East Ohio Conference of The United Methodist Church

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UNITED METHODISTS STAND AGAINST RACISM

Resources for Young Adults

As United Methodists examine ways to end racial injustice, offering resources about racism to young adults can help them to be part of the solution. The resources below are written for middle school and high school students.

Featured Middle School Resources

Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America
by Jennifer Harvey is a New York Times best-selling book that guides families, educators, and communities to raise their children to be able to be able and active anti-racist allies.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
by Mildred D. Taylor, set in Mississippi at the height of the Depression, this is the story of one family's struggle to maintain their integrity, pride, and independence in the face of racism and social injustice.

Hidden Figures Young Readers’ Edition
by Margot Lee Shetterly tells the amazing true story of four African American female mathematicians at NASA who faced gender discrimination and racial prejudice while calculating the numbers that would launch rockets into space.

Middle School Audience

Deep Blue Life: Faith and Culture - Anti-Racism (free download from Cokesbury website) Teaches children about empathy, culture, race, and prejudice using three sessions teaching about "Prejudice and Stereotypes," "Curiosity and Empathy," and "Colors and Cultures."
Stella by Starlight by Sharon M. Draper is a gripping and realistic portrayal of life in the segregated South during the Great Depression for 11-year-old Stella and her brother, who witness a Ku Klux Klan meeting in the woods one night.
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson is an intimate and moving account of the author’s childhood as an African American in the 1960’s and 1970’s.
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie is the story of Junior, an aspiring cartoonist who leaves his school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school.
Nelson Mandela: The Authorized Comic Book by the Nelson Mandela Foundation makes the story of Mandela’s life and work accessible for teenagers through dramatic pictures, new interviews, firsthand accounts, and archival material.
A Wreath for Emmett Till by Marilyn Nelson is a moving and chilling poem about the 14-year-old boy whose 1955 lynching helped spark the civil rights movement.

Featured High School Resources

The Hate U Give
by Angi Thomas is a powerful and heart-wrenching novel about police brutality and systemic racism. When 16-year-old Starr’s unarmed best friend Khalil is killed at the hands of a police officer she is caught between threats from the police and the local drug lord, protecting her community and risking her own life.

X: A Novel
by Ilyasah Shabazz follows the formative years of one of the most powerful leaders in African American history.

Dear Martin
by Nic Stone tells of Justyce, top of his class and set for the Ivy League, writing a journal to Martin Luther King, Jr. in an attempt to make sense of a police encounter in which he was treated roughly and unfairly.

High School Audience

Shine, Coconut Moon by Neesha Meminger is a poignant story about identity, prejudice, and difference.
Monster by Walter Dean Myers is a multi-award-winning book that chronicles the unfair court proceedings for Steve Harmon, a teenager accused of murder and robbery.
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose is an in-depth account of the important yet largely unknown civil rights figure who refused to give her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama nine months before Rosa Parks.
How It Went Down by Kekla Magoon tells what happens to his family and his community after Black teenager Tariq Johnson was fatally shot by a white man.
The Lines We Cross by Randa Abdel-Fattah is a poignant and thought-provoking Romeo-and-Juliet story about prejudice and discrimination against Muslim immigrants.
All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely is a moving novel about privilege and racism told between the alternating perspectives of one Black and one white teenager.
March: Book Three by John Lewis is the stunning conclusion of the award-winning trilogy by congressman and civil rights key figure John Lewis that makes the history of the civil rights movement accessible to teenagers.