Celebrating our Right to Read History

When I started seeing photos like the one below filling my feeds I was so angry. Angry that uninformed people are determining what our kids can read and learn.

That anger didn’t diminish at all when I saw the next photo. Still angry, but now a huge feeling of sadness, too. I was the kid (probably like many of you!) who lived at the library - the one in my community, the one in my school, and the one in my classroom. I can barely think about what seeing these books covered in paper does to all the kids who now can’t hold and read (and re-read!) and take home those books.

I know so many of you are involved in some of the public discussions in your communities about these outrageous restrictions being placed on books and teachers. THANK YOU!

I guess this all feels especially heavy as we move into February and Black History Month. It feels so important now (more than ever!) that we use all opportunities to celebrate reading about Black History. We Are Your Children Too is a nonfiction middle grade book that explores a deeply troubling chapter in American history: the strange case of Prince Edward County, Virginia (the only place in the United States to ever formally deny its citizens a public education) and the students who pushed back. I am embarrassed to say I have lived in Virginia for ten years now and only learned of this story in the last year. I am so thankful for books like this to help me fill in the gaps in my own knowledge.

In 1954, after the passing of Brown v. the Board of Education, the all-White school board of one county in south central Virginia made the decision to close its public schools rather than integrate. Those schools stayed closed for five years. While the affluent White population of Prince Edward County built a private school—for White children only—Black children and their families had to find other ways to learn. Some Black children were home schooled by unemployed Black teachers. Some traveled thousands of miles away to live with relatives, friends, or even strangers. Some didn’t go to school at all. But many stood up and became young activists, fighting for one of the rights America claims belongs to all: the right to learn. You can read more and get your copy here.

One of those young Virginia activists was 16-year-old Barbara Johns. I am thrilled that her statue will soon represent Virginia in the US Capitol, replacing the statue of Robert E. Lee. You can read more about it here.

This next book is based on the remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery through daring, determination, and disguise.

In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North. Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities, and generated headlines around the country. But they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States, their lives and thousands more on the line and the stakes never higher. You can read more and get your copy here.

“I saw a little school report from back then and it said, ‘Ilyon likes to play with Imani.’” I love this story about the childhood connections between the author of this book (Ilyon Woo) and Imani Perry, author of National Book Award Winner, South to America.  If you haven’t read Perry’s book yet, you should!  You can check it out here.

This next book has been described as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings meets Educated. High praise!

Aunt Gerald takes in anyone who asks, but the conditions are harsh. For her young niece Goldie Taylor, abandoned by her mother and coping with trauma of her own, life in Gerald’s East St. Louis comes with nothing but a threadbare blanket on the living room floor. But amid the pain and anguish, Goldie discovers a secret. She can find kinship among writers like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. She can find hope in a nurturing teacher who helps her find her voice. And books, she realizes, can save her life. Goldie Taylor's debut memoir shines a light on the strictures of race, class and gender in a post–Jim Crow America while offering a nuanced, empathetic portrait of a family in a pitched battle for its very soul. You can read more and get your copy here.

Shaking up New York and national politics by becoming the first African American congresswoman and, later, the first Black major-party presidential candidate, Shirley Chisholm left an indelible mark as an "unbought and unbossed" firebrand and a leader in politics for meaningful change. Anastasia C. Curwood interweaves Chisholm's public image, political commitments, and private experiences to create a definitive account of a consequential life. In so doing, Curwood suggests new truths for understanding the social movements of Chisholm's time and the opportunities she forged for herself through multicultural, multigenerational, and cross-gender coalition building. You can read more and get your copy here.

A “ride-or-die chick” is a woman who holds down her family and community. She’s your girl that you can call up in the middle of the night to bail you out of jail, and you know she’ll show up and won’t ask any questions. Her ride-or-die trope becomes a problem when she does it indiscriminately. She goes above and beyond for everyone in every aspect of her life—work, family, church, even if it’s not reciprocated, and doesn’t require it to be because she’s a “strong Black woman” and everyone’s favorite ride-or-die chick. To her, love should be earned, and there’s no limit to what she’ll do for it. In this book, author, adjunct professor of sociology, and former therapist Shanita Hubbard disrupts the ride-or-die complex and argues that this way of life has left Black women exhausted, overworked, overlooked, and feeling depleted. She suggests that Black women are susceptible to this mentality because it’s normalized in our culture. It rings loud in your favorite hip-hop songs, and it even shows up in the most important relationship you will ever have—the one with yourself. You can read more and get your copy here.

Creating justice-centered organizations is the next frontier in DEI. This book shows how to go beyond compliance to address harm, share power, and create equity. This thought-provoking, solutions-oriented book offers strategic advice on how to adopt a justice mindset, anticipate and address resistance, shift power dynamics, and create a psychologically safe organizational culture. Individual chapters provide pragmatic how-to guides to implementing justice-centered practices in recruitment and hiring, data collection and analysis, learning and development, marketing and advertising, procurement, philanthropy, and more. This book comes out February 14th - you can read more and pre-order your copy here.

Many people struggle to have honest conversations about race, even those who consider themselves allies or identify as anti-racist. For anyone who wants to have better, more productive discussions, Courageous Discomfort is an empowering handbook that teaches you how to do just that. In these pages, authors (and best friends), Shanterra McBride, who is Black, and Rosalind Wiseman, who is white, discuss their own friendship and tap into their decades of anti-racism work. These 20 questions-as-chapters invite you into the conversation without judgment and inspire thoughtful reflection and discussion. There will be moments when you will laugh or cringe at the ridiculous or awkward things you read. But the truth is, there is no perfect solution or script for every maybe-racist, sort-of-racist, or blatantly racist situation. And that's OK: making mistakes is just an opportunity to do better next time. But doing this work will empower us to have the relationships we really want to have, including the relationship we want to have with ourselves. You can read more and get your copy here.

In addition to the books above, here are two shows worth checking out…

The 1619 Project, inaugurated with a special issue of The New York Times Magazine, challenges us to reframe U.S. history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as our nation's foundational date. This new Hulu docu-series, hosted by the project’s creator and main voice, Nikole Hannah-Jones, is an expansion of the earlier piece, reimagined for a new format, creating new story lines, adding new reporting and bringing in a host of new voices. You can watch the trailer here.

Raised in the small all-Black Florida town of Eatonville, Zora Neale Hurston studied at Howard University before arriving in New York in 1925. She would soon become a key figure of the Harlem Renaissance, best remembered for her novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. But even as she gained renown in the Harlem literary circles, Hurston was also discovering anthropology at Barnard College with the renowned Franz Boas. She would make several trips to the American South and the Caribbean, documenting the lives of rural Black people and collecting their stories. She studied her own people, an unusual practice at the time, and during her lifetime became known as the foremost authority on Black folklore. Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space is an in-depth biography of the influential author whose groundbreaking anthropological work would challenge assumptions about race, gender and cultural superiority that had long defined the field in the 19th century. The film is now streaming – you can watch it here.