But wait, there's more! Our volunteer community had a lot to share about what books and resources have made a difference for them in understanding the historical context of racial injustice. If you haven't seen it, check out We Keep Learning: Part I. 
 
We are continual learners who strive to connect others to resources that our board, volunteers, and staff are finding helpful in that quest.  We are currently reading, following, and listening to:

Brynn:

• "Here is my syllabus for my CCP African American History course"

Haley:

• https://www.todaysparent.com/family/books/kids-books-that-talk-about-racism (as the link says, resources for talking with kids about racism)
• White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard For White People To Talk About Racism by Robin Diangelo

John:
 
Films
Amazing Grace  (based on the origin of the hymn and the fight to end the British slave trade)
Amistad (based on the famous 1839 rebellion on a slave ship and the aftermath)
Almos’ a Man (based on Richard Wright’s short story; PBS American Short Story Film Series)
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (based on the novel by Ernest J. Gaines)
Do the Right Thing (written, produced, and directed by Spike Lee)
I Am Not Your Negro (documentary based on an unfinished manuscript by James Baldwin)
 
Essays
Frederick Douglass, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time and Notes of a Native Son
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose, especially the title essay
Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me
Eve Fairbanks, “The ‘Reasonable’ Rebels,” Washington Post, 8/29/2019
 
Autobiography
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Malcolm X with Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (also Spike Lee’s film Malcolm X)
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (also the film)
Melba Pattillo Beals, Warriors Don’t Cry
 
Short Fiction
James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”
Langston Hughes, The Best of Simple
 
Novels
Charles Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon and Beloved
Ernest J. Gaines, A Gathering of Old Men and A Lesson Before Dying
Octavia Butler, Kindred
Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River
Nnedi Okorafor, The Binti Trilogy: Binti, Binti: Home, Binti: The Night Masquerade
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
 
Poems
Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask”
Langston Hughes, Montage of a Dream Deferred
Robert Hayden, “Those Winter Sundays”
 
Experiences
Seeing the signs for “White” and “Colored” as a child traveling in the South with my parents
       in the 1950s
Teaching in the Xavier University E Pluribus Unum Program decades ago
Listening to African American faculty and students at Xavier over the years
Taking the 21-Day Racial Equity and Social Justice Challenge from the Cleveland YWCA in
        2019
Docenting and leading discussions at Harriet Beecher Stowe House

Harriet wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851-52 to draw light to the injustices of her own time.  With the current challenges our nation faces, we are reminded that the legacy of Harriet's time still interferes with our nation’s journey towards an equitable society. 

The Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House community values the ideas of historical literacy (http://stowehousecincy.org/aboutus.html. ) As part of our lead-in week to Harriet’s Virtual Birthday Party on Sunday June 14th, we want to share ideas and resources we have found helpful in our own learning process. 
 
We are continual learners who strive to connect others to resources that our board, volunteers, and staff are finding helpful in that quest.  We are currently reading, following, and listening to:
 
Abigail:

• Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor by Layla F. Saad
• Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation by Latasha Morrison
• We are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century edited by Dorothy Sterling (for Semi-Colon club)
• Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center
• Cincinnati NAACP

 
Christina:

• The Stony Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
• International Coalition of Sites of Conscience
• NPR Codeswitch podcast

​Fred:

• I just concluded reading Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby (Metropolitan Books 2004).  It took a few months of lockdown to read this wonderfully written history, which introduced me to a number of heroes I had not known, including Ernestine Rose (early 19th century Jewish feminist émigré from Europe) and Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (early 20th century publisher of Little Blue Books).
• Earlier in the lockdown I read Harriet Beecher Stowe in Florida, 1867 to 1884 by Olav Thulesius (McFarland & Co. 2001), a short 150-page expanded thesis I think, a choppy read, but with a lot of information about her role in Reconstruction and her environmental concerns.
• Now I am two-thirds of the way through Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Known and the Unknown by Edward Wagenknecht (Oxford University Press 1965), “a psychograph, or “portrait,” or character study” of the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  I highly recommend it.
• In late April, after reading so many articles others had shared on Facebook that originated from The Atlantic magazine, I subscribed digitally.  It has been a stellar source of quality journalism about the Covid pandemic, the self-destruction of the Trump regime, and the Black Lives Matter protests.  How appropriate, as when I subscribed Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief, sent an email entitled “How It All Began” that explained:  “In the spring of 1857, a group of Boston transcendentalists gathered for dinner at the Parker House Hotel. After five hours of repartee, they decided to create a new magazine, one that would make politics, literature, and the arts its chief concerns.They were united in three ways: their opposition to slavery, their love of American writing, and their tripartite names—including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and James Russell Lowell. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, was invited, but she boycotted the dinner when she learned that alcohol would be served. After everyone agreed on Oliver Wendell Holmes’s proposed name, a plan for The Atlantic was set. The founders wanted to be “fearless and outspoken” at the dawn of “a new era of human civilization.” In a manifesto, they promised to be “the organ of no party or clique”; to “honestly endeavor to be the exponent of what its conductors believe to be the American idea”; and to care for the “whole domain of aesthetics.” The manifesto was signed by, among others, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and yes, "Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe."

Robin:

• Just Mercy, book by Bryan Stevenson, and movie
• Dark Waters, movie
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
• Black Prophetic Power by Cornell West -- It's a look at six well-known revolutionary African American leaders: Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Malcolm X, and Ida B. Wells.
• No One is Illegal by Justin Akers Chacon and Mike Davis
• The Bridge that is My Back, poetry collection, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria E. Anzaldúa.

6/11/2021 update: General admission hours will resume on Saturdays (10am-4pm) and Sundays (12pm-4pm). Tours by appointment will continue on Thursdays and Fridays.

7/9/2020 update: In the event that Hamilton county enters Level 4 (purple) in the Ohio Public Health Advisory System, the site will close to the public and re-open at the direction of the Ohio History Connection.

7/2/2020 update: Due to current high levels of virus spread in Hamilton County, masks will be required for all visitors. If you have a medical exemption request, please indicate this on your tour request form. 

Thank you for making plans to visit the Harriet Beecher Stowe House! We are thrilled to welcome you. For the health and safety of our visitors, volunteers, and staff, we have implemented new guidelines. Some highlights are below. You can CLICK HERE read our full re-opening plan. 
 
What you need to know:​

from the Board of the Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House:

It was an interesting and cathartic moment. We were coming to the conclusion of our zoom board meeting, when one of the members paused and expressed her dismay at the death of Mr. George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police department.
 
This outrage has transcended racial and political lines. Protests have erupted around the country and overseas. Law enforcement officials, black and white, have expressed their concern and disagreement with the police tactic the world has seen. As in the case of Eric Garner in New York, Floyd’s words “I can’t breathe” have become the new plea of protest.
 
The board meeting mentioned was a meeting of the Board of Trustees of Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House.  Just like the outrage of our board member and others, there was another brave person who, over a century and a half ago, expressed her outrage about slavery and the treatment of people of color in this country: Harriet Beecher Stowe. Mrs. Stowe had received a letter from her sister in law, Mrs. Isabella Jones Beecher in which she said to Harriet: “If I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that will make this nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is.” According to Harriet’s children she read their aunt’s letter to them, then rose to her feet with crumpled letter in her hand, and declared, “I will write something, I will if I live.”
 
She wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852.  The book profoundly transformed how Americans thought about the institution of slavery. It is said of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, that never before had the “curious institution” been so effectively contrasted with the ideals of American liberty and Christian virtue. Now 168 years after the publishing of her book and on the eve of her birthday, we the community of the Friends of Harriet Beecher Stowe House must declare our position as the vestiges of slavery in the form of institutional racism continue in the United States of America.
 
The United States built its own freedom, in part, on the dispossession of one race and the enslavement of another. The problem of racism is deeply rooted in the nation’s very foundation. That was the profound truth that Harriet Beecher Stowe sought to communicate by writing Uncle Tom’s Cabin.  Stowe intended that her work would cause her readers to see the humanity in others.  As a people, our progress toward that goal has been at best piecemeal, and has had many setbacks.  Recent events in Minneapolis and elsewhere make it very clear that we are still a long way from the ideal that Harriet Beecher Stowe sought to encourage. In homage to her, the Friends of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House join with people of goodwill everywhere in condemning senseless acts of racial violence.  We look forward to the day when, as a nation, we can live up to the ideal that Harriet Beecher Stowe envisioned: seeing the humanity in others and advocating for freedom and opportunity for all people.