The 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution reads as follows:

Amendment XIII

Section 1.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2.

Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Black Lives Matter has always been more of a human rights movement rather than a civil rights movement. BLM's focus has been less about changing specific laws and more about fighting for a fundamental reordering of society wherein Black lives are free from systematic dehumanization. Still, the movement’s measurable impact on the political and legal landscape is undeniable. 

What gets referred to as “the Black Lives Matter movement” is, in actuality, the collective labor of a wide range of Black liberation organizations, each which their own distinct histories. These organizations include groups like the Black Youth Project 100, the Dream Defenders, Assata’s Daughters, the St. Louis Action council, Millennial Activists United, and the Organization for Black Struggle, to name just a few. Continue Reading

• Campaign Zero
• The National Police Accountability Project
• Black Lives Matter
• #SayHerName from The African American Policy Forum
• Real Criminal Justice Reform Now! Campaign from ACLU
• We're Done Dying Campaign from NAACP
• We are Here Movement from Change.Org

That’s what Amy Cooper, a white woman, said when she publicly apologized for calling the police on a black man bird-watching in Central Park.

The words rang especially hollow coming from Cooper. After all, the previous day she had used her position as a white woman to summon police — and the potential for police violence — against editor and birder Christian Cooper after he asked her to put her dog on a leash. “I’m going to tell them there’s an African American man threatening my life,” she says in a video that quickly went viral.

Not everyone acquires the overnight infamy of Amy Cooper. But her claim of non-racism was a familiar one. If asked, most people would probably say they are not racist. And they’re especially likely to say it after they’ve already done something racist. As Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, notes in his book How to Be an Antiracist, “When racist ideas resound, denials that those ideas are racist typically follow.”

But as Kendi also notes, it’s not enough to simply be “not racist.” “The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist,’” he writes. “It is ‘antiracist.’” Continue reading from Vox

• Data Census

  The Census Bureau is the leading source of quality data about the nation's people and economy.

• Independent Voices: An open access of Alternative Press

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• National Education Association on Discipline and the School-To-Prison Pipeline

  According the ACLU the School-to-Prison Pipeline is a disturbing national trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

• NewsLibrary

  Searches the archives of hundreds of national, state, regional, and local newspapers. Some full-text articles are available free of charge.

• Pew Research Center

  Provides free access to data and reports which document the impact of the Internet and technology on American life.

• Police Brutality Mapping

  Police Killing: A case where a person dies as a result of being shot, beaten, restrained, intentionally hit by a police vehicle, pepper sprayed, tasered, or otherwise harmed by police officers, whether on-duty or off-duty.

• Southern Poverty Law Center

  The Southern Poverty Law Center is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. Using litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy, the SPLC works toward the day when the ideals of equal justice and equal opportunity will be a reality.

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

  The main federal government agency that tracks employment and labor data.

• U.S. Department of Education

  The primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. and other nations.

• Umbra

  umbrasearch.org brings together hundreds of thousands digitized materials about African American history from over 1,000 libraries and archives across the country.

• United States Department of Justice Hate Crime Statistics

  United States Department of Justice 2018 (most recent year available) hate crime statistics. A hate crime is defined as a crime in which the motivation for committing the crime is based on bias. In the United States, 46 states have hate crime legislation.

• The US Bureau of Justice - Criminal Victimization Statistics

  This link will take you to a data-set posted by the US Bureau of Justice on crime based on the the race of the offender and the race of the victim.

• World Bank Open Data

  Free and open access to global development data