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Resources on Race, Racism, and Reconciliation

A living list of resources on race, racism, and reconciliation compiled by CFR Exhibition Manager & Curator Julia Renaud and CFR Volunteer Beth Shearer.

Tools for Teaching and Learning

Center for Reconciliation. “The Cross and the Lynching Tree” Discussion Guide and Activities for Small Groups. Developed by Elon Cook Lee and edited by The Rev. Linda Grenz. Leeds, MA: LeaderResources, 2016.  CrossTreeStudyGuide.pdf

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.  50th Anniversary edition. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress : Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994.

“Having Difficult – But Important – Conversations about Race.” Radio Boston segment June 20, 2010. 19:22 https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2020/06/10/difficult-conversations-about-race?utm_source=WBUR+Editorial+Newsletters&utm_campaign=5926b72c53-WBUR

Kendi, Ibram X. How to Be an Antiracist. New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2019.

McKamey, Pirette. “What Antiracist Teachers Do Differently.” The Atlantic, June 17, 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2020/06/how-be-anti-racist-teacher/613138/

Oluo, Ijeoma. So You Want to Talk about Race. New York: Seal Press, 2018.

Open Yale Courses – full college level courses on race, slavery and Reconstruction that were recorded, transcribed and made available online for free by Yale University.       

Race Forward. What is Systemic Racism? An eight-part video series that illustrates the ways racism shows up in our lives across institutions and society. https://www.raceforward.org/videos/systemic-racism

Resources for Racial Reconciliation and Justice. Curated by members of the staff of the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church USA. https://episcopalchurch.org/racial-reconciliation/resources

Sacred Ground: A Film-Based Dialogue Series on Race and Faith. From the Episcopal Church USA. 10-part film- and readings-based series with extensive online resources. https://episcopalchurch.org/sacred-ground

Website of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Extensive educational resources, including Talking About Race. https://nmaahc.si.edu/

The Southern Poverty Law Center. Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide. August 14, 2017. https://www.splcenter.org/20170814/ten-ways-fight-hate-community-response-guide

Spry, Amber. “Beyond The Obligatory Statement: Here Are 5 Things Organizations Can Do To Meaningfully Combat Racism.” WBUR, June 15, 2020. https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2020/06/15/business-anti-racist-amber-spry

Teaching Tolerance. A project of the Southern Poverty Law Center that provides free social justice and anti-bias resources to K-12 educators. https://www.tolerance.org/

Williams, Chad Louis, Kidada E. Williams, and Keisha N. Blain, eds. Charleston Syllabus: Readings on Race, Racism, and Racial Violence. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2016.

History of Slavery in Rhode Island and New England

Andrade, Kevin. “Snowtown: Looking into the past of a long-lost Providence neighborhood.” Providence Journal. June 1, 2018. https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20180601/snowtown-looking-into-past-of-long-lost-providence-neighborhood

Brown, William J. The Life of William J. Brown of Providence, R.I. : With Personal Recollections of Incidents in Rhode Island. Durham: University of New Hampshire Press, 1883.

Browne, Katrina, Alla Kovgan, Jude Ray, Elizabeth Delude-Dix, Juanita Capri Brown, Liz Dory, Roger C. Miller, Ebb Pod Productions, and California Newsreel. Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. San Francisco, Calif.]: California Newsreel, 2008. Documentary (86:00) and accompanying book.  http://www.tracesofthetrade.org/

Clark-Pujara, Christy. Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island. Early American Places. New York: New York University Press, 2016.

Cranston, G. Timothy, and Neil Dunay. We Were Here Too: Selected Stories of Black History in North Kingstown. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014.

Farrow, Anne. Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery. New York: Ballantine Books, 2005.

Geake, Robert A with Lorén Spears. From Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the American Revolution. Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2016.

Gomez O’Toole, Marjory for the Little Compton Historical Society. If Jane Should Want to be Sold: Stories of Enslavement, Indenture and Freedom in Little Compton, Rhode Island. United States: Little Compton Historical Society, 2016.

Hagen, Sophie. “How Two Riots Made Providence a City.” Providence Monthly. February 28, 2017. http://providenceonline.com/stories/snowtown-hardscrabble-riots- providence,22373

Hardesty, Jared. Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds. Amherst, MA: Bright Leaf, 2020.

Melish, Joanne Pope. Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and “Race” in New England, 1780-1860. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016.

Newell, Margaret Ellen. Brethren by Nature: New England Indians, Colonists, and the Origins of American Slavery. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015.

Rappleye, Charles. Sons of Providence: The Brown Brothers, the Slave Trade, and the American Revolution. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Warren, Wendy. New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America. New York: Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2016.

History of Slavery and Race in the U.S.

Allen, James. Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms Publishing, 2000.

Baptist, Edward E. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. Boulder: Basic Books, 2012.

Berry, Daina Ramey. A Black Women’s History of the United States. Revisioning American History. Boston: Beacon Press, 2020.

Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. Kesington: Cambridge University Press, Skyhorse Publishing Company, Incorporated, City Lights Publishers, 2011. Originally published 1845.

Equal Justice Initiative. Extensive library of reports, documentaries, videos and other educational materials about the history and legacy of slavery, criminal justice reform and racial justice from the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, AL. https://eji.org/

Farmer, Ashley D. Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era. Justice, Power, and Politics. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2017.

Foner, Eric. Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad. New York: W.W. Norton, 2015.

Fradin, Dennis B, and Judith Bloom Fradin. Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: Clarion Books, 2000.

Franklin, John Hope. Reconstruction after the Civil War. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Guyatt, Nicholas. Bind Us Apart: How Enlightened Americans Invented Racial Segregation. New York: Basic Books, 2016.

Hartman, Saidiya V. Lose Your Mother: A Journey along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007.

Jones, Martha S. Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Gates, Henry Louis. Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow. New York: Penguin Press, 2019.

Jacobs, Harriet Ann. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: An Autobiographical Account of an Escaped Slave and Abolitionist. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2015. Originally published 1861.

Kendi, Ibram X. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. New York: Bold Type Books, 2016.

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938. First-person interviews with formerly enslaved people performed by the Federal Writers’ Project. https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/?fa=segmentof:mesn.162/&sb=title_s_desc&st=gallery

Rediker, Marcus Buford. The Slave Ship: A Human History. New York: Viking, 2007.

Reséndez, Andrés. The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2016.

Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York and London: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2018.

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta. From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2016.

The 1619 Project. A 5-part audio series hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones from the New York Times. Also available as transcripts. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/podcasts/1619-podcast.html

  • 1: The Fight for a True Democracy, 42:34
  • 2: The Economy that Slavery Built, 31:51
  • 3: The Birth of American Music, 34:25
  • 4: How the Bad Blood Started, 39:11
  • 5: The Land of Our Fathers part 1, 29:16
  • 5: The Land of Our Fathers part 2, 36:38.

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. Records of 36,000 individual slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866.  https://www.slavevoyages.org/

Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. New York: Vintage Books, 2011.

Blackness and Anti-Black Racism in America

Asim, Jabari. The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2007.

Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. Westminster: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013.

Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists: Color Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. Rowman and Littlefield, 2017.

Carruthers, Charlene A. Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2018.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi.  Between the World and Me. Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, Random House Publishing Group, 2015.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “Ta-Nehisi Coates has an incredibly clear explanation for why white people shouldn’t use the n-word.” Vox. Nov. 9, 2017. https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/11/9/16627900/ta-nehisi-coates-n-word

Code Switch. Podcast series from NPR. Conversations about race hosted by journalists of color. https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch

Davis, Angela Y. The Angela Y. Davis Reader. Blackwell Readers. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1998.

Dyson, Michael Eric. Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America. First edition. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017.

DuBois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. Originally published A.C. McClurg & Co., 1903.

Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2009.

Khan-Cullors, Patrisse. When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018.

Lorde, Audre, and Cheryl Clarke. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. New York: Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale, 2012.

Morrison, Toni. The Origin of Others. Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 2016. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2017.

National LGBTQ Task Force. Black Feminism & the Movement for Black Lives. Panel interview with Barbara Smith, Reina Gossett, and Charlene Carruthers, 2016. 50:48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV3nnFheQRo&feature=youtu.be

Peck, Raoul, James Baldwin, Kino Lorber Edu, and Kanopy. I Am Not Your Negro. San Francisco, California, USA]: Kino Lorber Edu, Kanopy Streaming, 2016. Film about James Baldwin’s life and work, available on Netflix. 1:33:48

Robinson, Phoebe, and Jessica Williams. You Can’t Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain. East Rutherford: Penguin Publishing Group, 2016.

Sharpe, Christina Elizabeth. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham: Duke University Press, 2016.

Still Processing. Podcast series from the New York Times. Hosted by Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham. https://www.nytimes.com/column/still-processing-podcast

Tatum, Beverly Daniel. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations about Race. New York: Basic Books, 2017.

University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. A Conversation on Race and Privilege with Angela Davis and Jane Elliott. September 6, 2018. 1:42:39 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0jf8D5WHoo

Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. New York: Random House, 2020.

Whiteness and White Supremacy in America

Anderson, Carol. White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2016.

DiAngelo, Robin J. White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018.

Irving, Debby. Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race. Cambridge, MA: Elephant Room Press, 2014.

Isenberg, Nancy. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. New York, New York: Viking, 2016.

Jarrett-Schell, Peter. Seeing My Skin: A Story of Wrestling with Whiteness. New York: Church Publishing, Inc., 2019.

McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Excerpted essay from Working Paper 189, “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies.” 1988. https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf

Morrison, Toni. Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. New York: Vintage Books, 1993.

Painter, Nell Irvin. The History of White People. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010.

Saad, Layla F. Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks, 2020.

Mass Incarceration and the Legacy of Slavery

Alexander, Michelle. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press, 2020.

Davis, Angela Y., and Steve Freeman. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.

Morris, Monique W. Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools. New York: The New Press, 2016. [book]

  • Morris, Monique W. and Jacoba Atlas. Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools. Women in the Room Productions, 2019. https://pushoutfilm.com/ [documentary]

Muhammad, Khalil Gibran. The Condemnation of Blackness : Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010.

Stern, Kaia. Voices from American Prisons: Faith, Education and Healing. New York: Routledge, 2014.

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014. [book]

Reparations for American Slavery

“A Call for Reparations: Nikole Hannah-Jones on the Wealth Gap.” Nikole Hannah-Jones interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.  47:00   https://www.npr.org/2020/06/24/882927446/a-call-for-reparations-nikole-hannah-jones-on-the-wealth-gap

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. “The Case for Reparations.” Atlantic Magazine, June 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/

Douglas, Kelly Brown. “A Christian Call for Reparations.” Sojourners Magazine, July 2020. https://sojo.net/magazine/july-2020/christian-call-case-slavery-reparations-kelly-brown-douglas

Hannah-Jones, Nikole. “What is Owed.” New York Times Magazine. June 30, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/24/magazine/reparations-slavery.html

“Reparations and the Wealth Gap.”  Radio Open Source podcast, NPR. 50:20. https://radioopensource.org/reparations-and-the-wealth-gap/?utm_source=WBUR+Editorial+Newsletters&utm_campaign=2c632a569d-WBURTODAY_2020_07_10_11_20&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d0781a0a0c-2c632a569d-134695789#

Christianity, Race, and Reconciliation

The Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing. Extensive print and multimedia resources on racial reconciliation as well as a youth curriculum. http://www.centerforracialhealing.org/

Benaquist, Lawrence Michael, and William J Sullivan. Here am I, send me: the journey of Jonathan Daniels. Atlanta: Episcopal Media Center, 2003. 57:49 https://www.pbs.org/video/here-am-i-send-me-the-story-of-jonathan-daniels-bkneej

“Black Lives Matter: Racial Reconciliation and the Church.” Tea Time Theology Podcast featuring Julia Renaud, Exhibition Manager & Curator, Center for Reconciliation (Episcopal Diocese of RI). 51:00 https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/tea-time-theology

Boesak, Allan Aubrey, and Curtiss Paul DeYoung. Radical Reconciliation: Beyond Political Pietism and Christian Quietism. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2012.

Cone, James H. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2011.

Davis, David Brion. In the Image of God : Religion, Moral Values, and Our Heritage of Slavery. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.

Goetz, Rebecca Anne. The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.

Hart, Drew. Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism. Scottdale: Herald Press, 2016.

Shattuck, Gardiner H. Episcopalians and Race: Civil War to Civil Rights. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 2000.

Walker-Barnes, Chanequa. I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William Beerdmans Publishing Company, 2019.

Wallis, Jim. America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, Baker Publishing Group, 2016.

For Children and Young Adults

Anderson, Carol and Tonya Bolden. We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding our Racial Divide. New York: Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 2018.

Aydin, Andrew, John Lewis, and Nate Powell. March. Graphic novel trilogy about Lewis’s lifelong struggle for civil rights. Top Shelf Productions. Book One, 2013. Book Two 2015. Book Three, 2016.

Baker, Kyle. Nat Turner. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2008. [Graphic novel]

Browne, Mahogany L. Woke Baby. New York: Roaring Book Press, 2018.

Bolden, Tonya. Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2005.

Bolden, Tonya. Searching for Sarah Rector: The Richest Black Girl in America. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2014.

Chambers, Veronica and the Staff of the New York Times. Finish the Fight: The Brave and Revolutionary Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2020.

Elliott, Zetta, and Purple Wong. Milo’s Museum. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.

Harrison, Vashti. Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2017.

Kendi, Ibram X. Antiracist Baby. Penguin Books, 2020.

Levy, Debbie. We Shall Overcome: The Story of a Song. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2013.

Pomplun, Tom and Lance Tooks, eds. African American Classics: Great Stories and Poems from America’s Earliest Black Writers. Eureka Productions. 2012. [Graphic novel]

Reynolds, Jason and Ibram X. Kendi. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2020. YA version of Stamped From the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi.

Shelton, Paula Young  and Raul Colon. Child of the Civil Rights Movement. Schwartz & Wade, 2009.

Weatherford, Carole Boton. Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins. Dial Books, 2004.

Weatherford, Carole Boton. Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. Hyperion Book, 2006.

Woelfle, Gretchen. Mumbet’s Declaration of Independence. Carolrhoda Books, 2014.