America is currently rumbling with a reckoning on race and wonder whether it will finally reconcile its history of systemic oppression of its Black citizens, who have helped build this country. The 2020 murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, in the midst of a global pandemic ignited a wave of racial justice protests and activism analogous to how the murder of Emmett Till in August 1954 sparked the Civil Rights Movement 65 years ago.

We are facing the fierce urgency of empathy and the overdue dismantling of long-standing barriers that prevent Black people from realizing their full potential in America. Research from the Opportunity Agenda reveals that stories of our lived experiences, more so than data and numbers, is what evokes the empathy that changes hearts and minds that might push us further toward a more perfect union.

I Too Am America: On Loving and Leading Black Men and Boys, written by Shawn Dove and Nick Chiles, delivers timely insights and inspiration that humanizes the stories of Black men and boys, while offering strategic recommendations on how together we can from our current rumblings with a racial reckoning to loving, learning and leading with and on behalf of Black men and boys.