Will Black Lives Matter on the Fourth of July? (The COVID-19 Remix)

Independence Day is approaching quickly in the US on Saturday, and it will be an interesting one in the Age of Donald Trump, COVID-19, Social Distancing, Asian American discrimination and harassment and a resurgence of protests demanding that Black Lives Matter.

But many of us don’t think about the Fourth of July’s legacy and how freedom did not come to everyone in 1776, the repercussions of which are still being felt today.

My vision for 2020 was to have it be the year of my holistic healing, until the pandemic interrupted me. And then the social and racial unrests began. The police killings of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade and George Floyd affected me profoundly as an African American man, triggering a memory of how I was once stopped by the police one late night in 1999 while walking home and minding my business. Thankfully, I made it back to my home safely, but the experience left a permanent mark on my psyche. Today, I aim to resist with librarianship, writing and through my social media presence.

While it’s good to know that several corporations are taking a positive stance within the Black Lives Matter movement, I remain somewhat skeptical, seeing as how, historically, we’ve been lied to (my ancestors never did get their 40 acres and a mule in 1865). I want to believe America will finally get it in 2020 and see African Americans as full-fledged humans who deserved to be loved and affirmed. But at least for my part, I will ensure that all my patrons at the library be declared such. My life matters, and I will see to it that Black lives matter with my presence and essence as a Black male librarian and writer. July 4 will indeed be different for many of us, including me.

If you’re in the mood for some (not at all) light reading for the long weekend, here are some of my favorites:

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight is a comprehensive biography of fugitive slave, abolitionist, orator, politician, statesman, and ambassador Frederick Douglass. Douglass made America's hypocrisy clear in his famous speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" at the Rochester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society in Rochester, New York on July 5, 1852.

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele and On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case of Hope by DeRay Mckesson are books written by Black Lives Matter activists.

Rest in Power: The Enduring Legacy of Trayvon Martin by Sybrina Fulton is a memoir by Martin's mother. Fulton is currently running for public office in Miami-Dade County commissioner, District 1.

How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi is a new approach in identifying, discussing and dismantling race, racism, and racialism today. It is one of the most requested books at BPL. His other book, Stamped From The Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, chronicles how racism became a social construct during America’s colonial years and marginalized people of African descent ever since. Kendi also teamed up with best-selling children’s and YA author Jason Reynolds to publish Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, a young readers remix of Stamped from the Beginning. 

Bound to the Fire: How Virginia’s Enslaved Cooks Helped Invent American Cuisine by Kelley Fanto Deetz provides the origins of advertising icons Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Rastus of Cream of Wheat fame. The background begins with enslaved people who worked in plantation kitchens and fed the nation. Food companies adapted real-life stories of enslaved Blacks like Nancy Green into racial tropes and stereotypes, influenced American cuisine, and made billions off these images. 

In the Shadow of Statues: A White Southerner Confronts History by Mitch Landrieu is a memoir of the New Orleans mayor who removed Confederate monuments and argued for White Americans to reckon with their racist histories. 

Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? by Mumia Abu-Jamal is a collection of essays from the longtime activist and journalist, who has been a political prisoner for 38 years for the alleged murder of a White police officer in Philadelphia. He explores the origins of the police as plantation patrollers in the Antebellum South. 

Lies My Teacher Taught Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen argues that history textbooks have lied to school children by presenting lies and myths as truths. 

Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop by Yuval Taylor is a historical look into the origins of blackface minstrel shows as entertainment by both White and Black performers. 

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn is the exploration into the collective histories of Indigenous/Native Nations, Africans, women, poor and rich Whites, Latinos, Asians, gays, people with disabilities, and other marginalized people.

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz looks at the history of Indigenous Peoples outside of the savage and uncivilized stereotypes attached to them by imperialists and colonists. Jean Mendoza and Debbie Reese published a young readers version, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People, to guide them with hands-on resources to learn the history not taught to them in schools. 

The Making of Asian America: A History by Erika Lee is a valuable source because it details the origins of anti-Asian racism and discrimination in America with the Yellow Peril stereotypes, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982, and the Model Minority myths.