Follen’s Anti-Racism Book Group meets once a month on the third Sunday evening of the month during the church year. Their past reads (and occasional movie views) are below. All are encouraged to attend–even if you haven’t finished the book!  Email Jane Current at antiracismbookgroup@follen.org for more information. Meetings are currently on Zoom.

2020/2021 Church Year

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Caste by Isabel Wilkerson
“Dark Girls” documentary by Chansin Berry and Bill Duke
Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad
How The South Won the Civil War By Heather Cox Richardson
Fools Crow by James Welch
The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee by David Treuer
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde

2019/2020 Church Year

The Fire This Time edited by Jesmyn Ward
The Half Has Never Been Told by Edward Baptiste
Barracoon by Zora Neal Hurston
Harriet movie about Harriet Tubman
Kindred by Octavia Butler
The Second Founding by Eric Foner
Fruitvale Station by Ryan Coogler

2018/2019 Church Year

PBS American Experience: The Abolitionists
Raising White Kids by Jennifer Harvey
White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
Black KKKlansmen movie by Spike Lee
The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
Boston Globe Spotlight Series: “The Valedictorians”
The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B.Du Bois
Becoming by Michelle Obama
New England Bound by Wendy Warren
The Firebrand and the First Lady by Patricia Bell-Scott

2017/2018 Church Year

Tears We Cannot Stop Michael Eric Dyson
The Children David Halberstam
We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Thurgood movie of play starring Laurence Fishburne
“Boston. Racism. Image. Reality.” Seven-part Boston Globe Spotlight series
Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
Slavery By Another Name by Douglas Blackmon
Black Walden by Elise Lemire
Autobiography of Frederick Douglass

2016/2017 Church Year

Common Ground by J. Anthony Lucas
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
13th documentary by Ava Du Vernay
Evicted by Matthew Desmond
Moonlight movie by Barry Jenkins and Tarell McRaney
Waking Up White by Debby Irving
Anything written by James Baldwin PLUS documentary film, I Am Not Your Negro
Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X. Kendi
Darkening the Doorways: Black Trailblazers and Missed Opportunities in Unitarian Universalism by Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed

2015/2016 Church Year

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander ( also TED talk by author )
Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North documentary by Katrina Browne
The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley
America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America by Jim Wallis
Fixing the System HBO Documentary about incarceration