SOCIAL JUSTICE RESOURCES

The Diversity Awareness Committee offers information on a variety of resources and select events related to issues of inequity, diversity and injustice in the greater Madison area to promote a culturally inclusive learning environment in PLATO. New recommendations will be added on an on-going basis. We welcome your suggestions; please contact Kathy Michaelis or MaryJo MacSwain.

Resources

• DID YOU KNOW?  – PLATO's current biweekly feature by non-mainstream individuals that might be new to you.
• Videos
• Movies 
  ––> NEW! Rustin
• Podcasts
• Articles
  
• Books 
  ––> NEW! Solito

Recommended Videos

Wisconsin in Black and White is a video series produced in partnership between PBS Wisconsin and the Madison-based Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development. This special program distills Nehemiah's Justified Anger: Black History for a New Day curriculum into four episodes that focus on Health Divides, the Racial Wealth Gap, Education and Criminal Justice. According to Nehemiah, the goal of these episodes is for viewers to understand how the African-American experience has shaped the world we all live in, and how allies can find roles supporting racial justice today.

Women of the Movement is a six-episode video series is based on the true story of Mamie Till-Mobley, who in 1955 risked her life to find justice after her son Emmett Till was brutally murdered in the Jim Crow South. Unwilling to let Emmett's murder disappear from the headlines, Mamie chose to bear her pain on the world's stage, emerging as an activist for justice and igniting the civil rights movement as we know it today. Available on Hulu, YouTube TV, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, Apple TV,  or possibly your cable provider’s On Demand service.

Why Race Matters A digital series elevating issues of importance affecting Wisconsin’s Black communities hosted and produced by Angela Fitzgerald.

Recommended Movies

NEW! Rustin is a 2023 biographical drama that tells the story of how a lesser known figure in the early 1960’s Civil Rights struggle – Bayard Rustin – led the biracial team that brought the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to fruition. The movie stars Colman Domingo as Rustin with a supporting cast that brings all the major players – Black and white – of the 1960’s struggle to life. The film does not shy away from Rustin’s homosexuality or the internal battles within the Civil Rights movement. Available on Netflix.

The Banker tells the story of two black men with great business acumen forced to hire a working-class white man to pretend to be the head of their business empire while they pose as a janitor and chauffeur. The film is based on actual occurrences in 1954. Directed by George Nolfi, it stars Anthony Mackie, Samuel L. Jackson, and Nicholas Hoult. Streaming on Apple TV+, Netflix, Hulu, Prime, and other services.

Recommended Podcasts  

A Case Study in White Allyship: Seeing Our Schools Through the Eyes of Black Parents In this podcast, Dr. Alex Gee talks with three white parents of kids in a local Madison school who have been joining anti-racism efforts in reaction to an incident with a black child. Listen in to the revealing conversation with Kate Kaio, Jeremy Holiday, and Eli Steenlage as they navigate their own equity journey while trying to support the black family, the African-American community, and the school community. Black Like Me Podcast, S4 Ep. 87, March 31, 2020. 

Recommended Articles

Can We Honor These Pioneers? Marines pride themselves on a reputation as the toughest U.S. military branch. They also were the last to integrate. Read the stories of the first Black recruits. Written by Rachel Jones with photos by Michael McCoy; National Geographic; September 21, 2022  . 

Mayors for a Guaranteed Income Year in Review, June 2021-2022 reports on the results from pilot guaranteed income projects from around the country.  Madison's recent initiative on guaranteed income – MadisonForwardFund.com – is part of a larger network of cities grappling with solutions for economic insecurity.

What Does a Traffic Jam in Atlanta have to do with Racial Segregation? Quite a Lot. by Kevin M. Kruse; New York Times Magazine, August 14, 2019.

Why Black People in Madison, Wisconsin are Impatient, and Should Be. Kaleem Caire lists over 100 reports and news articles about racial disparities in Madison dating back to 1931. You don't have to read each news article – just a review of the titles tell the story.

"It’s easy to see why they consider books dangerous..." says Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts Jr in his September 29, 2021 Opinion column published for Banned Books Week. He continues, “Those who ban and burn books seek to ban and burn the courage it takes to grapple with that which might leave you challenged, unsettled or changed.”

Who's afraid of critical race theory? Not the students in my classes is an interesting article on the hot topic of Critical Race Theory, written by DSr. Vincent Jungkunz, Ohio University Associate Professor of Political Science. The Washington Post Opinion; June 23, 2021.

9 Artists Explore the Pride and Joys of Being Asian American and Pacific Islander in this interview by Enkhbayar Munkh-Erdene for YES! Magazine in May 28, 2021.

Recommended Books

NEW! Solito by Javier Zamora

How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning With the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith 

Just as I Am: A Memoir by Cicely Tyson

Hell of a Book by Jason Mott

The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang

Forgotten by Linda Hervieux

The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee

SOLITO

by Javier Zamora

A powerful memoir about Javier, a nine-year-old boy who makes a 3,000-mile trip from El Salvador across the U.S. border to reunite with his parents. He travels with a group of strangers and a “coyote.” The trip takes longer than planned and there are many perils along the way “A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito not only provides an immediate and intimate account of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier's story, but it's also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home." – Javier Zamora

HOW THE WORD IS PASSED
A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

by Clint Smith 

This book was the UW-Madison "Big Read" Selection for 2022-23

A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, "How the Word Is Passed" illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view—whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted.

Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith's debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be.

Click here for background on why "How the Word is Passed" was selected as the 2022-23 UW-Madison Big Read book.

JUST AS I AM

by Cicely Tyson

“Just as I Am is my truth. It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside… And here in my ninth decade, I am a woman who, at long last, has something meaningful to say.” 

Cicely Tyson was an actress, lecturer, activist, and one of the most respected talents in American theater and film history. Her work garnered critical and commercial applause for more than 60 years. Her two Emmys for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman made her the first African-American woman to win an Emmy for Best Actress.

In 2013, Ms. Tyson won the Tony Award for Best Actress for her performance in The Trip to Bountiful. A capstone achievement came in 2018, when she became the first Black woman to receive an honorary Oscar. Another highlight from her lengthy list of honors was being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016. 

HELL OF A BOOK

by Jason Mott

One of Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Fiction | One of Philadelphia Inquirer's Best Books of 2021 | One of Shelf Awareness's Top Ten Fiction Titles of the Year | One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books | One of NPR.org's "Books We Love" | EW’s "Guide to the Biggest and Buzziest Books of 2021" | One of the New York Public Library's Best Books for Adults | (the list of awards goes on and on!)

"An astounding work of fiction from a New York Times bestselling author Jason Mott, always deeply honest, at times electrically funny, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans, and America as a whole."

In Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and urgent: since Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.

As these characters’ stories build and build and converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, it’s also about the nation’s reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news. And with what it can mean to be Black in America.

Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind?  Unforgettably told, with characters who burn into your mind and an electrifying plot ideal for book club discussion, Hell of a Book is the novel Mott has been writing in his head for the last ten years. And in its final twists it truly becomes its title.

Available at Madison Library – print and audio versions.

by Jay Caspian Kang

"A riveting blend of family history and original reportage by a conversation-starting writer for The New York Times Magazine that explores-and reimagines-Asian American identity in a Black and white world. In 1965, a new immigration law lifted a century of restrictions against Asian immigrants to the United States.

Nobody, including the lawmakers who passed the bill, expected it to transform the country's demographics. But over the next four decades, millions arrived, including Jay Caspian Kang's parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. They came with almost no understanding of their new home, much less the history of "Asian America" that was supposed to define them.

The Loneliest Americans is the unforgettable story of Kang and his family as they move from a housing project in Cambridge

to an idyllic college town in the South and eventually to the West Coast. Their story unfolds against the backdrop of a rapidly expanding Asian America, as millions more immigrants, many of them working-class or undocumented, stream into the country.  

~ From book jacket.

FORGOTTEN
The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, At Home And At War

by Linda Hervieux

The injustices of 1940's Jim Crow America are brought to life in this extraordinary blend of military and social history--a story that pays tribute to the valor of an all-black battalion whose crucial contributors at D-Day have gone unrecognized to this day.

In the early hours of June 6, 1944, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, a unit of African-American soldiers, landed on the beaches of France. Their orders were to man a curtain of armed balloons meant to deter enemy aircraft. One member of the 320th would be nominated for the Medal of Honor, an award he would never receive. The nation’s highest decoration was not given to black soldiers in World War II.

Drawing on newly uncovered military records and dozens of original interviews with surviving members of the 320th and their families, Linda Hervieux tells the story of these heroic men charged with an extraordinary mission, whose contributions to one of the most celebrated events in modern history have been overlooked. Members of the 320th—Wilson Monk, a jack-of-all-trades from Atlantic City; Henry Parham, the son of sharecroppers from rural Virginia; William Dabney, an eager 17-year-old from Roanoke, Virginia; Samuel Mattison, a charming romantic from Columbus, Ohio—and thousands of other African Americans were sent abroad to fight for liberties denied them at home. In England and Europe, these soldiers discovered freedom they had not known in a homeland that treated them as second-class citizens—experiences they carried back to America, fueling the budding civil rights movement.

In telling the story of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, Hervieux offers a vivid account of the tension between racial politics and national service in wartime America, and a moving narrative of human bravery and perseverance in the face of injustice.

Available through Madison Public Library.