Office of Social Justice & Activism - OSJA

"...Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples' history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative."--Publisher's description.

"Presents the history of the United States from the point of view of those who were exploited in the name of American progress."

TITLE CURRENTLY ON COURSE RESERVES. "Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Coates shares with his son -- and readers -- the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder."

"Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer's coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice."

"At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain. It consists of two "letters," written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism. Described by The New York Times Book Review as "sermon, ultimatum, confession, deposition, testament, and chronicle...all presented in searing, brilliant prose," The Fire Next Time stands as a classic of literature."

"Based on original interviews and nearly a decade of painstaking research in archives and census records, [this book] provides irrefutable evidence that racial cleansing occurred again and again on American soil and fundamentally reshaped the geography of race. In this groundbreaking book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Elliot Jaspin has rewritten American history as we know it."

"In The Ledger and the Chain, prize-winning historian Joshua D. Rothman tells the disturbing story of the Franklin and Armfield company and the men who built it into the largest and most powerful slave trading company in the United States. In so doing, he reveals the central importance of the domestic slave trade to the development of American capitalism and the expansion of the American nation."

"A powerful polemic on the state of black America that savages the idea of a post-racial society. America's great promise of equality has always rung hollow in the ears of African Americans, but today the situation has grown even more dire.

"Race-based affirmative action had been declining as a factor in university admissions even before the recent spate of related cases arrived at the Supreme Court. ... Cashin offers a new framework for true inclusion for the millions of children who live separate and unequal lives. Setting aside race in use of place in diversity programming, she writes, will better amend the structural disadvantages endured by many children of color, while enhancing the possibility that we might one day move past the racial resentment that affirmative action engenders."

"To Make the Wounded Whole describes how King's black messianic vision propelled him into fateful encounters with other black leaders, the war in Vietnam, black theology and world liberation movements."

Frank Dobson is the director of Otterbein's Office of Social Justice and Activism!

In this book, filled with "entrancing prose," ... "Frank Dobson offers his own bold, subtle explorations of race and life in America." (From review by Jeff Gundy, Bluffton University)

"In America's Original Sin, Wallis offers a call to action in overcoming the racism so ingrained in American society. He speaks candidly to Christians -- particularly white Christians -- urging them to cross a new bridge toward racial justice and healing. Whenever divided cultures and gridlocked power structures fail to end systemic sin, faith communities can help lead the way to grassroots change."

"Unarmed citizens shot by police. Drinking water turned to poison. Mass incarcerations. We've heard the individual stories. Now a leading public intellectual and acclaimed journalist offers a powerful, paradigm-shifting analysis of America's current state of emergency, finding in these events a larger and more troubling truth about race, class, and what it means to be "Nobody.""

Fifty years ago, Malcolm X told a white woman who asked what she could do for the cause, 'Nothing.' Michael Eric Dyson believes he was wrong. Now he responds to that question. If society is to make real racial progress, people must face difficult truths, including being honest about how Black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.

A behind-the-scenes account of the #blacklivesmatter movement shares insights into the young men and women behind it, citing the racially charged controversies that have motivated members and the economic, political, and personal histories that inform its purpose.