkerson

• Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence, 2016, Williams, Chad, Williams, Kidada E., Blain, Keisha N.

• Dispatches from the Race War, 2020, Tim Wise

• White Lies Matter, 2017, Tim Wise 

• The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority, 2015, Ellen D. Wu

• Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy, 2020, David Zucchino (Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize)

WEBSITES:

Talking to Kids About Racism and Justice: a list for parents, caregivers & educators

Oakland Public Library

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s0lCA3FlulVhK6DFE2d3uYCipc6ApY8Gn2rMwm6fYqw/edit?ts=5ed90dff#heading=h.660636hiyby8

Smithsonian, National Museum of African American History & Culture

Talking about Race

https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race

CLASSROOM TOOLS:

• African American History: What Happened Here? Knowledge Cards

• The Civil Rights Movement Knowledge Cards, Library of Congress

BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS:

Going Places: Victor Hugo Green and His Glorious Book, 2022, Tonya Bolden, illustrated by Eric Velasquez

I Am An American: The Wong Kim Ark Story, 2021, Martha Brockenbrough with Grace Lin, illustrated by Julia Kuo

Because of You. John Lewis: A True Story of a Remarkable Friendship, 2022, Andrea Davis Pinkney, illustrated by Keith Henry Brown

Mary's Idea, 2023, Chris Raschka

Something Beautiful, 1998, Sharon Dennis Wyeth

Undercover Latina, 2022, Aya De León

Ida B. Wells, Voice of Truth: Educator, Feminist, and anti-Lynching Civil Rights Leader, 2022, Michelle Duster, illustrated by Laura Freeman

When the Schools Shut Down: A Young Girls’ Story of Virginias Lost Generation and the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Decision, 2022, Yolanda Gladden, Keisha Morris, and Tamara Pizzoli

The Artivist, 2023, Nikkolas Smith

The 1619 Project: Born on the Water, 2021, Nikole Hannah-Jones and Renée Watson, illustrated by Nikkolas Smith
 

Until Someone Listens: A Story about Borders, Family, and One Girl’s Mission, 2022, Estela Juarez with Lissette Norman, illustrated by Teresa Martinez 

The Colors of Us, 1999, Karen Katz

The Sum of Us (Adapted for Young Readers): How Racism Hurts Everyone, 2023, Heather McGhee
 

¡Mambo Mucho Mambo! The Dance that Crossed Color Lines, 2021, Dean Robbins, illustrated by Eric Velasquez

The Mother of a Movement: Jeanne Manford Ally, Activist and Co-Founder of PFLAG, 2022, Rob Sanders, illustrated by Sam Kalda

Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults), 2014, Bryan Stevenson

The Skin I'm In, 2003, Pat Thomas

Sanctuary: Kip Tiernan and Rosie’s Place, the Nation’s First Shelter for Women, 2022, Christine McDonnell, Illustrated by Victoria Tentler-Krylov

Ablaze with Color: A Story of Painter Alma Thomas, 2022, Jeanne Walker Harvey, illustrated by Loveis Wise

Teaching for Black Lives, 2018, Edited By Dyan Watson, Jesse Hagopian, Wayne Au

Shirley Chisholm Dared: The Story of the First Black Woman in Congress, 2021, Alicia D. Williams, illustrated by April Harrison

Choosing Brave: How Mamie Till-Mobley and Emmett Till Sparked the Civil Rights Movement, 2022, Angela Joy, illustrated by Janelle Washington

Coolies, 2001, Yin

ASSOCIATIONS THAT HELP SUPPORT AND PROMOTE SOCIAL JUSTICE NARRATIVES FOR TODAY'S CHILDREN 

JaneAddams Children's Book Award

Jane Addams Peace Association

http://www.janeaddamschildrensbookaward.org

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

Formation: January 19, 1920

www.aclu.org

Black Lives Matter

Founded: 2013

www.blmla.org

BLM tips for staying safe online:

www.vpnmentor.com/blog/support-black-lives-matter-online/ 

Black Visions Collective

Founded: 2017

www.blackvisionsmn.org

Black Voters Matter Fund

Founded: 2016

www.blackvotersmatterfund.org

Center for Policing Equity

In 2007, Stanford University Professor Jennifer L. Eberhardt, then Denver Police Department Division Chief Tracie L. Keesee and Professor Phillip Atiba co-created Center for Policing Equity (CPE) to foster collaborative relationships between law enforcement and researchers. 

www.policingequity.org

Color of Change

Founded: 2005

www.colorofchange.org

Equal Justice Initiative

Founded: 1989, Montgomery, Alabama

www.eji.org

The National Association of Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)

Founded: 1909, New York, New York

www.naacp.org

National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution

Established: December 19, 2003, Washington, D.C.

www.nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race

National Police Accountabililty Project 

Founded: 1937

www.nlg-npap.org

Police Brutality Center

www.policebrutalitycenter.org/what-is-racial-profiling/ 

Reclaim the Block

Founded: 2018, Minneapolis, Minn.

www.reclaimtheblock.org

Southern Poverty Law Center

Founded: 1971, Montgomery, Alabama

www.splcenter.org

Teaching Tolorence

A project of the Southern Poverty Law Center

www.tolerance.org

The Whiteness Project

Established: 2014, Buffalo, NY

www.whitenessproject.org

The Zinn Education Project: Teaching People's History

Launched: 2008, Boston Mass

William Holtzman, Rethinking Schools, Teaching for Change

www.zinnedproject.org

African American Civil War Museum

Washington, DC

African American Museum of the Arts, Inc.

DeLand, Florida

African American Museum in Cleveland

Cleveland, Ohio

African American Museum of Dallas

Dallas, Texas

African American Museum and Library at Oakland

Oakland, California

African American Museum in Philadelphia

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

African-American Research Library & Cultural Center

Washington Park, Florida

Alexandria Black History Museum

Alexandria, Virginia

American's Black Holocaust Museum

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Apex Museum

Atlanta, Georgia

Baton Rouge African American Museum

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Temporarily closed

Black American West Museum and Heritage Center

Denver, Colorado

Temporarily closed

Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia

Richmond, Virginia

Bronzeville Children's Museum

Chicago, Illinois

Buffalo Soldiers National Museum

Houston, Texas

California African American Museum: CAAM

Los Angeles, California

Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History

Detroit, Michigan

Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum & State Historic Site

Sedalia, North Carolina

Dr. Carter G. Woodson African American Museum

St. Petersburg, Florida

DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center

Chicago, Illinois 

George Washington Carver Museum

Austin, Texas

Griot Museum of Black History

St. Louis, Missouri 

Hampton University Museum

Hampton, Virginia

Houston Museum of African American Culture

Houston, Texas

International African American Museum

Charleston, South Carolina

International Civil Rights Center & Museum

Greensboro, North Carolina

Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia

Big Rapids, Michigan

Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration 

/ The National Memorial for Peace and Justice

Montgomery, Alabama

Lewis Latimer House Museum

Queens, New York

Lincolnville Museum & Cultural Center

St. Augustine, Florida

Mississippi Civil Rights Museum

Jackson, Mississippi

Museum of African American History

Boston, Massachusetts

Museum of the African Diaspora

San Francisco, California

Natchez Museum of African America History and Culture 

Natchez, Mississippi

National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center

Wilberforce, Ohio

National Civil Rights Museum

Memphis, Tennessee

National Great Blacks in Wax Museum, Inc.

Baltimore, Maryland

National Civil Rights Museum

Memphis, Tennessee

National Museum of African American Music

Nashville, Tennessee

National Museum of African American History and Culture

Washington, DC

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center

Cincinnati, Ohio

National Voting Rights Museum and Institute

Selma, Alabama

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum

Kansas City, Missouri

New Orleans African American Museum

New Orleans, Louisiana

Northwest African American Museum

Seattle, Washington

Temporarily closed

Old Dillard Museum

Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Old Slave Mart Museum

Charleston, South Carolina

Reginald F. Lewis Museum

Baltimore, Maryland

Spady Museum

Delray Beach, Florida

Studio Museum in Harlem

New York City (Harlem), New York

Temporarily closed

Whitney Plantation

Wallace / Edgard, Louisiana

edogamy - restricting marriage to people within the same caste. (Outlawing marriage between whites to Blacks, Asians or Native Americans.)  

genocide - the deliberate killing of people who belong to a particular racial, political, or cultural group. [Merriam-Webster]

Japanese internment camps - In February 1942, after the Pearl Harbor attack, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 giving the army the power, without warrants or indictments or hearings, to arrest all 110,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast. Men, women and children were taken from their homes, forced into relocation and incarcerated, under armed guards, for over three years. Their homes, businesses and property were seized and never returned. 

Jim Crow - Immediately following the Civil War, a system and set of state and local laws were created to legalize racial segregation and to systematically stack the deck against the newly emancipated slaves, indigenous people, Asian immigrants and people of color. Jim Crow lasted about 100 years. Rights denied include the right to vote, hold office, employment, education, home ownership, and more. The consequence of defying Jim Crow laws was often lynching, arrest, fines or incarceration.

massacre (versus a battle) - A massacre usually involves innocent and/or unarmed civilians, whereas a battle is fought between two armies.

Reconstruction - Roughly from 1862 - 1877, Reconstruction marks the post-Civil War era when slavery was legally abolished, yet Anti-Black racism, anti-Native racism, racial injustice and inequity continued with fervor. Many of the ruling class continued to fight to preserve and expand slavery, while formerly enslaved people were left landless and forced to work the land of the former enslavers under near slavery conditions, unable to reap the fruit of their own labor. It hardly felt like "freedom" in 1865 and thereafter. Sadly lost was the golden opportunity to finally start living by the Declaration of Independence's claim that "all men are created equal" and the biblical plea to "love thy neighbor". Instead, sore losers in the war channeled their anger and fear into creating Jim Crow laws to stacked the deck against freed slaves, indigenous people, Asian immigrants and people of color.

Systemic or Structural Racism : the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another. Systematic or structural racism has three components: 

--History : provides the framework for current racism; A structure built on a history (foundation) of racism will be a racist structure.

--Culture : ever present in our day to day lives; allows racism to be accepted, normalized and perpetuated.

--Institutions and/Policy : those in power who make up the fundamental relationships and rules across society which reinforces racism and gives it societal legitimacy. (And is extremely hard to dismantle.)

White privilege -  It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a white person to recognize their own white privilege. [Example: In response to viewing police brutality video.: "That's not the (Minnesota / Texas / New York / California / Washington DC / other) that I know!" "Of course it isn't. We are shielded by our white privilege from the horrors Black Americans face daily."]

White supremacy - Simply put, if a white person believes that a person of color is below their equal, they are guilty of white supremacy. 

Racism is the perception that one race is superior to another, that the color of their skin determines their place in the human hierarchy. Pernicious and pervasive, it is supported by a matrix of power and history. For racism to be real, there has to be power. It has to be a hard and incontestable power. It is this that gives racism its vicious quality.

- Ben Okri

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.

- Martin Luther King Jr.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.      -Desmond Tutu

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything. - Albert Einstein

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth.         -William Faulkner

There comes a time when silence is betrayal. -Martin Luther Kind, Jr.

First they came for the Socialists, 

and I did not speak out -

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, 

and I did not speak out-

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, 

and I did not speak out -

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me -

and there was no one left to speak for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience. But where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. _Martin Luther King, Jr.