Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case

The Lynching: The Epic Courtroom Battle That Brought Down the Klan

Laurence Leamer · 378 pages

"The New York Times bestselling author of The Kennedy Women chronicles the powerful and spellbinding true story of a brutal race-based killing in 1981 and subsequent trials that undid one of the most pernicious organizations in American history--the Ku Klux Klan. On a Friday night in March 1981 Henry Hays and James Knowles scoured the streets of Mobile in their car, hunting for a black man. The yo

Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution

Diane McWhorter · 720 pages

At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America

Philip Dray · 528 pages

It is easy to shrink from our country's brutal history of lynching. Lynching is called the last great skeleton in our nation's closet: It terrorized all of black America, claimed thousands upon thousands of victims in the decades between the 1880s and the Second World War, and leaves invisible but deep scars to this day. The cost of pushing lynching into the shadows, however--misremembering it as

Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America

Patrick Phillips · 302 pages

"A gripping tale of racial cleansing in Forsyth County, Georgia and ... testament to the deep roots of racial violence in America ... Patrick Phillips breaks the century-long silence of his hometown and uncovers a history of racial terrorism that continues to shape America in the twenty-first century"--

Black Like Me

John Howard Griffin · 190 pages

Publisher's description: Studs Terkel tells us in his Foreword to the definitive Griffin Estate Edition of Black Like Me: "This is a contemporary book, you bet." Indeed, Black Like Me remains required reading in thousands of high schools and colleges for this very reason. Regardless of how much progress has been made in eliminating outright racism from American life, Black Like Me endures as a gre

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Isabel Wilkerson · 635 pages

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. She interviewed more than a t

Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

Martin Luther King Jr. · 230 pages

Chronicles the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott sparked by Mrs. Rosa Park's refusal to give up her seat to a white male, describing the plans and problems of a nonviolent campaign, reprisals by the white community, and the eventual attainment of desegrated city bus service.

Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement

John Lewis, Michael D'Orso · 526 pages

The son of an Alabama sharecropper, and now a sixth-term United States Congressman, John Lewis has led an extraordinary life, one that found him at the epicenter of the civil rights movement in the late '50s and '60s. As Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lewis was present at all the major battlefields of the movement. Arrested more than forty times and severely beat

While the World Watched

Carolyn Maull McKinstry · 301 pages

On September 15, 1963, a Klan-planted bomb went off in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Fourteen-year-old Carolyn Maull was just a few feet away when the bomb exploded, killing four of her friends in the girl's rest room she had just exited. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history ... and the turning point in a young girl'

Leon's Story

Leon Walter Tillage · 107 pages

Long Walk to Freedom

Nelson Mandela · 638 pages

The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly recreates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive, compelling and uplifting, Long Walk to Freedom is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader

Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South

Anne Moody · 384 pages

Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. In this now classic autobiography, she details the sights, smells, and suffering of growing up in a racist society and candidly reveals the soul of the black girl who had the courage to challenge it. The result is a touc

A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School

Carlotta Walls LaNier · 284 pages

When 14-year-old Carlotta Walls walked up to Little Rock Central High School on September 25, 1957, she and eight other black students only wanted to make it to class. But the journey of the "Little Rock Nine" would lead the nation on an even longer and much more turbulent path, one that would challenge prevailing attitudes, break down barriers, and forever change America. Descended from a line of

Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America

Gilbert King · 545 pages

In 1949, Florida's orange industry was booming with cheap Jim Crow labor. When a white seventeen-year-old Groveland girl cried rape, vicious Sheriff McCall was fast on the trail of four young blacks who dared to envision a future for themselves. Then the Ku Klux Klan rolled into town, burning homes and chasing hundreds of blacks into the swamps. So began the chain of events that would bring Thurgo

Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power

Timothy B. Tyson · 416 pages

Robert F. Williams was suspended and made a pariah by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the organization that had been at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement, because he dared speak clear pixel of the day-to-day, street-level struggle faced by Southern blacks, and encourage that violence upon African American homes and families be met in kind. Afraid of offe

They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group

Susan Campbell Bartoletti · 176 pages

"They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti is a historical nonfiction book aimed at young adults. It explores the origins and rise of the Ku Klux Klan after the American Civil War in 1865. The book provides a detailed account of the social and political climate of the time, highlighting the fear and racism that fueled the Klan's actions

Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don't You Grow Weary

Elizabeth Partridge

An inspiring look at the fight for the vote, by an award-winning authorOnly 44 years ago in the U.S., Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was leading a fight to win blacks the right to vote. Ground zero for the movement became Selma, Alabama.Award-winning author Elizabeth Partridge leads you straight into the chaotic, passionate, and deadly three months of protests that culminated in the landmark march fro

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Nikole Hannah-Jones · 590 pages

I Am Not Your Negro

James Baldwin · 144 pages

Transcript of the documentary film, I am not your negro, by Raoul Peck composed of unpublished and published writings, interviews, and letters by James Baldwin on the subject of racism in America.

Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa

Antjie Krog · 403 pages

"Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. But how could this country - one of spectacular beauty and promise - come to terms with its ugly past? How could its people, whom

March: Book One

John Lewis · 125 pages

March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis’ personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans John Lewis’ youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Lut

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice

Phillip M. Hoose · 146 pages

Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents the first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.

The Silence of Our Friends

Mark Long, Jim Demonakos · 198 pages

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide

Carol Anderson · 280 pages

White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide is a 2016 nonfiction book by Emory University professor Carol Anderson. Anderson was contracted to write the book following the reaction to an op-ed she wrote for The Washington Post in 2014. White Rage became a New York Times Best Seller, and was listed as a notable book of 2016 by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, an