THE BIG WHITE LIE*

This has never been a "white" country

All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black.

Ta-Nehisi Coates in Between the World and Me

 

I’ve been exposed to America’s racial paradigm for three-quarters of a century; what I write here is based on what I’ve lived and what I’ve learned from reading history in works other than official classroom texts. As the PBS documentary Race: The Power of an Illusion explains, “Race has no genetic basis.” Instead, it “is a powerful social idea that gives people different access to opportunities and resources.” However, scientific data means nothing in the presence of this powerful social imperative.

The murders of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Michael Brown are high-profile examples of how racism permeates American society. These murders rekindle the fear that I, and most parents of black male children, live with daily. We know that at any moment some person (police officer, random gun-toter) could see your child’s black maleness as a threat that has to be eradicated. And numerous precedents have taught these would-be “guardians” they will not be punished for these murders. These cases remind us yet again that some things haven’t changed in the last 150 years. In 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford that blacks “have no rights which the white man is bound to respect . . . .”

It has been dismaying, although not surprising, to see racism’s ugly head spinning wildly after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. Having our first black president seems to have unhinged a sizable number of Americans, most visibly those in the Tea/Republican Party, but thankfully they are not the majority. These people are outraged at having a black man in the White House and, in addition to insulting the president in every possible way they can think of, they are passing and pushing for laws to take us back in time, to their “glory” days. Apparently they’re longing for the time when people who were not white and male couldn’t vote, let alone run for president. To achieve that end they are erecting new barriers to the right to vote, especially for black and brown folks. This is one step back to the days they long for when only propertied white males had voting rights. 

For these disturbed Americans, President Obama’s election has concretized the warning that Patrick Buchanan has been issuing for years, most specifically in his book, State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. “Third world” is his euphemism for people who are not white. That title, and the mythology of a white America that so many want to return to, represent the Big White Lie. 

THE ONLY INVASION

The only “invasion” of America has been by whites—people who looked like Buchanan. This has never been a white country. There were no whites (i.e., Europeans) here when the first immigrants showed up uninvited, but were welcomed. Then these immigrant Europeans utilized their more efficient weaponry to invade and occupy the land, systematically displacing or killing the indigenous people. They succeeded in taking control, but the original inhabitants they dubbed “Indians” survive and continue to have a presence, however marginalized, in their ancestral homeland.

Europeans had been engaged in the capture and sale of Africans for more than a century when they “discovered” the New World. So it was a no-brainer in 1619 to bring Africans across the Atlantic to do the back-breaking work of developing "their" new country and making the most of the land’s resources. Europeans held the reins of power, but the country was not “white” because the original inhabitants were still present, and the number of Africans was rapidly increasing, especially in the South, where much of the slave labor was concentrated. In what was to become the United States, immigrants from Europe gradually set aside their disdain for each other—muting regional prejudices and national differences—to become “white”and thereby establish a cohesive group superiority over the “nonwhites” in their midst. The population of “colored” people expanded exponentially as white males took advantage of their power to rape the “inferior” women. The offspring of these legitimate rapes further diminished the percentage of whites. 

In 1848 the Treaty of GuadalupeHidalgo placed a significant portion of Mexico (including what are now the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and part of Colorado and Texas) and Mexicans within the United States, increasing the number of “colored” citizens in America yet again. 

The suffusion continued with the importation of Chinese laborers to build the Transcontinental Railroad completed in 1869. Then the U.S. acquired Puerto Rico (there are more Puerto Ricans in this country than in Puerto Rico) the Philippines, and Guam after defeating Spain in the 1898 Spanish-American War. 

American imperialism brought along other “nonwhite territories” like Samoa, the Virgin Islands, Alaska and Hawaii, the latter two admitted as the 49th and 50th states in 1959. The “nonwhite” people living in these territories are all Americans, although they are not allowed to vote in national elections, or the U.S. Congress. (Washington, DC occupies the same dubious distinction, except they can now vote for the POTUS.) U. S. military incursions in Southeast Asia and the Middle East have spurred refugees and immigrants from these non-European areas to settle here and more are coming. The term “nonwhite” is itself the perfect indicator of the assumed supremacy of whiteness. 

Now that the national stew is nicely spiced and these people of color are exercising power, a number of whites are hysterically digging in their heels in a desire to “take their country back.” Fear of becoming a “minority” in “their” country is what built the fence on the Mexican border, toughened immigration restrictions, and increased deportations. 

Their rage for more prisons had long been fueled by a desire to re-enslave blacks—African- and Hispanic-Americans make up approximately 25 percent of the nation’s population, yet they constitute more than half of those incarcerated in the country’s prisons. Now, however, the hungry and rapacious privatized prison industry is gobbling up poor whites as well. (In 1998 an Atlantic article stated, “The United States now imprisons more people than any other country in the world—perhaps half a million more than Communist China.” And the numbers have increased since that article was written.)

What these frightened folk don’t realize is that their hysteria is much too late. Dragging their heels will only create deep ruts. It’s inevitable, people of color will be the majority, and soon. Not because of any “invasion” as Buchanan and others want us to believe. Rather, this demographic shift is a result of long-standing official U.S. policies and imperialist practices that created a racial paradigm in the United States dating back to the first European immigrants. 

Award-winning writer John Edgar Wideman described a racial paradigm as “a vision of humankind and society based on the premise that not all people are created equal and some are born with the right to exploit others.” And this is how it operates in this country that purports to be a democracy.

With the media’s constant barrage of statistics, African Americans are not allowed to forget that we are regarded as not measuring up to the white standard. That makes it easier for officials and others to see African Americans as disposable. For many years we were the defective ethnic group, but as their numbers increase, the alarmists are now focusing on Hispanic Americans. Since 2001, people from the Middle East, or those who look like they could be from that area, have been added to the list of suspects. 

Racism is integral to who Americans are, to what the U. S. has been since its inception and still is. Yet, only in recent months have some tentatively acknowledged its existence, while most are still in denial. What is never mentioned, or hardly even alluded to, is that despite their status as the standard to which everyone else is compared, some whites feel the full measure of their inadequacies until reminded that at least they are not black/Hispanic/foreign, at which time they can swell with pride. 

Many government officials, political leaders, media, pundits and others continue to invoke the Big White Lie because that lie helps them maintain control over those who have no power aside from what their skin color supposedly confers. 

*adapted from the essay of the same title in the collection, Not All Poor People Are Black and Other Things We Need to Think More About.

I will miss my friend

Memories of Julian Bond 

by Janet Cheatham Bell

"These words come, after all, from a steady triumph of right over wrong. Some of these are angry words--but anger is a proper emotion to bring to this fight. Some of the words are humorous--laughter is a frequently employed weapon that can win--and wound. And some are musical, lyrical--prose poetry from singers without any instrument except their voices or pens and their minds." 

Julian Bond in the introduction to my book, Till Victory Is Won: 

Famous Black Quotations from the NAACP.

Julian and me in 1977 at a fundraiser for the late Hoyt Fuller's First World magazine

I first met Julian in 1969. I was living in Athens, Ohio with my husband, Art Saxe, who was a professor at Ohio University (OU). The previous year, after Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, and in response to student demands, I had been  recruited by OU's English Department to teach African American Literature. In that position I was doing everything I could to increase the presence of blacks in what had been a completely white department, so I persuaded them to sponsor Michael Thelwell for a stint as a writer-in-residence. Although we'd never met, I thought Michael's work as both a writer and an activist would appeal to my students.

We invited Michael to dinner at our house and he asked if we would drive him to a nearby Ohio town where Julian Bond was scheduled to speak. Afterwards, we went out for a drink. Julian and Mike (buddies from their SNCC days) were so busy catching up with one another, they hardly knew Art and I were there. Julian had no memory of that meeting.

We met again seven years later in March 1976. I was divorced and living in Indianapolis, employed by the Indiana Department of Public Instruction (DPI). I was the state's Curriculum Consultant for Ethnic Studies. The state Social Studies Consultant was hosting a Midwest Regional Conference, co-sponsored by DPI. Julian had been engaged as the keynote speaker and I offered to pick him up from the airport. 

We had a couple of hours before he was to speak, so we went for coffee and I coached him on what I thought he should say to the Midwest educators. He was relaxed and easy to talk to with a self-deprecating sense of humor. I learned that we shared nearly identical interests in literature as well as politics. He had been an English major in college just like me. A few days after he left he sent a nice thank you note to the office.

A few months later I saw him again at the "Black Bicentennial" in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, held in June. I had convinced DPI it was essential that the Ethnic Studies Consultant attend Heritage Days: The Black Perspective (the official name of the black bicentennial). My good friend Helen joined me for the event. Julian was one of many speakers at the celebration, and when Helen and I had lunch with him he gave us each a copy of his book, A Time to Speak and a Time to Act. 

After that, Julian and I kept in touch regularly, for years by phone and letters; later by email. We often exchanged newspaper clippings and copies of articles we wanted to share or discuss. Whenever he was in Indianapolis or nearby, I'd go hear him speak and we'd meet afterwards. While my son and I were living in Boston, Julian filmed an episode of Sesame Street at WGBH and invited eight-year-old Kamau to be one of the children in the segment. (That was W. Kamau Bell's television debut. Things sort of came "full circle," when as host of his own television show, Totally Biased, Kamau interviewed Julian at a 2012 Presidential Inaugural Ball.) 

In 1976 Julian almost ran for President of the U.S. himself. This is a T-shirt left over from that aborted run. (Collector's item maybe?)

Here's four-year-old Kamau in his child-sized version of the T, which he ripped up as part of his Incredible Hulk-bursting-out-of-his-clothes bit.

When I quit my job to publish quotation books, Julian encouraged and supported me when some others thought I'd lost my mind. He generously wrote endorsements for my books and introduced me to folks he thought might be helpful. Julian was also a writer and poet and sent me handwritten copies of a proposed series of stories similar to Langston Hughes' famous "Simple Stories." Julian's wise and outspoken character was named Leroy. 

In 1987, my friend was at a low point in his life. John Lewis had defeated him in 1986 for a seat in the U.S. Congress, he was estranged from his wife who publicly accused him and others of being addicted to cocaine, and on June 21 The Washington Post Magazine published an article by Juan Williams titled, "Julian Bond on the Edge." It was not a flattering piece. Julian was particularly dismayed because he felt betrayed by those he'd thought of as friends. I consoled him as best I could.

He was not beaten down by these experiences, however, and wrote back to say he would be working with Paul Simon on a series of benefit concerts starring Miriam Makeba, Hugh Masakela and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. He sent me two tickets for the Chicago-area concert. My date was mighty impressed with our seats, which were just four rows from the front. In fact we were seated just in front of Julian, who proudly introduced his date, Mavis Staples.

As often happens after a period in the dark, people emerge to find a new direction illuminated. The congressional defeat was the end of Julian's political career, and the beginning of an expansion of his career as a media host/commentator, national chair of the NAACP, and professor of civil rights. The University of Virginia, where he taught for twenty years, is raising money for a fitting tribute: endowing the Julian Bond Professorship of Civil Rights and Social Justice.

We had been in touch less frequently in the last few years, but I am shaken by his passing; it took a few days for me to accept the reality of it. I wasn't ready for him to leave, but obviously he was ready to go. 

When Will It End?

Sometimes, I let down my guard and forget how deeply entrenched the distorted story of African Americans is in this country. As Chimamanda Adichie says in her TED talk, a single story about anything is dangerous.

And the election of our first black president hasn't altered that single story a bit for many Americans, even those who voted for President Obama. Twice. I got an unexpected reminder of that yesterday which disturbed me and my sleep last night.

A sweet, friendly, older white woman (I'll call her Ingrid), whom I run into periodically and we occasionally chat, stopped me yesterday. She had bought a copy of my essay collection, Not All Poor People, Are Black and read it! She wanted to talk about my book. Then this woman whom I don't know well, but do know that she's a fan of President Obama and is supportive of him and many of his policies, reminded me of that pervasive single story about blacks.

Ingrid is a pleasant, seemingly intelligent woman; I've never felt a whiff of condescension from her. She appears to be healthy and happy with her life. So when she wanted to talk about my book, I  anticipated an interesting discussion.

Ingrid wanted me to know how sad the book made her. This startled me a bit because I've received several comments about the book, but had never heard that one. However, the book includes a variety of essays and, of course, each person brings her/his own experiences to what they read.

Then she told me a bit about herself: she grew up without knowing or ever seeing a black person. She first laid eyes on one of us when she was 17. Ingrid further explained that she's lived in several cities in different parts of the country, and she named them for me. The ones I remember are Austin, TX; Madison, WI; Ann Arbor, MI and she now lives in Bloomington, IN. (I believe all the places she named were college towns.) And she said, indicating that suddenly things have gotten worse, not once in any of these places did she ever hear of any racial upheavals.

I sighed and responded, "Because you didn't hear of them doesn't mean they didn't happen." She nodded her head, but I doubt that she "heard" what I said. Ingrid also wanted to know why blacks are so angry and react "so violently" when something happens. (I thought I had spelled that out several times and in a variety of ways in my book.) The thought of trying to explain what was wrong with her question so thoroughly exhausted me that I simply reminded her that the violence usually begins with the police killing a black person. I also pointed out that after hundreds of years of being enslaved and oppressed, people reach a point of not being able to take any more without fighting back as best they can.

Then she asked, "But don't you think that the Africans who came here are better off...aren't you better off than you would be if you were still in Africa where things are so bad?"

Somehow, I remained calm. First I reminded her that we did not come here like her ancestors had. (I thought this was common knowledge, but decided not to let it go uncorrected.) I reminded her that we were captured and brought over in chains, except for those whose bones are now scattered at the bottom of the Atlantic. 

I also needed to refute her single story about Africa. I asked her, "Who knows what the continent of Africa would be like today if 60 million people and much of their natural resources had not been drained off to build and enrich Europe and America?"

"Sixty million? Really? I had no idea it was that many."

"Nobody knows the exact number, but the Slave Trade went on for about 500 years, and scholars have estimated that 12 million Africans were removed each year."

Ingrid would never wave a Confederate flag, or be less than polite to any person, no matter their color. She undoubtedly would adamantly deny that she's ever had a racist thought. Yet she thinks that I should be grateful my ancestors were captured and enslaved; otherwise I would still (horror of horrors) be in AFRICA!

I was restless as I tried to sleep last night because I realized how absolutely weary I am of trying to get American whites not to accept the story they are told repeatedly about Africa and African Americans. It feels like a Sisyphean punishment. Why would whites (and many blacks) believe me when throughout their lives everything they read, see on television and are taught keeps telling them the opposite of what I have to say? Besides, how could I possibly be "objective"? 

And yes, I recognize that not all whites subscribe to the single story, but more of them do than not. For examples, see David Brooks on Ta-Nehisi Coates' book, Between the World and Me. See an Iraq War veteran killed by jail guards in Texas. Also see people waving Confederate flags--a historic symbol of treason and a recent symbol of hatred for blacks--to greet the President of the United States.
 
I'm trying to cling to my optimism and keep my heart open, but when will it end? I am really tired of this.

What Can I Do to Help End Racism?

This blog entry is for those who say they are disgusted by this country's treatment of African Americans and want to help do something about it. Their hesitation is that they don't know how they can help.

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.

Days of Grace: A Memoir by Arthur Ashe and Arnold Rampersad, Knopf, 1993. Ashe, a tennis player, wrote about his experiences playing a predominantly white sport.

Ella Baker: Freedom Bound by Joanne Grant, John Wiley & Sons, 1998.

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, The Fire Next Time, Dell Publishing, 1963.

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.

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

TheAbolitionists  Dramatization of the movement to abolish slavery. (pbs.org documentary)

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)

Many Rivers to Cross: African American History with Henry Louis Gates Jr. (pbs.org documentary)

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.)

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)