How to Be an Ally During Black History Month and Beyond

Workshops, Toolkits & More

The Center for Equity & Inclusion helped our staff begin their equity journey, providing valuable tools and resources to build a foundation of understanding. New staff members at OCF have participated in the four-day, virtual Reframing Racism Workshop.

Get your daily dose of Black history by following the Great Plains Black History Museum on Facebook. Check out their virtual exhibit, Black and White in Black and White: Images of Dignity, Hope, and Diversity in America. Visit in-person, at 2221 N 24th St., by appointment.

Learning for Justice, formerly known as Teaching Tolerance, is geared toward teachers but anyone can benefit from their rich repository of articles, webinars, and frameworks for self-guided learning. Many of the lessons found here could be adapted for workplaces of all kinds.

Follow Connect Black Omaha. The digital platform focuses on culturally relevant events and resources, engaging local businesses, and supporting the vibrancy of Black culture. Looking to support Black-owned businesses during BHM 2022 and beyond? There’s a directory for that.

The African American Unity Fund supports initiatives and organizations that benefit the Black community in the Omaha-Council Bluffs metro area. Funding priorities include areas related to arts and culture, community development, health and wellness, capacity building, and more.

The application period is open annually January 1 to March 1. Also, anyone can donate to the African American Unity Fund.

Books

Originally published in 1965, the autobiography tells the life story of Malcolm X, one of the most pivotal figures in civil rights history, who was born in Omaha. It dives into his perspective of the American Dream, its limitations, and the country’s inherent racism.

This crucial reading demonstrates the link between slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, and racism. A great companion to this book is Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th on Netflix, where scholars, activists, and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans and the U.S. prison boom.

In a series of essays that takes the form of an open letter to his son about race in America, Ta-Nehisi Coates seeks to answer: What is it like to inhabit a Black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to “model minorities” in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism.

The Black Experience through the Lens of Rudy Smith, a photographer who worked at the Omaha World-Herald for 45 years, includes over 300 photos from sports icons Bob Gibson, Bob Boozer, Marlin Briscoe, Johnny Rodgers and Gale Sayers to musicians B.B. King, Dizzy Gillespie, and Gladys Knight to the 1960s civil rights riots and the joys and struggles in North Omaha.

Debby Irving, a white woman, shares her sometimes cringe-worthy struggles to understand racism and racial tensions, and offers another perspective on bias, stereotypes, manners, and tolerance.

The Omaha Public Library shared their picks here.

Films

Out of Omaha is a coming-of-age story about twin brothers Darcell and Darrell Trotter, two Black men growing up in the racially divided city of Omaha, Nebraska.

The Hate U Give, based on the best-selling novel by Angie Thomas, follows a teenager who witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood friend; she must find her voice and stand up for what’s right.

Based on James Baldwin’s unfinished book, I Am Not Your Negro explores racism through the stories of Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.

“Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People” probes the recesses of American history through images that have been suppressed, forgotten, and lost.

Out of Darkness, a three-part documentary, examines the untold history of African people and the African cultural contribution to the nations of the world.

Dark Girls is a documentary that explores the prejudices and cultural bias that dark-skinned women face throughout the world.

Podcasts

Hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw, an American civil rights advocate and a leading scholar of critical race theory, Intersectionality Matters! unpacks political and racial topics through conversations with activists, journalists, politicians, and historians.

Hosted by journalists of color, NPR’s Code Switch podcast tackles the subject of race head-on.

The Diversity Gap, hosted Bethaney Wilkinson, addresses the gap between good intentions and good impact regarding diversity, inclusion, culture, and belonging. She has additional resources on her website, including a book.

The voices of change makers, content creators, activists, and leaders driving a movement for accurate representations of Black people.

Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist, is back with a new podcast. The Roxane Gay Agenda. If you enjoy hearing from people—women, mostly; Black women, usually—who bring unique perspectives to a world in complete and utter chaos, add this to your listening list.

Talks & More

Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice—and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. (TED)

In a 2-minute video, Layla Saad addresses how to turn “performative wokeness” into allyship. Saad is the author of best-selling book “Me and White Supremacy“

Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989 to describe how race, class, gender, and other individual characteristics overlap. In this moving talk, she calls on us to bear witness to this reality. (TED)

*She also has a podcast Intersectionality Matters!

In these true stories told live, Emily Richmond wrestles with a grade school survey, and Maxie Jones witnesses a historic night in Harlem.

Finance executive Mellody Hobson makes the case that speaking openly about race—and particularly about diversity in hiring—makes for better businesses and a better society. (TED)

A recent story from the New York Times — “What if Instead of Calling People Out, We Called Them In?” — features Smith College professor Loretta J. Ross.