Racial Justice Resources
Learn More About Juneteenth
- “The Hidden History of Juneteenth” TalkingPointsMemo.com
- Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture
- “Juneteenth: Activists Across US Inherit a Historic Battle for Racial Justice”The Guardian
- “Massachusetts Recognizes Juneteenth as a State Holiday” NBCBoston.com
Understand the Legacy of Slavery
- Watch 13th, Ava DuVernay’s documentary that connects mass incarceration and the prison-industrial complex to American structural racism and a loophole in the 13th Amendment.
- Read
- The 1619 Project from The New York Times
- “Slavery By the Numbers” by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in The Root
- “From Juneteenth to the Tulsa massacre: What isn’t taught in classrooms has a profound impact” NBCNews.com
Learn & Act to Support Reparations Locally and Nationally
- Join/ Contribute to Mystic Valley Area Branch of NAACP
- “The Case for Reparations” Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic
- “Confronting Slavery: Local NAACP highlights the push for reparations” NeighborhoodView.org
- “H.R. 40 is Not a Symbolic Act: It’s a Path to Restorative Justice” U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee ACLU.org
- Read From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century William A. Darity Jr. & A. Kirsten Mullen, University of North Carolina Press, 2020.
- Join/ Contribute to Campaign Zero
- Support the work of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, Northeastern University
There are many resources available where individuals can sign up for newsletters, programs, etc.
Some places to sign up for periodic sources inspiration, information, and action:
Center for Antiracist Research.
Research center based at BU, directed by Ibam X. Kendi, founded in 2020. Sign up for newsletter on website.
Sign up for notices of local actions and activities.
organizes impact teams to respond to crises and calls for lobbying.
Sign up for workshops, videos
Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice.
Sponsors expert, often cutting edge panels. Sign up for their periodic newsletter.
Sponsors Antiracist Organizing in the Suburbs workshops, SURJ Boston (Showing up for Racial Justice), and White People Challenging Racism workshops. Sign up for announcements on the website.
Massachusetts Unitarian Universalist advocacy network. Often serves as a clearing house for racial and climate justice advocacy opportunities. Sponsors the Black Lives Matter working group. Sign up for notices by emailing Patty Shepherd uu-mass-action-certified-working-group-black-lives-matter+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
sponsors interesting faith based racial and cultural explorations. Sign up for announcements at their website.
Sign up for the newsletter at the website. Mystic Valley NAACP. Local chapter for Arlington, Medford, Malden.
sign up for notices of information and advocacy opportunities
The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute
part of The Birmingham Civil Rights National Monument in Birmingham, Alabama. Sign up for their periodic newsletter and preview exhibits on their website.
The US National Park Service American cultures initiative
develops travel and resources documenting US cultural history. Their website is not only aesthetically lovely, but contains an interesting bibliography.
The Smithsonian Museums in Washington DC
Contains the National Museum of African American History and Cultures,
the National Museum of African Art,
and the National Museum of the American Indian.
Each have events, exhibits and a mailing list.
The Museum of African American History in Boston and Nantucket
maintains a nice list of historic resources and places to visit.
sponsors interesting events. Sign up for the newsletter on the website.
Several important local efforts have a Facebook presence:
Arlington Fights Racism,
MaldenCORE,
Black Lives Matter, Cambridge.
Note: This section of the website is still evolving. Please watch this space as we identify more resources in the near future.
RJCC would love to hear from you with ideas, suggestions, and questions. Email us at: racialjustice@firstparish.info