America’s legal system often provides a framework and guidelines on how we address issues that impact our communities. From civil rights and environmental concerns to individual freedoms and the rights of corporations, the legal system can help us address issues that impact us all.

Discovering Justice’s Education Director Laura Brenner compiled this list of resources to support learning and facilitate conversations around race and racism in America.

Books For Students

• Coretta Scott King Book Award Winners
• A Children’s Booklist for Anti-racist Activism
• Race Cars: A children’s book about white privilege, Jenny Devenny
• BLM Instructional Library (online read alouds)
• If You Come Softly, Jacqueline Woodson
• NYTimes Anti-Racism Booklist for kids 0-12+

Books by Black authors to for Adults:

General:

• • The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America, Marc Lamont Hill
  • How to be an Antiracist, Dr. Ibram X. Kendi
  • The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander
  • Nobody: Casualties of American’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond, Marc Lamont Hill
  • The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
  • The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin

• Between The World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates

• Stamped From The Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Ibram X. Kendi  The Beginning

• Stamped: Racism, Anti Racism, and You: A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds *a YA remix (other Jason Reynold’s YA books here)

• This Book is Anti-Racist, Tiffany Jewell *a YA book

• See more books here at “This Book List in Anti-Racist”

Specifically for Educators:

• Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hamond
• We Want to Do More Than Survive: Abolitionist Teaching and the Pursuit of Educational Freedom, Bettina L. Love
• Cultivating Genius, Dr. Gholdy Muhammad
• Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom, Lisa Delpit
• Schooling for Critical Consciousness, Daren Graves & Scott Seider
• Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom,  Bell Hooks

*Please consider purchasing these titles and others from Frugal Bookstore, a Black-owned community bookstore in Boston that DJ tries to support whenever possible.

Articles

• Tens Steps to Non-Optical Allyship
• 11 Things To Do Besides Say ‘ This Has To Stop’ In The Wake of Police Brutality
• Fredrck Douglass Used Photographs To Force The Nation To Begin Addressing Racism
• White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

Video

• Talks to help you understand racism in America
• “How Studying Privilege Systems Can Strengthen Compassion”
• Raising Antiracist Kids: Empowering the Next Generation of Changemakers
• “The Danger of a Single Story”

Specifically for Educators:

• Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of Our Schools
• Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy

Podcasts

• RadioLab Presents: More Perfect, (WNYC Studios)
• 1619 (The New York Times)

Netflix Series

• 13th
• When They See Us
• The Racial Wealth Gap, Explained
• The Death & Life of Marsha P. Johnson
• Teach Us All

Amazon Prime

• I Am Not Your Negro 

HBO

• The Loving Story

Social Media Accounts:

• The Conscious Kid
• ACLU
• Grassroots Law Project
• The King Center
• Ibram X. Kendi
• Austin Channing
• Jumaane Williams
• Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu’s IG or  twitter
• Rachel Cargie

Discovering Justice is excited to welcome Matt Wilson as our new Executive Director.

Wilson has a three-decade history as a nonprofit executive in the Commonwealth, most recently finishing a seven-year stint as the founding Executive Director of MASSCreative, the state’s advocacy group for the arts and creative community.

“Matt brings a history of building and managing nonprofits that educate, prepare, and engage students and Massachusetts residents in civic actions,” said Tony Jordan, board president of Discovering Justice. “We are excited that he is bringing his energy, experience, and passion for positive change to Discovering Justice. Especially in the current environment, Matt is the kind of leader we need to take Discovering Justice into the future and best serve our constituents.”

For thirty-six years, Wilson built and ran community-based initiatives for a healthier and more vibrant Commonwealth. As a community organizer, public advocate, fundraiser, and trainer, Wilson has worked with residents to help them envision, realize, and build their capacity and power for change. He has led campaigns for a cleaner environment, affordable and accessible health care, and increased investment in the arts.

“I am excited about the opportunity to help grow Discovering Justice’s programs that help students understand how the legal system works and how they can act to create a more just Massachusetts,” said Wilson. “There has never been a more important time to engage in civic action and ensure that our democracy is vibrant and holds our leaders accountable. I look forward to working with our dedicated staff to continue Discovering Justice’s two-decade-long history of working with judges, teachers, lawyers, and civic leaders to teach students about the judicial system and to work for justice.”

Wilson was the founding Executive Director of MASSCreative, the statewide advocacy voice for Massachusetts’ arts, cultural, and creative community. Under his direction, MASSCreative grew to more than 400 organizational members with 25,000 individuals taking part in public education and advocacy actions. In his tenure, arts funding in the Commonwealth doubled and his advocacy work helped implement state policies to increase access and participation to quality arts education.

As the Director of Toxics Action Center from 1989 to 2005, Wilson built the organization from scratch to a New England-wide resource for hundreds of neighborhoods working to protect themselves from pollution threats.

Wilson graduated from Dartmouth College earned a Masters of Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.