While the collective voice of Planet Bluegrass, in the time of Corona, is in souls and silos across town, the state and the country, as individuals we have been reading, protesting, listening and learning. We are educating ourselves, having uncomfortable conversations and searching for meaningful actions we can take beyond words; but with no tickets to sell, no bands to book, and no jobs to fill, words alone seem inadequate.
As a business we stand:
In solidarity with Black Lives Matter whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to stop violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.
In solidarity with victims of police violence and the need for the Justice in Policing Act, the most sweeping federal legislation in our history to reform the police. It bans chokeholds and strangleholds; eliminates racial, ethnic and religious profiling; gets rid of “qualified immunity” in court which shields racist police officers from liability for their injuries; establishes a nationwide database of police misconduct to keep proven dirty cops from resurfacing in other parts of the country; stops transferring military equipment from the DOD to local police departments; and requires that deadly force be used as a last resort only to save life.
We will support this bill and we will vote and encourage others to vote. Racism is a lethal threat to the Black community and a divide-and-conquer strategy against all Americans. We will unite and rebuild.
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Here is a community curated list of books, poems, articles and blog posts that explore race, not only in St. Louis, but America as a
whole. By no means a full comprehensive list, here are a few to get you started on the trail of understanding what's happening.
For additional information, please visit Black Lives Matter.
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Children’s Books
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Freedom on the Menu: The Greensboro Sit-Ins by Carole Boston Weatherford
Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom by Virginia Hamilton
One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia
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Civil Rights History
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Freedom Summer: The Savage Season of 1964 That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy by Bruce Watson
Lynching of Cleo Wright by Dominic J. Capeci JR
The Freedom Summer Murders by Don Mitchell
The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America by James T. Patterson
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
American Slavery, American Freedom by Edmund S. Morgan
A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School by Carlotta Walls Lanier
Olivia's Story: The Conspiracy of Heroes Behind Shelley V. Kraemer by Jeffrey S. Copeland
Waking from the Dream: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Shadow of Martin Luther King, Jr. by David Chappell
Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis That Shocked the Nation by Elizabeth Jacoway
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose
Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America by Elliot Jaspin
Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington
Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919 by William Tuttle
Strange Fruit, Volume I: Uncelebrated Narratives from Black History by Joel
Christian Gill, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
All Eyes Are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklyn Sokol Jason
A Black Gambler's World of Liquor, Vice, and Presidential Politics: William Thomas Scott of Illinois, 1839-1917 by Bruce Mouser, Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association by E. David Cronon
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism by James Loewen
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Contemporary Civil Rights Issues
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Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America by Eugene Robinson
The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t and Why by Jabari Asim
Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice by Paul Kivel
The Meaning of Freedom: And Other Difficult Dialogues by Angela Y. Davis
Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice by Si Kahn
The House That Race Built edited by Wahneema Lubiano
Black Stats: African Americans by the Numbers in the Twenty-First Century by Monique W. Morris
Great American City: Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect by Robert J. Sampson
The News: A User’s Manual by Alain De Botton
Combined Destinies: Whites Sharing Grief about Racism by Jealous T. Ann
The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Mat Taibbi
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son by Tim Wise
Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk about Race and How to Do It by Shelly Tochluk
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class Ian Haney-Lopez
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Memoir
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The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons and an Unlikely Road to Manhood by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
The Grace of Silence: A Family Memoir by Michele Norris
High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America by Jessica B. Harris March, Book 1 by John Lewis
Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
At the Elbows of My Elders by Gail Milissa Grant
A Mighty Long Way by Carlotta Walls Lanier
Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
Fire Shut Up in My Bones by Charles Blow
Sister: An African American Life in Search of Justice by Silvia Bell White Novels and Stories Exploring Race
Novels and Stories Exploring Race
Welcome to Braggsville by T. Geronimo Johnson Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi Americannah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
A Taste of Honey by Jabari Asim
Betsey Brown by Ntozake Shange
A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest J. Gaines
Native Son by Richard Wright
King Hedley II by August Wilson
Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse
Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination by Toni Morrison All about Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color by Jina Ortiz
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Policing and Incarceration
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Rise of the Warrior Cop by Radley Balko
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander Losing Legitimacy by Gary Lafree
Mass Incarceration on Trial by Jonathan Simon Suspicion Nation by Lisa Bloom
The Central Park Five by Sarah Burns
Arbitrary Justice by Angela J. Davis
Life in Prison by Stanley “Tookie” Williams
No Choirboy: Murder, Violence and Teenagers on Death Row by Susan Kuklin Why Are So Many Black Men in Prison? By Demico Boothe
Race in St. Louis History
Never Been a Time by Harper Barnes
Mapping Decline by Colin Gordon
Grassroots at the Gateway by Clarence Lang
That’s the Way it Was by Vida “Sister” Goldman Prince Olivia’s Story by Jeffrey Copeland
Mill Creek Valley A Soul of Saint Louis: The Life and Death of a Black Neighborhood by Ron Fagerstrom