Your weekend long reads 🗞️

Good morning, friends of The Short List! We hope the weekend finds you and your loved ones in a safe, warm place.

This year's celebration of Black History Month comes at an incredibly challenging time. The year 2020 brought the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit Blacks Americans harder than any other group. If that was not enough, police-involved killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd exposed chronic injustices in our law enforcement. Then 2021 began with an attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob enraged by the election of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the first Black person and first woman to hold that office.

As you enjoy this weekend's long reads, consider this: In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asked a question in the title of his last book, "Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community?"

We face the very same question today. "There’s no going back to a “normal” that never worked that well for Black people anyway," writes Paste BN's Nichelle Smith. "The only way forward is through."

• The complex history of Alexander Twilight, the first African American to earn a bachelor's degree
• She was the first Black person freed by Lincoln, but her grave was paved over
• 'Antiracist' author Ibram Kendi thinks big: Why not equality right now?

Feeling inspired? There are lots more good reads below.