Skip to main content
LibApps staff login

Black Lives Matter

This guide offers a sample of the resources available at ASU Library and is intended for research as well as personal education.

Injustice and Inequality in America

undefinedQueen Njinga 

by Achille Devéria - http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitLarge/mw150782/Ann-Zingha Public Domain

The arrival of a slave ship carrying approximately 20 people, Africans from Angola, in August of 1619 to a port near Jamestown, Virginia marks the beginning of chattel slavery in what would become the United States. The enslaved Africans were likely forced to work the tobacco fields in the English Colony of Virginia (Elliott and Hughes, 2019).

Slavery has shaped and formed everyday American life. The 1619 Project by the New York Times Magazine explores the lingering effects. Resources from and within The 1619 Project are listed below:

Articles:

The Idea of America, by Nikole Hannah-Jones

Capitalism, by Matthew Desmond

A Broken Health Care System, by Jeneen Interlandi

Traffic, by Kevin M. Kruse

Undemocratic Democracy, by Jamelle Bouie

Medical Inequality, by Linda Villarosa

American Popular Music, by Wesley Morris

Sugar, by Khalil Gibran Muhammad

Mass Incarceration, by Bryan Stevenson

The Wealth Gap, by Trymaine Lee

Hope, a Photo Essay, by Djeneba Aduayom

400 Years: A Literary Timeline

Broadsheets

Why Can’t We Teach This? by Nikita Stewart (2019)

A Brief History of Slavery, by Mary Elliott and Jazmine Hughes (2019)

Audio

The 1619 Podcast 

NPR (August 22, 2019). The 1619 Project. 1A. Interviews.

Museums

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. https://nmaahc.si.edu/

 

undefined Image: U.S. Department of State

On June 19, 1865, word reached over 250,000 enslaved black people in Texas that the Emancipation Proclamation had been signed by Abraham Lincoln more than two and half years earlier and that they were granted freedom. Union Gen. Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865 and read General Order Number 3 from various locations. General Order Number 3 stated that all enslaved persons were free and had absolute equality of personal rights. Juneteenth is celebrated as an annual holiday commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.  

Ellis, N. (2020). What Juneteenth tells us about the value of black life in America. The Washington Post.

Taylor, D. B. (June 19, 2020). So you want to learn about Juneteenth? The New York Times

Galveston Historical Foundation (2020). Juneteenth and General Order No. 3.

The post-Civil War Reconstruction was a period when the nation attempted to reunify and realize equality for African Americans during the years 1863 - 1877. 

undefinedWhite mobs destroy Black Wall Street in Tulsa, OK 1921.

Redlining was the practice of drawing red lines on maps around predominately black neighborhoods. Between 1933 and 1977, the government-sponsored Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) used them to avoid investment in these neighborhoods. The evidence of this practice is documented by the Mapping Inequality project at the University of Richmond. Digitized scans of the HOLC redlining maps are held in the National Archives. Below is a redlining map of Phoenix.

undefined

 

The ASU Library acknowledges the twenty-three Native Nations that have inhabited this land for centuries. Arizona State University's four campuses are located in the Salt River Valley on ancestral territories of Indigenous peoples, including the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Pee Posh (Maricopa) Indian Communities, whose care and keeping of these lands allows us to be here today. ASU Library acknowledges the sovereignty of these nations and seeks to foster an environment of success and possibility for Native American students and patrons. We are advocates for the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge systems and research methodologies within contemporary library practice. ASU Library welcomes members of the Akimel O’odham and Pee Posh, and all Native nations to the Library.