Racism & Racial Identity Archives

May 15, 2010: Kalief Browder Arrested, Held for Three Years with No Trial

Kalief Browder was arrested at the age of 16 for allegedly stealing a backpack weeks before in the Bronx.

The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America

Book — Non-fiction. By Carol Anderson. 2021. 272 pages.
This book illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable.

July 4, 1963: Clyde Kennard Died

Clyde Kennard (June 12, 1927–July 4, 1963) bravely and righteously tried to pursue higher education in Mississippi. He faced the fatal wrath of the state as a result of his efforts to challenge white supremacy.

Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment

Book — Non-fiction. By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. 2018. 236 pages.
A history of guns and gun laws in the United States, from the original colonization of the country to the present.

Here is a synopsis of South Carolina testimonies at the hearings in July, 1871.

July 7, 1871: Testimony at Klan Hearings by Elias Thomson

Elias Thomson, an African American who lived in Spartanburg, South Carolina, bravely shared testimony detailing violence inflicted against him because he voted for the Republican ticket in the local election.

Oct. 22, 1883: Frederick Douglass Denounces Supreme Court Ruling

In this speech, Frederick Douglass denounced the Civil Rights Cases of 1883, in which the Supreme Court held that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not empower Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals.

A broadside distributed by Benjamin Singleton advertising migration to Kansas, 1878.

April 15, 1878: Real Estate and Homestead Association Relocated

The Real Estate and Homestead Association helped organize travel and settlement for African Americans, “Exodusters,” who fled the South because of racial violence and “bulldozing” by white supremacist groups.

I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction

Book — Non-fiction. By Kidada E. Williams. 2023. 352 pages.
An account of the brutal white supremacist violence and terror that formerly enslaved people were faced with during Reconstruction.

Our Kind of Historian: The Work and Activism of Lerone Bennett Jr.

Book — Non-fiction. By E. James West. 2022. 328 pages.
This biography examines the life of historian and activist Lerone Bennett Jr. and his influence on African American culture and history.

July 20, 1967: Newark Black Power Conference Begins

More than 1,000 delegates representing 286 organizations and institutions from 126 cities in 26 states, Bermuda, and Nigeria gathered at the National Conference on Black Power in Newark, New Jersey.

“Intolerable Conditions”: Teaching About Northern Racism Through Rosa Parks’s Detroit

Teaching Activity. By Say Burgin, Jeanne Theoharis, and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Students learn to “talk back” to official accounts of the Detroit Uprising of 1967 by focusing on its root causes. They also get a fuller sense of Rosa Parks’s life and politics, and the Black freedom struggle outside of the South.

Being Clem

Book — Fiction. By Lesa Cline-Ransome. 2021. 256 pages.
The final novel in the award-winning Finding Langston trilogy, this novel examines mid-twentieth century America through the eyes of Clem, a young boy whose family is torn apart after his father's untimely death.

Teaching Activity by Lesa Cline-Ransome

Teaching A People’s History of the March on Washington

Teaching Activity. By Jessica Lovaas and Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 2021. Updated in 2023.
A lesson with case studies from Los Angeles; Birmingham, Alabama; Brooklyn; Detroit; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Albany, Georgia; and Cambridge, Maryland — to introduce students to the diverse struggles across the United States that were represented at the March on Washington.

Teaching Activity by Adam Sanchez

The People Shall Continue

Picture Book. By Simon J. Ortiz, illustrated by Sharol Graves. 2022. 32 pages.
This powerful telling of the history of the Native/Indigenous peoples of North America recounts their story from Creation to the invasion and usurpation of Native lands.

Teaching Activity by By Simon J. Ortiz, Illustrated by Sharol Graves

Regina, a Native girl, runs in the mountains on this book cover

Indian No More

Book — Historical fiction. By Charlene Willing McManis and Traci Sorell. 2016. 224 pages.
This award-winning children's book follows a young Indigenous girl's quest to understand her identity as an Indian despite being so far from home.

Nov. 15, 1842: Slave Revolt at Webbers Falls

The Slave Revolt of 1842 — when dozens of enslaved Black people in Webbers Falls, Oklahoma fought back and briefly escaped from their Cherokee overseers — was the largest rebellion of enslaved people in Indian Territory history.

Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity

Book — Non-fiction. By Donald Yacovone. 2022. 464 pages.
This book details the battle over historical memory in public schools and how the white elite has devoted extraordinary resources to perpetuating racist ideas in each generation through K-12 curriculum.