American Civil Rights

Published in 1965 by W. W. Norton, William McCord's book, Mississippi: The Long, Hot Summer, is one of the first examinations of the events of 1964 by a scholar. It provides a compelling, detailed account of Mississippi people and places, including the thousands of student workers who found in the state both opportunities and severe challenges. McCord's work sought to communicate to a broad audience the depth of repression in Mississippi.

"The Year of Birmingham", 1963, was a cataclysmic turning point in America's long civil rights struggle. Child demonstrators faced down police dogs and fire hoses in huge nonviolent marches against segregation. Ku Klux Klansmen retaliated by bombing the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young Black girls. Diane McWhorter, daughter of a prominent Birmingham family, weaves together police and FBI records, archival documents, interviews with Black activists and Klansmen, and personal memories into an extraordinary narrative....

*GRAMMY WINNER* *National Bestseller* *Nominated for an Audie for Best Business/Personal Development Audiobook* A brilliant and empowering collection of final reflections and words of wisdom from venerable civil rights champion, the late Congressman John Lewis at the end of his remarkable life...

Through the lens of Sammy Davis Jr.'s six-decade career in show business—from vaudeville to Vegas to Broadway, Hollywood, and network TV—Dancing Down the Barricades examines the workings of race in American culture. The title phrase holds two contradictory meanings regarding Davis's cultural politics: Did he dance the barricades down, as he liked to think, or did he simply dance down them, as his more radical critics would have it?

It was the final speech of a long day, August 28, 1963, when hundreds of thousands gathered on the Mall for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. In a resounding cadence, Martin Luther King Jr. lifted the crowd when he told of his dream that all Americans would join together to realize the founding ideal of equality. The power of the speech created an enduring symbol of the march and the larger civil rights movement. King's speech still inspires us fifty years later, but its very power has also narrowed our understanding of the march.

An important book of epic scope on America’s first racially integrated, religiously inspired movement for change The civil war brought to a climax the country’s bitter division. But the beginnings of slavery’s denouement can be traced to a courageous band of ordinary Americans, black and...

In Bloody Tuesday, John Giggie powerfully recovers one of the last great untold stories of the civil rights movement and its role in the reckoning with America's ongoing struggle for racial justice.

From a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a devastating exploration of the racial disparities in violent death and injury in America and a blueprint for ending this fundamental social injustice About 170,000 black Americans have died in homicides just since the year 2000. Violence takes more years of life...

In 1964 a small group of African American men in Jonesboro, Louisiana, defied the nonviolence policy of the mainstream civil rights movement and formed an armed self-defense organization - the Deacons for Defense and Justice - to protect movement workers from vigilante and police violence. With their largest and most famous chapter at the center of a bloody campaign in the Ku Klux Klan stronghold of Bogalusa, Louisiana, the Deacons became a popular symbol of the growing frustration with Martin Luther King Jr.'s nonviolent strategy.

A masterclass in the civil rights movement from one of the legendary activists who led it. Compiled from his original lecture notes, Julian Bond’s Time to Teach brings his invaluable teachings to a new generation of readers and provides a necessary toolkit for today’s activists in the era of...

First time on audio! The timeless Pulitzer Prize winner, the first in an epic two-volume biography that set the standard for historical scholarship on this era, narrated by Emmy and Tony Award winner Courtney B. Vance. This monumental biography by David Levering Lewis—eight years in the...

"There is no equal justice for Black people today; there never has been. To our everlasting shame, the quality of justice in America has always been and is now directly related to the color of one's skin as well as to the size of one's pocketbook." This quote comes from George W. Crockett Jr.'s essay, "A Black Judge Speaks" (Judicature, 1970). The stories of Black lawyers and judges are rarely told. By sharing Crockett's life of principled courage, "No Equal Justice" breaks this silence.

A vivid account of the Right’s subversive campaign to impose Christian nationalist rule. Time and again, when confronted with serious challenges to their power and privilege, white Christian nationalists seek solace—and satisfaction—in state-supported forms of vigilantism. This was true at...

A multigenerational saga of a family and a community in Tulsa’s Greenwood district, known as “Black Wall Street,” that in one century survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, urban renewal, and gentrification “Ambitious . . . absorbing . . . By the end of Luckerson’s outstanding book...

The American political system can be challenging to navigate. In a time when the political climate can be contentious, understanding the American system of government is an important tool to have. This comprehensive guide covers the basics of U.S. politics in a clear, easy-to-follow format...

With “arresting prose and keen insights” (Donna Brazile, New York Times bestselling author of Hacks), bestselling author Juan Williams turns his attention to the rise of a new 21st-century civil rights movement in this highly anticipated follow-up to Eyes on the Prize. More than a century of...

The world's eyes were on Mississippi during the summer of 1964, when civil rights activists launched an ambitious African American voter registration project and were met with violent resistance from white supremacists. Sue Sojourner and her husband arrived in Holmes County, Mississippi, in the wake of this historic time, known as "Freedom Summer". Thunder of Freedom unites Sojourner's personal experiences with her insights regarding the dynamics of race relations in the 1960s South, providing listeners with a unique look at the struggle for rights and equality in Mississippi.

Inspired by a colleague's involvement in the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964, Wall Street attorney Donald A. Jelinek traveled to the Deep South to volunteer as a civil rights lawyer during his three-week summer vacation in 1965. He stayed for three years. In White Lawyer, Black Power, Jelinek recounts the battles he fought in defense of militant civil rights activists and rural African Americans, risking his career and his life to further the struggle for racial equality.

Why is it that so many efforts by liberals to lift the Black underclass not only fail, but often harm the intended beneficiaries? In Please Stop Helping Us, Jason L. Riley examines how well-intentioned welfare programs are in fact holding Black Americans back. Minimum-wage laws may lift earnings for people who are already employed, but they price a disproportionate number of Blacks out of the labor force. Affirmative action in higher education is intended to address past discrimination, but the result is fewer Black college graduates than would otherwise exist.

Presumed Guilty reveals how the Supreme Court allows the perpetuation of racist policing by presuming that suspects, especially people of color, are guilty.