I believe the first step toward understanding how to become an ally in this struggle African Americans have been engaged in for centuries, is to do your homework and learn more about it.
Many people of all colors/ethnic groups/"races" operate on a subconscious acceptance of white supremacy because that is the culture of this country and always has been. To not operate that way, you first have to be aware of how these cultural assumptions play out in daily life. To help create that awareness, I recommend reading/watching a few of the items on the following list of books and DVDs.
Whatever genre you prefer--biography, comedy, documentary, essay, history, film, novel, short story, television--there's something here for you, including material from real life as well as works of imagination. This list is not meant to be exhaustive or comprehensive; it is personal, consisting of items I am familiar with and that I think will be helpful. And since it is personal, I've included my own books.
(I apologize for this blog program that has a mind of its own regarding spacing, formatting and fonts.)
HISTORIES
Bennett, Lerone Jr., Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America, Johnson Publishing Co./Penguin Books, 1986. Johnson Publishing Company’s (Ebony and Jet magazines) resident historian teaches us just how long ago Africans were brought to this land. Updated many times, it was originally published in 1961.
Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss Jr., From Slavery
to Freedom: A History of African
Americans, 6th edition, Knopf, 1988. Now in its 8th edition, considered the
definitive history of African Americans. Originally published in 1947.
Giddings, Paula, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America,
William Morrow & Co., 1984.
Hine, Darlene Clark and Kathleen Thompson, A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America, Broadway
Books, 1998.
McKissack,Patricia and Fredrick, Scholastic books for young readers.
Van Sertima, Ivan, They Came Before Columbus: The
African Presence in Ancient America, Random House, 1976.
BIOGRAPHIES/MEMOIRS
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Bantam Books, 1993.
Angelou
writes movingly about her childhood with her grandmother in Arkansas.
Baker was active in the civil rights
movement and founding adviser to Snick, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
(SNCC).
The
Time and Place That Gave Me Life
by Janet Cheatham Bell, Indiana
University Press, 2007. The
story of an “ordinary” black family in the heartland (Indianapolis) coping with
race in their daily lives.
Maggie’s
American Dream: The Life and Times of a Black Family by James P. Comer, New
American Library, 1988. Comer
is a physician and the Maurice Falk Professor of Child Psychiatry at the
Yale University School of Medicine's Child Study Center.
Narrative
of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An
American Slave,
Written by Himself, Boston Anti-Slavery Office, 1845; Dolphin Books, 1963. A brilliant man tells the story of how he overcame the humiliation and depravity of those who “owned” him.
Watch Me Fly: What I Learned on the Way to Becoming the Woman I Was Meant to Be by Myrlie Evers-Williams with Melinda Blau, Little, Brown & Co.,
1999. The
widow of Medgar Evers, the assassinated civil rights leader who was murdered in
Mississippi in 1963, writes about that experience and her life subsequently.
Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself by Harriet A. Jacobs, edited by Jean Fagan Yellin, Harvard University
Press,1987. An
account of what it was like for a woman to be someone else’s property.
Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
(1878-1946) by Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf, 2004. The
experiences of the first black heavyweight boxing champion; also see the PBS
Ken Burns documentary of the same title.
Vernon
Can Read: A Memoir
by Vernon E. Jordan Jr. with Annette
Gordon-Reed, Public Affairs, 2001. The life story of a former president of the National
Urban League and adviser to President Bill Clinton.
Born
to Rebel: An Autobiography
by Benjamin E. Mays, The University
of Georgia Press, 1971. The
late Dr. Mays was president of Atlanta’s historically black Morehouse College
and an adviser to his student, Martin Luther King Jr.
The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother by James McBride, Riverhead Books, 1996. This memoir is a
well-written account of what it was like growing up in Brooklyn with his white
mom.
Makes
Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America by Nathan McCall, Random House, 1994. A completely different kind of story by a Washington
Post reporter who came of age in Portsmouth, Virginia.
On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker by A'Lelia Bundles, Scribner, 2001. The life of the first female American millionaire who earned rather than inherited her money.
A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, by David W. Blight, Harcourt, 2007. The individual life
stories of John Washington and Wallace Turnage who managed to free
themselves from bondage.
NOVELS & SHORT STORIES
Campbell, Bebe Moore, Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, Random House, 1993. This captivating story follows the lives of two families, one white, one black after a racist incident. Set in Mississippi in the 1950s.
Ellison, Ralph, Invisible
Man, Random House, 1952. Classic, prize-winning novel about the
journey of blacks in America.
Faulkner, William, Light in August, Vintage Books, 1991. A classic southern Gothic novel set in Mississippi with quirky characters including Joe Christmas
who isn’t sure if he’s black or white. Originally published in 1931.
Hughes, Langston,
The
Ways of White Folks: Stories, Knopf, 1969. Individual stories
about a variety of encounters between blacks and whites. Originally published
in 1934.
Jones, Edward P., The Known World, Amistad, 2006. The story of the anomaly of a
black man who owned slaves.
Morrison, Toni, The
Bluest Eye, Plume, 1994. Morrison’s first novel is a story of how
living in an environment where appearance, especially skin color, determines
worth, can distort a child’s perception and esteem. Originally published in 1970.
Petry,
Ann, The
Street, Pyramid Books, 1966. A hard look
at a young black woman struggling to
live and raise a son in Harlem in the late 1940s. Originally published 1946.
Tademy, Lalita, Cane River, Grand Central
Publishing, 2002. Engrossing
story of four generations of French-speaking black women in Louisiana based on
the author’s own family.
Walker,
Margaret, Jubilee, Bantam, 1966. The author imagines how her family survived
in the years after slavery was abolished.
Williams,
John A., The Man Who Cried I Am, New American Library, 1967. A novel about a
secret assassin who kills every police officer who has killed a black person.
ESSAYS & BOOKS ON BEING BLACK IN AMERICA
Baldwin, James, Notes of a Native Son, Bantam Books,
1955.
Baldwin, James, Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native
Son, Dial Press, 1961.
Baraka, Amiri
(LeRoi Jones), Blues People: The NegroExperience in White America and the Music that Developed From It, William
Morrow & Co., 1968.
Bell, Janet
Cheatham, Victory of the Spirit:Reflections on My Journey, Sabayt Publications, 2011.
Bell, Janet
Cheatham, Not All Poor People Are Black:and other things we need to think more about, Sabayt Publications, 2015.
Carter, Stephen
L., Reflections of an Affirmative ActionBaby, Basic Books, 1991.
Cose, Ellis, The Rage of a Privileged Class, Harper
Collins, 1993. A
former columnist and writer for Newsweek,
on the racism experienced by well-paid professionals.
Edwards, Audrey
& Dr. Craig K. Polite, Children of the Dream: The Psychology of Black Success, Doubleday, 1992.
DeGruy, Joy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, Uptone Press, 2005.
DeGruy, Joy, Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, Uptone Press, 2005.
Golden, Marita, Saving Our Sons: Raising Black Children in a
Turbulent World, Anchor Books, 1995.
Monroe, Sylvester
and Peter Goldman, Brothers: Black and
Poor—A True Story of Courage and Survival, William Morrow & Co., 1988.
Muhammad, Khalil
Gibran, The Condemnation of Blackness:
Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America, Harvard University
Press, 2010.
Ogbu, John U., Minority Education and Caste: The American
System in Cross-Cultural Perspective, Academic Press, 1978.
Painter, Nell
Irvin, Creating Black Americans:
African-American History and Its Meanings 1619 to the Present, Oxford
University Press, 2006.
Phelts, Marsha
Dean, An American Beach for African
Americans, The University Press of Florida, 1997.
Robinson,
Randall, The Debt: What America Owes toBlacks, Dutton, 2000.
Thandeka, Learning to Be White: Money, Race, and God in America, Continuum, 1999.
Walker, Alice, The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart,
Random House, 2000.
West, Cornel, Race Matters, Beacon Press, 1993.
Wilkerson,
Isabel, The Warmth of Other Suns: the
Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, Vintage Books, 2011. (Beautifully written, Pulitzer Prize-winning stories of the decades-long
migration of black citizens fleeing the South in search of a better life.)
Williams,
Patricia J., Seeing a Color-Blind Future:
The Paradox of Race, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1997.
Woodson, Carter
G., Mis-education of the Negro,
Associated Publishers, 1969. Originally published in 1933.
DVDs
The Book of Negroes (Black Entertainment Television [BET] original movie; story of a woman captured in Africa and enslaved prior to America's Revolutionary War.)
Deacons for Defense (political drama of blacks defending themselves against the KKK, set in Bogalusa, Louisiana in 1965)
Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Movement 1954-1985 (pbs.org documentary)
The
Feast of All Saints (a TV miniseries based on the Anne Rice novel of the same
title) looks at the Louisiana custom of placage
where wealthy white men and a few light-skinned free blacks select mixed-race women
as mistresses.
Fruitvale Station (a dramatization of the life and murder of Oscar
Grant who was killed in Oakland, CA.)
Huey P. Newton: Prelude to a Revolution (documentary)
Lackawanna Blues (a play by Ruben Santiago-Hudson makes a compelling drama about a rooming house in Lackawanna, NY)
Marcus Garvey: American Experience (pbs.org documentary)
Mooz-Lum, (dramatization of post-9/11 suspicion and distrust of blacks who are Muslims.)
Paul Mooney: Analyzing White America (a comedic analysis)
Paul Robeson: Here I Stand (YouTube video on the life of Robeson,
Sr., a successful actor, singer, football player, and lawyer, vilified
for his uncompromising advocacy of
equality.)
Race: The Power of an Illusion (California Newsreel film carefully explains and documents the artifice of racial categorizations.)
Race: The Power of an Illusion (California Newsreel film carefully explains and documents the artifice of racial categorizations.)
Scottsboro: An American Tragedy (documentary about young black men falsely accused of raping two white women)
Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell (a revolutionary [now cancelled] television series that took a comedic
look at topical issues, including racism.)
Twelve
Years a Slave (PBS dramatization of the book of the same title.)
Unforgivable Blackness: The
Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (Ken
Burns documentary of the first black heavyweight boxing champion)
Waiting for "Superman" (documentary on America's failing school system)
Why We Laugh (documentary on history of black comedy)