American Civil Rights

A vivid historical fiction account of the community activism behind San Diego's Chicano Park—home to the largest outdoor mural collection in the U.S.—and just one example of the Mexican American community’s rich history of resistance and resilience. Barrio Logan, one of San Diego’s...

2020 J. ANTHONY LUKAS PRIZE WINNER From the bestselling author of There Are No Children Here, a richly textured, heartrending portrait of love and death in Chicago's most turbulent neighborhoods. The numbers are staggering: over the past twenty years in Chicago, 14,033 people have been killed...

A powerful, impactful, eye-opening journey that explores through the Civil Rights Movement in 1950s-1960s America in spare and evocative verse. In stunning verse, Erica Martin's debut poetry collection walks readers through the Civil Rights Movement—from the well-documented events that shaped...

In The Black Calhouns, Gail Lumet Buckley - daughter of actress Lena Horne - delves deep into her family history, detailing the experiences of an extraordinary African American family from Civil War to civil rights. Beginning with her great-great-grandfather, Moses Calhoun, a house slave who used the rare advantage of his education to become a successful businessman in postwar Atlanta, Buckley follows her family's two branches: one that stayed in the South and the other that settled in Brooklyn.

The “riveting”* true story of the fiery summer of 1970, which would forever transform the town of Oxford, North Carolina—a classic portrait of the fight for civil rights in the tradition of To Kill a Mockingbird *Chicago Tribune On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a twenty-three-year-old...

In Lighting the Fires of Freedom Janet Dewart Bell shines a light on women’s all-too-often overlooked achievements in the Movement. Through wide-ranging conversations with nine women, several now in their nineties with decades of untold stories, we hear what ignited and fueled their activism, as Bell vividly captures their inspiring voices. Lighting the Fires of Freedom offers these deeply personal and intimate accounts of extraordinary struggles for justice that resulted in profound social change, stories that remain important and relevant today.

The arduous task of overthrowing Jim Crow codes and legislation marked one of the first strides toward the modern struggle for ethnic equality in American society and required nearly a century of struggle. That effort spawned a multitude of heroic African American activists, but it is remembered in large part for the work of two iconic African American men of stature. Much like their later counterparts, the debate between gradual integration through temporary accommodation and overtly insistent activism was led by Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois.

Gretchen Sorin recovers a forgotten history of black motorists, and recounts their creation of a parallel, unseen world of travel guides, black only hotels, and informal communications networks that kept black drivers safe. At the heart of this story is Victor and Alma Green's famous Green Book, begun in 1936, which made possible that most basic American right, the family vacation, and encouraged a new method of resisting oppression.

A vibrant, revealing portrait of the "King of Calypso," whose extraordinary performing career and activism helped remake America through the civil rights era and beyond Even two years after his death, Harry Belafonte is everywhere. You can’t go to a wedding, or to Yankee stadium, without...

Born in Hamburg in the 1930s, Marione Ingram fled Nazi Germany only to find racism as pervasive in the American South as anti-Semitism was in Europe. As a white woman and a Holocaust refugee, Marione was the most unlikely of heroes in the fight for civil rights for African Americans. This is her empowering story - a tale of courage, strength, and determination.

An astonishing civil rights story from Newbery Honor winner and National Book Award finalist Steve Sheinkin. On July 17, 1944, a massive explosion rocked the segregated Navy base at Port Chicago, California, killing more than 300 sailors who were at the docks, critically injuring off-duty men...

Both an epic history and an intimate family story, a startling account of the lives of Black cops in one Midwestern city. In the wake of the George Floyd protests, a Black police organization in Cleveland called the Black Shield was causing a stir. Officers broke ranks with their fellow cops...

An expat in Rome makes his way as a writer in this gripping and genre-defying novel, first published in 1965 by a rediscovered great of Black American literature. In this masterpiece of metafiction set in the Rome of the tumultuous 1960s, Black American expatriate Bill Demby narrates his...

A radical reclamation of the Black Madonna as a liberatory figure that offers a richly spiritual and politically charged vision of Black divinity and resistance. Social psychologist and author of God Is a Black Woman Christena Cleveland brings forth Black Madonna as a Divine icon and spiritual...

Ida B. Wells is an American icon of truth telling. Born to slaves, she was a pioneer of investigative journalism, a crusader against lynching, and a tireless advocate for suffrage, both for women and for African Americans. She cofounded the NAACP, started the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, and was a leader in the early civil rights movement. This engaging memoir relates Wells’ private life as a mother as well as her public activities as a teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight for equality and justice.

2014 NAACP Image Award Winner: Outstanding Literary Work – Biography / Auto Biography 2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013 The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks examines her six decades of activism...

A moving true story for children ages 6 to 9 about growing up in Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II—from the iconic Star Trek actor, activist, and author of the New York Times bestselling graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy. February 19, 1942. George Takei is four years...

The Boy Who Saved Lives with a Pen: How Adolfo Kaminsky Forged a Path to Freedom During WWII by Deborah Blumenthal is a forthcoming title from Roaring Brook Press...

During the civil rights movement, the state of Mississippi created an elaborate spy network. Its mission was to preserve segregation by any means necessary—including voter interference, sponsorship of white supremacy groups, and even murder.

Bayard Rustin (1912 to1987), the famed openly gay African American organizer, taught Martin Luther King Jr. strategies of nonviolence during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, thereby launching the birth of the civil rights movement in 1955. Widely acclaimed as a founding father of modern black protest, in 1963 Rustin reached his pinnacle of notoriety as organizer of the March on Washington.