Category: Advocacy Center News

Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy’s Anti-Racist Reading List

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At Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy, we believe that ALL people should have access to legal assistance and resources that ensure stability and promote opportunity. We fight for equal justice under the law every day. Racial justice and equity are inherent to this work. 

During the Black Lives Matter protests over last summer, The Advocacy Center staff compiled a list of books, articles, and podcast that had contributed to our own learning of anti-racism, racial oppression, and inequities in the United States. In honor of Martin Luther King Jr., we would like to share that list with you so that as a community we can continue our own education. Today is a day of reflection on how far we have come and how much further we have to go to reach true equality in our nation.

Articles:

“Maintaining Professionalism In The Age of Black Death Is….A Lot”  by Shenequa Golding 

The 1619 Project (New York Times) 

“Lynch Law in All its Phases” by Ida B. Wells

“The Master’s Tools will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” by Audre Lord

“The Combahee River Collective Statement“

“Performative Allyship Is Deadly (Here’s What to Do Instead)” by Holiday Phillips 

Books

“White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism” by Robin DiAngelo 

“How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi 

“Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do” by Jennifer L. Eberhardt  

“Raising White Kids” by Jennifer Harvey  

“So You Want to Talk About Race” by Ijeoma Oluo  

“The Black and the Blue: A Cop Reveals the Crimes, Racism, and Injustice in America’s Law Enforcement” by Matthew Horace and Ron Harris  

“Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” by Bryan Stevenson 

“The Fire Next Time” by James Baldwin 

“Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race” by Reni Eddo-Lodge 

“They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, And A New Era In America’s Racial Justice Movement” by Wesley Lowery 

“Hood Feminism: Notes From The Women That The Movement Forgot” by Mikki Kendall 

“Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism” by bell hooks 

“Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People” by Ben Crump 

“From Slavery To Freedom: A History of African Americans” by John Hope Franklin  

“The Third Reconstruction: How a Moral Movement Is Overcoming the Politics of Division and Fear” by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and William Barber II 

“Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates 

“Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi 

“The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” by Michelle Alexander 

“Woman, Race and Class” by Angela Davis  

“Are Prisons Obsolete?” by Angela Davis 

“The Color of Law: The Forgotten History of How our Government Segregated America” by Richard Rothstein 

“Scenes of Subjection” by Saidiya Hartman 

“When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir” by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and Asha Bandele 

“Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Every Day Resistance in the Plantation south” by Stephanie Camp

“Counting Descent” by Clint Smith

For kids: 

“The Colors of Us” by Karen Katz 

“Let’s Talk About Race” by Julius Lester 

“The Skin I’m In: A First Look at Racism” by Pat Thomas 

Sesame Street’s “We’re Different, We’re the Same” by Bobbi Jane Kates 

“Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story about Racial Injustice” by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard 

“I Am Enough” by Grace Byers 

“Happy in Our Skin” by Fran Manushkin and Lauren Tobia 

“Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hamer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement” by Carole Boston Weatherford and Ekua Holmes 

“Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America” by Jennifer Harvey 

“Daddy Why Am I Brown?: A healthy conversation about skin color and family” by Bedford F. Palmer 

“A Terrible Thing Happened” by Margaret Holmes 

“Antiracist Baby” by Ibram X. Kendi 

For teens:  

“The Hate U Give” by Angie Thomas 

“Harbor Me” by Jacqueline Woodson 

“This Book Is Anti-Racist: 20 Lessons on How to Wake Up, Take Action, and Do The Work” by Tiffany Jewell and Aurelia Durand 

“Brown Girl Dreaming” by Jacqueline Woodson 

“Dear White People” by Justin Simien 

The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead 

Statement on Wednesday’s Insurrection at the Capitol

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From our executive director, Ken Schorr:

Politics profoundly affects our work and our ability to receive fair treatment, adequate income, and needed services for our clients. While I usually avoid discussing partisan politics in my role in our organization, it is imperative to talk about politics in times like these. We have seen an extraordinary display of American politics this week.

The Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy is, as its name says, a legal advocacy organization. We use our training and skills as lawyers and legal advocates to get our clients what they are due according to the law. We believe to our core in the Rule of Law. Justice lives here, for everyone.

On Wednesday, a violent mob assaulted and vandalized the Capitol Building, during Congressional proceedings, for the purpose of disrupting the counting of electoral college votes to certify the results of the Presidential election. This is a horrifying event that fundamentally contradicts the Rule of Law.

Law enforcement met this crowd of mostly white extremists in a civil manner compared to recent police treatment of thousands of diverse, peaceful protestors calling for racial justice and fair treatment. The stark contrast shows deep institutional racism in our society and illustrates the importance of our work for racial equity and justice.

There must be consequences for this mob and its instigators to reinforce the principle that this is a nation of laws, that apply to everyone, to our clients who are often disfavored but for the law, and to the powerful and favored, who are often excused from compliance or consequences.

The effort to subvert the electoral college count was based on the unsupported assertion that there was widespread election fraud which was repeatedly exposed as untrue in the results of scores of lawsuits filed to overturn election results. This follows the persistent lie that there is widespread voter fraud, as an argument to support extensive and relentless voter suppression efforts, most of which is racially focused, as one court said, to “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.” We must continue to work to expose and root out these acts of racism as we elect our leaders.

Last, but not least, the State of Georgia, once in the core of the Confederacy, elected two US Senators on Tuesday. One is Raphael Warnock, a Black minister from the Church formerly pastored by Martin Luther King. The other is Jon Ossoff, a young Jewish journalist, the youngest person elected to the Senate in 40 years. I share this result not as a comment on the party they represent, but as an embrace of diversity and inclusion that is a hopeful sign of change.

Welcome to 2021, a new year.

Executive Director, Ken Schorr, Recognized by NC Justice Center with Lifetime Achievement Award

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Congratulations, Ken!

We are immensely proud to announce that our executive director, Ken Schorr, received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the North Carolina Justice Center as a part of their 2020 Defenders of Justice ceremony this past weekend. The Justice Center recognized him “for his decades of leadership in legal services, as he tirelessly defended the interests of underrepresented North Carolinians.”  

Ken Schorr, Executive Director

Ken has had the privilege of advocating for low-income people in Little Rock, Phoenix, Dallas, and Charlotte for the duration of his career. Dedicated to those he serves, Ken has fought with the principle that legal aid lawyers must have the same undiluted loyalty to their clients and the same high level of competence as private lawyers.  

Access to legal services “is only a part” of justice for all. “We also need the political and economic systems to work to end poverty and racism, and to do that we need to work beyond the legal system,” Ken underscored in his acceptance speech.  

“Low income people need lawyers, they need advocates, and they need them to be able to use the full range of advocacy tools to promote and protect the rights of all low-income people. We must be able to do this for each individual client and to change systems adversely affecting all low-income people. It is a part of how we will end poverty, and racism, for everyone in our community.” 

Ken served as Litigation Director of Community Legal Services in Phoenix, Arizona, from 1979 to 1983 and as Executive Director of Legal Services of North Texas in Dallas, Texas, from 1983 to 1987. A native of Washington, D.C., he received a B.A. degree from Brandeis University in 1973, a J.D. degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 1975 and an M.S. Degree in organization development from the American University School of Public Affairs and the NTL Institute in 2002. Ken has served as the director of The Advocacy Center since 1988. 

Ken is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Housing Partnership, a Special Advisor to and former member of the North Carolina Equal Access to Justice Commission, and has served on the boards of local, state and national nonprofits, including the N.C. Justice Center, Crisis Assistance Ministry, Uptown Men’s Shelter, United Way of Central Carolinas, North Carolina Legal Services Resource Center, Texas Legal Services Resource Center, National Legal Aid and Defender Association and NLADA Service Corporation. 

At Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy, Ken is known for his engagement with all staff, new and old, work on community and programmatic collaborations, staunch advocacy and support in all areas of our work, and his tie-dye shirt at the annual staff BBQ.  

Thank you, Ken, for your leadership, service, and unyielding commitment to justice for all people.