Mental Health Issues Facing the Black Community
~ Sunshine Behavioral Health

Articles

Black Students More Likely to Be Arrested at School (2017)
~ Evie Blad and Alex Harwin

Eighty-Four Percent of Students Arrested in Madison Schools are Black (2017)
~ Robert Chappell | Madison 365

New Study Exposes Barriers That Block Girls of Color From Opportunity (2017)
Kenrya Rankin | Color Lines

Schools Share Best Practices to Close Achievement Gaps: Tony Evers Says More Needs to be Done for Black, Hispanic Kids (2014)
~ Journal Sentinel | Erin Richards and Kelly Meyerhofer

Research, Papers, and Literature Reviews

A Decade of Disproportionality: A State-Level Analysis of African American Students Enrolled in the Primary Disability Category of Speech or Language Impairment (2019)
This study aimed to determine if African American students were disproportionately represented between the years of 2004 and 2014 in the primary disability category of Speech or Language Impairment (S/LI) under the 2004 reauthorized Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act.
~ Gregory C. Robinson and Pamela C. Norton

Improving African American Student Outcomes: Understanding Educational Achievement and Strategies to Close Opportunity Gaps (2014)
This paper provides a review of research related to disparities in educational outcomes for African American students in the United States and research-based practices for closing the educational achievement gap. The paper presents National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) data trends documenting the historic and persistent disparities in educational outcomes among African American students and other student groups. The author reframes the problem of disparities in educational achievement as an issue of unequal opportunity to learn (a longstanding "opportunity gap” in the U.S.) in an effort to help stakeholders understand issues related to racial disparities in educational achievement and practices for creating more equitable schools, an essential investment in the academic and life trajectories of African American students. Promising practices from high performing, largely African American, low-income schools are discussed.
~ Charisse Cowan Pitre

Predictors of Achievement in African American Students at Risk for Academic Failure: The Roles of Achievement Values and Behavioral Engagement (2013)
The achievement gap between African American and European American youth is a pervasive problem in the United States. This study explored how achievement values and behavioral engagement affect the academic attainment of an academically at-risk sample of 167 African American youth in late elementary school. Results indicate that achievement values do not have a significant influence on engagement or achievement in late elementary school. However, behavioral engagement significantly influenced math achievement from Grades 4 to 5. The implications of these findings are discussed. 
~ Psychology in the Schools | Jamilia J. Blake

Media

The Abolitionists (2013)
Radicals. Agitators. Troublemakers. Liberators. Called by many names, the abolitionists tore the nation apart in order to create a more perfect union. Men and women, black and white, Northerners and Southerners, poor and wealthy, these passionate anti-slavery activists fought body and soul in the most important civil rights crusade in American history. What began as a pacifist movement fueled by persuasion and prayer became a fiery and furious struggle that forever changed the nation.
~ PBS Television

Beyond BROWN: Pursuing the Promise
On May 17, 1954, in its decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the doctrine of “separate but equal,” ending legal segregation in American education. Fifty years later, how close is America to fulfilling the promise of Brown?
~ PBS Television

Black and White Now - Three-Part Series
With a black first family and fewer people citing racism as a "big problem," just how much have the country's race relations changed? It's a question "Good Morning America" posed in its three-part series "Black and White Now," which takes a look at the current state of race relations.

• Part I - What a Doll Tells Us About Race (2009)

• Part II - Race for a Cab: When Hailing a Ride Isn't so Black and White (2009)

• Part III - Black and White Now: Kids Talk Race (2009)

~ ABC News

Booker T. Washington High grad Deonte Bridges' Valedictorian Speech (2010)
~ YouTube
Deonte Bridges moved the audience with his Valedictorian speech before fellow graduates, faculty, staff and parents at Booker T. Washington High School's graduation ceremony on May 28, 2010, at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center. 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story (2009)  
Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
~ Ted.com

Closing the Achievement Gap (2004)
Join Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Clarence Page as he tells the story of Amistad Academy, a charter school founded in 1999. Its goal? To close the persistent and dramatic achievement gap between minority students and white students in America's public school system. See how Amistad did it. And, more important, how other public schools can do it, too.
~ PBS Television

Freedom Riders (2011)
This inspirational documentary is about a band of courageous civil rights activists calling themselves the Freedom Riders. Gaining impressive access to influential figures on both sides of the issue, it chronicles a chapter of American history that stands as an astonishing testament to the accomplishment of youth and what can result from the incredible combination of personal conviction and the courage to organize against all odds.
~ PBS Television

A Girl Like Me (2007)
What messages does our society give African American children about their value and worth as human beings? In her documentary, A Girl Like Me, teen filmmaker Kiri Davis conducts interviews with her peers to explore the impact and consequences of these messages. She then reconducts Dr. Kenneth Clark's "doll test" with young African American children with sobering results.
~ Director: Kiri Davis
~ Producer: Reel Works Teen Filmmaking

Growing Roses in Concrete (2015)
Jeff Duncan-Andrade outlines how love and compassion towards urban youth are necessarily a precursor to attaining the outcomes we aspire to achieve. More importantly, he suggests that if we are to have SUSTAINABLE paradigm shifts, the roses that emerge from the concrete are going to have to want to return.
~ Jeff Duncan-Andrade via YouTube

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Videos
Martin Luther King Jr. was a social activist and Baptist minister who played a key role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968. King sought equality and human rights for African Americans, the economically disadvantaged and all victims of injustice through peaceful protest. He was the driving force behind watershed events such as the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the 1963 March on Washington.
~ History.com

Montgomery Bus Boycott
For 382 days, almost the entire African-American population of Montgomery, Alabama, including leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, refused to ride on segregated buses, a turning point in the American civil rights movement.
~ History.com

The Murder of Emmett Till
In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old black boy whistled at a white woman in a grocery store in Mississippi. Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago, didn't understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from his bed, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. His killers were arrested and charged with murder, but were both acquitted quickly by an all-white, all-male jury. Shortly afterwards, the defendants sold their story, including a detailed account of how they murdered Till, to a journalist. The murder and the trial horrified the nation and the world and helped mobilize the civil rights movement. ~ PBS Television

Race for a Cab: When Hailing a Ride Isn't So Black and White (2009)
~ Dan Harris and Gitika Ahuja via ABC News

Slavery by Another Name (2012)
This 90-minute documentary that challenges one of Americans’ most cherished assumptions: the belief 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 in 1865, thousands of African Americans were pulled back into forced labor with shocking force and brutality.
~ PBS Television

Too Important to Fail (2011)
In the fifth installment of Tavis Smiley Reports, Tavis investigates the root causes of the increased dropout rate among teenagers, specifically among Black teenage males, as well as what can be done and is being done to reverse this.
~ PBS Television

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2005)
Jack Johnson — the first African-American Heavyweight Champion of the World, whose dominance over his white opponents spurred furious debates and race riots in the early 20th century — enters the ring once again in January 2005 when PBS airs Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, a provocative new PBS documentary by acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns
~ PBS Television

Reports and Publications

Achievement Gaps: How Black and White Students in Public Schools Perform in Mathematics and Reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress - A Statistical Analysis Report (2009)
~ National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education

Mass Incarceration and Children's Outcomes: Criminal Justice Policy is Education Policy (2016)
~ Economic Policy Institute | Leila Morsy and Richard Rothstein

Race in the Heartland: Wisconsin’s Extreme Racial Disparity (2019)
~ COWS - University of Wisconsin - Madison

The Urgency of Now: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males, 2012
~ Schott Foundation for Public Education

Teaching Resources

Books with Multicultural, Cross-Cultural, and Intercultural Games and Activities

Recommended Reading

Addressing Over-Representation of African American Students in Special Education: The Prereferral Process. An Administrator's Guide (2013)
~ U.S. Department of Education

This guide for administrators addresses the problem of the frequent over-identification of African American students as disabled resulting in over-representation of this population in special education programs. The guide focuses on preventive strategies--specifically, how administrators may use the prereferral intervention process, school.climate, family involvement, and professional development to prevent and/or help reduce the over-representation of African American students in special education. The guide first presents an overview of over-representation, including U.S.. Department of Education data showing the extent and seriousness of the problem. It then considers how the law supports administrators in addressing over-representation of African American students in special education. Next, the guide examines how experienced practitioners and researchers suggest administrators might intervene to prevent and eliminate the over-representation of African American students in their districts through a prereferral intervention process, attention to school climate, family involvement, and professional development. Resources on over-representation are also listed.

The African-American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Country (2002)
~ Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornel West

One hundred original profiles of the most influential African-Americans of the twentieth century. 
Without Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis, we would not have jazz. Without Toni Morrison or Ralph Ellison, we would miss some of our greatest novels. Without Dr. King or Thurgood Marshall, we would be deprived of political breakthroughs that affirm and strengthen our democracy. Here, two of the leading African-American scholars of our day, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Cornel West, show us why the twentieth century was the African-American century, as they offer their personal picks of the African-American figures who did the most to shape our world. This colorful collection of personalities includes much-loved figures such as scientist George Washington Carver, contemporary favorites such as comedian Richard Pryor and novelist Alice Walker, and even less-well-known people such as aviator Bessie Coleman. Gates and West also recognize the achievements of controversial figures such as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and rap artist Tupac Shakur. Lively, accessible, and illustrated throughout, The African-American Century is a celebration of black achievement and a tribute to the black struggle for freedom in America that will inspire readers for years to come.

American Nightmare: The History of Jim Crow (2003)
~ Jerrold M. Packard 

For a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, a quarter of all Americans lived under a system of legalized segregation called Jim Crow. Together with its rigidly enforced canon of racial "etiquette," these rules governed nearly every aspect of life―and outlined draconian punishments for infractions. The purpose of Jim Crow was to keep African Americans subjugated at a level as close as possible to their former slave status. Exceeding even South Africa's notorious apartheid in the humiliation, degradation, and suffering it brought, Jim Crow left scars on the American psyche that are still felt today. American Nightmare examines and explains Jim Crow from its beginnings to its end: how it came into being, how it was lived, how it was justified, and how, at long last, it was overcome only a few short decades ago. Most importantly, this book reveals how a nation founded on principles of equality and freedom came to enact as law a pervasive system of inequality and virtual slavery. Although America has finally consigned Jim Crow to the historical graveyard, Jerrold Packard shows why it is important that this scourge―and an understanding of how it happened―remain alive in the nation's collective memory.

Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (2004)
~ David Garrow

Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, this is the most comprehensive book ever written about the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Based on more than seven hundred interviews with all of King's surviving associates, as well as with those who opposed him, and enhanced by the author's access to King's personal papers and tens of thousands of pages of FBI documents, this is a towering portrait of a man's metamorphosis into a legend.

The Beast Side: Living and Dying While Black in America (2016)
~ D. Watkins (Author) and‎ David Talbot (Foreword)

To many, the past 8 years under President Obama were meant to usher in a new post-racial American political era, dissolving the divisions of the past. However, when seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot by a wannabe cop in Florida; and then Ferguson, Missouri, happened; and then South Carolina hit the headlines; and then Baltimore blew up, it was hard to find any evidence of a new post-racial order. Suddenly the entire country seemed to be awakened to a stark fact: African American men are in danger in America. This has only become clearer as groups like Black Lives Matter continue to draw attention to this reality daily not only online but also in the streets of our nation’s embattled cities.

Now one of our country’s quintessential urban war zones is brought powerfully to life by a rising young literary talent, D. Watkins. The author fought his way up on the eastside (the “beastside”) of Baltimore, Maryland—or “Bodymore, Murderland,” as his friends call it. He writes openly and unapologetically about what it took to survive life on the streets while the casualties piled up around him, including his own brother. Watkins pushed drugs to pay his way through school, staying one step ahead of murderous business rivals and equally predatory lawmen. When black residents of Baltimore finally decided they had had enough—after the brutal killing of twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody—Watkins was on the streets as the city erupted. He writes about his bleeding city with the razor-sharp insights of someone who bleeds along with it. Here are true dispatches from the other side of America.

Between the World and Me (2015)
~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Beyond the Big House: African American Educators on Teaching Education (2005)
~ Gloria Ladson-Billings

Gloria Ladson-Billings, acclaimed African American scholar and teacher educator, examines the field of teacher education through the accomplishments and contributions of well-known African American teacher educators - Lisa Delpit, Carl Grant, Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, Geneva Gay, Cherry McGee Banks, William Tate, and Joyce King.

Black Teachers on Teaching (1998)
~ Michele Foster

Black Teachers on Teaching is an honest and compelling account of the politics and philosophies involved in the education of black children during the last fifty years. Michele Foster talks to those who were the first to teach in desegregated southern schools and to others who taught in large urban districts, such as Boston, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. All go on record about the losses and gains accompanying desegregation, the inspirations and rewards of teaching, and the challenges and solutions they see in the coming years.

Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic, and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap (2004)
~ Richard Rothstein

It seems to be a common-sense argument that, if teachers know how to teach reading, or math, or any other subject, and if schools emphasize the importance of these tasks and permit no distractions, children should be able to learn regardless of their family income or skin color. But this perspective is misleading and dangerous. It ignores how social class characteristics in a stratified society like ours influence learning in school. For nearly half a century, the association between social and economic disadvantage and the student achievement gap has been well known to economists, sociologists, and educators. Most, however, have avoided the obvious implication of this understanding, that raising the achievement of lower-class children requires that public policy address the social and economic conditions of these children's lives, not just school reform.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (2010)
~ Phillip Hoose

On March 2, 1955, an impassioned teenager, fed up with the daily injustices of Jim Crow segregation, refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Instead of being celebrated as Rosa Parks would be just nine months later, fifteen-year-old Claudette Colvin found herself shunned by her classmates and dismissed by community leaders. Undaunted, a year later she dared to challenge segregation again as a key plaintiff in Browder v. Gayle, the landmark case that struck down the segregation laws of Montgomery and swept away the legal underpinnings of the Jim Crow South. Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents the first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America (2017)
~ Richard Rothstein

Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law offers “the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation” (William Julius Wilson). Exploding the myth of de facto segregation arising from private prejudice or the unintended consequences of economic forces, Rothstein describes how the American government systematically imposed residential segregation: with undisguised racial zoning; public housing that purposefully segregated previously mixed communities; subsidies for builders to create whites-only suburbs; tax exemptions for institutions that enforced segregation; and support for violent resistance to African Americans in white neighborhoods.

The Dreamkeepers: Successful Teachers of African American Children (2009)
~ Gloria Ladson-Billings

In the second edition of her critically acclaimed book The Dreamkeepers, Gloria Ladson-Billings revisits the eight teachers who were profiled in the first edition and introduces us to new teachers who are current exemplars of good teaching. She shows that culturally relevant teaching is not a matter of race, gender, or teaching style. What matters most is a teacher's efforts to work with the unique strengths a child brings to the classroom. A brilliant mixture of scholarship and storytelling, The Dreamkeepers challenges us to envision intellectually rigorous and culturally relevant classrooms that have the power to improve the lives of not just African American students, but all children. This new edition also includes questions for reflection

Faces At The Bottom of The Well: The Permanence of Racism (1993)
~ Derrick Bell

The noted civil rights activist uses allegory and historical example to present a radical vision of the persistence of racism in America. These essays shed light on some of the most perplexing and vexing issues of our day: affirmative action, the disparity between civil rights law and reality, the “racist outbursts” of some black leaders, the temptation toward violent retaliation, and much more.

Ghosts of Jim Crow: Ending Racism in Post-Racial America (2015)
~ F. Michael Higginbotham

When America inaugurated its first African American president, in 2009, many wondered if the country had finally become a "post-racial" society. Was this the dawning of a new era, in which America, a nation nearly severed in half by slavery, and whose racial fault lines are arguably among its most enduring traits, would at last move beyond race with the election of Barack Hussein Obama? In Ghosts of Jim Crow, F. Michael Higginbotham convincingly argues that America remains far away from that imagined utopia. Indeed, the shadows of Jim Crow era laws and attitudes continue to perpetuate insidious, systemic prejudice and racism in the 21st century. Higginbotham’s extensive research demonstrates how laws and actions have been used to maintain a racial paradigm of hierarchy and separation—both historically, in the era of lynch mobs and segregation, and today—legally, economically, educationally and socially. Using history as a roadmap, Higginbotham arrives at a provocative solution for ridding the nation of Jim Crow’s ghost, suggesting that legal and political reform can successfully create a post-racial America, but only if it inspires whites and blacks to significantly alter behaviors and attitudes of race-based superiority and victimization. He argues that America will never achieve its full potential unless it truly enters a post-racial era, and believes that time is of the essence as competition increases globally.

A Handbook for Teachers of African American Children (2004)
~ Baruti Kafele

A Handbook for Teachers of African American Children is a guide providing strategies and suggestions for teachers to utilize towards raising the achievement levels of African American children.

Jim Crow Guide to the U.S.A.: The Laws, Customs and Etiquette Governing the Conduct of Nonwhites and Other Minorities as Second-Class Citizens (2011)
~ Stetson Kennedy

Jim Crow Guide documents the system of legally imposed American apartheid that prevailed during what Stetson Kennedy calls "the long century from Emancipation to the Overcoming." The mock guidebook covers every area of activity where the tentacles of Jim Crow reached. From the texts of state statutes, municipal ordinances, federal regulations, and judicial rulings, Kennedy exhumes the legalistic skeleton of Jim Crow in a work of permanent value for scholars and of exceptional appeal for general readers.

Keeping Black Boys Out of Special Education (2005)
~ Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu

This critical analysis looks at the disproportionate number of African American males in special education. Arguing that the problem is race and gender driven, questions covered include Why does Europe send more females to special education? Why does America lead the world in giving children Ritalin? Is there a relationship between sugar, Ritalin, and cocaine? and Is there a relationship between special education and prison? More than 100 strategies to help teachers and parents keep black boys in the regular classroom, such as revising teacher expectations, increasing parental involvement, changing teaching styles from a left-brain abstract approach to a right-brain hands-on approach, redoing the curriculum, understanding the impact of mass media, and fostering healthy eating habits.

Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny (2007)
~ Hill Harper

This unique compilation of letters provides wisdom, guidance, and heartfelt insight to help the reader chart their own path to success. Based on the author’s motivational speaking at inner-city schools across the country, the letters deal with the tough issues that face young people today. Bombarded with messages from music and the media, Harper set out to dispel the stereotypical image of success that young people receive today and instead emphasizes alternative views of what it truly means to be a successful male, such as educational and community achievements and self-respect. Intended to provide this frequently regarded “lost generation” of young men with words of encouragement and guidance, Harper’s deep-rooted passion regarding the plight of today’s youth drove him to write this book, sure to change the lives of readers for years to come.

Motivating and Preparing Black Youth for Success (1997)
~ Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu

In this book, the author discusses how to reduce the dropout rate and motivate black children.

Motivating Black Males to Achieve In School & In Life (2009)
~ Baruti Kafele

If you've ever been uncertain about what to do about the chronic achievement gap between black males and other student populations, then here's a book that will forever change your approach to these students and equip you with a whole new plan for motivating black males to achieve in school and in life. Award-winning educator and author Baruti K. Kafele draws from his 20 years of experience in teaching black males and turning around troubled urban schools to explain:

• Why the challenges of educating black male students are different from educating other student populations.

• What all black male students need in their classroom experiences.

• How to assess your own attitudes and abilities to educate black males.

• Which major problems outside of school could change the way you teach black males.

• How to address the root causes of black male self-identity.

• Why and how to develop a young men's empowerment program.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2012)
~ Michelle Alexander and Cornel West

Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action."

Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word (2003)
~ Randall Kennedy

It’s “the nuclear bomb of racial epithets,” a word that whites have employed to wound and degrade African Americans for three centuries. Paradoxically, among many black people it has become a term of affection and even empowerment. The word, of course, is nigger, and in this candid, lucidly argued book the distinguished legal scholar Randall Kennedy traces its origins, maps its multifarious connotations, and explores the controversies that rage around it. Should blacks be able to use nigger in ways forbidden to others? Should the law treat it as a provocation that reduces the culpability of those who respond to it violently? Should it cost a person his job, or a book like Huckleberry Finn its place on library shelves? With a range of reference that extends from the Jim Crow south to Chris Rock routines and the O. J. Simpson trial, Kennedy takes on not just a word, but our laws, attitudes, and culture with bracing courage and intelligence.

Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing (Revised ed., 2017)
~ Joy Degruy

In the 16th century, the beginning of African enslavement in the Americas until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and emancipation in 1865, Africans were hunted like animals, captured, sold, tortured, and raped. They experienced the worst kind of physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual abuse. Given such history, isn't it likely that many of the enslaved were severely traumatized? And did the trauma and the effects of such horrific abuse end with the abolition of slavery? Emancipation was followed by one hundred more years of institutionalized subjugation through the enactment of Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, peonage, convict leasing, domestic terrorism and lynching. Today the violations continue, and when combined with the crimes of the past, they result in yet unmeasured injury. What do repeated traumas, endured generation after generation by a people produce? What impact have these ordeals had on African Americans today? Dr. Joy DeGruy, answers these questions and more. With over thirty years of practical experience as a professional in the mental health field, Dr. DeGruy encourages African Americans to view their attitudes, assumptions, and behaviors through the lens of history and so gain a greater understanding of how centuries of slavery and oppression have impacted people of African descent in America. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome helps to lay the necessary foundation to ensure the well-being and sustained health of future generations and provides a rare glimpse into the evolution of society's beliefs, feelings, attitudes and behavior concerning race in America.

Race: A History Beyond Black and White (2007)
~ Marc Aronson

Acclaimed young-adult historian Marc Aronson tackles dificult questions in this astounding book, which traces the history of racial prejudice in Western culture back to ancient Sumer and beyond. He shows us Greeks dividing the world into civilized and barbarian, medieval men writing about the traits of monstrous men, until, finally, Enlightenment scientists scrap all those mythologies and come up with a new one: charts spelling out the traits of human races. Aronson's journey of discovery yields many surprising discoveries. For instance, throughout most of human history, slavery had nothing to do with race. In fact, the idea of race itself did not exist in the West before the 1600s. But once the idea was established and backed up by "scientific" theory, its influence grew with devastating consequences, from the appalling lynchings in the American South to the catastrophe known as the Holocaust in Europe.

Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood (1999)
~ William Pollack, Ph.D.

Based on William Pollack's groundbreaking research at Harvard Medical School over two decades, Real Boys explores this generation's "silent crisis": why many boys are sad, lonely, and confused although they may appear tough, cheerful, and confident. Pollack challenges conventional expectations about manhood and masculinity that encourage parents to treat boys as little men, raising them through a toughening process that drives their true emotions underground. Only when we understand what boys are really like, says Pollack, can we help them develop more self-confidence and the emotional savvy they need to deal with issues such as depression, love and sexuality, drugs and alcohol, divorce, and violence.

Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South (2003)
~ William Henry Chafe and Raymond Gavins (Editors)

Based on interviews collected by the Behind the Veil Project at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, this remarkable book presents the most extensive oral history ever of African American life under segregation.Citing Remembering Jim Crow as a Best Book of the Year for 2001, Library Journal wrote that "]when] the segregation era finally passes from living memory, students of its history will look to sources like this for a shivering dose of reality and inspiring stories of everyday resistance." In vivid, compelling accounts, men and women from all walks of life tell how their day-to-day activity was subjected to profound and unrelenting racial oppression. At the same time, Remembering Jim Crow is a testament to how black southerners fought back against the system, raising children, building churches and schools, running businesses, and struggling for respect in a society that denied them the most basic rights. 

Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (2005)
~ Derrick Bell

When the landmark Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education was handed down in 1954, many civil rights advocates believed that the decision, which declared public school segregation unconstitutional, would become the Holy Grail of racial justice. Fifty years later, despite its legal irrelevance and the racially separate and educationally ineffective state of public schooling for most black children, Brown is still viewed by many as the perfect precedent.Here, Derrick Bell shatters the shining image of this celebrated ruling. He notes that, despite the onerous burdens of segregation, many black schools functioned well and racial bigotry had not rendered blacks a damaged race. He maintains that, given what we now know about the pervasive nature of racism, the Court should have determined instead to rigorously enforce the "equal" component of the "separate but equal" standard. Racial policy, Bell maintains, is made through silent covenants--unspoken convergences of interest and involuntary sacrifices of rights--that ensure that policies conform to priorities set by policy-makers. Blacks and whites are the fortuitous winners or losers in these unspoken agreements. The experience with Brown, Bell urges, should teach us that meaningful progress in the quest for racial justice requires more than the assertion of harms. Strategies must recognize and utilize the interest-convergence factors that strongly influence racial policy decisions.In Silent Covenants, Bell condenses more than four decades of thought and action into a powerful and eye-opening book.

Start Where You Are, But Don’t Stay There: Understanding Diversity, Opportunity Gaps, and Teaching in Today’s Classrooms (2010)
~  H. Richard Milner IV (Author),‎ Gloria Ladson-Billings (Foreword)

This book addresses a crucial issue in teacher training and professional education: the need to prepare pre-service and in-service teachers for the racially diverse student populations in their classrooms. The book aims to help practitioners develop insights and skills for successfully educating diverse student bodies. The book centers on case studies that exemplify the challenges, pitfalls, and opportunities facing teachers in diverse classrooms. These case studies―of white and African American teachers working (and preparing to work) in urban and suburban settings―are presented amid more general discussions about race and teaching in contemporary schools. 

Strengthening the African American Educational Pipeline (2007)
~ Edited by Jerlando F.L. Jackson with a Foreward by Gloria Ladson-Billings

Focusing on pre-K-12 schools, higher education, and social influences, this book examines the following question: What systemic set of strategies is necessary to improve the conditions for African Americans throughout the educational pipeline?

Swagger: 10 Urgent Rules for Raising Boys in an Era of Failing Schools, Mass Joblessness, and Thug Culture (2013)
~ Lisa Bloom

"There is a great deal we as parents can do at little or no cost to give our boys the advantages they need right now to jack up their odds of finishing high school, going to college, and leading a decent, free life in which they can not only support a family but also contribute to their communities. Because parenting can't wait. Our boys are growing up now, in conditions they did not create, and they deserve more than an adulthood defined by illiteracy, poverty, and reporting to a parole officer. Swagger will show you how." —from the Introduction

Tools for Teaching the History of Civil Rights in Milwaukee and the Nation
~ Michael Edmonds

This powerful, user-friendly curriculum is designed to help teach middle and high school students the history of the Civil Rights Movement in Milwaukee and the South. Each of its twenty lessons includes background information, facsimiles of historical documents, classroom activities, and thoughtful questions designed to spark critical thinking. Students will learn to connect their lives today with the people who worked 50 years ago to make the United States honor the promises of the Founding Fathers.

Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (2011)
~ Claude Steele

Claude M. Steele, who has been called “one of the few great social psychologists,” offers a vivid first-person account of the research that supports his groundbreaking conclusions on stereotypes and identity. He sheds new light on American social phenomena from racial and gender gaps in test scores to the belief in the superior athletic prowess of black men, and lays out a plan for mitigating these “stereotype threats” and reshaping American identities.

White Teachers/Diverse Classrooms: A Guide to Building Inclusive Schools, Promoting High Expectations, and Eliminating Racism (2006)
~ Edited by Julie Landsman and Chance W. Lewis

For African Americans, school is often not a place to learn but a place of low expectations and failure. In urban schools with concentrations of poverty, often fewer than half the ninth graders leave with a high school diploma. Black and White teachers here provide an insightful approach to inclusive and equitable teaching and illustrate its transformative power to bring about success. This book encourages reflection and self-examination, calls for understanding how students can achieve and expecting the most from them. It demonstrates what’s involved in terms of recognizing often-unconscious biases, confronting institutional racism where it occurs, surmounting stereotyping, adopting culturally relevant teaching, connecting with parents and the community, and integrating diversity in all activities. This book is replete with examples of practice and telling insights that will engage teachers in practice or in service. It should have a place in every classroom in colleges of education. Its empowering message applies not just to teachers of Black students, but illuminates teaching in every racially diverse setting.

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations About Race (2003)
~ Beverly D. Tatum

Walk into any racially mixed high school and you will see Black, White, and Latino youth clustered in their own groups. Is this self-segregation a problem to address or a coping strategy? Beverly Daniel Tatum, a renowned authority on the psychology of racism, argues that straight talk about our racial identities is essential if we are serious about enabling communication across racial and ethnic divides. These topics have only become more urgent as the national conversation about race is increasingly acrimonious. This fully revised edition is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of race in America.

Young, Gifted and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African-American Students (2004)
~ Theresa Perry, Claude Steele, & Asa Hilliard III

Young, Gifted, and Black is a unique joint effort by three leading African-American scholars to radically reframe the debates swirling around the achievement of African-American students in school. In three separate but allied essays, Theresa Perry, Claude Steele, and Asa Hilliard place students' social identity as African-Americans at the very center of the discussion. They all argue that the unique social and cultural position Black students occupy, in a society which often devalues and stereotypes African American identity, fundamentally shapes students' experience of school and sets up unique obstacles. And they all argue that a proper understanding of the forces at work can lead to practical, powerful methods for promoting high achievement at all levels.