The Black Lives Matter mission is to build local power and to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. - Black Lives Matter
The term, police brutality, refers to all acts of unjustified cruelty inflicted by police on others. It may include the use of abusive language and physical violence which exceeds a justifiable response to a present threat. ~~World of Criminal Justice, Gale
From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation by
"Activist and scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and persistence of structural inequality such as mass incarceration and Black unemployment. In this context, she argues that this new struggle against police violence holds the potential to reignite a broader push for Black liberation"
The Color of Law: A Forgotton History of How Our Government Segregated America by
Richard Rothstein explodes the myth that America's cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation -- that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes it clear that it was de jure segregation -- the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments -- that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day
Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: the Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America by
Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as'brave and bold,'this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that'we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.'By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a'call to action.'Called'stunning'by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis,'invaluable'by the Daily Kos,'explosive'by Kirkus, and'profoundly necessary'by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience.
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by
In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America's "first white president." But the story of these present-day eight years is not just about presidential politics. This book also examines the new voices, ideas, and movements for justice that emerged over this period--and the effects of the persistent shadow of our nation's old and unreconciled history. Coates powerfully examines the events of the Obama era from his intimate and revealing perspective--the point of view of a young writer who begins the journey in an unemployment office in Harlem and ends it in the Oval Office, interviewing a president. We Were Eight Years in Power features Coates's iconic essays first published in The Atlantic, including "Fear of a Black President," "The Case for Reparations," and "The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration," along with eight fresh essays that revisit each year of the Obama administration through Coates's own experiences, observations, and intellectual development, capped by a bracingly original assessment of the election that fully illuminated the tragedy of the Obama era.
The Harvest of American Racism by 
#1960Now by
Sheila Pree Bright's moving photographs of Civil Righs activists and Black Lives Matter protests.
Between the World and Me by
In a series of essays, written as a letter to his son, Coates confronts the notion of race in America and how it has shaped American history, many times at the cost of black bodies and lives.
Police Brutality, Misconduct, and Corruption Criminological Explanations and Policy Implications by 