Here is a list of readings that educators can use to broach conversations in the classroom about the events immediately preceding and following the resignation of University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe as well as the broader student protest emerging at colleges across the United States. These readings provide valuable information about the history of black student movements in the United States, the experiences of black college athletes, and the history of race relations in Missouri, the border South, and the United States in general. They also offer broader insights on race and racial inequality, the intersections of race and sport, struggles over school desegregation, and white supremacy and black resistance. All readings are organized by date of publication. This list is not meant to be exhaustive–you will find omissions. Please view Austin McCoy’s bibliography on campus activism and follow #Mizzousyllabus for additional reading suggestions. Please click here to read Brandon Byrd’s post on the significance of the #mizzousyllabus.
The idea of the #mizzousyllabus was conceived by Dr. Leah Wright Rigueur, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University. An historian by training, Dr. Wright Rigueur received her B.A. in History from Dartmouth College and her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Princeton University. Before joining the Kennedy School faculty, she was a professor at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. Her research interests include 20th Century United States political and social history, and modern African American history. Her first book, The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power (Princeton University Press, 2015) covers more than four decades of American political and social history, and examines the ideas and actions of black Republican activists, officials and politicians, from the era of the New Deal to Ronald Reagan’s presidential ascent in 1980. This semester, Professor Wright Rigueur is teaching a course entitled “Race, Riot, and Backlash in the United States.” You can download a copy here.
Op-Eds, Editorials, and Blogs
- Dave Zirin, “Black Mizzou Football Players Are Going on Strike Over Campus Racism,” 8 November 2015, The Nation
- Ibram X. Kendi, “Beholding Mizzou and the Power of Black Students,” 11 November 2015, African American Intellectual History Society
- Carol Anderson, “The Long and Troubled Racial Past of Mizzou,” 13 November 2015, The Conversation
Readings on Black Student Activism
- Angela Y. Davis, Angela Davis–An Autobiography (1974)
- Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (1981)
- William H. Exum, Paradoxes of Protest: Black Student Activism in a White University (1985)
- Yohuru R. Williams, Black Politics/White Power: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Black Panthers in New Haven (2008)
- Stefan M. Bradley, Harlem vs Columbia University: Black Student Power in the late 1960s (2009)
- Ibram X. Kendi, The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education (2012)
- Martha Biondi, The Black Revolution on Campus (2012)
- Shirletta J. Kinchen, Black Power in the Bluff City: African American Youth and Student Activism in Memphis, 1965-1975 (2015)
On School Desegregation and Institutional Diversity
- Richard Kluger, Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality (1976)
- Lorene Cary, Black Ice (1991)
- Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (2003)
- Tomiko Brown Nagin, Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (2011)
- Sarah Ahmed, On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional LIfe (2012)
Readings on Missouri
- Melton Alonza McLaurin, Celia, A Slave (1991)
- Diane Mutti Burke, On Slavery’s Border: Missouri’s Small-Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865 (2010)
- Aaron Astor, Rebels on the Border: Civil War, Emancipation, and the Reconstruction of Kentucky and Missouri (2012)
- Gary R. Kremer, Race and Meaning: The African American Experience in Missouri (2014)
- Kristen Epps, Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras (2016)
On the University of Missouri
- University of Missouri-Columbia Black Alumni Association, The African-American Experience at the University of Missouri, 1950-1994 (1994)
Readings on Race and Sports
- Amy Bass, Not the Triumph but the Struggle: The 1968 Olympics and the Making of the Black Athlete (2002)
- William C. Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete (2006)
- Billy Hawkins, The New Plantation: Black Athletes, College Sports, and Predominantly White NCAA Institutions (2010)
Multimedia Resources
Classroom Resources
- Katie Walden, Storify on College Sports and Civil Rights
Archives
- Hewlett Diversity Archive, Special Collections and Archives, Wesleyan University
- Guide to African American Experience in Missouri, The State Historical Society of Missouri
- Special Collections and Archives at Mizzou
*This list has been compiled by and is currently being maintained by Brandon R. Byrd, an AAIHS blogger and Assistant Professor of History at Mississippi State University. Please send an email to bbyrd@history.msstate.edu if you find errors, broken links, etc. We are no longer accepting new suggestions for this list. However, please continue to tweet additional suggestions on Twitter using the #Mizzousyllabus hashtag. Thank you!