African American history is American history. It should be celebrated, memorialized, and reflected on regularly like the rest of history. Some debate February – the shortest month of the year – is too short a time to celebrate and analyze African American history.
Regardless, the dynamics of White-Black relations in the United States is deserving of specific time to think about the contributions of African American culture. I just hope we can make it a regular rhythm of our current and ongoing education. For all of us in “the land of the free,” it would benefit us to look closer and longer at the striving for freedom African Americans vied, and are vying for. It is sure to give us a more concrete understanding of freedom.
Below is an incomplete list of resources that can help you create a clearer picture of Christian and American freedom socially, individually, religiously, and culturally. Overall, I hope these resources will help stir your affections for God and people, and will help guide you through this Black History Month and beyond.
(What artists, books, podcasts, or films would you recommend?)
Black Voices
- Truth’s Table (Podcast)
- Michelle Higgins
- Christina Edmondson
- Ekemini Uwan
- Pass The Mic (Podcast)
- Jemar Tisby
- Tyler Burns
- Jasmine L. Holmes
- Ava DuVernay
- Michelle Alexander
- Dr. Eric Mason
- Dr. H.B. Charles Jr.
- Thabiti Anyabwile
- Lèonce Crump, Jr.
Articles
- “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard to Talk to White People About Racism” – Dr. Robin DiAngelo
- “The Sanitizing of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks” – Jeremy Scahill
- The First White President – Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Devastation of Black Wall Street
- “White Evangelicals Must Ask, ‘Why Does Our Theology Lead to Republicanism?’” – Jemar Tisby
Books
- Divided By Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America – Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith
- Ghetto: The Invention of a place, the History of an Idea – Mitchell Duneier
- The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration – Isabel Wilkerson
- Stamped from The Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America – Ibram X. Kendi
- The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism – Edward E. Baptist
- My Bondage and My Freedom – Frederick Douglass
- The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther – Jeffrey Haas
- The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness – Michelle Alexander
- We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy – Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Between The World and Me – Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption – Bryan Stevenson
- The Kerner Report – A Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disobedience
- Unashamed – Lecrae
- Confessions of an Ex-Evangelical – A.D. Thomason
Films
- 13TH (Trailer)
- Selma (Trailer)
- Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (Trailer)
- Equanimity & The Bird Revelation – Dave Chappelle
- I Am Not Your Negro (Trailer)
Music
- Mystery of Iniquity – Lauryn Hill
- I Get Out – Lauryn Hill
- VRY BLK – Jamila Woods
- Church Clothes 3 (Album)– Lecrae
- High For Hours- J. Cole
- Get Rich or Die Talking – Aha Gazelle
- All Black Party – Aha Gazelle
- The Narrative (Album) – Sho Baraka
- Chapter 9: Jim Crow (Explicit)- Sho Baraka
- I Hate Cats – Propaganda
- It’s Not Working (The Truth) – Propaganda
