Anti-Racism Resources

In 1971, Eddie Conway, Lieutenant of Security for the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to life plus thirty years behind bars. Paul Coates was a community worker at the time and didn't know Eddie well - the little he knew, he didn't much like. But Paul was dead certain that Eddie's charges were bogus. He vowed never to leave Eddie - and in so doing, changed the course of both their lives. For over forty-three years, as he raised a family and started a business, Paul visited Eddie in prison, often taking his kids with him. He and Eddie shared their lives and worked together on dozens of legal campaigns in hopes of gaining Eddie's release.
→→On order at CWSL Library. Available in electronic format to patrons at GoodReads.com

Nominated for an NAACP Image Award A Publishers Weekly Top 10 History Title for the season Booklist's Top 10 Diverse Nonfiction titles for the year BookRiot's "50 Must-Read Poetry Collections" Most Anticipated Books of the Year--The Rumpus, Nylon A revelatory work in the tradition of Claudia Rankine's Citizen, DaMaris Hill's searing and powerful narrative-in-verse bears witness to American women of color burdened by incarceration. "It is costly to stay free and appear / sane." From Harriet Tubman to Assata Shakur, Ida B. Wells to Sandra Bland and Black Lives Matter, black women freedom fighters have braved violence, scorn, despair, and isolation in order to lodge their protests.
→→Available in print to patrons of CWSL Library
→→Available also in e-book format to patrons at CWSL Library Overdrive.(cwsl.overdrive.com)

THE INSTANTNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. New York TimesEditor's Pick. Library Journal Best Books of 2019. TIMEMagazine's "Best Memoirs of 2018 So Far." O, Oprah's Magazine's "10 Titles to Pick Up Now." Politics & Current Events 2018 O.W.L. Book Awards Winner The RootBest of 2018 "This remarkable book reveals what inspired Patrisse's visionary and courageous activism and forces us to face the consequence of the choices our nation made when we criminalized a generation. This book is a must-read for all of us." - Michelle Alexander,New York Times bestselling author ofThe New Jim Crow A poetic and powerful memoir about what it means to be a Black woman in America--and the co-founding of a movement that demands justice for all in the land of the free.
→→Available in print to patrons of CWSL Library
→→Available also in e-book format to patrons at CWSL Library Overdrive.(cwsl.overdrive.com)

Finalist for the 2018 National Council on Crime & Delinquency's Media for a Just Society Awards Nominated for the 49th NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work (Nonfiction) A 2017 Washington Post Notable Book A Kirkus Best Book of 2017 "Butler has hit his stride. This is a meditation, a sonnet, a legal brief, a poetry slam and a dissertation that represents the full bloom of his early thesis: The justice system does not work for blacks, particularly black men." --The Washington Post "The most readable and provocative account of the consequences of the war on drugs since Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow . . . ." --The New York Times Book Review "Powerful . . . deeply informed from a legal standpoint and yet in some ways still highly personal" --The Times Literary Supplement (London) With the eloquence of Ta-Nehisi Coates and the persuasive research of Michelle Alexander, a former federal prosecutor explains how the system really works, and how to disrupt it Cops, politicians, and ordinary people are afraid of black men.
→→Available in print to patrons of CWSL Library
→→Available also in e-book format to patrons at CWSL Library Overdrive.(cwsl.overdrive.com)

Policing the Black Man explores and critiques the many ways the criminal justice system impacts the lives of African American boys and men at every stage of the criminal process from arrest through sentencing. Essays range from an explication of the historical roots of racism in the criminal justice system to an examination of modern-day police killings of unarmed black men. The coauthors discuss and explain racial profiling, the power and discretion of police and prosecutors, the role of implicit bias, the racial impact of police and prosecutorial decisions, the disproportionate imprisonment of black men, the collateral consequences of mass incarceration, and the Supreme Court's failure to provide meaningful remedies for the injustices in the criminal justice system.
→→Available in print to patrons of CWSL Library
→→Available also in e-book format to patrons at CWSL Library Overdrive.(http://cwsl.overdrive.com)

The problem is not overpolicing, it is policing itself. Why we need to defund the police and how we get there. Recent weeks have seen an explosion of protest against police brutality and repression. Among activists, journalists and politicians, the conversation about how to respond and improve policing has focused on accountability, diversity, training, and community relations. Unfortunately, these reforms will not produce results, either alone or in combination. The core of the problem must be addressed: the nature of modern policing itself.
→→ Available in e-book format to patrons at CWSL Library Overdrive.

the topic features an in-depth essay written especially for this book to examine the history of policing in America, with its origins in the white slave patrols of the antebellum South and an explicit mission to terrorize the country's black population. Applying a personal, historical, and political lens, Mumia provides a righteously angry and calmly principled radical black perspective on how racist violence is tearing our country apart and what must be done to turn things around. "[Mumia's] writings are a wake-up call. He is a voice from our prophetic tradition, speaking to us here, now, lovingly, urgently."--Cornel West "He allows us to reflect upon the fact that transformational possibilities often emerge where we least expect them."--Angela Y. Davis
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→→Also, Available in e-book format to patrons at CWSL Library Overdrive. (cwsl.overdrive.com)

A deeply reported book that brings alive the quest for justice in the deaths of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and Freddie Gray, offering both unparalleled insight into the reality of police violence in America and an intimate, moving portrait of those working to end it. Conducting hundreds of interviews during the course of over one year reporting on the ground, Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery traveled from Ferguson, Missouri, to Cleveland, Ohio; Charleston, South Carolina; and Baltimore, Maryland; and then back to Ferguson to uncover life inside the most heavily policed, if otherwise neglected, corners of America today.
→→Available in print to patrons of CWSL Library
→→Available also in e-book format to patrons at CWSL Library Overdrive.(http://cwsl.overdrive.com)

Winner of the 2017 Pulitzer prize in history winner of the 2017 Bancroft prize national book award finalist * Los Angeles Times book prize finalist * New York times notable book for 2016 * named a best book of the year by the Boston Globe, Newsweek, Kirkus, and Publishers Weekly the first definitive history of the infamous 1971 Attica prison uprising, the state's violent response, and the victims' decades-long quest for justice. On September 9, 1971, nearly 1,300 prisoners took over the Attica Correctional Facility in upstate New York to protest years of mistreatment. Holding guards and civilian employees hostage, the prisoners negotiated with officials for improved conditions during the four long days and nights that followed. On September 13, the state abruptly sent hundreds of heavily armed troopers and correction officers to retake the prison by force.
→→Available in print to patrons of CWSL Library
→→Available also in e-book format to patrons at CWSL Library Overdrive.(http://cwsl.overdrive.com)

A bracing, provocative, and perspective-shifting book from one of Canada's most celebrated and uncompromising writers, Desmond Cole. The Skin We're In will spark a national conversation, influence policy, and inspire activists. In his 2015 cover story for Toronto Life magazine, Desmond Cole exposed the racist actions of the Toronto police force, detailing the dozens of times he had been stopped and interrogated under the controversial practice of carding. The story quickly came to national prominence, shaking the country to its core and catapulting its author into the public sphere. Cole used his newfound profile to draw insistent, unyielding attention to the injustices faced by Black Canadians on a daily basis.
→→Available in e-book format to patrons at CWSL Library Overdrive

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.
→→Available in print to patrons of CWSL Library
→→Available also in e-book and in Audiobook format to patrons at CWSL Library Overdrive (cwsl.overdrive.com)

"Should become mandatory reading for all police academy students."--Damon Woodcock (Ret.), Portland, Oregon, Police Bureau "A well-researched, historically grounded, and mordant critique of American policing past and present."--Christian Parenti Even critics have a difficult time imagining a world without police. But just what is the role of police in a democracy: to serve the public or to protect the powerful? Tracing the evolution of the modern police force back to the slave patrols, this controversial study observes the police as the armed defender of a violent status quo. Kristian Williams is the author of American Methods: Torture and the Logic of Domination.
→→Available in print to patrons of CWSL Library
→→Available also in e-book format to patrons at CWSL Library Overdrive.(http://cwsl.overdrive.com)

With her characteristic brilliance, grace and radical audacity, Angela Y. Davis has put the case for the latest abolition movement in American life: the abolition of the prison. As she quite correctly notes, American life is replete with abolition movements, and when they were engaged in these struggles, their chances of success seemed almost unthinkable. For generations of Americans, the abolition of slavery was sheerest illusion. Similarly,the entrenched system of racial segregation seemed to last forever, and generations lived in the midst of the practice, with few predicting its passage from custom. The brutal, exploitative (dare one say lucrative?) convict-lease system that succeeded formal slavery reaped millions to southern jurisdictions (and untold miseries for tens of thousands of men, and women).
→→Available in print to patrons of CWSL Library
→→Available also in e-book format to patrons at CWSL Library Overdrive.(http://cwsl.overdrive.com)

Racial profiling—as practiced by police officers, highway troopers, and customs officials—is one of America’s most explosive public issues. But even as protest against the practice has swelled, police forces and others across the country continue to argue that profiling is an effective crime-fighting tool. In Profiles in Injustice, now in paperback, David Harris—described by the Seattle Times as "America’s leading authority on racial profiling"—dismantles those arguments, drawing on a wealth of newly available statistics to show convincingly that profiling is not only morally and legally wrong, but also startlingly ineffectual at preventing crime or apprehending criminals.
→→Available in print to patrons of CWSL Library