Books, Movies, Plays, and Speeches
Fair Housing Council (FHCO) staff, Board Members, and colleagues have collected the following list of books, movies, and plays for your enjoyment.
If you have a fair housing- or diverisity-related item to add to this page please let us know at information@FHCO.org; be sure to include "Books, Movies, and Plays on FHCO.org" in your subject line.
Contents of this Page:
Books
Movies
Plays and Speeches
Books:
101 Tools for Tolerance: Simple Ideas for Promoting Equity and Celebrating Diversity
A 16-page piece from the Souther Poverty Law Center; http://www.tolerance.org
A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo
A Peculiar Paradise: A History of Blacks in Oregon, 1788-1940, Elizabeth McLagan
A Short History of Portland, Gordon DeMarco
Absolute True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
A novel by Sherman Alexie offers an insider's view about life as a
Spokane, Washington Indian; what it means to live on the reservation; and the challenges that face young people growing up in those
circumstances. Considered a book for young adults, some of the novel's content has become controversal. Published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in 2007. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316013692?
ie=UTF8&tag=tribucompasit-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957
&creativeASIN=0316013692
Accessible Home Design
While not a detailed primer on all of the Fair Housing Act's Design and Construction requirements for multi-family housing or the requirements found in the Americans with Disabilities Act, this easy to read book none-the-less touts the benefits of accessibility. Authored
by Thomas D. Davies Jr. and Carol Peredo Lopez; published by Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) in 2006.
What must I do to install an elevator in my two-story home? Can I retrofit my master bathroom to include a spacious roll-in shower? How can my flower garden be made more accessible? Accessible home projects have always involved intricate planning and design, but their construction is often compromised because builders are unfamiliar with the specialized concepts and techniques. The need for expert information on this area of design is critical, and in response, PVA offers this a book that can guide you to develop attractive and functional designs that not only improve accessibility, but also increase the comfort and enjoyment of your home. http://www.pva.org/site/News2?news_iv_ctrl=-1&page=NewsArticle&id=6345
America Would Lose It’s Soul: The Immigration Restriction Debate, 1920-1924
Vilja Lehtinen
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Rights and Murder in the Jazz Age
Written by Kevin Boyle, this book won the National Book Award for nonfiction and was a finalist for
the Pulitzer Prize. To quote one review, it is “a poignant biography, a tour-de-force of historical detective work, a
gripping courtroom drama, and a powerful reflection on race relations in America. http://history.osu.edu/people/person.cfm?ID=665
Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero's Life and Legacy Revealed...
Written by Myrlie Evers-Williams and Manning Marable and published by Basic Civitas Books. In June 1963, Evers, an NAACP field secretary in Mississippi, was
assassinated in the driveway of his Jackson home by a White
supremacist. The slaying was a pivotal moment in the Civil Rights
Movement, prompting John F. Kennedy to give his most impassioned speech
about the need for racial tolerance.The content of the book is available at http://books.google.com.
Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City
Written by Mary Patitillo and published by University of Chicago Prescs, this book is a study of Chicago’s North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood.
Bleeding Albina: A History of Community Disinvestment: 1940-2000
Karen J. Gibson and Irina V. Sharkova, Portland State University
Building a West Coast Ghetto: African American Housing in Portland, 1910-1960
Stuart, McElderry, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 92, 2001: 137-1148
Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History,
1954-1968
 This evocative book, written by Myrlie Evers Williams, is the first to tell the story of the civil rights movement through the inspiring photographs that recorded, promoted, and protected it. Published by Abbeville Press; http://www.abbeville.com/bookpage.asp?isbn=0789201232
Complicity: How the Nort Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery
Written by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, Jenifer Frank, and Cheryl Magazine. This is a 2005 Ballantine Book version of the Hardford Courant series on how Connecticut was involved in the slave economy of the colonies.
Cost of Privilege: Taking on the System of White Supremacy and Racism
Written by Chip Smith; published by Camino Press; http://www.costofprivilege.com
DOTS A Fair Housing Tale
"DOTS" is a children's book that explains our rights to live where we want in language that children can understand. The book was written by Gary Ross and illustrated by Anwar Morse. Available through the the Erie County Fair Housing Partnership at http://www.ecfhp.org
Dreams of the West: A History of the Chinese in Oregon, 1850-1950
Ron Hongbaol
Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans
Written by Jean Pfaelzer and published by Random House, this book deals with the ethnic cleaning of Chinese Americans from California and the Pacific Northwest in the second half of the 19th Century; http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl/9781400061341.html
Forces of Prejudice in Oregon, 1920-1925
Laurence J. Saalfeld, Portland, OR, 1984
Gift: The Oregon Nikkei Story Retold
Deena K. Nakata
Glimpses from the Past: 50 Years of Community Building
Richard Sanders, published by the Housing Authority of Portland in 1991 for it’s 50th anniversary
History of White People
Author Nell Irvin Painter is interviewed on her book by National Public Radio on 03/15/10; www.FHCO.org/mp3s/HistOfWhitePeopleNPR03152010.mp3. Published by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. The book traces the idea of a white race--often for economic, scientific, and political ends.
Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America
Written
by Elinor Langer and published by Metropolitan Books, this book details a brutal Portland murder in the 1980s in what was labeled the most prejudiced city in the West and, at the time of the killing, it was probably the whitest big city in the United States.
http://www.mclemee.com/id47.html
Immigrants' Children, Jewish and Italian memories of Old South Portland
Written by Polina Olsen; published by Smart Talk Publications. Provides a description of immigrant life in old South Portland from teh early 1900s until urban renewal in the 1960s. It was a self-contained community that replicated the societies they left behind in Europe. This oral history captures daily life through the words of the immigrant's children and includes maps, history of specific buildings and memories from a range of former residents. http://home.comcast.net/~smart_talk_publications
Inside the Klavern: The Secret Minutes of an Oregon Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s
Edited by David A. Horowitz. Annotated collection of the minutes of a thriving Klavern in LaGande between 1922 and 1924
Jews Of Oregon 1850-1950
Written by Steven Lowenstein and published by the Jewish Historical Society, this book provides an illustrated history of the migration of Jews to Oregon and the history of Oregon's Jewish community from the pioneer days to present.
Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations
Written by Ira Berlin and published by Viking Adult is reviewed (and highly recommended) by Kevin Boyle in a New York Times Sundy Book Review article at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/books/review/Boyle-t.html.
Nazi Movement in America
Elinor Langer. The story of the murder of Mulugeta Seraw in Portland, Oregon
Our Diverse Society: Race and Ethnicity - Implications for 21st Century American Society
Written by David Engstrom and Lissette Piedra; published by NASW Press; http://www.naswpress.org
Portland’s Chinese: The Early Years
Portland Center for Urban Education, 1975
Segregation: The Rising Cost for America
Edited by James Carr and Nandinee Kutty; sponsored by the National Fair Housing Alliance. This book documents how discriminatory practices in the housing markets through most of the past century have produced extreme levels of residential segregation that result in significant disparities in access to good jobs, quality education, homeownership and asset accumulation between minority and non-minority households. http://www.nationalfairhousing.org/Portals/33/News%20Docs/SEGREGATION%20Flyer%20
and%20Order%20Form.pdf
Strangers in the Land
John Higham. The history of agitation for immigration restriction in early 20th century
The State of Black Michigan, 1967-2007
Edited by Joe Darden, Curtis Stokes, and Richard Thomas; published by Michigan State University Press; http://www.msupress.msu.edu
The Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family
Written by by Lauren Kessler and published by Reed Business Information, Inc., this book portrays a Japanese American family from the early 1900s to World World II internment camps and after. http://laurenkessler.com/books
Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism
James Loewen
Sweet Cakes, Long Journey: The Chinatowns of Oregon
For decades Oregon had the second largest Chinese population
in the US and, in geographic area, Portland's two
Chinatowns were the largest in North America. Author Marie Rose Wong chronicles the history of Portland's Chinatowns from their early
beginnings in the 1850s until the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in
the 1940s. Published by University of Washington Press. http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/search/books/WONSWE.html
Teaching about Asian Pacific Americans: Effective Activities, Strategies and Assignments for Classrooms and Communities
Edited by Edith Wen-Chu Chen and Glenn Omatsu; published by Rowman and Littlefield.
Ten Ways to Fight Hate: A Community Response Guide
A 32-page piece from the Southern Poverty Law Center; http://www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/downloads/publication/Ten_Ways_2010.pdf
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was instantly successful and has become a classic of modern American fiction. The novel is loosely based on the author's observations of her family and neighbors, as well as on an event that occurred near her hometown in 1936, when she was 10 years old.
The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explained the novel's impact by writing, "In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism."
Movies:
Brick by Brick: A Civil Rights Story
A 2007 film documentary directed and produced by Bill Kavanagh details the long-running Yonkers housing drama. http://www.brick-by-brick.com.
A Raisin in the Sun film
A 1961 drama film starring Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, Roy Glenn, and Louis Gossett. The adaptation was based on the play by Lorraine Hansberry (listed here under Plays and Speeches). In 2005, A Raisin in the Sun was selected for preservation in the United States of America National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
A Raisin in the Sun television movie
A 2008 television movie directed by Kenny Leon. The teleplay by Paris Qualles is based on the award-winning 1959 play of the same name by Lorraine Hansberry (listed here under Plays and Speeches). The film debuted at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast by ABC on February 25, 2008. According to Nielsen Media Research, the program was watched by 12.7 million viewers and ranked #9 in the ratings for the week ending March 2, 2008.
Ghosts of Mississippi
A 1996 drama directed by Rob Reiner staring Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg and James Woods. The plot focuses on the 1994 trial of Byron De La Beckwith, the white supremacist accused of the 1963 assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers.
LOST (Season 5, Episode 13, 0:00-0:49, Aired 04/15/09)
This edition of the popular ABC TV series features an example of illegal housing discrimination in the first few seconds of the show. The dramatized flashback of the show's character, Miles, appears to have preceded the real life Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 that made familial status (the presence of children under 18 in a household) a protected class across the US. http://www.hulu.com/watch/86660/lost-some-like-it-hoth
To Kill a Mockingbird
A 1962 drama film based on the novel of the same name by Harper Lee (included in the list of books above). It was directed by Robert Mulligan and stars Gregory Peck in the role of Atticus Finch. In 1995, the film was listed in the National Film Registry. It also ranks twenty-fifth on the American Film Institute's 10th anniversary list of the greatest American movies of all time.
Plays & Speeches:
I Have A Dream speech
An historic public speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., during which he spoke of his desire for a future where blacks and whites among others would coexist harmoniously as equals. King's delivery of the speech on August 28, 1963, from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was a defining moment of the American Civil Rights Movement. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters, the speech is often considered to be one of the greatest and most notable speeches in history and was ranked the top American speech of the 20th century by a 1999 poll of scholars of public address.
At the end of the speech, King departed from his prepared text for a partly improvised peroration on the theme of "I have a dream", possibly prompted by Mahalia Jackson's cry, "Tell them about the dream, Martin!". He had delivered a speech incorporating some of the same sections in Detroit in June 1963, when he marched on Woodward Avenue with Walter Reuther and the Reverend C. L. Franklin, and had rehearsed other parts.
The full text and video with audio of Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech can be found at: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm
A Raisin in the Sun play
A
play by Lorraine Hansberry that debuted on Broadway in 1959. The story is based upon a family's own experiences growing up in Chicago's Woodlawn neighborhood. A Raisin in the Sun was the first play written by a black woman to be produced on Broadway, as well as the first play with a black director (Lloyd Richards) on Broadway.
Waiting for the curtain to rise on opening night, Hansberry and producer, Phillip Rose, did not expect the play to be a success, for it had already received mixed reviews from a preview audience the night before.
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