Black Lives Matter

What is Black Lives Matter?

Summary of Black Lives Matter from the Library of Congress

Discover many great resources curated by the American Library Association (ALA) on Equity, Diversity & Inclusion

Advancing Racial Equity in Your Library Free on-demand webinar from ALA
Black Lives Matter at School
Libraries Respond: Black Lives Matter
"Reading for Change: Book List - Recommended Antiracism Titles for All Ages"
Schomburg Center Black Liberation Reading List

Listen to: Newsmaker: Marilyn J. Mosby, Baltimore City State's Attorney on NPR's Midday- April 19, 2021

Black Voices on Western Racism

Articulate While Black by H. Samy Alim; Geneva Smitherman; Michael Eric Dyson (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9780199812967
Publication Date: 2012-10-01
Barack Obama is widely considered one of the most powerful and charismatic speakers of our age. Without missing a beat, he often moves between Washington insider talk and culturally Black ways of speaking - as shown in a famous YouTube clip, where Obama declined the change offered to him by aBlack cashier in a Washington, D.C. restaurant with the phrase, "Nah, we straight."In Articulate While Black ...
Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
ISBN: 9780062282712
Publication Date: 2014-08-05
From the author of Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, the New York Times Bestseller and Best Book of the Year at NPR, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, and many more A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. "Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be....
A Beautiful Ghetto by Devin Allen; D. Watkins (Introduction by); Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor (Introduction by)
ISBN: 9781608467594
Publication Date: 2017-09-12
On April 18, 2015, the city of Baltimore erupted in mass protests in response to the brutal murder of Freddie Gray by police. Devin Allen was there, and his iconic photos of the Baltimore uprising became a viral sensation. In these stunning photographs, Allen documents the uprising as he strives to capture the life of his city and the people who live there. Each photo reveals the personality, beauty, and spirit of Baltimore and its people...
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
ISBN: 9780812993547
Publication Date: 2015-07-14
Hailed by Toni Morrison as "required reading," a bold and personal literary exploration of America's racial history... Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates's attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son--and readers--the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences....
A Burst of Light by Audre Lorde
ISBN: 9780486818993
Publication Date: 2017-09-13
"Lorde's words -- on race, cancer, intersectionality, parenthood, injustice -- burn with relevance 25 years after her death." -- O, The Oprah Magazine Winner of the 1988 Before Columbus Foundation National Book Award, this path-breaking collection of essays is a clarion call to build communities that nurture our spirit. Lorde announces the need for a radical politics of intersectionality while struggling to maintain her own faith as she wages a battle against liver cancer. From reflections on her struggle with the disease to thoughts on lesbian sexuality and African-American identity in a straight white man's world,...
Citizen by Claudia Rankine
ISBN: 9781555976903
Publication Date: 2014-10-07
Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggression in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time....
Decolonising the Mind by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
ISBN: 9780852555019
Publication Date: 1986-06-26
Ngugi describes this book as 'a summary of some of the issues in which I have been passionately involved for the last twenty years of my practice in fiction, theatre, criticism and in teaching of literature.'East Africa [Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda]: EAEP
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
ISBN: 9780679601517
Publication Date: 1995-05-02
At once a powerful evocation of his childhood in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, The Fire Next Time, which galvanized the nation in the early days of the Civil Rights movement, stands as one of the essential works of our literature.Warns citizens to examine the actual state of America, the role of blacks, and race relations after a century of Emancipation.
Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson
ISBN: 9780525535270
Publication Date: 2019-09-17
"In less than 200 sparsely filled pages, this book manages to encompass issues of class, education, ambition, racial prejudice, sexual desire and orientation, identity, mother-daughter relationships, parenthood and loss....With Red at the Bone, Jacqueline Woodson has indeed risen -- even further into the ranks of great literature." - NPR
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds; Ibram X. Kendi
ISBN: 9780316453691
Publication Date: 2020-03-10
A timely, crucial, and empowering exploration of racism--and antiracism--in America This is NOT a history book. This is a book about the here and now. A book to help us better understand why we are where we are. A book about race. The construct of race has always been used to gain and keep power, to create dynamics that separate and silence. This remarkable reimagining of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi's National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning reveals the history of racist ideas in America, and inspires hope for an antiracist future. Download the free educator guide here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Stamped-Educator-Guide.pdf
World to Come: the Baltimore Uprising, Militant Racism, and History by Katherine Bankole-Medina
ISBN: 9780692681510
Publication Date: 2016-04-02
This essay collection, World to Come: Essays on the Baltimore Uprising, Militant Racism, and History, addresses the 2015 Baltimore protests and riots over the death of Freddie Gray. The main purpose of this compilation is to critically explore the historical moment surrounding the 2015 Baltimore Uprising and the death of Freddie Gray (excluding the court cases of the Baltimore 6-the police officers involved). The manuscript makes a unique contribution to several fields: African American history, African American studies, Africology, historical criticism, and critical race theory...

Activism

Ghosts of Jim Crow by F. Michael Higginbotham
ISBN: 9780814724460
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
A provocative, and timely, solution for ridding America of the traces of Jim Crow policies to create a truly post-racial landscape When America inaugurated its first African American president, in 2009, many wondered if the country had finally become a "post-racial" society. Was this the dawning of a new era, in which America, a nation nearly severed in half by slavery, and whose racial fault lines are arguably among its most enduring traits, would at last move beyond race with the election of Barack Hussein Obama?...
Uprooting Racism by Paul Kivel
ISBN: 9780865713383
Publication Date: 1998-09-01
"Offers advice on the strategic intervention of racism in public policy, institutional settings, or interpersonal interactions." "A uniquely sensitive, wise, practical guide for white people struggling with their feelings about race".--Howard Zinn

History

The Condemnation of Blackness (ebook) by Khalil Gibran Muhammad
ISBN: 9780674062115
Publication Date: 2011-11-30
Lynch mobs, chain gangs, and popular views of black southern criminals that defined the Jim Crow South are well known. We know less about the role of the urban North in shaping views of race and crime in American society. Following the 1890 census, the first to measure the generation of African Americans born after slavery, crime statistics, new migration and immigration trends, and symbolic references to America as the promised land of opportunity...
The Politics of Public Housing by Rhonda Y. Williams
ISBN: 9780195306514
Publication Date: 2005-12-08
In this collective biography, Rhonda Y. Williams takes us behind, and beyond, politically expedient labels to provide an incisive and intimate portrait of poor black women in urban America. Drawing on dozens of interviews, Williams challenges the notion that low-income housing was a resounding failure that doomed three consecutive generations of post-war Americans to entrenched poverty. Instead, she recovers a history of grass-roots activism...
Race for Profit (ebook) by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
ISBN: 9781469653662
Publication Date: 2019-10-21
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, reeling from a wave of urban uprisings, politicians finally worked to end the practice of redlining. Reasoning that the turbulence could be calmed by turning Black city-dwellers into homeowners, they passed the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, and set about establishing policies to induce mortgage lenders and the real estate industry to treat Black homebuyers equally....
Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics by George Derek Musgrove; Claire Potter (Series edited by); Renee Romano (Series edited by)
ISBN: 9780820341217
Publication Date: 2012-02-01
Historians have exhaustively documented how African Americans gained access to electoral politics in the mid-1960s, but few have scrutinized what happened next, and the small body of work that does consider the aftermath of the civil rights movement is almost entirely limited to the Black Power era. In Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics, George Derek Musgrove pushes much further, examining black elected officials' allegations of....

Films

13th by Ava DuVernay (Director), Melina Abdullah, Michelle Alexander, Cory Booker, et al.
Publication Date: 2016
In this thought-provoking documentary, scholars, activists and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom.
I am not your Negro (Available through USMAI by request) by James Baldwin
ISBN: 9780525434719
Publication Date: 2017
Transcript of the documentary film, I am not your negro, by Raoul Peck composed of unpublished and published writings, interviews, and letters by James Baldwin on the subject of racism in America.

Support in Academic Environments

Despite the best intentions : how racial inequality thrives in good schools by Amanda E. Lewis and John B. Diamond
ISBN: 9780199711536
Publication Date: 2015
Teaching about race and racism in the college classroom: notes from a white professor by Cyndi Kernahan (Author)
Call Number: LB2331eb
ISBN: 9781949199253
Publication Date: 2019
"Teaching about race and racism can be a difficult business. Students and instructors alike often struggle with strong emotions, and many people have robust preexisting beliefs about race. At the same time, .....
Topographies of Whiteness by Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (Editor)
ISBN: 9781634000222
Publication Date: 2017-04-30
Exploring the diverse terrain that makes up library and information science (LIS), this collection features the work of scholars, practitioners, and others who draw from a variety of theoretical approaches to name, problematize, and ultimately fissure whiteness at work.....

Jane Elliot's Training on Racial Prejudice

The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment

In 1968, Jane Elliot an elementary school teacher in a small town in Iowa attempted to teach her class why the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. was celebrated heroic during Black History Month. She separated them in two groups: those with blue eyes and those with brown. On the first day of the experiment, the brown eyed group is exalted above the rest and given preferential treatment. The other group was regarded as dirty, stupid, and were treated unkindly by the preferred group. The intention was to demonstrate why the work of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s was celebrated that February. Elliot hypothesized that the children would have a better comprehension of racial discrimination if they could empathize with the pain prejudice and discrimination caused. The children walked away from the experience having learned an unforgettable lesson and so did Jane.

The documentary, "A Class Divided" produced and offered for free by Frontline PBS documents Jane Elliot's experiment as she and her former student revisit the groundbreaking experiment decades later.

Black Lives Matter

Keywords for Your Own Research

Black Lives Matter

Black Voices on Western Racism

Activism

History

Films

Support in Academic Environments

Jane Elliot's Training on Racial Prejudice

The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Experiment

Editorials