Stories on Race & Racism

statement from the stnm board of directors

Storytellers of New Mexico stands with Black Lives Matter (BLM) in condemning the targeted deaths of Black and African American people by police. STNM also condemns our country’s long history of overt and structural racism targeting Black and African American people, Native American people and other people of color, causing undue hardships and disparities in access to services/resources and in quality of life. Further, STNM affirms the rights of all individuals who are marginalized due to race, ethnic origin, sex, gender identity, religious affiliation, and other identities.

To this end, STNM will immediately work to shine light on social justice issues, beginning with the issues of racism and violence against people of color.

STNM is compiling the below resource list of stories focused on Black and African American and Native American storytellers and issues of race and racism. As well, our immediate programming highlighting social justice issues begins with the Stories at a Distance series on Zoom. STNM will continue to review and update its policies and programs through an anti-racist/anti-hate lens. “We the people of the United States” means ALL the people.

Black & African American Personal Storytelling About Race and Racism

#WeVoteWeCount
The Racial Equity Anchors Collaborative (Anchors) have joined together to launch WeVoteWeCount.org to provide a digital platform for voters to share their stories of interference with their voting rights at the polls, difficulties registering to vote and other barriers to voting. Together we will amplify voter stories submitted on the website and produce and widely distribute a report on these voters’ experiences in the hopes of sparking action that guarantees full voter protection.

#VulnerabilityThroughTheLenseOfBlackExperience

Activist Tarana Burke and researcher Brené Brown discuss helping the Black community confront trauma through their new collection of essays, “You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience.”

#BlackStoriesMatter
#BlackStoriesMatter is TMI Project’s way of making an impact in addressing incidents of hate, bigotry and racial injustice in our local community while also participating as an organization in the national outcry of injustice.

Something Happened In Our Town (American Sign Language (ASL) Storytelling)
Something Happened in Our Town follows two families — one White, one Black — as they discuss a police shooting of a Black man in their community. The story aims to answer children's questions about such traumatic events, and to help children identify and counter racial injustice in their own lives. Includes an extensive notes for parents and caregivers for discussing race and racism with children, child-friendly definitions, and sample dialogues.

Barbershop Stories with Jon Batiste and Congressman John Lewis
Jon Batiste chats with Congressman John Lewis about "March" while getting a haircut from his barber Chad. From The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

So What Are You??? With Val Day-Sanchez
Based in Albuquerque, Val asks the question, “what was your first experience with race?” These stories are candid and poignant. 

“A Conversation About Growing Up Black”, Op-Docs From The New York Times
In this short documentary, young black men explain the particular challenges they face growing up in America.

“A Conversation With Black Women on Race”, Op-Docs From The New York Times
In this short documentary, black women talk about the challenges they face in society.

“Black Stories - And Black Lives - Matter” collection from Story Collider
Story Collider’s mission is to tell stories about science. Here you’ll find a collection of stories from their archives about Black people’s experiences with police violence and institutional racism -  but also stories of Black science, joy, and life. 

The Liberation of RNA
Original Story from Story Collider picked up on Radiolab and interspersed with an interview of Brandon Ogbunu

The “Tell Black Stories” project from Color of Change and Paper Monday
A project “elevating the experiences and identities of those representing or fostering accurate portrayals of Black people through their leadership or work.”  

The Stoop: Stories From Across The Black Diaspora
A podcast that digs into stories that are not always shared out in the open. Hosts Leila Day and Hana Baba start conversations about what it means to be Black and how we talk about Blackness. It’s a celebration of Black joy with a mission to dig deeper into stories that we don’t hear enough about.

This Is My Story #BlackLivesMatter project from FBE
FBE contributors share personal stories of being Black in America

Risk! Storytelling Podcast: Black Lives
The RISK! podcast will be re-running 13 stories by Black storytellers about race or racism in the coming weeks.

StoryCorps Griot
StoryCorps Griot is an initiative to ensure that the voices, experiences, and life stories of African Americans will be preserved and presented with dignity. The Griot Initiative also documents the varied voices of people with roots in the African Diaspora living in the United States.

StoryCorps: To Live With Your Hands Unfolded
Albert Sykes, a youth mentor and community organizer in Jackson, Mississippi speaks with his son, Aidan, about what it means to be a Black man raising Black boys in America.

StoryCorps: Traffic Stop (an animated story)
Alex Landau, an African American man, was raised by his adoptive white parents to believe that skin color didn’t matter. When Alex was pulled over by Denver police officers one night in 2009, he lost his belief in a color-blind world—and nearly lost his life. Alex tells his mother, Patsy Hathaway, what happened that night and how it affects him to this day.

StoryCorps: A More Perfect Union
During the Jim Crow era, the board of registrars at Alabama’s Hale County Courthouse prevented African American people from registering to vote. Undeterred, Theresa remembers venturing to the courthouse on the first and third Monday of each month, in pursuit of her right to vote.

TEDTalks Collection on Anti-Black Racism In America
From passionate pleas for reform to poetic turns of phrase, these talks take an honest look at everyday realities of Black Americans and illuminate the way forward.

StorySlam Oakland: “Race & Privilege” 
Three Black storytellers from Oakland, CA, share their true experiences on the theme: Race and Privilege. 

Amber Ruffin, “A Lifetime of Traumatic Run-Ins with Police”
Late Night writer Amber Ruffin shared personal stories of police run-ins over several episodes. The four stories are compiled together here. 

“Dog Pound” by Glynn Washington 
Experience of being arrested for already paid dog fines

Interracial Eating by Phoebe Robinson
Story/interview about racism in and around food

Our Stories: An African American Fiction Podcast
This podcast features fictional stories that present Black people as our true and authentic selves. Stories that educate as well as entertain. Currently featuring the novel, Burning Uncle Tom's Cabin.   

You Had Me At Black 
You Had Me at Black is the podcast where Black Millennials tell true-life stories. Inspired by the proverb, 'Those who tell stories rule the world,' stories are used to reclaim the Black narrative. Each week, hear a fresh story from a new voice. 

Up/Root 
Up/Root is a podcast about identity, culture and global living. We redefine what it means to be uprooted through stories of joy, resilience and justice and a celebration of the roots that enable us to rise up. (Nairobi, Kenya)

Book: “Black Imagination: Black Voices On Black Futures”
This dynamic collection of Black voices works like an incantation of origin, healing, and imagination. Born from a series of conceptual art exhibitions, the perspectives gathered here are nowhere near monochromatic... Each insists on their own variance and challenges every reader to witness for themselves that Black Lives (and Imaginations) Matter.

Black & African American History Stories

Oral History Archives of the National Museum of African American History & Culture

Every Tone and Testimony: an African-American Aural History
From archival materials of the Smithsonian Folk-Ways Archive

Civil Rights History Project: Michael D. McCarty
Renowned American Storyteller and former Black Panther Michael D. McCarty oral history interview. Conducted by David P. Cline  in Los Angeles, California, 2016. 

#BlackLivesMatter for Children and Grownups
#Pride - The Stonewall Rebellion
In Queer Story time, artist and educator Ayesha Ali gives the history behind the Black Lives Matter movement and the Stonewall Rebellion, geared for young listeners.

The Legacy of Storytelling in African-American History
A CBS report

Hollywood in Color
Hollywood in Color is a podcast telling the stories of the stars usually left out of entertainment history — the people of color in front of and behind the camera who have been representing for over a century.

Renowned  African American storyteller Sheila Arnold delivering the first session of International Storytelling Center's Freedom Stories 
Filmed live from the National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee— the location where Elihu Embree published The Emancipator in 1820, the first newspaper in the United States solely devoted to the abolition of slavery. The Freedom Stories project is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities​ and aims to unpack, illuminate, and engage the neglected Black experience in Appalachia through a series of constructive public and digital conversations. The project brings together scholars, storytellers, and the public for forward-thinking dialogue around why this history is critical to understanding the story of our nation and the continual struggle for freedom.

Black & African American Traditional Storytelling/Folk Tales

Eyeseeme Story Time
Join the Eyeseeme Foundation for children's story time each week. The Eyeseeme Foundation is the non-profit arm of the Eyeseeme African American Bookstore. The Foundation's mission is to create programs that increase childhood literacy for under-served communities and to promote African American History and multicultural literature that will increase respect and tolerance for diverse cultures.

Story of the Flying Africans
Storybird Songstress Homepage
Local storyteller, Brenda Hollingsworth-Marley, was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. At an early age of about 7, she would craft her own puppets out of socks and present puppet shows to her friends in the neighborhood. Brenda’s early passion for storytelling turned professional in 1991 and she hasn’t slowed down since. Traveling around the world, Brenda has told her stories to people of all ages and all places. Known as the Storybird Songstress, Brenda is a “Storyteller of All Seasons,” a performer with many talents.

Revisiting the Legend of Flying Africans
Sophia Nahli Allison for The New Yorker Magazine. “The story of flying Africans has been passed down from generation to generation since slavery—a secret, suppressed gift of our ancestors. While this myth has evolved over the years, it continues to be the source of imagination that depicts freedom, new futures, and returning to Africa.”

Jan Blake, “The Fisherman: A Tale of Passion, Loss, and Hope”
Through the telling of a traditional folktale, Jan Blake demonstrates that whilst the world may have changed irrefutably over the last one hundred years, our hopes, dreams, and passions have not and that traditional folktales are just as relevant and as capable as the latest blockbuster or art house movie, of guiding us to a reflection on what it means to human.

How African American folklore saved the cultural memory and history of enslaved people
Adapting the oral storytelling traditions of their ancestors helped enslaved people stolen from West Africa cope with and record their experiences in America. And later it helped other generations, particularly in the 19th century, to learn what happened to the ancestors who had been enslaved.

10 African and African American Folktales for Children
These books blend together a rich combination of history, fable, and illustrations that engage and teach children the importance of African American culture. 

Native American/Indigenous Storytelling

Changing the way we see Native Americans, Matika Wilbur
Delivered at the TEDxTeachersCollege event

Dovie Thomason, Lakota/Kiowa Apache: Three very different performances by renowned Native American Storyteller
1)Never Forget: the Heart of the Earth is a Woman
2)Thoughts about orality and literacy, And a personal story
3)Short personal story about meeting a man named Custer

Indigenous Urbanism
Indigenous Urbanism is a place-based storytelling podcast about the spaces we inhabit, and the community drivers and practitioners who are shaping those environments and decolonising through design. 

Terese Marie Mailhot, “Surviving Racism”
A Native writer struggling against the ignorance of white culture finds that her stories are her lifeline, her wounds are her power, and though the scales have been weighted against her in almost every way, there are many reasons to survive.

Seeding Sovereignty Storytellers Project 
Storytellers aims to address some of the disproportionate effects Indigenous youth face as a result of climate change, colonial patriarchy, social inequity, systemic injustice, poverty, institutional racism, transphobia, homophobia, and ignorance. We do this by holding space for traditional healing, sharing our lived experiences and our collective knowledge in a safe environment through creative resistance and digital storytelling.

Coronavirus Is Attacking the Navajo ‘Because We Have Built the Perfect Human for It to Invade’
Scientific American: A traditional Diné storyteller explains how disadvantage and injustice have shaped her people’s encounter with COVID-19.

Seth Fairchild, TEDx: Native American Oral Storytelling & History
We focus on everyday lives of Choctaws through pivotal moments in history, exploring topics such as the Civil Rights movement, boarding school initiatives, and relocation efforts.  We gather oral accounts of what it was like to be Native American through these times, from the stories that make us unique as a people

Native Peoples of North America
The Smithsonian recounts an epic story of resistance and accommodation, persistence and adaption, and extraordinary hardship and survival.

Native American Girls Describe the REAL History Behind Thanksgiving
6 Native American girls school us on the real  history of Thanksgiving for Teen Vogue

Hopi Origin Story
For the Hopi and other Pueblo peoples, after they emerge they meet the caretaker of the earth who instructs them to honor Mother Earth by taking care of her.

How Navajo Storytelling Helped Prepare the Code Talkers of WWII
The Navajo have a rich oral storytelling tradition. Code Talker Peter MacDonald Sr. explains how that tradition helped Navajos learn the code, which comprised of words from the Navajo language and applied it to military phrases.

What does it mean to be a Native American today? 
Op-Docs is The New York Times’s Emmy-award-winning and Oscar-nominated short documentary series. Conversations with Native Americans on Race.

Who Am I? It Depends…
Reflections on identity by David Pérez, Taos, N.M.