Part I. Slavery, survival, and community building / Kidada E. Williams

"An address to the slaves of the United States" / Henry Highland Garnet

From life and adventures of Charles Ball / Charles Ball

From incidents in the life of a slave girl / Harriet Jacobs

"Roll Jordan roll" / adapted by Nicholas Britell

"I've been in the storm so long"

"Before Charleston's church shooting, a long history of attacks" / Douglas R. Egerton

"The first attack on Charleston's AME Church" / Maurie McInnis

From "sweet dreams of freedom': freedwomen's reconstruction of life and labor in lowcountry South Carolina" / Leslie Schwalm

From soul by soul: life inside the antebellum slave market / Walter Johnson

From saltwater slavery: a middle passage from Africa to American diaspora / Stephanie E. Smallwood

From in the shadow of slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863 / Leslie M. Harris

Part II. Religious life, spirituality, and racial identity / Keisha N. Blain

From religious experience and journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee, giving an account of her call to preach the gospel / Jarena Lee

"Amazing grace" / John Newton

"Love and terror in the Black church" / Michael Eric Dyson

"The long and proud history of Charleston's AME Church" / Manisha Sinha

"The condition of Black life is one of mourning" / Claudia Rankine

From African American religion: a very short introduction / Eddie S. Glaude

From "bitter herbs and a lock of hair: recollections of Africa in slave narratives of the Garrisonian era" / Jermaine O. Archer

From Islam in Black America: identity, liberation, and difference in African American Islamic thought / Edward Curtis

From God's long summer: stories of faith and civil rights / Charles Marsh

From songs of Zion: the African Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa / James Campbell

Part III. The Civil War and Reconstruction in history and memory / Kidada E. Williams

"The Civil Rights Bill": extracts from a speech delivered in the House of Representatives / Robert Brown Elliot

"Declaration of the immediate causes which induce and justify the secession of South Carolina from the federal union"

From "The Constitution of the Confederate States" / with annotations by Stephanie McCurry

"Corner stone speech" / Alexander H. Stephens

"No more auction block for me" / Gustavus D. Pike

From "A second Haitian revolution: John Brown, Toussaint Louverture, and the making of the American Civil War" / Matthew Clavin

From Black over White: Negro political leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction / Thomas C. Holt

From to joy my freedom: southern Black womens' lives and labors after the Civil War / Tera W. Hunter

From Confederate reckoning: power and politics in the Civil War south / Stephanie McCurry

From terror in the heart of freedom: citizenship, sexual violence, and the meaning of race in the post-emancipation south / Hannah Rosen

Part IV. Jim Crow, racial politics, and global White supremacy / Kidada E. Williams

From Plessy v. Ferguson / Supreme Court of the United States (163 U.S. 537)

From "Declaration of the rights of the Negro peoples of the world: the principles of the Universal Negro Improvement Association" / Marcus Garvey and the UNIA

"Call to the march" / Asa Philip Randolph

From "The souls of White folk" / W.E.B. Du Bois

From a red record / Ida B. Wells-Barnett

"If we must die" / Claude McKay

"Strange fruit" / Abel Meeropol and Billie Holliday

"Rhodesian flag, Confederate flag: roof and the legacies of racial hate" / Benjamin Foldy

From southern horrors: women and the politics of rape and lynching / Crystal N. Feimster

From "We are not what we seem': rethinking Black working-class opposition in the Jim Crow south" / Robin D.G. Kelley

From "to speak when and where I can': African American women's political activism in South Carolina in the 1940s and 1950s" / Cherisse Jones-Branch

From the possessive investment in whiteness: how White people profit from identity politics / George Lipsitz

"Blackness beyond boundaries': navigating the political economies of global inequality" / Manning Marable

Part V. Civil rights and Black power / Chad Williams

"Testimony before the Credentials Committee, Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey" / Fannie Lou Hamer

"We shall overcome"

"Mississippi Goddam" / Nina Simone

"The Black agenda

Gary declaration: Black politics at the crossroads" / National Black Political Convention

"Is it time to reevaluate the church's role in the civil rights movement?" / Robin Blake

"More than a seat on the bus" / Danielle McGuire

From "Joanne is you and Joanne is me': a consideration of african american women and the 'free joan little' movement, 1974-75" / Genna Rae McNeil

From "could history repeat itself? the prospects for a second reconstruction in post-World War II South Carolina" / Robert Korstad

From up south: civil rights and Black power in Philadelphia / Matthew Countryman

From we will shoot back: armed resistance in the Mississippi freedom movement / Akinyele Umoja

Part VI. Contemporary perspectives on race and racial violence / Chad Williams

"Remarks by the president in eulogy for the honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney, College of Charleston, Charleston, South Carolina" / Barack Obama

"The blacker the berry" / Kendrick Lamar

From "Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department" / United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division

"Speech on Walter Scott shooting" / Clementa Pinckney

"Black bodies, White terrorism: a global reimagining of forgiveness" / Esther Armah

"Ella taught me: shattering the myth of the leaderless movement" / Barbara Ransby

"On the pole for freedom: Bree Newsome's politics, theory, and theology of resistance" / Brittney Cooper

From hate thy neighbor: move in violence and the persistence of racial segregation in housing / Jeannine Bell

From Charleston in Black and White: race and power in the south after the civil rights movement / Steve Estes

From not even past: Barack Obama and the burden of race / Thomas Sugrue

From "African American women, mass incarceration, and the politics of protection" / Kali Nicole Gross.