Portside

As part of the deep and broad reaction to the killings in Charleston, historian Chad Williams and his colleagues have put together a deeply informative and useful bibliography of essential readings on African American life and history, and on the struggle against racism. We have provided a link to the project, below, followed by a short article on it, published in The Guardian, by Marta Bausells. More links and information are available at the Guardian site.

Bryan Stevenson has spent most of his career challenging bias against minorities and the poor in the criminal justice system. He is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Montgomery, Ala., an advocacy group that opposes mass incarceration and racial injustice. Stevenson is a member of The Marshall Project’s advisory board. He spoke with Corey Johnson. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Congratulations to Columbia University student activists in the group, Columbia Prison Divest, who successfully launched a campaign protesting their school's investment in private prisons. Columbia University will sell its roughly 220,000 shares in G4S, the world's largest private security firm, as well as its shares in the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company in the U.S.

The murder of three men and six women at a church in Charleston is a national tragedy, but in America, the killing of black people is an unending spectacle.