Racism in America Bibliography
Racism in America, Part 1
Resources
Books
Berlin, Ira, The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations
Brotherhood of Liberty, Justice and Jurisprudence: An Inquiry Concerning the Constitutional Limitations of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments
Note: This is a reprint of a book originally published in early 1800s by an early Black
organization founded in Baltimore.
Jackson, Kellie Carter, Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence (Part of America in the Nineteenth Century)
Carson, Clayborne et al., The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader: Documents, Speeches, and Firsthand Accounts from the Black Freedom Struggle
Note: most of this book covers the period after 1954. However, there is a
section on Brown v. Board of Education
Douglass, DuBois, and Washington, African-American Classics Collection: Up from Slavery, The Souls of Black Folk and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Note: 3 works published in one book
Douglass, Frederick, Narrative of The Life of Frederick Douglass
Douglass material also available on line through Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/202/202-h/202-h.htm
Douglass, Frederick, archive of Douglass' newspaper The North Star
https://archive.org/details/pub_frederick-douglass-paper
DuBois, W. E. Burghardt
Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880
Education and Empowerment: The Essential Writings of W.E.B.
The Souls of Black Folk
Available in print and also available on line through Gutenberg:
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/408/408-h/408-h.htm#chap12
Foner, Eric
The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
A Short History of Reconstruction
Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad
Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction
Franklin, John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans
Gates, Henry Louis Jr.,
Many Rivers to Cross
A publication written to complement the PBS Documentary Series Many Rivers to Cross. Book availability:
2 copies available in RI CLAN system
1 ebook available in RI CLAN system
Currently available on Kindle for $1.99
Paperback available for order on Amazon Prime for $29.99 (also available for order via other sources for roughly the same price.)
See section below on PBS Documentaries for information about viewing documentary series.
Stony The Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow
Hurston, Zora Neale,
Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"
Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance
Jacobs, Harriet, Incidents in The Life of a Slave Girl
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11030/11030-h/11030-h.htm
Kendi, Ibram X., Stamped from The Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Note: Also available in a Young Adult version which is excellent and has been
selected as the Read Across Rhode Island book for 2021. There will be programming in RI around this book next spring, including an appearance by the author. Many children will be reading in schools.
Klarman, Michael J., From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality
Lawrence, Jacob, The Great Migration: An American Story
Note: a picture book of Lawrence’s Migration Series, a sequence of paintings
and captions depicting the Great Migration
Lemann, Nicholas, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America
Marshall, Thurgood, Thurgood Marshall: His Speeches, Writings, Arguments, Opinions, and Reminiscences (The Library of Black America)
Nelson, Kladir, Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans
Note: This is a beautifully illustrated picture book for children, recommended by
class member Barbara Barnes and her sister Bev. The illustrations and themes
speak to readers of all ages, and it’s a great book to be aware of if you are discussing
our class themes with children in your family.
Northrup, Solomon, Twelve Years A Slave
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/45631/45631-h/45631-h.htm
Rothstein, Richard, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Rowan, Carl T., Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall
Smith, Venture, A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Venture, A Native of Africa
Sugrue, Thomas J., Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North
Washington, Booker T., Up From Slavery: An Autobiography
Available in print and also available online via Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2376/2376-h/2376-h.htm
Watts, Jill, The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt
Weatherford, Carole Boston, author; Nelson, Kadir, Illustrator, Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom.
Wilkerson, Isabel
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
The Warmth of Other Suns
Wilder, Craig Steven, Ebony and Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America's Universities
Williams, Juan
Note: This publication complements a documentary series Eyes on the Prize,
which covers the period after 1954 and will be a useful resource for the second half of this class. Most of this book covers the period after 1954. However, there is asection on Brown v. Board of Education.
Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary
Woodson, Carter G., The Mis-Education of the Negro
Originally published in 1933. The thesis is that blacks of his day were being culturally indoctrinated, rather than taught, in American schools. This conditioning, he claims, causes blacks to become dependent and to seek out inferior places in the greater society of which they are a part. He challenges his readers to become autodidacts and to "do for themselves", regardless of what they were taught.
Yetman, Norman R., Editor, When I was a slave : memoirs from the Slave Narrative Collection (Narratives originally recorded by the Federal Writers' Project between 1936 and 1938 under the sponsorship of The Library of Congress.)
Articles available on-line
Ida B. Wells “LYNCHING, OUR NATIONAL CRIME” (1909 speech to NAACP available on-line)
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1909-ida-b-wells-awful-slaughter/
Isabel Wilkerson, “The Long-Lasting Legacy of the Great Migration” -- available on line
Walter White “I Investigate Lynchings” article in the American Mercury, Jan, 1929
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/segregation/text2/text2read.htm
Link to Booker T. Washington’s history of Mound Bayou
https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/supplemental/booker_t/ch07_02_booker_t_washington_rediscovered.pdf
Public Archaeology Lab, Survey Report African American Struggle for Civil Rights in Rhode Island: The Twentieth Century Phase 2: Statewide Survey and National Register Evaluation http://www.rihs.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/3526_RI-Civil-Rights_SurveyReport-with-Appendix-Final.pdf
Good summary of civil rights movement in RI
Do black lives matter to the constitution?
https://digitalcommons.law.wne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1352&context=facschol
https://symposium.hillsdale.edu/s/race-in-america-history-and-controversies
includes one lecture on the Constitution with a very detailed explanation of Plessy v. Ferguson
National Museum of African American History, “Historical Foundations Of Race”
https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race
James Madison’s Montpelier website, “Slavery, the Constitution, and a Lasting Legacy”
https://www.montpelier.org/learn/slavery-constitution-lasting-legacy
Constitutional Rights Foundation, “The Constitution and Slavery”
https://www.crf-usa.org/black-history-month/the-constitution-and-slavery
Websites
PBS Online, The Africans in America website – an extensive source of educational resources on African American history – intended for teachers but provides resources of interest to anyone studying this subject
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/home.html
1696 Heritage Group
The 1696 Heritage Group is a consulting firm located in Rhode Island and headed by Keith and Theresa Guzman Stokes. It is dedicated to helping persons and institutions of color to increase their knowledge and access to the light of truth of their unique American heritage. The Group's website provides a wealth of information and includes links to related sites.
Doris Franklin Finley African-American Heritage Trail.org
An Educational Broadcasting System website on Jim Crow – includes timeline, many resources
https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/jimcrow/
Good website on NAACP’s legal strategy
https://americanhistory.si.edu/brown/history/index.html
Website for NY History Museum’s exhibit on black citizenship in Jim Crow era
history.org/exhibitions/black-citizenship-age-jim-crow#
Website for Black Past, a huge internet repository of material
Website for New York Public Library Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience
http://www.inmotionaame.org/home.cfm;jsessionid=f8302412501607249905798?bhcp=1
Website for the National Museum of African American History
Website for the National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox, The Making of African American Identity:
A collection of primary resources—historical documents, literary texts, and works of art—thematically organized with notes and discussion questions. All available online.
Vol. I, 1500-1865 https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/index.htm
Vol. II, 1865-1917 https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai2/index.htm
Vol. III, 1917-1968 https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/index.htm
PBS Documentaries
Note: PBS documentaries are available online if you have a WGBH Passport membership. If you belong to Amazon Prime, you can also take out a PBS Documentaries additional membership for $3.99/month. Some may be available as DVDs through RI CLAN system.
The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross, with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Episode 1: The Black Atlantic (1500 – 1800)
Explores the global experiences that created the African-American people. The episode portrays the earliest Africans, slave and free, who arrived on these shores.
Episode Two: The Age of Slavery (1800 – 1860)
The lives of African Americans changed dramatically after the American Revolution. Cotton fueled the rapid expansion of slavery into the Deep South, creating a Second Middle Passage --- a forced migration of slaves from the Upper South into the Deep South.
Episode Three: Into the Fire (1861 – 1896)
Episode Four: Making a Way Out of No Way (1897-1940)
During the Jim Crow era, African Americans struggled to build their own worlds within the confines of segregation. A steady stream of African Americans migrated away from the South in what's called the Great Migration.
Episode Five: Rise! The Road to Civil Rights (1940-1968)
The long road to civil rights, when the deep contradictions in American society finally became unsustainable.
Episode Six: A More Perfect Union (1968 – 2013)
From the Black Power movement to the first black president of the United States.
Availability:
8 copies of DVD available through RI CLAN.
Available with a PBS Passports Membership.
If you belong to Amazon Prime, you can subscribe for $3.99/month to a PSB Documentaries feature which will give you access to this documentary. (Currently, the first episode is available free of charge on Amazon Prime.)
Reconstruction: America After The Civil War, with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Part 1, Hour 1
Part 1, Hour 2
Part 2, Hour 1
Part 2, Hour 2
Simple Justice (about Thurgood Marshall – on American Experience)
Slavery By Another Name
Other videos available online
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ferGR39eZU
video on Mound Bayou – all black town in Mississippi
The Order of Myths
$0.00 with a Fandor trial on Prime Video Channels
Conversations with History: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery with Eric Foner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXgR0EyQkWg
A Conversation with Eric Foner about "Gateway to Freedom"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEGLKXAabS4
Eric Foner: Reconstruction and the Constitution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj5MeRM4fG8
Lecture at Columbia Humanities Festival, Nov 13, 2019, about Foner’s book Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
Video of slave ship
https://www.slavevoyages.org/voyage/ship#slave-
Films
Birth of A Nation
YouTube, Amazon Prime
Within Our Gates
Directed by Oscar Micheaux, 1920
Where to Watch: Library of Congress YouTube Channel, Amazon Prime, fuboTV, Kanopy,
River of Hope
Amazon Prime
Twelve Years A Slave
Glory
42 (Jacky Robinson)
Mudbound
Olympic Pride, American Prejudice
George Washington Carver at Tuskegee Institute (1937)
Where to Watch: The U.S. National Archives’ YouTube channel.
The Legend: The Bessie Coleman Story – Amazon Prime
Harriet