Almost 100 years ago, responding to the public outcry over the violent drowning of a black boy by a white mob at a public beach on Lake Michigan, a citywide (multiracial but white-led) commission published “The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot.”
“Centuries of the Negro slave trade and of slavery as an institution … placed a stamp upon the relations of the two races which it will require many years to erase,” the nearly 700-page 1922 report began. “The past is of value only as it aids in understanding the present; and an understanding of the facts of the problem … is the first step toward its solution.”
As protests spread across America once more, bringing to front pages and the forefronts of our minds ugly truths about our country that shouldn’t have been forgotten in the first place, we turn again to the written record, to the literature. In an effort to deepen our understanding of race and racism in America, we asked writers to share with us the texts that have done the most to deepen theirs. Together these histories, novels and verses have helped shape our collective consciousness of a subject that is irreducible, and universal.
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