Augie Reads 2019-2020: Between the World and Me

After the Civil War and Reconstruction, whites in Southern states developed an oppressive racial caste system called Jim Crow. This article, from the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University, outlines the legal restrictions on African-Americans during the Jim Crow period, as well as social rules that reinforced inequality.

This essay by Davarian L. Baldwin, a professor of American studies at Trinity College, provides an overview of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, and the earlier movements that influenced it. The essay is part of a digital exhibit at the New York Public Library and includes links to images and other primary sources.

This brief article from Blackpast.org provides background on the Freedom Riders: black and white activists who rode together on buses throughout the South to protest segregation in transportation. The riders faced violence at many points along the way. Although the buses never reached their destination in New Orleans, televised coverage of the Freedom Riders and the attacks they faced led to national pressure to desegregate transportation.

The 1964 Civil Rights Act, among other things, barred states from applying voter registration requirements unequally. Throughout the South, civil rights activists worked to register black voters, while white supremacists fire-bombed churches and murdered volunteers. This story from PBS features interviews with those involved in the Civil Rights Movement 50 years later about what that summer meant for them.

While Jim Crow was primarily associated with the South, racial oppression and segregation were enforced in various ways nationwide. One practice was redlining, where government surveyors color-coded neighborhoods by how "safe" they were to invest money in. Places with high minority populations were depicted with red lines around them, meaning it was nearly impossible for people to get loans to buy houses; this made it difficult for African-Americans and other minorities to build wealth. This Washington Post article by Tracy Jan, whose reporting focuses on race and the economy, looks at how redlining still affects people and communities, even though parts of it are now illegal. Coates has written about the impact of redlining and other discriminatory policies in many of his essays, including "The Case for Reparations".

In this review of a biography of Malcolm X, Ta-Nehisi Coates discusses the activist’s life and how his message resonates today.

One major influence in Coates’s life was his father, a former Black Panther. Founded in California in the mid 1960s, the Black Panther Party worked to change the lives of African-Americans in cities, focusing on self defense and economic equality. This article from Newsweek discusses the history of the Black Panthers, and how they connect to Black Lives Matter today.