The true story of racial inequality—and resistance to it—is the prologue to our present. You can see it in where we live, where we go to school, where we work, in our laws and in our leadership. Unequal presents a gripping account of the struggles that shaped America and the insidiousness of racism, and demonstrates how inequality persists. As readers meet some of the many African American people who dared to fight for a more equal future, they will also discover a framework for addressing racial injustice in their own lives.

This book is banned in Texas. And Florida. And wherever else school boards think kids are too fragile to learn the truth. Are they right?

Slavery ended a long time ago, they say. And Martin Luther King Jr. took care of any racism left over, they say. Let’s move on, they say.

And then they’ll ban this book, and books like it, which tell you the truth: that the effects of slavery, Jim Crow, red-lining, voter suppression, mass incarceration, environmental racism and unconscious biases have created a United States that is, in fact, Unequal.