PERSPECTIVES: A PROJECT

18 Historical Nonfiction Books That Exemplify the Power of Protest and Resistance

Protest is not always big and audacious; it can be small acts of courage and resistance. During slavery, many of the enslaved didn’t have the fearlessness of those who risked their lives to plan and carry out escapes and rebellions like Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, and Gabriel Prosser. Some of the enslaved resisted in ways that have been described as “day-to-day” resistance. Such acts entailed faking sicknesses, destroying tools and other plantation equipment, pretending not to understand instructions, and setting fires, and there have even been stories of slaves poisoning enslavers. But one of the most daring acts of resistance was learning to read. Anti-literacy laws were used as a tactic to dominate and perpetuate white intellectual superiority. Those caught in the act of reading or possessing any such materials that would indicate that intent could suffer severe punishment…continue reading

Books:

Harriet and the Promised Land - Jacob Lawrence  

Sojourner Truth’s Step-Stomp Stride - Andrea Davis Pinkney, Illustrator - Brian Pinkney 

Rosa - Nikki Giovanni, Illustrator - Bryan Collier 

Let Freedom Sing - Vanessa Newton 

Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story - Ruby Bridges

Child of the Rights Movement - Paula Young Shelton, Illustrator - Raul Colon 

We Troubled the Waters - Ntozake Shange, Illustrator - Rod Brown 

We Shall Not Be Moved - Velma Maia Thomas  

Frederick Douglass: The Lion Who Wrote History - Walter Dean Myers, Illustrator - Floyd Cooper 

Ida B. Wells: Let the Truth Be Told - Walter Dean Myers, Illustrator - Bonnie Christensen 

Rebels Against Slavery: American Slave Revolts - Patricia & Fredrick McKissick

Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement - Carole Boston Weatherford, Illustrator - Ekua Holmes 

Extraordinary People of The Civil Rights Movement - Sheila Hardy & P Stephen Hardy 

Now Is Your Time!: The African-American Struggle for Freedom - Walter Dean Myers  

Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom: My Story of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights March - Lynda Blackmon Lowery as told to Elspeth Leacock & Susan Buckley, Illustrator - PJ Loughran 

March Series (3 Book Set) - John Lewis & Andrew Aydin, Illustrator - Nate Powell 

Find more historical nonfiction books by Black authors here 

Reel Racism: Confronting Hollywood’s Construction of Afro-American Culture (Thinking Through Cinema) (2000)  

“Reel Racism: Confronting Hollywood’s Construction of Afro-American Culture goes beyond reflection theories of the media to examine cinema’s active participation in the operations of racism –a complex process rooted in the dynamics of representation. Written for undergraduates and graduate students of film studies and philosophy, Reel Racism focuses on methods and frameworks that analyze films for their production of meaning and how those meanings participate in a broader process of justifying, naturalizing, or legitimizing difference, privilege, and violence based on race. 

In addition to analyzing how the process of racism is articulated in specific films, Reel Racism examines how specific meanings can resist their function of ideological containment, and instead, offer a perspective of a more collective, egalitarian social system– one that transcends the discourse of race.”

by Vincent F. Rocchio

Get it here 

Beloved by Toni Morrison

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. 

Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. 

Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.  

Get it now here

Toni Morrison (born Chloe Anthony Wofford), is an American author, editor, and professor who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature for being an author “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”

Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed African American characters; among the best known are her novels The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. In 2001 she was named one of “The 30 Most Powerful Women in America” by Ladies’ Home Journal.

The Art of Lighting Dark Skin for Film and HD 

by Cybel Martin

“Every shade and hue offers its own unique challenges and glorious opportunities for the Cinematographer to create art. Anyone with a basic knowledge of lighting can get a decent exposure when filming non-white skin. I want to discuss “the art”.

Your narrative will dictate how a character should appear: Ashen. Vibrant. Healthy. Exhausted. Apathetic. Enlightened. I can (and so can you) make any skin tone exude one of those adjectives. This is my process:

                                  ( Cinematographer Cybel Martin )

Once the director and I come to a consensus on how a film should look, I determine which HD camera / film stocks and lenses can achieve it and still stay in budget. My lighting scheme is based on the dynamic range and/or latitude of the HD/film stock, my “man power” (size and technical ability of my G/E crew), post production budget for Color Correct, pace of our shooting schedule and demands of the location (no windows, can’t rig from the ceiling etc)…

Here are a few of the things I consider when working with different skin colors…”

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Donald Glover is Featured on Ad Week’s Cover For Young Influentials Under 40 Who Are Shaping The Industry

“In the writers room, I kept repeating, ‘It’s OK if we get canceled in the first year. I just want to have a show that we’re proud of, that we can say, this is the show I would watch if I was not on it,’” says Glover, who serves as creator, showrunner, writer, occasional director and star.