Colin Kaepernick Will Not Be Silenced Colin Kaepernick's protest against police brutality puts him in rare company in sports history.

At a time in our nation’s history when inflammatory debates over the purpose, scope, and legacy of black protest and white backlash have taken a front-row seat in our collective consciousness, we argue that the need for elevated public discourse supported by accurate depictions of history could not be greater. In service of this goal, we have compiled a list of “Freedom Dream” resources spanning close to two centuries—including books, essays, films, documentaries, songs, and museums—that can help readers, viewers, and listeners to understand race as the central political, cultural, economic, social, and geographic organizing principle of our nation, past and present. For it is only when we acknowledge the centrality of race in dictating the outcomes of life and death in the United States can we begin to work toward meaningful forms of racial justice.

Not only do the following resources reflect the ideas, feelings, histories, and theories to which Colin Kaepernick has drawn attention through his activism and philanthropy, but they also represent the thematic basis of many of our personal conversations with him over the past few years.

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“The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro”

Frederick Douglass (1852)

At a gathering predominated by white abolitionists in Rochester, New York, Douglass offers a searing indictment of the chasm between the nation’s founding principles and its racial reality. Douglass refused to celebrate the Fourth of July until all persons subject to enslavement were emancipated.

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Harriet Jacobs (1861)

The autobiography of Harriet Jacobs is arguably the most well-known antebellum slave narrative written by a woman. Directing critical attention to the intersection of race and gender, Jacobs chronicles experiences specific to black women under slavery.

Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases

Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1892)

Wells-Barnett emerged in the 1890s as one of the most forceful critics and chroniclers of the lynching of black citizens during the 19th century. Originally published as a pamphlet, Southern Horrors documents “the extent to which lynch law prevails in parts of the Republic [and] the conditions which force into exile those who speak the truth.”

The Mis-Education of the Negro

Carter G. Woodson (1933)

Woodson offers a deep critique of the role of education in the reproduction of racial inequality and black subjugation. He writes, "When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper place' and will stay in it.” He contends that rectifying such "miseducation" is the most urgent issue facing the black community.