Student Reading List
Andersen, Margaret L., and Patricia Hill Collins. Race, Class, and Gender: An Anthology. 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1998. A great primer on the social strata that this unit describes. There are a myriad of essays in this anthology to select for classroom use.
Baptist, Edward E. The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. New York: Basic Books, 2014. Baptist’s book profoundly lays out the ways in which the American economy was built on the backs of enslaved people. Excerpts from this book can be used when building background on race, racism, and the roots of wealth inequality and economic insecurity.
Dahl, Robert A. On Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020. Robert Dahl was one of Yale’s foremost political scientists. On Democracy serves as a manual on how to govern democratically. This book would be well utilized in the “Solutions” portion of the unit in proposing ideas for a more equitable United States.
Gates, Henry Louis. Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow. New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2019. Gates’ book is not quoted in the narrative section, however, there are a number of chapters and excerpts that can be used in the “Race and Racism” section when teaching the unit. It would be particularly helpful is establish the various ways that segregation and racial discrimination continued in the wake of the Civil War.
Klarman, Michael J. Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2007. Michael Klarman is one of the leading authorities on civil rights in the United States. Unfinished Business served as a sort of spiritual influence when drafting some of the core ideas for this unit, but would best be utilized in the classroom. There are a number of chapters that align with each major section of the curriculum.
Klarman, Michael J. From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2004. Klarman’s book on the Supreme Court includes a wealth of resources for classroom use. There are a number of historic cases that can be utilized in each section of the curriculum unit.
Kidd, Sue Monk. The Invention of Wings. New York, NY: Viking, 2014. The Invention of Wings details the lives of Sarah Grimke, a white abolitionist, widely regarded as the mother of the women’s suffrage movement, and Hetty Grimke, one of the family’s enslaved servants charged to be Sarah’s handmade. The novel is historical fiction, but it serves as an excellent resource in showing the disparities between white abolitionists and suffragettes alongside African Americans who held the same goals.
McGhee, Heather C. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together. First edition. New York, NY: One World, 2021. A hopeful book that is best utilized in the “Solutions” section of the unit. McGhee skillfully describes the perils of racist thinking and actions and offers a number of methods for reparations and unity.
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