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The viral video of Christian Cooper confronting a white woman who threatened to call the police on him while he was birdwatching in New York's Central Park helped drive the 2020 protests stemming from the police murders of Black Americans. Yet Cooper has done much beyond this video to raise awareness about racism in general and within the birding world.
The last chapter of his memoir Better Living Through Birding shows him traveling to the Deep South to both reckon with his racial history and promote a more equitable vision of birding through the Black Belt Birding Festival. The event, hosted by the Alabama Audubon (a branch of the bird protection and conservation organization the Audubon Society), sought to increase interest and participation in birdwatching by minorities, as well as to bolster economic and tourism opportunities for the Black Belt, a region spanning Southern states populated by majority-Black farming communities. Individually, Cooper has created a DC Comics ...
