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Ari Berman is an award-winning journalist, national voting rights correspondent at Mother Jones, Reporting Fellow at Type Media Center and author of GIVE US THE BALLOT: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America. Countless books have been written about the civil rights movement, but far less attention has been paid to what happened after the dramatic passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and the turbulent forces it unleashed. In this groundbreaking narrative history. Through meticulous research, in-depth interviews, and incisive on-the-ground reporting, Give Us the Ballot offers the first comprehensive history of its kind, and provides new insight into one of the most vital political and civil rights issues of our time. Join the World of Wellesley for our 2023, Community Book Read, “Give Us the Ballot”. You will have the chance to meet and hear directly from Ari Berman at an in-person event on March 21st. In the interim, recommend this book to your friends and neighbors and ask yourself why is the right to vote still under debate?
For more information and reviews of “Give Us the Ballot”, go to:
Purchase “Give Us The Ballot” from Wellesley Books (click here)
Join our Community Book read! In addition to reading the book, we invite you to organize or join a book discussion for your organization, place of worship, coworkers or book group.
There will be an author event with Isabel Wilkerson. Register here!
Join author Isabel Wilkerson for a virtual webinar MARCH 10, 2022, 6:15-7:30 PM.
It will be facilitated by Dr. Regine Michelle Jean-Charles, Director of Northeastern University’s Department of Africana Studies, and Dean’s Professor of Culture and Social Justice, and Professor of Africana Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, was published in August 2020 to critical acclaim and became a Number 1 New York Times bestseller. Dwight Garner of The New York Times called it, “An instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far.” Oprah Winfrey chose it as her 2020 Summer/Fall book club selection, declaring it “the most important book” she had ever selected.
Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her deeply humane narrative writing while serving as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times in 1994, making her the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize and the first African American to win for individual reporting. In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded Wilkerson the National Humanities Medal for “championing the stories of an unsung history.” –Penguin Random House
Learn more about Ms. Wilkerson and her work here.
Join our Community Book read! In addition to reading the book, we invite you to organize or join a book discussion for your organization, place of worship, coworkers or book group.
Dr. Walker is one of the most powerful voices today in the areas of relational and cultural growth, antiracism and reconciliation. She has worked at Harvard Business School and Wellesley College. She is passionate about bridging cultural differences. She is hopeful and inspirational and believes in the individual and collective power to heal our divisions and disconnections.
Race is a powerful qualifier in our society, it shapes perceptions of who belongs and informs narratives of who we are as a community and as individuals. Using examples from her practice as a licensed psychologist and as an African American growing up in the South, Dr. Walker provides a way to enter into cross-racial discussion about race and race relations. Throughout her book Dr. Walker shares stories as examples of our racialized lives and poses questions for reader reflection.
Learn more about Dr. Walker and her work here.
Named a best book of the year by Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, GQ, Time, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, NPR’s Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s “On Point,” Vogue, Smithsonian, Cosmopolitan, Seattle Times, Bloomberg, Lit Hub’s “Ultimate Best Books,” Library Journal, Paste, Kirkus, Slate.com and Book Browse.
From New Yorker staff writer David Grann, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Lost City of Z, a twisting, haunting true-life murder mystery about one of the most monstrous crimes in American history.
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.
Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. The family of an Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, became a prime target. Her relatives were shot and poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more and more members of the tribe began to die under mysterious circumstances.
In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes like Al Spencer, the “Phantom Terror,” roamed—many of those who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll climbed to more than twenty-four, the FBI took up the case. It was one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations and the bureau badly bungled the case. In desperation, the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only American Indian agents in the bureau. The agents infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.
In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. Based on years of research and startling new evidence, the book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward American Indians that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly compelling, but also emotionally devastating.
Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans. In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, and drawing from history, the authors disrupt long-held and enduring myths such as:
Each chapter deftly shows how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance. Accessibly written and revelatory, “All the Real Indians Died Off” challenges readers to rethink what they have been taught about Native Americans and history.
We as people who reside, work, and engage in Wellesley acknowledge this town is located on the traditional territory of the Massachusett and Nipmuc Tribes. Learn more about Native Land.
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