Starting Points
Check out the Harvard Kennedy School
Racial Justice, Racial Equity, and Anti-Racism Reading List!
Racial Justice, Racial Equity, and Anti-Racism Reading List!
The following resources offer introductions to and overviews of the subject matter. Use them to find out about the broad contours of your field of study, then move on to the resources listed further down on this page for more in-depth research.
Find Books & Articles
For books (both print and electronic) owned by Harvard's libraries, consult HOLLIS, our library catalog. Be sure to select the "library catalog" (not the "everything") option if you are looking only for books. Once you have found titles of interest, try exploring further by following the linked subject headings or the virtual bookshelf feature available with each detailed catalog record.
For articles, book reviews, etc., the following databases provide excellent coverage of the topic:
- Race Relations Abstracts (Harvard Login)Includes abstracts (and select full text) of articles, book chapters, and books on race relations, ethnicity, immigration, etc., primarily in the United States.
- Ethnic NewsWatch (Harvard Login)Full-text collection of the newspapers, magazines and journals of the ethnic, minority and native press from 1960 to present.
- U.S. Hispanic Newsstream (Harvard Login)Compiles full text from a wide variety of Hispanic-American news media (in both Spanish and English).
- Oxford African American Studies Center (Harvard Login)Extensive reference resource on the history of African Americans and the African diaspora more broadly, including thematic essays, biographies, primary sources, maps, and images.
Also check the following resources from HKS:
- Race, Research & Policy PortalGateway to research on "diversity, racial equity, and antiracist organizational change in private, public and non-profit firms and entities," curated by the Institutional Anti-Racism and Accountability Project (IARA) at HKS's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
- HKS Policy Topic: Gender, Race, and IdentityRecent work by HKS researchers on issues related to the intersection of gender, race, class, etc. and public policy.
Find Primary Sources
- American Race Relations: Global Perspectives, 1941-1996 (Harvard Login)Thousands of commentaries on African American, Hispanic American, Asian American and Native American history covering foreign reactions to America's struggles with racial justice from the Jim Crow era to the Civil Rights movements and beyond.
- Black Studies Center (Harvard Login)Extensive collection of texts on Black Studies, including scholarly articles, newspapers, fiction and poetry, etc., primarily from a historical perspective.
Find Video
- Alexander Street Press Diversity Collection (Harvard Login)Contains documentaries, interviews, biographies, performances, and lectures.
- PBS Video Collection (Harvard Login)Contains hundreds of documentaries and other television broadcasts from PBS, including "American Experience," "Finding Your Roots," "Frontline," etc.
- Digitalia Film Library (Harvard Login)Digitalia Film Library offers streaming video of films and documentaries from Latin America, Europe and North America.
- Film Platform (Harvard Login)A curated collection of educational films covering a variety of topics from legal studies generally to human rights, environmental studies, politics, technology, among others.
- Kanopy (Harvard Login)Collection of videos including documentaries. Clips can be created and saved.