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Black Lives Matter: A Guide

Overview

Black Lives Matter challenges the systemic racism and violence faced by African Americans. The movement grew out of a response to the pervasive police brutality experienced by Black people. Black Lives Matter is a global movement founded by community organizers Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. 

The Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library has gathered a sample of available library resources to help you explore various facets of these complex and significant issues. For help locating books in the library, consult this guide and/or ask for directions at the library's information desk. If you have resources to suggest, please feel free to email usFinally, as this guide is far from comprehensive, please search the library's catalog or chat with a librarian to find additional resources.

Primary Source Databases

Current News

To access the full text of local, national and international newspapers, please use these databases. Content is updated daily and you'll find today's papers already available. It's a great way to avoid paywalls! Contact a librarian with questions or for help.

Film & Music

We've listed a few of our favorite films by Black creators below, as well as a link to the Jazz Music Library, which you can access on your computer. You can check out DVDs from the library; we also have portable DVD players to rent.

Harmful Language Statement

The Gustavus Library is committed to fostering an inclusive and welcoming environment for all our patrons. We acknowledge that harmful and outdated language or terminology exists in catalog records for our materials, though, and we would welcome your help in identifying such instances.

If you encounter any language that you consider to be harmful or offensive to yourself or others, please use this form to report it and suggest alternative language. We will contact the Library of Congress to request that changes be made whenever we come across items under their purview and will supplement our own descriptions with more respectful terms as necessary. We also direct you to our entire Harmful Language Statement for more information. 

Gustavus Library DEI guides

Black History

Be sure to also browse the shelves in the General Collection in the E184 - E185 section (third floor), where you'll find a lot of books related to Black history.

Antiracism

Race and the Law

Fiction

To browse more fiction by Black authors, search "Fiction Black authors" or "African American authors Fiction" in the Advanced Search of the library catalog; set the search field to Subject. We've also been actively growing our Afrofuturism collection! Search "African and Diasporic Speculative Fiction" as a keyword to see titles.

Memoirs

Librarians

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Reference Librarians
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507-933-7567

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0