By Lori L. Tharps: On April 12, two Black men were arrested at a Starbucks in Philadelphia for sitting at a table and waiting for their business associate to arrive. Initially, the police said the two men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, were arrested because they were trespassing since they hadn’t ordered anything, but after a thorough investigation, it was discovered that Nelson and Robinson had only been at the chain coffee shop for two minutes before police were called. In other words, the two men were arrested for “sitting while Black.” To break it down another way, the white manager of the Starbucks, who has been identified as Holly Hylton, picked up the phone and called in her white privilege to destroy the lives of two innocent Black men. Read more →

Graduates across the country are heading off to new adventures and new stages of their education or careers. If you’re looking for the perfect book this season for the graduate in your life, check out our graduation gift guide with recommendations from our catalog. Remember that you can always browse our website for more inspiration titles. Read more →

Millions tuned in on Saturday, May 19, to watch the royal wedding ceremony of Britain’s Prince Harry and African American actress Meghan Markle. Bishop Michael Curry of the American Episcopal Church delivered a stirring and dynamic sermon for the occasion. At the get-go, he quoted none other than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Read more →

A Q&A with Fred Pearce: Nuclear scandals and disasters have been a recurring theme of my life as an environment journalist for several decades. But they seemed to have fallen off the radar. Old news, but definitely not fake news. Then I was commissioned to visit the heart of Britain’s nuclear industry, both military and civil, at a remote spot on the northwest coast of England called Sellafield. I was profoundly shocked at what I found, from the mile-after-mile of coastal mud that qualifies as radioactive waste to the world’s largest stockpile of plutonium, sitting inside a warehouse and wide open to terrorist attack. I set out to explore the world’s hidden legacy of nuclear fallout and debris, and this book is the result. Read more →

By Philip C. Winslow A Palestinian throws a rock in response to Israel's intervention during a protest, organized to mark 70th anniversary of Nakba. Photo by Jordi Bernabeu Farrus (Creative Commons License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/r) Last Monday’s opening of the American Embassy... Read more →

By Ayla Zuraw-Friendland: I didn’t mean to start my spring cleaning at 10:30pm on a Tuesday. I had just gotten home from having a drink with a friend and it was warm enough in my attic room to open a window. I was optimistic in the way that only a cheap cider and a text confirming that your order of pad thai will arrive in thirty minutes or less can make a person. Tonight, I announced to my roommate’s cat, would be the night I finally switched my summer and winter clothes. I dragged the boxes from the attic, and began what would be a three-hour process. It was a lot more than I bargained for. Read more →

By Scott W. Stern: As the United States prepared to enter World War I in the spring of 1917, and as millions of young men gathered in dozens of military training camps across the country, federal officials were worried: these young men might get sick. They might contract pneumonia, tuberculosis, the flu, or, most terrifying of all, syphilis or gonorrhea. Read more →

By Christian Coleman | For Black athletes, sports and politics have always been intertwined. Their very presence on the field is a political act. Some athletes have used their status and influence to speak out against racial injustice; others have remained silent. From legends like Paul Robeson and Jackie Robinson to current icons like Colin Kaepernick and LeBron James, the heritage of Black activism within sports is deep and complex. Journalist Howard Bryant details it in full in The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism. Read more →

By Lisa Page: For some of us, racial identity is elastic. We can pass. For white, for black, for Middle Eastern. For Latinx. I am one of those people. I know what it is to assimilate to a group you identify with, because I did it myself, against my white mother’s wishes. She hated me calling myself black. For this reason, my response to The Rachel Divide, Laura Brownson’s new documentary about Rachel Dolezal, is complicated. Read more →

By Rebecca Todd Peters: On Saturday, like many people across the country, I heard the news that James Cone had passed. Serving on the Union Theological Seminary faculty for almost fifty years means that Dr. Cone literally taught generations of seminarians, and I was fortunate to be one of those folks. I still remember the first day of his systematic theology class, in the first semester of my first year of seminary. Sitting in that lecture hall in 1992, with nearly 100 students and watching him take the podium and explain to us that he was a the-o-lo-gian (in his classic, high-pitched, Southern drawl), and what that meant for him as a scholar and a black man from Arkansas, was highlight of my seminary career. Read more →

By Rita Nakashima Brock: I first met James Cone in the back seat of a car. I was teaching at a Black college in rural east Texas in 1981, and he had been invited to lecture on campus. I was invited along when Jim had to be driven to the airport, and we were introduced as he got into car. While in college and seminary in California, I had been introduced to the struggles for justice of the Black Panther Party, the United Farm Workers, and the feminist women’s self-help health movement. The early works of Cone, Mary Daly, Marianne Katopo, Nelle Morton, Paolo Friere, and Rubem Alves had shaped my orientation to theology, and I had been teaching Cone, Friere-style, in a class at the college. Read more →

By Bill Ayers: On April 26 and 27, we joined thousands of people from around the country and around the world at the Peace and Justice Opening in Montgomery, Alabama. Days were filled with formal and informal gatherings, reunions and new connections, the Peace and Justice Summit featuring many powerful thinkers including Elizabeth Alexander, Jelani Cobb, Ava DuVernay, and Michelle Alexander, and on the last night, the Concert for Peace and Justice. The focus of the gathering was the unveiling of two breathtaking new sites: the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and the Legacy Museum, both projects of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). Read more →

By Paul Ortiz: When migrant laborers, Nuyoricans, Chicana/os, Afro-Cubanos, Guatemaltecos, and immigrants from every part of earth united on May Day in 2006, they protested immigration restriction measures that threatened their families, their livelihoods, and their dignity. The testimonials featured on picket signs, in interviews, and on the Internet and other venues opened a window into the resurgence of working-class political culture. The demonstrators vigorously expressed their opposition to US House Resolution 4437.52. Latinx workers restored the age-old faith that racial capitalism had tried to drown out, that labor was the true source of the nation’s wealth. Read more →