Highlighted purchases made with the Racial Equity Fund. Find recently purchased print and electronic books, videos, databases and more!
What is the Libraries Racial Equity Collections Fund?
Overdrive and Libby app
We have a growing Anti-racist collection in Overdrive (an ebook and audiobook lending platform) with titles written by BIPOC authors and focused on racial equity and social justice.
Selected books
History
An African American and Latinx History of the United States by ISBN: 9780807013106Publication Date: 2018-01-30An intersectional history of the shared struggle for African American and Latinx civil rights Spanning more than two hundred years, An African American and Latinx History of the United States is a revolutionary, politically charged narrative history arguing that the "Global South" was crucial to the development of America as we know it.
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave by ISBN: 9781536146172Publication Date: 2018-12-28Frederick Douglass, a former slave, became the leader of the abolitionist movement. The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave is a first-hand account of his life from indentured slave to a free man.
Overground Railroad by ISBN: 9781683356578Publication Date: 2020-01-07The first book to explore the historical role and residual impact of the Green Book, a travel guide for black motorists Published from 1936 to 1966, the Green Book was hailed as the "black travel guide to America." At that time, it was very dangerous and difficult for African-Americans to travel because black travelers couldn't eat, sleep, or buy gas at most white-owned businesses.
Biography, memoir, autobiography
Born a crime: stories from a South African childhood by ISBN: 0385689233Noah's path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, at the time such a union was punishable by five years in prison. As he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist, his mother is determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.
The beautiful struggle: a father, two sons and an unlikely road to manhood by ISBN: 0385526849Publication Date: 2009A memoir of growing up in the tough world of Baltimore in the 1980s chronicles the relationship between the author and his father, a Vietnam vet and Black Panther affiliate, and his campaign to keep his sons from falling victim to the temptations of the streets.
Heavy by ISBN: 9781501125690Publication Date: 2018-10-16In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling.
I'm still here: Black dignity in a world made for whiteness by ISBN: 1524760862Publication Date: 2018The author's first encounter with a racialized America came at age seven, when her parents told her they named her Austin to deceive future employers into thinking she was a white man. She grew up in majority-white schools, organizations, and churches, and has spent her life navigating America's racial divide as a writer, a speaker, and an expert helping organizations practice genuine inclusion.
Just Mercy by ISBN: 9780812984965Publication Date: 2015-08-18A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice--from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time.
Racism, antiracism, and social justice
Algorithms of Oppression by ISBN: 9781479849949Publication Date: 2018-02-20In Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Umoja Noble challenges the idea that search engines like Google offer an equal playing field for all forms of ideas, identities, and activities. Data discrimination is a real social problem; Noble argues that the combination of private interests in promoting certain sites, along with the monopoly status of a relatively small number of Internet search engines, leads to a biased set of search algorithms that privilege whiteness and discriminate against people of color, specifically women of color.
The Fire This Time by ISBN: 9781501126369Publication Date: 2016-08-02In this bestselling, widely lauded collection, Jesmyn Ward gathers our most original thinkers and writers to speak on contemporary racism and race, including Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Edwidge Danticat, Kevin Young, Claudia Rankine, and Honoree Jeffers. Envisioned as a response to The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin's groundbreaking 1963 essay collection, these contemporary writers reflect on the past, present, and future of race in America.
How to Be an Antiracist by ISBN: 0525509283Publication Date: 2019-08-13Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism--and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types.
On the Other Side of Freedom by ISBN: 0525560327Publication Date: 2018-09-04In August 2014, twenty-nine-year-old activist DeRay Mckesson stood with hundreds of others on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, to push a message of justice and accountability. These protests, and others like them in cities across the country, resulted in the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement. Now, in his first book, Mckesson lays down the intellectual, pragmatic, and political framework for a new liberation movement.
So You Want to Talk about Race by ISBN: 9781580056786Publication Date: 2018-01-16In this New York Times bestseller, Ijeoma Oluo offers a hard-hitting but user-friendly examination of race in America Widespread reporting on aspects of white supremacy -- from police brutality to the mass incarceration of Black Americans -- has put a media spotlight on racism in our society. Still, it is a difficult subject to talk about.
Stamped from the Beginning by ISBN: 9781568584645Publication Date: 2016-04-12In this deeply researched and fast-moving narrative, Kendi chronicles the entire story of anti-black racist ideas and their staggering power over the course of American history. He uses the life stories of five major American intellectuals to drive this history: Puritan minister Cotton Mather, Thomas Jefferson, abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, W.E.B. Du Bois, and legendary activist Angela Davis. As Kendi shows, racist ideas did not arise from ignorance or hatred. They were created to justify and rationalize deeply entrenched discriminatory policies and the nation's racial inequities.
Healing Racial Trauma by ISBN: 9780830843879Publication Date: 2020-01-07"People of color have endured traumatic histories and almost daily assaults on our dignity. We have prayed about racism, been in denial, or acted out in anger, but we have not known how to individually or collectively pursue healing from the racial trauma."
Fiction stories
How Long 'til Black Future Month? by ISBN: 9780316491358Publication Date: 2018-11-27Three-time Hugo Award winner and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption that sharply examine modern society in her first collection of short fiction, which includes never-before-seen stories.
Sing, Unburied, Sing by ISBN: 9781501126093Publication Date: 2017-09-05Jojo is thirteen years old and trying to understand what it means to be a man.
We Cast a Shadow by ISBN: 9780525509066Publication Date: 2019-01-29In a near-future Southern city, everyone is talking about a new experimental medical procedure that boasts unprecedented success rates. In a society plagued by racism, segregation, and private prisons, this operation saves lives with a controversial method--by turning people white.
Their Eyes Were Watching God by ISBN: 0060838671Publication Date: 2013-03-19One of the most important and enduring books of the twentieth century, Their Eyes Were Watching God brings to life a Southern love story with the wit and pathos found only in the writing of Zora Neale Hurston.
Selected documentaries you can stream now
- Race: The power of an illusionThis documentary series challenges one of our most fundamental beliefs: that humans come divided into a few distinct biological groups. This ... series is an eye-opening tale of how what we assume to be normal, commonsense, even scientific, is actually shaped by our history, social institutions and cultural beliefs. Episode one explores how recent scientific discoveries have toppled the concept of biological race. Episode two questions the belief that race has always been with us. It traces the race concept to the European conquest of the Americas. Episode three focuses on how our institutions shape and create race.
- Slavery by another nameThis documentary challenges one of Americans' most cherished assumptions: that slavery in this country ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. The film tells how even as chattel slavery came to an end in the South after the Civil War, new systems of involuntary servitude took its place with shocking force and brutality. The film documents how for more than 80 years, thousands of African Americans, often guilty of no crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay, repeatedly bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of white masters. Tolerated by both the North and South, forced labor lasted well into the 20th century. Based upon the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas A. Blackmon, the film gives voice to the largely forgotten victims and perpetrators of forced labor and features moving interviews with their descendants living today. A distinguished group of historians provides context and perspective on one of the most shameful and little known chapters in American history.
- White like me: Race, racism, and white privilege in AmericaThis documentary based on the work of acclaimed anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, explores race and racism in the US through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. In a stunning reassessment of the American ideal of meritocracy and claims that we've entered a post-racial society, Wise offers a fascinating look back at the race-based white entitlement programs that built the American middle class, and argues that our failure as a society to come to terms with this legacy of white privilege continues to perpetuate racial inequality and race-driven political resentments today. For years, Tim Wisés bestselling books and spellbinding lectures have challenged some of our most basic assumptions about race in America. White Like Me is the first film to bring the full range of his work to the screen ́ to show how white privilege continues to shape individual attitudes, electoral politics, and government policy in ways too many white people never stop to think about.
Last Updated: Jan 7, 2025 3:35 PM
URL: https://libguides.umn.edu/RacialEquityFund