Black Lives Matter

In response to the continued acts of racial violence committed by law enforcement in the U.S. and the ensuing worldwide protest movement, the CMA staff has compiled this collection of resources to help advance anti-racism work in our community and beyond. We recognize that this is a small sample of the many resources currently available on these issues. We invite you to begin here and to never stop learning.

CMA Board of Directors: Statement of Solidarity, June 2020

Literature by living authors has been marked with a caret (^).

Updated: October 3, 2022

• Music by Black Composers

• Black Music Matters (earsense)
• Creative Black Music at the Walker (Walker Art Center)
• Blues People Amiri Baraka
• A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music George E. Lewis^

• Centering the Picture: The role of race & ethnicity in cultural engagement Slover Linett Audience Research
• Black Scholars Confront White Supremacy Alex Ross^
• Opera Can No Longer Ignore Its Race Problem Joshua Barone^
• Black Artists on How to Change Classical Music Interviews by Zachary Woolfe^ and Joshua Barone^
• Lifting the Cone of Silence From Black Composers George E. Lewis^
• A Small Act of Curation George E. Lewis^
• On Racial Justice A Letter from Billie Holiday Theatre Artistic Director Indira Etwaroo^
• Color Blind: Anna Netrebko and Blackface Olivia Giovetti^ (VAN Magazine)
• Why is American Classical Music so White? Tom Huizenga^ (NPR)
• How the Beatles Destroyed Rock & Roll Elijah Wald^

Guides

• Anti-Racism Resources (compiled by Sarah Sophie Flicker and Alyssa Klein)
• A Guide to Allyship (compiled anonymously; sources cited within)

Short Reads

• Denial Is the Heartbeat of America Ibram X. Kendi^

• Talking About Race (National Museum of African American History and Culture)

Long Reads

• White Fragility Robin DiAngelo^
• How to Be An Antiracist Ibram X. Kendi^
• Me and White Supremacy Layla F. Saad^

Short Reads/Websites

• #8toAbolition
• The 1619 Project (The New York Times Magazine)

• Black Lives Matter

• blackspace Manifesto
• The BREATHE Act Summary (Movement for Black Lives [M4BL])

• Colorlines

• Carceral Tech Resistance Network
• Defunding The Police: What Would It Mean For The U.S.? (NPR)
• Freedom to Thrive: Reimagining Safety & Security in our Communities (by the Center for Popular Democracy, Law for Black Lives, and Black Youth Project 100)

• The Movement for Black Lives

• Protecting Communities from Gentrification (Institute for Local Self-Reliance)Democracy Now!:
  • Articles on Police Brutality | Articles on the Black Lives Matter Movement

Long Reads

• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness Michelle Alexander^
• Are Prisons Obsolete?, Abolition Democracy, and Freedom is a Constant Struggle Angela Davis^
• Necropolitics Achille Mbembe^
• The End of Policing Alex Vitale^

• 13th (2016, Ava DuVernay) | (Also on Netflix)
• The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (2015, Stanley Nelson) | (Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube)
• I Am Not Your Negro (2016, Raoul Peck) | (Amazon Prime, iTunes, YouTube)
• Angela Davis on Abolition, Calls to Defund Police, Toppled Racist Statues & Voting in 2020 Election (from Democracy Now!)
• Claudia Rankine: On Whiteness (PBS)
• “Systemic Racism Explained” (act.tv)
• Cornel West on Music, Race, and Compassion (WNYC)
• A Conversation on Race and Privilege with Angela Davis and Jane Elliott (University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work)

• 1619 (The New York Times)
• Code Switch “The Racial Reckoning that Wasn’t” (NPR)
• Code Switch (NPR)
• Intersectionality Matters! (hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw)
• Momentum A Race Forward Podcast
• Nice White Parents (The New York Times)
• Pod for the Cause (from the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights)
• Pod Save the People (Crooked Media)

Financial Support

• National Bail Fund Network Directory

• National Bail Out

• The Bail Project

• Black Trans Femmes in the Arts

• The Okra Project

• National Lawyers Guild

• Justice for Breonna Taylor Fund

Other Ways to Support

• Defund12.org

• Bail Payer Volunteer Sign-Up (NYC only)

• The Radical Database (Created by Angela Ruiz)
• Ways You Can Help

• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou
• Notes of a Native Son James Baldwin
• Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates^
• “What to a Slave is the Fourth of July” Frederick Douglass
• The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches W.E.B. Du Bois
• Bad Feminist: Essays Roxane Gay^
• Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America Melissa Harris-Perry^
• Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black bell hooks
• Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of This Nation John Lewis
• “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” Martin Luther King Jr.
• Zami: A New Spelling of My Name Audre Lorde
• Beloved and The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison
• Revolutionary Suicide and To Die For The People Huey P. Newton
• Citizen: An American Lyric Claudia Rankine^
• Assata: An Autobiography Assata Shakur^
• The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race Jesmyn Ward^, editor
• The Autobiography of Malcom X Malcom X and Alex Haley
• NYPL Schomburg Center Black Liberation Reading List