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Introduction
| p. ix | "To know the past is to know the present. To know the present is to know yourself." |
| Racist idea: any idea that suggests something is wrong or right, superior or inferior, better or worse ab out a racial group. Antiracist idea: any idea that suggests that racial groups are equals. 600-year history. |
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| p.xi | Young black males were 21x more likely to be killed by police than their White counterparts between 2020-2012 |
| Black people are 5x more likely to be incarcerated than Whites | |
| p.xii | Three groups: segregationists, assimilationists, antiracists |
| p.xiii | Author wanted to discover the source of racist ideas |
Section 1: 1415 - 1728
Section 1: 1415 - 1728
| Chapter 1: The Story of the World's First Racist | ||
| p.5 | 1415 | King John of Portugal |
| Prince Henry (son of King John) | ||
| Gomes Eanes de Zurara (writer - "world's first racist"; wrote about & defended black ownership | ||
| al-Hasan Ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, later to be known as Johannes Leo and Leo Africanus ("first known African racist") | ||
| Pope Leo X | ||
| Chapter 2: Puritan Power | ||
| Aristotle (Climate Theory) | ||
| 1577 | George Best (Curse Theory) | |
| 1590 | William Perkins - writer | |
| 1635 | John Cotton & Richard Mather - Puritan ministers; wanted to escape English persecution; Puritan superiority | |
| p.17 | Harvard University (Greek & Latin texts could not be disputed) | |
| p.18 | John Pory -America's first legislative leader | |
| p.18 | 1619 | San Juan Bautista (Spanish ship) - carrying 350 Angolans |
| p.18 | 1619 | George Yeardly - governor of Virginia; bought the first 20 slaves |
| Chapter 3: A Different Adam | ||
| p.21 | 1644 | Richard Baxter - British minister |
| p.22 | John Locke - philosopher | |
| p.24 | Lucilio Vanini - Polygenesis Theory | |
| p.24 | 1688 | Mennonites - circulated an antislavery petition; first piece of writing that was antiracist |
| p.25 | 1676 | Metacomet - Native American war leader |
| p.26 | Nathaniel Bacon - Virginia white laborer | |
| p.26 | William Berkely - Governor of Virginia; created White privileges | |
| Chapter 4: A Racist Wunderkind | ||
| p.29 | 1663 | Cotton Mather born - clergyman, writer; introduced witchcraft |
| p.31 | 1676 | Edward Randolph |
| King Charles II | ||
Section 2: 1743 - 1826
Section 2: 1743 - 1826
| Chapter 5: Proof in the Poetry | ||
| p.41 | mid- 1700s |
Enlightenment era |
| p.42 | 1743 | Benjamin Franklin - started American Philosophical Society |
| p.42 | Thomas Jefferson | |
| p.44 | 1772 | Phyllis Wheatley - a purchased "daughter" - homeschooled, never a working slave, first African-American author of a book of poetry |
| p.45 | Benjamin Rush - doctor; believed that Black people were made savages by slavery | |
| Chapter 6: Time Out | ||
| p.49 | Recap of racist ideas | |
| Chapter 7: Time In | ||
| p.53 | Just four words in this chapter: "Africans are not savages." | |
| Chapter 8: Jefferson's Notes | ||
| 1807 | Britain ended slavery | |
| p.56 | 1776 | Thomas Jefferson - wrote Declaration of Independence. "All men are created equal..." but he owned 200 slaves... |
| p.57 | 1776-1881 | Revolutionary War |
| p.59 | 1787 | Constitutional Convention |
| p.59 | 1787 | The Great Compromise - created two-house legislature |
| p.60 | The 3/5 Compromise - slaves count as 3/5 of a person to be counted in their populations | |
| p.61 | 1791 | The Haitian Revolution - largest and most successful slave rebellion in the Western Hemisphere |
| Chapter 9: Uplift Suasion | ||
| p.65 | 1790s | Uplift Suasion - the notion that white people could be persuaded away from racist views if they only saw black people working to lift themselves up from their lowly station - the task of ending white racism falls to black people. |
| Chapter 10: The Great Contradictor | ||
| p.69 | 1800 | Gabriel & Nancy Prosser - planned a large slave rebellion in Virginia |
| p.70 | 1800 | James Monroe (Governor of Virginia) |
| p.71 | Charles Fenton Mercer - Virginia delegate & one of the founders of the American Colonization Society | |
| p.71 | Robert Finley - one of the founders of the American Colonization Society (1816) | |
| p.71 | 1801 | Thomas Jefferson - third President |
| p.72 | 1807 | Slave Trade Act - no new slaves were permitted to be imported into the United States |
| p.74 | Louisiana Territory - could perhaps be used as a safe haven for slaves | |
| p.75 | 1820 | Tallmadge Amendment - prevented any further importation of slaves into Missouri |
| p.75 | 1820 | Missouri Compromise - Maine admitted as a free state, Missouri as a slave state |
| p.77 | 1826 | 50th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; Thomas Jefferson dies |
Section 3: 1826 - 1879
Section 3: 1826 - 1879
| Chapter 11: Mass Communication for Mass Emancipation |
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| p.84 | 1829 | William Lloyd Garrison - abolitionist who believed in gradual equality |
| p.86 | David Walker - abolitionist who believed in gradual equality | |
| p.88 | 1831 | Nat Turner - enslaved African-American preacher who led a four-day rebellion of enslaved and free black people in Virginia; caught and hanged |
| Chapter 12: Uncle Tom | ||
| p.92 | Samuel Norton - scientist / anthropologist | |
| p.92 | 1840 | Census report - free blacks were insane & enslaved blacks were sane; biracial individuals had shorter life spans that Whites |
| p.92 | 1844 | John C. Calhoun (South Carolina Senator) |
| p.93 | 1845 | Frederick Douglass - runaway slave, abolitionist, statesman; wrote Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave |
| p.94 | Soujourner Truth - writer, slave | |
| p.94 | Harriet Beecher Stowe - author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, endorsed colonization | |
| Chapter 13: Complicated Abe | ||
| p.99 | 1858 | Abraham Lincoln - anti-slavery but against black voting and racial equality; pledged not to challenge Southern slavery if elected |
| p.100 | 1858 | Stephen Douglas |
| p.102 | 1860 | South secession - South Carolina became first slave state in the south to secede from the United States |
| p.103 | 1861 | Jefferson Davis - president of the Confederate states |
| p.103 | 1861 | Civil War |
| p.103 | 1862 | Slave Act repealed |
| p.104 | 1862 | Emancipation Proclamation |
| 1865 | Civil War ends | |
| 1865 | Reconstruction | |
| 1865 | President Abraham Lincoln killed; Vice President Andrew Johnson, a former slave holder, becomes president | |
| Chapter 14: Garrison's Last Stand | ||
| p.108 | President Andrew Johnson reversed many of Lincoln's antislavery promises | |
| p.108 | Black Codes created - also called Black Laws; governed the conduct of free Blacks | |
| p.108 | 1870s | Jim Crow Laws - las that legitimized racial segregation |
| p.108 | Thaddeus Stevens - Pennsylvania Congressman and antiracist | |
| p.109 | William Lloyd Garrison - abolitionist, one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, published The Liberator newspaper. Moral stance vs. political stance: It was the moral duty of the United States to eliminate the evil of slavery. | |
| p.110 | 2/3/1870 | 15th Amendment: prohibited the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Contained racist loopholes |
| p.110 | 1870 | American Anti-Slavery Society disbanded |
| p.111 | Colonization ideas - Dominican Republic, domestic migration to Kansas | |
| p.112 | Reconstruction did not result in immediate emancipation or immediate equality | |
Section 4: 1868 - 1963
Section 4: 1868 - 1963
| Chapter 15: Battle of the Black Brains | ||
| P.117 | William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (W.E.B. Du Bois) - biracia assimilationist; "King of Uplift Suasion" and "Black King of Assimilation" | |
| p121 | 1892 | Ida B. Wells - investigative journalist |
| p.121 | 1895 | Booker T. Washington - new leader of Black America |
| p.124 | Talented Tenth - a term publicized by du Bois that designated a leadership class of African Americans in the early 20th century | |
| p.126 | Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. - 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909 | |
| Chapter 16: Jack Johnson vs. Tarzan | ||
| p.129 | 1908 | Jack Johnson - fighter/boxer with a white wife. Arrested due to threat he posted to White men. |
| p.132 | 1916 | Edgar Rice Burroughs - author of book, Tarzan of the Apes, a cultural phenomena that reinforced the idea of White supremacy and that Africans (Black people) were savages. |
| Chapter 17: Birth of a Nation (and a New Nuisance) | ||
| p.135 | 1916 | Woodrow Wilson elected (Democrat) - at that time Democrats dominated the South and Republicans dominated the North; 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921 |
| Chapter 18: The Mission Is in the Name | ||
| p.139 | 1916 | Marcus Garvey Jamaican antiracist - visited NAACP (formed by Du Bois and Villard) and dismayed to find lack of Blacks working in the office |
| p.140 | Garvey forms Universal Negro Improvement Association | |
| p.143 | 1919 | Bloodiest summer since Reconstruction referred to "Red Summer" - marked by white supremacist terrorism and racial riots across the United States |
| Chapter 19: Can't Sing and Dance and Write It Away | ||
| p.147 | 1924 | HArlem Renaissance - Dubois supported media suasion, a new form of uplift suasion - using media (art) to woo Whites |
| p.148 | 1926 | Niggerati - a resistant group of Black artists, included Langston Hughes |
| p.149 | 1929 | Herbert Hoover elected as 31st president of the United States from 1929-1931 (Republican) |
| p.151 | 1933 | Du Bois moving toward antiracism (vs assimilation); left he NAACP |
| p.152 | 1933 | Nation enters the Great Depression under President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat); implemented New Deal; shift in Republican and Democratic parties into transforming into the parties we have today. New Deal did not help Blacks as much as it helped Whites. |
| p.152 | 1934 | Du Bois argues for Black safe spaces and supports voluntary nondiscriminatory segregation |
| Chapter 20: Home Is Where the Hatred Is | ||
| p.155 | 1942 | US enters WWII and Double V Campaign (slogan and drive to promote the fight for democracy in overseas campaigns and at the home front in the United States for African Americans during World War IIO |
| 1945 | WWII nears end in April 1945 | |
| 1945 | Harry S. Truman elected 33rd president of the United States (1945-1953) | |
| p.157 | 2/2/1948 | Truman urged Congress to implement a civil rights act despite the lack of support among White Americans. |
Section 5: 1963 - Today
Section 5: 1963 - Today
| Chapter 21: When Death Comes | ||
| p.169 | 1963 | Angela Davis (Brandeis Univ student); four girls killed in her Birmingham, AL community |
| p.170 | 1962 | James Baldwin & Malcolm X speak at Brandeis - inspire Angela Davis |
| p.172 | 1963 | President John F. Kennedy assassinated |
| p.172 | 1963 | Lyndon B. Johnson sworn in as President; vows to pass JFKp.173 civil rights bill |
| p.174 | 1964 | Civil Rights Act of 1964 - discrimination on the basis of race is illegal; first important civil rights legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1875; Angela Davis and Malcolm X view it as a political play |
| p.174 | George Wallace and Barry Goldwater enter presidential race | |
| p.175 | 1965 | Malcolm X shot and killed |
| p.177 | Malcolm X argued that White people weren't born racist, America was built to make them that way | |
| p.177 | 1965 | Voting Rights Act of 1965 (LBJ) - most effective piece of antiracist legislation ever passed by Congress |
| Chapter 22: Black Power | ||
| p.179 | 1965 | LA Watts neighborhood violence - deadliest & most destructive urban rebellion in history |
| p.180 | 1965 | Copenhagen for Race and Color Conference - examined role of racist language symbolism (ex: black sheep, blackmail); "ghetto" and "minority" became synonyms for Black in America |
| p.180 | 1966 | Stokely Carmichael - new chairman of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); Greenwood, MS rally: March Against Fear - origin of "Black Power" |
| p.182 | Black Panther Party for Self Defense: two-man movement in Oakland, CA (Huey Newton and Bobby Seale) | |
| p.183 | Black Panther "Ten-Point Platform" | |
| p.184 | 1967 | Angela Davis starts Black Student Union on University of California campus; spreads nationwide |
| p.185 | 1967 | Martin Luther King shifting away from assimilationist views; wanted to create an "economic bill of rights" |
| p.186 | 1968 | "Planet of the Apes" movie released - megahit; stoked racist fears |
| p.187 | 4/4/68 | Martin Luther King shot and killed; Black Power antiracist movement surges |
| p.188 | Black Studies departments created in education; Angela Davis supports Communist ideals | |
| Chapter 23: Murder Was the Case | ||
| p.191 | 1968 | Richard M. Nixon supports segregation; uses racially-charged language in campaign speeches; supports "southern strategy" |
| p.192 | 1968 | Nixon elected 37th President of the US |
| 1969 | Ronald Regan (California Governor) fires Angela Davis from UCLA; overturned by CA Superior Court; fired again by Reagan | |
| p.194 | 1970 | Jonathon Jackson courthouse shooting; Angela Davis charged with murder and arrested months later; developed her Black feminist theory while incarcerated in solitary confinement |
| p.196 | 1972 | Angela Davis represents herself at her trial and wins; returns to teaching |
| 1974 | President Richard M. Nixon resigns | |
| p.199 | 1976 | "Rocky" movie released - "symbolized the pride of White supremacist masculinity's refusal to be knocked out from the thunderstorm of civil rights and Black Power protests and policies." |
| p.200 | 1976 | "Roots" by Alex Haley - most-watched show in television history |
| 1976 | Ronald Regan runs for president | |
| Chapter 24: What War on Drugs? | ||
| p.203 | 1976 | Ronald Regan loses election to Gerald Ford |
| 1980 | Ronald Regan elected 40th President of the US with "law and order" platform | |
| p.204 | 1982 | "War on Drugs" - unfairly incarcerated millions of Black Americans |
| p.205 | 1986 | Anti-Drug Abuse Act - minimum 5-year sentences; mass incarceration of Blacks, felony charges |
| p.207 | 1989 | "Crack baby" term invented by Washington Post columnist to indiscriminately describe a generation of Black children born from drug-addicted parent. |
| p.208 | George H. W. Bush elected 41st President of the US (1989-1993) | |
| Chapter 25: The Soundtrack of Sorrow and Subversion | ||
| p.211 | 1988 | arrival of Hip-hop; drove change and empowerment |
| p.213 | 1991 | Rodney King brutally beaten by four LA police officers; beating was filmed |
| p.215 | 1992 | Bill Clinton wins Democratic nomination; police officers involved in Rodney King beating found not guilty - led to LA riots |
| p.217 | 1994 | Clinton endorses Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act - caused the largest increase of the prison population in US history, most ly on nonviolent drug offenses, mainly Black men |
| Chapter 26: A Million Strong | ||
| p.220 | 1994 | Personal Responsibility & Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (anti-welfare bill) - implied that Black people, not racism, caused racial inequalities |
| p.222 | 1995 | Million Man March - biggest political mobilization in Black American history |
| Chapter 27: A Bill Too Many | ||
| p.227 | 2000 | Scientific evidence that the races are 99.9% the same brought forth "The concept of race has no genetic or scientific basis." |
| p.229 | 2000 | tens of thousands of Black Florida voters banned from voting or had their votes destroyed in the presidential election |
| p.230 | 9/11/2000 | attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93 |
| p.231 | 2003 | No Child Left Behind Act - left the neediest students behind due to decreased funding to schools not making improvements |
| p.232 | 2004 | Democratic National Convention Keynote address by Barack Obama |
| Chapter 28: A Miracle and Still a Maybe | ||
| p.236 | 2005 | Obama became nation's only African American in the US Senate in 2005 |
| p.236 | 2005 | Hurricane Katrina devastates poor Black communities |
| p.238 | 2007 | Barack Obama announces presidential candidacy |
| p.239 | 2008 | Obama delivers "A More Perfect Union" speech on race |
| 2008 | Obama elected 44th president of the US (more assimilationist vs antiracist) | |
| p.242 | 2013 | #BlackLivesMatter founded by three women as a direct response to racist backlash in th form of police brutality |
| p.243 | 2015 | #SayHerName - social movement that seeks to raise awareness for black female victims of police brutality and anti-black violence |