Antiracism Resources

Combining archival footage with testimony from activists and scholars, director Ava DuVernay's examination of the U.S. prison system looks at how the country's history of racial inequality drives the high rate of incarceration in America. Also streaming on Netfix.

A six-part series from PBS that explores the global experiences that created the African-American people.

The killing of Trayvon Martin provoked candid reflection from President Obama on the subject of discrimination and American race relations. PBS NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown Nathan McCall, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Bishop Harry Jackson Jr. and Michael Melton join Jeffrey Brown to continue the conversation on life and perception for black men in the U.S.

This PBS town hall meeting, moderated by Gwen Ifill, explores the many issues around race relations that have come to the fore after a white gunman shot and killed nine African-American parishioners in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, and the removal of the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds that followed.

Are racists born or made? Pioneering scientists have recently revealed that they can detect whether a person is subconsciously racist through a series of tests that are as ground-breaking as they are simple to do. This fascinating and revealing documentary showcases the latest scientific developments that can detect, measure, and change racist impulses in the brain.

Based on the 2018 adaptation and staging of the book at the Apollo Theater, this HBO special combines elements of the Apollo’s production, including powerful readings from Coates’ book, and incorporates documentary footage from the actors’ home life, archival footage, and animation

An Oscar-nominated documentary narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, I Am Not Your Negro explores the continued peril America faces from institutionalized racism.

World-renowned civil rights defense attorney Bryan Stevenson works to free a wrongly condemned death row prisoner.

In the wake of decisions by grand juries in both Missouri and New York’s Staten Island not to indict white police officers in the deaths of unarmed African-Americans, this edition of Moyers & Company is an encore broadcast of Bill’s conversation earlier this year with journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor for The Atlantic, about his cover story “The Case for Reparations” about why America needs to reconcile with its racist past.

Episode one explores how recent scientific discoveries have toppled the concept of biological race. Episode two questions the belief that race has always been with us. It traces the race concept to the European conquest of the Americas. Episode three focuses on how our institutions shape and create race.

Rodney King, whose 1991 videotaped beating by Los Angeles police launched a public dialogue about race relations in the United States, died at age 47. NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown, Patt Morrison of The Los Angeles Times, and Darnell Hunt of the University of California, Los Angeles, discuss his complicated life.

Activist journalist Desmond Cole puts racism in Canada front and center in the new CBC documentary The Skin We're In. Cole visits the sister of Andrew Loku, the 45-year-old South Sudanese man slain by Toronto police, and the Michael Brown memorial in Ferguson, Missouri, while tracing the legacy of anti-Black racism past and present. The program offers a glimpse, too, into the world of Cole the activist and his at times wearying fight for social justice.

The gap in opportunities for different races in America remains extreme. Nowhere is this more evident than our nation's top public schools. In New York City, where Blacks and Hispanics make up 70% of the city's school-aged population, they represent less than 5% at the city's most elite public high schools. Meanwhile, Asian Americans make up as much as 73%. This documentary follows a dozen racially and socioeconomically diverse 8th graders as they fight for a seat at one of these schools. Their only way in: to ace a single standardized test.

This inspirational documentary is about a band of courageous civil-rights activists calling themselves the Freedom Riders. Gaining impressive access to influential figures on both sides of the issue, it chronicles a chapter of American history that stands as an astonishing testament to the accomplishment of youth and what can result from the incredible combination of personal conviction and the courage to organize against all odds.

Documents a reunion of Iowa teacher Jane Elliott and her third-grade class of 1970, subjects that year of an ABC News television documentary entitled "The eye of the storm." Shows how her experimental curriculum on the evils of discrimination had a lasting effect on the lives of the students.

During the hottest day of the year in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, racial tensions are quickly inflamed and violence ensues.

An essential examination of the rise and fall of Orenthal James Simpson, and parallels between his incredible story with that of race in America. This critically-acclaimed documentary series reveals how he first became a football star, why America fell in love with him off the field, what happened in the trial for his ex-wife's murder, and finally, why he is now sitting in jail for another crime 20 years later.

In 1997, actor Morgan Freeman, a resident of the small town of Charleston, Miss., offered to pay for the senior prom at Charleston High School under one condition: the prom must be racially integrated. His offer was ignored. In 2008 he offered again, and the offer was accepted, changing the tradition of two separate proms for blacks and whites that had endured since the high school was integrated in 1970. Shows the problems and lessons learned as the event was planned and held.

The 1977 adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots, in which Haley traces his African American family's history from the mid-18th century to the Reconstruction era. The gripping story is told through four generations, from the capture of Kunta Kinte in Africa to his transport to Colonial America in brutal conditions through successive generations fighting to win their freedom in the Civil War. You may also be interested in the 2016 remake.

The true story of the 1923 razing of a black town in Florida, many of its people murdered over a lie. But some escaped and survived because of the courage and compassion of a few extraordinary people.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historical struggle to secure voting rights for all people. A dangerous and terrifying campaign that culminated with an epic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1964.