[FROM] OFF THE SHELF AND RECOMMENDED READING: 'SPIKE LEE: DO THE RIGHT THING'

THE SCURLOCK PHOTO STUDIO, DC

DIGNITY SHOWN IN SCURLOCK PHOTOS COUNTERED RACIAL STEREOTYPES PROPAGATED BY PREJUDICE

On Point Radio: Inequality

HOW INEQUALITY HURTS SOCIETIES

New global research on equality, inequality, and the happiness of nations.

American inequality is at towering heights not seen since before the Great Depression. Wealth is packed at the top of the ladder, and dwindling on the rungs below. The picture naturally makes many uneasy. A new global research effort says we are quite right to worry about it.

Two British epidemiologists say inequality is a public health issue, a national health issue. From crime rates to drug use to teenage pregnancy to heart disease and more, they say, the evidence shows inequality makes countries sick, even the rich.

We investigate inequality.

Listen in.

BBC: ONE BLOCK IN HARLEM [PART 1 AND 2]

WHO 'OWNS' HARLEM, THE

CAPITAL OF BLACK AMERICA?

Around the world the name Harlem is synonymous with people's knowledge of the black experience in America - it means ghetto, cultural achievement, political activism and impoverished despair.
But in the last decade the area has been going through dramatic changes. First, former President, Bill Clinton, opened his post-White House office there. Then, as Manhattan real estate prices rocketed, wealthy people, many of them white, began moving in.

Michael Goldfarb traces the iconic neighbourhood's story by telling the history of a single street in Harlem - 120th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues - from 1910 to the present day.
Although Harlem is the best-known African-American neighbourhood in the world, a hundred years ago 120th Street was, like most of the area, a Jewish neighbourhood.

Michael describes life as it was and life as it is today and asks - what price has been paid by long-term black residents for the area's gentrification? How important is it for African-American culture that Harlem remain what it has been since the 1920's, the undisputed capital of Black America.

Along the way Michael meets the people of 120th Street in Harlem, Professor of History at Columbia University, Manning Marable; architectural historian Michael Henry Adams; and Jeffrey Gurock, Professor of History at Yeshiva University and author of When Harlem was Jewish.

LISTEN TO PART I

LISTEN TO PART II

BALTIMORE CIVIL RIGHTS HISTORY BROUGHT TO LIFE

LEAD BY YOUNG MORGAN STATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS, A SEGREGATED READ'S LUNCH COUNTER SIT-IN PROTEST WAS WAGED IN 1955 BALTIMORE

In January 1955, Morgan State College students staged an impromptu sit-in at the lunch counter of the Read's drugstore at Howard and Lexington streets in Baltimore, demanding that African-Americans be served.

Their protest, along with others at local Read's stores, worked: That month, the retail chain began serving all patrons, black and white, at all of its 37 Baltimore-area lunch counters. But the students' victory has been largely overlooked in the annals of U.S. civil rights history, in part because it was not photographed or widely reported by the mainstream news media.

More than 55 years later, the Read's protest is getting more attention than it ever did in 1955, as local preservationists and civil rights leaders wage yet another battle, this time to save the building where the protesters took a stand — by taking a seat.

An out-of-town developer wants to raze the vacant building and other structures on the block to make way for a $150 million project called Lexington Square. That has sparked new interest in the building and the role it played in desegregation. City and state agencies have held public hearings about the building. A preservation group, Baltimore Heritage, has been leading tours of the block.

Above: Morgan State University students in jail in Baltimore for a protest

Below: one of the original MSU student Read's Drugstore Sit-in members, Dr. Helena Hicks

NPR and Michel Martin's Tell Me More: Lessons In Dignity: A Cry Out for Justice

Above, below: Tunisian students shout during a demonstration in solidarity with Egyptian protesters in Tunis. A popular revolt in

Tunisia forced President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to flee the country. And members of the Great Migration, Chicago, 1918 [Chicago

History Museum/Getty Images].

I have been, like most people, following news of the street protests and unrest in the Middle East. And it may seem strange, but my mind keeps going back to a book I read last summer by the great former New York Times reporter Isabel Wilkerson. It is called The Warmth of Other Suns and it is about the so-called Great Migration.

It details the mass movement of millions of blacks from the rural Southern United States to the North, Midwest and West in the decades following the first World War, up until the beginning of the 1960s.

What would one have to do with the other?

Read and/or listen to more.

HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES: Stopping Bullets with Jobs

FATHER GREG BOYLE OF HOMEBOY INDUSTRIES

IN CONVERSATION WITH TAVIS SMILEY

The California Endowment's CenterScene Public Programs hosted Father Greg Boyle on Thursday January 27, 2011 to discuss his new book, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. Through storytelling, Father Boyle

restores an intimate humanity to the former gang members who pass through the welcoming arms of Homeboy

Industries while also narrating his journey to becoming "Father G" to LA's most marginalized youth. The largest gang intervention program in the US, Homeboy Industries provides employment and job training to facilitate gang members' redirecting their lives away from violence and crime. Focusing on concrete actions that support and sustain healthy communities rather than the need to insert a specific message, his work embodies the crux of restorative and economic

justice through jobs, compassion, and the rebuilding of selfhood.