Arcadia Public Library

Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men -- bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can...

"Our Hidden Conversations is a unique compilation of stories, richly reported essays, and photographs providing a window into America during a tumultuous era. This powerful book offers an honest, if sometimes uncomfortable, conversation about race and identity, permitting us to eavesdrop on deep-seated thoughts, private discussions, and long submerged memories."--

""As we go about our daily lives, caste is the wordless usher in a darkened theater, flashlight cast down in the aisles, guiding us to our assigned seats for a performance. The hierarchy of caste is not about feelings or morality. It is about power--which groups have it and which do not." In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched...

 The National Book Award winning history of how racist ideas were created, spread, and deeply rooted in American society.
Some Americans insist that we're living in a post-racial society. But racist thought is not just alive and well in America — it is more sophisticated and more insidious than ever. And as award-winning historian Ibram X. Kendi argues, racist ideas have a long and lingering history, one in which nearly every...

The bloody attacks of protestors in Selma in 1965 led to the historic protection of all Americans' right to vote. The film explores a cherished family story of Selma and the current state of voter suppression in America..​.Fifty one years ago, the nation watched in horror as bloody images of police attacks on civil rights protestors in Selma, Alabama aired on television. John Witeck was a sophomore at the University of Virginia when he saw the graphic...

This short documentary was created from rare archival footage of almost seventy hours of ½"reel-to-reel video shot by pioneering performance and media artist Anthony D. Ramos. He was the only American camera present to record the historic first two days of independence in Cape Verde after 500 years of colonial rule.

Since its origin in 1859, the song Dixie's Land has been woven into the fabric of American pop culture. Originally penned as a tune for blackface minstrel troupes, the song became the anthem of the confederacy during the Civil War. Adopted by segregationists during the civil rights movement, the song was protested by students during the 60's and 70's. The song has virtually vanished from college campuses throughout the United States, but younger artists,...

Cape Town 1967. Caucasian Christian Barnard transplants the first human heart, but behind him stood an unknown black man: Hamilton Naki

This documentary reportage chronicles the first state visit to the United States in 1983 by Aristides Pereira, Cape Verde’s first president after independence. Highlights include an overview of the Cape Verdean communities in the Fox Point section of Providence and Pawtucket, Rhode Island and President Pereira’s visit to New Bedford, MA and visit to the schooner ERNESTINA, beloved queen of the Cape Verdean packet trade.

The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community...But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis...The...