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Carry Me Home is a story of the civil rights movement from the perspective of white privilege. A daughter of Birmingham's elite, the author details how her personal and region's life started to change after four black girls were killed by a bomb in a church basement.
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Freedom's Daughters documents the struggles of 20th-century activist women, covering everything from small acts of courage to the defiance of a president on national television. "The civil rights movement gave me the power to challenge any line that limits me," said leader Bernice Johnson Reagon.
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Mandela traces the life of this hero from his humble rural roots to his days as a fiery antiapartheid militant to his 1994 election as South Africa's first black president. In painstaking detail, Sampson chronicles this great leader's and his movement's long struggle against overwhelming odds.
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Walking With the Wind is John Lewis' own story of his early life in rural poverty, leadership in the civil rights movement and his eventual election to Congress in 1987. To this day, this patriot (and DLC member) remains true to the ideals of his boyhood hero, Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Bearing the Cross is a great biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., from his days as a young pastor to the leader of the civil rights movement. Garrow's account is about a great, complex man whose humanity, humility and spirituality is inspiring and often overwhelming.
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The Children is about eight idealistic black college students who became important leaders of the civil rights movement. When "sit-ins" aimed at desegregating Nashville restaurants started, the author, then a 25-year-old reporter, was assigned to cover a story that would ultimately change America.
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I Was Right on Time is the delightful story of Buck O' Neil, a star in the Negro Baseball League and the first African-American coach in major-league baseball. Made famous by his appearance on Ken Burns' PBS baseball series, O'Neil takes us through baseball's and America's past.
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Baseball's Great Experiment is a great story about Jackie Robinson, the African-American cultural pioneer in the late 1940s. Tygiel explains how the desegregation of baseball affected the overall culture, Jim Crow in the South and effectively ended the Negro Baseball League.
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Silver Rights tells the fascinating story of the Carter family in Mississippi in 1965. Mae Bertha's dream for her children was to get them a quality education so they could get out of the cotton fields. The family's experience serves as an inspiration to freedom fighters around the world.
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Speak Now Against the Day documents the experiences of courageous female, male, black and white Southerners who challenged the white ruling class and the "separate but equal" doctrine, well before the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation. Our struggles today pale in comparison.
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Frederick Douglas is a well-done account of the man and his times. McFeely does a great job of telling us about this fascinating, appealing, and all too human, leader. The book also gives insights into the thinking of the abolitionist movement before and after the Civil War.
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Warriors Don't Cry is a diary of Melba Beals, one of the Little Rock Nine who first integrated Arkansas' Central High School in 1957. Her torturous, and ultimately triumphant, journey shaped the civil rights movement. Her Grandmother India said "dignity is a state of mind, like freedom."
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The South and the Southerner, originally written in 1959, broke new ground in understanding the region in particular and race relations in general. The incredible courage of Ralph McGill, then editor of the Atlanta Constitution, demonstrated the pen is mightier than the sword.
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X is the personal story of a man who rose from the life of a petty criminal to become the most dynamic leader of the Black Revolution. The book is key to understanding African-American anger in the 1960s and today. His journey is fascinating.
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Parting the Waters is an in-depth look at Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement from 1954-1963. From the streets of Alabama to the corridors of the White House, Branch, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize, shows how the power of ordinary people transformed a country and the world.
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Eyes on the Prize, a companion volume to a PBS television series, is about the thousands of people who participated in the American civil rights movement from 1954 to 1965. Williams tells the compelling story of the movement's incredible human and political complexity.
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Essential Books
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