January 16 is the National Day of Racial Healing

ALA will join the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and organizations across the country in observing the 2018 National Day of Racial Healing on Tuesday, Jan. 16.

The National Day of Racial Healing is a call for racial healing, a celebration of our common humanity, and a call to action to create a more just and equitable world. In commemoration of the day, ALA invites library professionals and others to:

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• Join us in offering reading recommendations, programming and displays about race and equality and sharing messages of solidarity at your library. To start, visit our compilation of recommended reading lists on race and equality for all ages and reading levels.
   
• Join the National Day of Racial Healing conversation on social media by posting images and comments using the hashtag #LibrariesRespond, #NDORH (The National Day of Racial Healing) and #TRHT (Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation). We encourage our members to reflect and use the hashtags for a discussion about challenges to diversity, equity and inclusion in the library field and workplace. 

Established in January 2017, the National Day of Racial Healing is a part of the Kellogg Foundation’s Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) effort, a national and community-based process to plan for and bring about transformational and sustainable change and to address the historic and contemporary effects of racism.

Through a wide range of events, discussions and activities, groups brought together by civic, community, government and private organizations will focus on healing the wounds created by conscious and unconscious bias (racial, ethnic and religious).

ALA is one of 100 voluntary National Partner Organizations in the Kellogg Foundation’s TRHT efforts, along with 44 scholars, that participated in the 2016 TRHT design phase. More information is online at http://healourcommunities.org/.

Recently, ALA announced the TRHT Great Stories Club, a reading and discussion program that will engage underserved teens through literature and racial healing work. Up to 25 libraries will be selected to participate in the project’s pilot phase. The program is supported from a grant from the Kellogg Foundation.