To My Old Master
Letter penned by slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass to his former master in 1848. In the anthology Before Harlem. E-book.
*The Annihilation of Caste
Work by B. R. Ambedkar denouncing Hinduism and India's caste system. Originally published in 1936. Modern annotated edition with an introduction by Arundhati Roy.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
Open letter written on April 16, 1963 by Martin Luther King Jr. In Why We Can't Wait, the classic exploration of the events and forces behind the civil rights movement.
*Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
Martin Luther King's classic analysis of American race relations and the state of the civil rights movement. Written in 1967.
Eldridge Cleaver Recorded at Syracuse
Address by Eldridge Cleaver to the Peace and Freedom Party at Syracuse, New York, on July 28, 1968. Digitized LP. Streaming audio for authorized users.
Speech on Civil Rights
African American author James Baldwin addresses an audience of students in London in 1968. Streaming video for authorized users.
The Combahee River Collective Statement
Black feminist statement from 1977. Reprinted in How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective (2017).
The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism
Essay by Black feminist writer Audre Lorde. From the landmark collection Sister Outsider (1984).
*On the Courthouse Lawn
Read any part of this 2007 book by Sherrilyn Ifill examining the numerous ways in which the racial trauma of lynching still resounds across the United States.
Create Dangerously
Haitian American author Edwidge Danticat reflects on art and immigrant identity. From the 2010 essay collection of the same name.
*Exhibiting Blackness: African Americans and the American Art Museum
Explore this 2011 book by Bridget R. Cooks analyzing the curatorial strategies, challenges, and critical receptions of the most significant museum exhibitions of African American art in the United States.
Skywoman Falling
Essay by Native American botanist and ecological writer Robin Wall Kimmerer. From Braiding Sweetgrass (2013).
The Future of the United States
Concluding chapter of Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's award-winning Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States (2014).
*Stamped from the Beginning
Read any part of this award-winning history of race and racist ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi. Published in 2016.
Access e-book | Watch the video "How to Be an Antiracist," featuring Ibram X. Kendi at UC Berkeley
A Night in Bruce Springsteen's America
Short essay by poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib. From the collection They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us (2017). E-book.
*Decolonizing Wealth
Edgar Villanueva's analysis of the colonial dynamics at play in finance and philanthropy. Read any part of this 2018 non-fiction book.
From Here on Out
Remarks on the future of Black-led movements and transformative change. From As Black as Resistance: Finding the Conditions for Liberation (2018), by Zoé Samudzi and William C. Anderson.
*I'm Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness
Bestselling, partly autobiographical book by Austin Channing Brown about being Black in a world centered on Whiteness. Published in 2018. E-book.
*So You Want to Talk about Race
Examination of race in America by Ijeoma Oluo. So You Want to Talk about Race explains why certain things are considered racist and how to address them. Read any part of this book published in 2018.
*Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power
History of Chicago's racially discriminatory police system from 1919 to the 1970s by Simon Balto. Book published in 2019.
Origins
Chapter from Nick Estes's 2019 book about the history of Indigenous resistance, Our History Is the Future.
A Long-Running Play and the Emergence of Caste in America
Chapter from Isabel Wilkerson's bestselling Caste (2020), an examination of the unspoken hierarchies of power that permeate modern-day America.
*Me and White Supremacy
Book from 2020 by Layla Saad that started life as a 28-day challenge urging White readers to recognize the effects of White privilege and supremacy. Take Saad's challenge yourself! E-book.
*The Stonewall Generation: LGBT Elders on Sex, Activism, and Aging
Book published in 2020 in which sexuality researcher Jane Fleishman shares the stories of people in the LGBTQ community who came of age around the time of the Stonewall Riots of 1969.
The Trail of Broken Promises
Contextual essay by Rozanne Gooding Silverwood from How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America (2020). "The Trail of Broken Promises" is a brief history of US and Canadian treaties with First Nations. E-book.
*We Are Each Other's Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers, Land, and Legacy
Anthology by Natalie Baszile bringing together essays, poems, photographs, quotes, conversations, and first-person stories exploring Black people's connection to the American land from Emancipation to today. Published in 2021.
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