“African American Studies: Foundations and Key Concepts” reading list by Omari Weekes

Baldwin, James "A Talk to Teachers" (1963); “Going to Meet the Man” (1965)

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States (2006, link to book reviews and features)

Common Justice, “develops and advances solutions to violence that transform the lives of those harmed and fosters racial equity without relying on incarceration”

Cooper, Brittney Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower (2018, link to book with excerpts, reviews, and videos)

Critical Resistance and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (2008) Statement on Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex

CUNY Graduate Center “13 Scholars Shedding Light on the Roots of Racial Injustice”

Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obselete? (2003)

DiAngelo, Robin “No, I Won’t Stop Saying ‘White Supremacy’” (2017)

Erevelles, Nirmala “Crippin’ Jim Crow: Disability, Dis-Location, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline” (2014, link to book page with abstract and preview)

Haley, Sarah No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity (2016)

Halley, Catherine Institutionalized Racism: A Syllabus

Harjo, Joy Crazy Brave (2012, memoir) and An American Sunrise (2019) excerpts

Hartman, Saidiya Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women and Queer Radicals (2019)

How Black Lives Matter Changed the News,” an episode of the View from Somewhere podcast

Khan-Cullors, Patrisse and Asha Bandele When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir (2018, link to book page with interview, reviews, blog posts and more)

Lorde, Audre “Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” (1980)

Ore, Ersula J. Lynching: Violence, Rhetoric, and American Identity (2019, link to book page with brief article)

Perry, Imani Breathe: A Letter to My Sons (2020)

Pierrot, Grégory The Black Avenger in Atlantic Culture (2019,link to book page with brief article)

Royster, Jacqueline Jones “When the First Voice You Hear is Not Your Own” (1996)

Sankara, Thomas in “Black Harlem” and the United Nations, “Our White House is in Black Harlem,” 3 October 1984 (Harlem Speech part 1 and part 2) in Thomas Sankara Speaks, Pathfinder Press, 2007. A short speech at an event organized by the Harlem-based Patrice Lumumba Coalition (incomplete archive footage here , here and here).

Shakur, Assata Assata: An Autobiography (1987, includes forward by Angela Davis) and Assata in her own words from Cuba (1998, 15 minute SoundCloud recording)

Smith, Lillian Killers of the Dream (1949) on white families and compulsory heterosexuality reproducing violence and white supremacy

Solomon, Akiba and Kenrya Rankin, eds. How We Fight White Supremacy (2019, link here to C-SPAN interview with editors and more information about the book)

Spade, Dean, Reina Gossett No one is Disposable: Everyday Practices of Abolition (2014 videos)

"Strange Fruit," the song about lynching to which Billie Holiday brought visibility in the late 1930's and which Nina Simone performed in the 1960's. Recordings by Billie Holiday and Nina Simone.

Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta, a Black Studies professor at Princeton, put together an amazing resource “Scholars for Social Justice” a year ago, for teaching and learning about white supremacy.

The University of Minnesota Press has made a collection of antiracist books — including João H. Costa Vargas’s The Denial of Anti-Blackness: Multiracial Redemption and Black Suffering, Brett Story’s Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power Across Neoliberal America, Angelina E. Castagno’s Educated in Whiteness: Good Intentions and Diversity in Schools, and others — available online for free until August 31, 2020

Walia, Harsha Undoing Border Imperialism (2013, ebook)


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