Reading and Resources
Books
(Speaking Truth does not benefit monetarily or otherwise from the recommendations of book sellers.)
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
by Nikole Hannah-Jones
The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a revealing vision of the American past and present. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story builds on The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project,” which reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on the original "1619 Project, "weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself. This legacy can be seen in the way we tell stories, the way we teach our children, and the way we remember. Together, the elements of the book reveal a new origin story for the United States, one that helps explain not only the persistence of anti-Black racism and inequality in American life today, but also the roots of what makes the country unique.
The book also features an elaboration of the original project’s Pulitzer Prize–winning lead essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones on how the struggles of Black Americans have expanded democracy for all Americans, as well as two original pieces from Hannah-Jones, one of which makes a case for reparative solutions to this legacy of injustice.
Slavery’s Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation
Edited by Jill Strauss and Dionne Ford
More than two dozen authors, all members of Coming to the Table, have contributed stories to this anthology, edited by CTTT members Jill Strauss and Dionne Ford. The anthology addresses the shared legacy of racism and slavery in the United States told through the collected stories of descendants of enslaved people and enslavers. Recurring themes of displacement (literally and figuratively), identity, trauma, shame and guilt, memory and silences across generations, along with generosity, gratitude, and love challenge our understanding of history uncovering personal and collective truths.
The stories of the descendants of enslavers and the enslaved can help heal our past by shedding light on truths that are rarely told. Coming to the Tables’ programs and resources help writers uncover history and provide them with the support necessary for working collectively and sharing their stories with a wider audience; stories that are vital to healing our nation.
You can order from your local bookstore or online at Amazon, (a portion of sales through this Amazon link go to CTTT), Indie Bound, or directly from Rutgers University Press.
PLEASE NOTE: 75% of author proceeds from this Little Book are donated to Coming to the Table to support the racial healing work described within its pages.
The Little Book of Racial Healing: Coming to the Table for Truth-Telling, Liberation, and Transformation
by Thomas Norman DeWolf and Jodie Geddes
This book introduces Coming to the Table’s approach to a continuously evolving set of purposeful theories, ideas, experiments, guidelines, and intentions, all dedicated to facilitating racial healing and transformation.
People of color, relative to white people, fall on the negative side of virtually all measurable social indicators. The “living wound” is seen in the significant disparities in average household wealth, unemployment and poverty rates, infant mortality rates, access to healthcare and life expectancy, education, housing, and treatment within, and by, the criminal justice system.
Coming to the Table (CTTT) was born in 2006 when two dozen descendants from both sides of the system of enslavement gathered together at Eastern Mennonite University (EMU), in collaboration with the Center for Justice & Peacebuilding (CJP). Stories were shared and friendships began. The participants began to envision a more connected and truthful world that would address the unresolved and persistent effects of the historic institution of slavery. This Little Book shares Coming to the Table’s vision for the United States—a vision of a just and truthful society that acknowledges and seeks to heal from the racial wounds of the past. Readers will learn practical skills for better listening; discover tips for building authentic, accountable relationships; and will find specific and varied ideas for taking action.
Gather at the Table: The Healing Journey of a Daughter of Slavery and a Son of the Slave Trade
by Thomas Norman DeWolf (Author), Sharon Morgan (Author)
Gather at the Table is an honest exploration into the deep social wounds left by racism, violence and injustice, as the authors work through their own prejudices in search of reconciliation — and ultimately find friendship.” — Leymah Gbowee, 2011 Nobel Peace Laureate
The authors hope to inspire a national dialogue about the legacies of slavery and racism and offer practical guidance for individuals and groups who want to heal themselves and America.
TOP PICK
Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
In her new book Caste, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson compares America to an old house. “We can never declare the work over,” she writes. “Wind, flood, drought, and human upheavals batter a structure that is already fighting whatever flaws were left unattended in the original foundation.”
TOP PICK
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • One of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost for everyone—not just for people of color.
Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out?
Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression 1st Edition by Joe R. Feagin
In this book, Feagin develops a theory of systemic racism to interpret the highly racialized character and development of this society. Exploring the distinctive social worlds that have been created by racial oppression over nearly four centuries and what this has meant for the people of the United States, focusing his analysis on white-on-black oppression.
Drawing on the commentaries of black and white Americans in three historical eras; the slavery era, the legal segregation era, and then those of white Americans. Feagin examines how major institutions have been thoroughly pervaded by racial stereotypes, ideas, images, emotions, and practices. He theorizes that this system of racial oppression was not an accident of history, but was created intentionally by white Americans. While significant changes have occurred in this racist system over the centuries, key and fundamental elements have been reproduced over nearly four centuries, and US institutions today imbed the racialized hierarchy created in the 17th century.
Today, as in the past, racial oppression is not just a surface-level feature of society, but rather it pervades, permeates, and interconnects all major social groups, networks, and institutions across society.
Slaves in my Family by Edward Ball
"BALL IS A FIRST-RATE SCHOLAR-JOURNALIST...He's also a good detective, tracking down the many descendants of Ball slaves from New York to California and back in the South and coaxing them, often with some difficulty, to tell their stories...Outside Faulkner, it will be hard to find a more poignant, powerful account of a white man struggling with his and his nation's past."
--The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"A TOUR DE FORCE...The heart of this remarkable book consists of his sleuthing--tracking down and interviewing the descendants of former Ball slaves across the country... Part oral history, this unique family saga is a catharsis and a searching inventory of racially divided American society."
--Publishers Weekly
"A PAGEANTRY OF PASSIONS AND STRUGGLES."
--African Sun Times
Articles
I Am a Descendant of Slaveholders. Charlottesville Demands My Honesty About White Supremacy.
One writer opens up about her ancestor's crimes—and vows to do better. By Virgie Townsend
www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/politics/a12021048/my-ancestors-owned-slaves/
My ancestor owned 41 slaves. What do I owe their descendants? By John W. Mille
https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2018/11/28/my-ancestor-owned-41-slaves-what-do-i-owe-their-descendants
Two Women, Their Lives Connected by American Slavery, Tackle Their Shared History
www.smithsonianmag.com/history/women-lives-connected-american-slavery-tackleshared-history-180975508/
One descended from an enslaver, the other from the people he enslaved. Together, they traveled to the Deep South to learn their families’ pasts
Truth and Reconciliation: Addressing Systemic Racism in the United States By Danyelle Solomon
www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472899/truth-and-reconciliation/
For the United States to move toward real equality, it must work toward “the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences.” Only then will the nation successfully right an unjustifiable wrong and fundamentally change an economic and social system built on suppression and the concentration of wealth and power.
Bryan Stevenson on how America can heal: A conversation about truth and reconciliation in the US. By Ezra Klein
www.vox.com/21327742/bryan-stevenson-the-ezra-klein-show-america-slavery-healing-racism-george-floyd-protests
No More Lies. My Grandfather Was a Nazi
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/27/opinion/jonas-noreika-lithuania-nazi-collaborator.html
His Ancestors Were Slave Traders and Hers Were Slaves. What They Learned About Healing from a Roadtrip by Sharon Leslie Morgan and Thomas Norman DeWolf.
https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/make-right/2015/05/23/healing-historys-wound/
One great revelation along the way came from Coming to the Table co-founder Will Hairston, who said to me, “Guilt is the glue that holds racism together.” We build walls with bricks of denial to protect ourselves from feeling it. In the end, guilt is divisive and counterproductive. Instead of the destructive feeling of guilt, what I do feel is profound grief over the enormous damage done. I feel a responsibility to acknowledge and address the consequences of our historical inheritance. That is why I dedicate myself (and encourage other white people to do the same) to using my privilege to expose the truth and make a positive difference. - Thomas Norman DeWolf
The German Model for America By Mattie Kahn
www.vox.com/the-highlight/21405900/germany-holocaust-atonement-america-slavery-reparations
The long and public reckoning that followed the Holocaust shows a path forward for a United States that desperately needs to confront its racist past. “That was the beginning,” Wagner says. “That was the birth of a grassroots movement of a critical historical investigation.” America had the civil rights movement, but this — what Germans in their 20s and 30s undertook in the 1980s — was different. After the show, the call for a reckoning did not come from the victims. It came from the descendants of the perpetrators.
Even though I’ve argued that Germany did a lot right — despite the fact that they were slow at first in doing it — they didn’t get rid of racism or anti-Semitism entirely,” Neiman says. National memory is not a fixed thing; it can shift. It can be warped. “Every community needs to figure out its own way of doing this. I don’t believe history runs according to absolute laws that you can figure out beforehand. I think history is made by individual human beings in different cultural and social circumstances, and that’s a good thing.” Chatelain wishes those despairing over how much work lies ahead could see what stands to be gained — “a sense of safety, a sense of care, a belief that we’re not disposable and that we’re valuable, a sense that history can be a place where we draw moral courage and don’t have to feel ashamed,” she says. “Those things are possible, but we have to do them together.
A DESIRE WAS SPREADING ACROSS THE WEST GERMAN LANDSCAPE TO UNCOVER THE TRUTH OF A SHARED PAST