The Texas Digital Library stands against racism and with those working to end systemic injustices. We grieve the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others lost to racist and often police-inflicted violence, as well as the disproportionate number of COVID-19 deaths within minoritized communities. As we think about our own institutional responsibilities to our members, our staff, and our profession, TDL staff have been compiling resources on anti-racist work, particularly those relevant to libraries and archives. We hope that they will help us collectively find ways to interrogate and improve our practices that exclude and minimize Black and Brown communities and that perpetuate unjust systems. We recognize our own institutional shortcomings in this regard, and we want the Black and Brown workers in our member libraries to know that TDL sees you and strives to support you and amplify your voices. We invite you to share additional resources with us so that we can share them back to our communities. This might include anti-racist work that your library or archives is doing or has done, or books and other media that you have found useful in your work or personal explorations

The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A More Beautiful and Terrible History, award-winning historian Jeanne Theoharis dissects this national myth-making, teasing apart the accepted stories to show them in a strikingly different light. We see Rosa Parks not simply as a bus lady but a lifelong criminal justice activist and radical; Martin Luther King, Jr. as not only challenging Southern sheriffs but Northern liberals, too; and Coretta Scott King not only as a "helpmate" but a lifelong economic justice and peace activist who pushed her husband's activism in these directions. Moving from "the histories we get" to "the histories we need," Theoharis challenges nine key aspects of the fable to reveal the diversity of people, especially women and young people, who led the movement; the work and disruption it took; the role of the media and "polite racism" in maintaining injustice; and the immense barriers and repression activists faced. Theoharis makes us reckon with the fact that far from being acceptable, passive or unified, the civil rights movement was unpopular, disruptive, and courageously persevering. Activists embraced an expansive vision of justice--which a majority of Americans opposed and which the federal government feared. By showing us the complex reality of the movement, the power of its organizing, and the beauty and scope of the vision, Theoharis proves that there was nothing natural or inevitable about the progress that occurred.--Dust jacket