Racism & Racial Identity Archives

Do You Know Them?: Families Lost and Found After the Civil War

Picture book. By Shana Keller and illustrated by Laura Freeman. 2024. 40 pages.
Helps introduce young readers to the history of African American family members desperately trying to find their children, spouses, siblings, parents, and other loved ones during Reconstruction.

Portraits of Peacemakers: Americans Who Tell the Truth

Book — Non-fiction. By Robert Shetterly. 2024. 128 pages.
Loving, colorful portraits and short biographies of 50 peace activists.

Aug. 1, 1944: Racist Wildcat Strike Shuts Down Philadelphia

Not wanting Black coworkers to be given the same positions and pay, a contingent of Philadelphia Transit Company (PTC) workers staged a wildcat strike and withheld their labor.

Aug. 28, 1964: Columbia Avenue Uprising in Philadelphia

The Columbia Avenue Riot began in the predominantly African American neighborhoods of North Philadelphia after an altercation with the police and continued for three days.

Oct. 28, 1958: Two Children Arrested in N. Carolina

Following a kiss by a 7-year-old white girl, two young Black boys ages 8 and 9 were unlawfully arrested and brutally treated in Monroe, North Carolina.

July 11, 1954: First White Citizens’ Council Formed

White residents of Indianola, Mississippi, formed the first White Citizens’ Council to organize and carry out massive resistance to racial integration of public schools.

The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic

Book — Non-fiction. By Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker. 2013. 448 pages.
A sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world.

Morningside: The 1979 Greensboro Massacre and the Struggle for an American City’s Soul

Book — Non-fiction. By Aran Shetterly. 2024. 480 pages.
Drawing from survivor interviews, court documents, and FBI files, this book details the “Greensboro Massacre.”

Revolution by Fire: New York’s Afro-Irish Uprising of 1741, a Graphic Novel

Book — Historical fiction. By Marcus Rediker and David Lester, with Paul Buhle. 2024. 176 pages.
This book imagines outlaw fugitive John Gwin and an eclectic crew of renegades as they attempt to disrupt and overthrow the colonial social order.

March 8, 1741: New York Conspiracy

A purported conspiracy of the enslaved in New York City led to multiple fires and arsons followed by mass jailings, trials, and eventual executions of many involved.

Nearer My Freedom: The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano by Himself

Book — Non-fiction. By Monica Edinger and Lesley Younge. 2023. 216 pages.
The story of Olaudah Equiano, from his childhood in Africa to his capture, enslavement, and eventual liberation.

Nov. 5, 1917: Supreme Court Rules Against Segregated Housing

In the case of Buchanan v. Warley, the Supreme Court declared segregated housing to be unconstitutional.

Black Power and Palestine: Transnational Countries of Color

Book — Non-fiction. By Michael R. Fischbach. 2018. 296 pages.
Explores the connections between organizers of the Black Freedom Struggle and those struggling for Palestinian autonomy.

Jan. 20, 1919: Bragg Williams Killed by White Mob

A white mob dragged Black prisoner Bragg Williams from his jail cell and burned him at the stake in one of many acts of white supremacist violence in 1919 and beyond.

Will’s Race for Home

Book — Historical fiction. By Jewell Parker Rhodes. 2025. 208 pages.
A chapter book on the experience of a late 19th century era Black family participating in the Oklahoma Land Rush.

The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots

Book — Non-fiction. By John Swanson Jacobs. 2024. 288 pages.
A first-person narrative of the enslaved, lost for 169 years, now reproduced in full.

book cover of ghosts in the schoolyard by Eve Ewing

Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side

Book — Non-fiction. By Eve L. Ewing. 2018. 240 pages.
This book flips the script about how we talk about "failing schools," using historical research and current data to show that Chicago's public schools are storehouses of memory, an integral part of their neighborhoods, and at the heart of their communities.

Feb. 23, 1868: W. E. B. Du Bois Born

W. E. B. Du Bois, sociologist, historian, Pan-Africanist, author, and editor, was one of the most important scholars of the 20th century.

March 2, 1867: Congress Passes First of Four Reconstruction Acts

Congress overrode President Andrew Johnson’s veto and passed the first of four statutes known as the Reconstruction Acts, which outlined the process of readmission to the Union.

Unforgettable Sacrifice: How Black Communities Remembered the Civil War

Book — Non-fiction. By Hilary N. Green. 2025. 400 pages.
The untold stories of ordinary African Americans who took extraordinary steps in remembrance and resistance during and after the Civil War.

Oct. 14, 1916: Paul Robeson Excluded from Rutgers Football Team

As a sophomore, Paul Robeson was excluded from the Rutgers Football team because another team refused to play against a Black player.

Feb. 8, 1968: Orangeburg Massacre

Two years before the Kent State murders, 28 students were injured and three were killed in Orangeburg, South Carolina — most shot in the back by the state police while involved in a peaceful protest.

June 2, 1892: Robert Lewis Killed By White Mob in New York

Robert Lewis was brutally beaten and hanged from a tree by a crowd of nearly 2,000 people after being accused of assaulting Lena McMahon, a local white woman. No one was held accountable for his murder.

Guns and the Southern Freedom Struggle: What’s Missing When We Teach About Nonviolence

By Charles E. Cobb Jr.

The best way to understand this Mississippi movement episode is...as a story of organizers and the communities they were embedding themselves in during the Freedom Movement of the 1960s. Within this organizing experience, guns in the hands of supporters sometimes existed in tension with the nonviolence usually used to define movement philosophy and practice, but that more often existed in tandem with nonviolence. In other words, something more complex was at play.

March 13, 2020: Breonna Taylor Killed by Louisville Police

Louisville police officers opened fire in the home of 26-year-old Breonna Taylor, shooting and killing her.

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