American Civil Rights

The riveting story of the two crusading lawyers who led the legal battle to end segregation, one case and one courtroom at a time. The Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education is widely considered a seminal point in the battle to end segregation, but it was in fact the...

The school careers of two teenage girls who lived across town from each other - one black, one white - were altered by a court-ordered desegregation plan for Durham, NC in 1970. LaHoma and Cindy both found themselves at the same high school from different sides of a court-ordered racial “balancing act”. This plan thrust each of them involuntarily out of their comfort zones and into new racial landscapes. Their experiences, recounted in alternating first-person narratives, are the embodiment of desegregation policies, situated in a particular time and place.

"I have a dream." When those words were spoken on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, the crowd stood, electrified, as Martin Luther King, Jr. brought the plight of African Americans to the public consciousness and firmly established himself as one of the greatest orators of all time. Behind the Dream: The Making of the Speech that Transformed a Nationis a thrilling, behind-the-scenes account of the weeks leading up to the great event, as told by Clarence Jones, co-writer of the speech and close confidant to King.

*L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist* *New York Times Book Review Paperback Row* *New York Times Books to Watch for in July* *Time Best New Books July 2020* Galvanized by her work in our nation's jails, psychiatrist Christine Montross illuminates the human cost of mass incarceration and mental...

The former mayor of Charlottesville delivers a vivid, first-person chronicle of the terror and mayhem of the August 2017 "Unite the Right" event, and shows how issues of extremism are affecting not just one city but the nation itself. The deadly invasion of Charlottesville, Virginia, by white...

Deborah Santana is best known for her marriage to music icon Carlos Santana–a thirty-year bond that endures to this day. But as a girl growing up in San Francisco in the 1960s, daughter of a white mother and a black father–the legendary blues guitarist Saunders King–her life was charged...

From writer, award-winning placemaker and urbanist, Jay Pitter, this is a profoundly beautiful and essential text that asserts, with intimacy and insight, our collective responsibility to protect and enhance each other’s public joy. When Jay Pitter was growing up in a poorly designed...

In early 1968 the grisly on-the-job deaths of two African-American sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, prompted an extended strike by that city's segregated force of trash collectors. Workers sought union protection, higher wages, improved safety, and the integration of their work force. Their work stoppage became a part of the larger civil rights movement and drew an impressive array of national movement leaders to Memphis, including, on more than one occasion, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King added his voice to the struggle in what became the final speech of his life.

This powerful picture book biography spotlights Septima Poinsette Clark, the civil rights leader who taught Black adults how to combat Jim Crow-era voting regulations. Written by Septima’s granddaughter, Yvonne Clark-Rhines, along with acclaimed author Monica Clark-Robinson, this is a...

An urgent exposition of the pervasive human trafficking that lies just beneath the surface of the US economy—from the stories of its survivors The years of the COVID-19 pandemic have brought to light the exploitation of workers. In this moment of heightened visibility, Unbroken Chains demands...

An urgent examination of the invisibility of Black women and girls as victims of targeted killings, and the lack of police intervention and media coverage When Black women and girls are targeted and murdered their cases are often categorized by police officers as “N.H.I.” – “No Humans...

The true story behind Crispus Attucks High School and the all-Black basketball team loosely depicted as the championship opponent in the beloved classic sports movie Hoosiers. For far too long the mythology of Indiana basketball has been dominated by Hoosiers. Framed as the ultimate underdog...

In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, countless Black citizens endured violent resistance and even death while fighting for their constitutional rights. One of those citizens, Clyde Kennard, a Korean War veteran and civil rights leader from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, attempted repeatedly to enroll at the all-white Mississippi Southern College in the late 1950s. In A Slow, Calculated Lynching, Devery S. Anderson tells the story of a man who paid the ultimate price for trying to attend a white college during Jim Crow.

For Henry David Thoreau, there was no separation between public politics and personal principle. "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" is his famous account of the night he spent in jail for refusing to pay taxes to a government that supported slavery and waged war. His impassioned stand for justice later inspired Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and many other peaceful revolutionaries. This volume includes Thoreau's other important political writings: "A Plea for Captain John Brown", "Life Without Principle", and the poem "Independence".

Martin Luther King Jr. may be America's most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. But despite his stature, the significance of King's writings and political thought remains underappreciated. In To Shape a New World, Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry state that the marginalization of King's ideas reflects a romantic consensus history that renders the civil rights movement inherently conservative - an effort not at radical reform but at "living up to" enduring ideals laid down by the nation's founders.

“Chilling and convincing, Antidemocratic is a must-read.” —Heather Cox Richardson, author of Democracy Awakening “David Daley has been at the absolute forefront of educating us about the theft of our elections by radical Republicans determined to subvert everyone else’s power to choose...

From the award-winning author of Birth, a journey into the underground activist networks that have been working to protect women’s autonomy over their bodies amidst legal, political, religious, and cultural oppression over the past sixty years. In this definitive, eye-opening history...

On August 28, 1963, over a quarter-million people - two-thirds black and one-third white - held the greatest civil rights demonstration ever. In this major reinterpretation of the Great Day - the peak of the movement - Charles Euchner brings back the tension and promise of the march. Building on countless interviews, archives, FBI files, and private recordings, this hour-by-hour account offers intimate glimpses into the lives of those key players and ordinary people who converged on the National Mall to fight for civil rights in the March on Washington.

The nation’s foremost expert on restorative justice and the lead attorney for the last survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre presents a powerful and urgent call to arms to right the wrongs of our past for a more sustainable future. Despite North Tulsa, Damario Solomon-Simmons’ hometown...

Spotlights the tireless work of Black teachers in a historic New Orleans public school, one of countless public schools now part of a school closing crisis in cities nationwide Time and again, teachers of color have been blamed for every conceivable wrong in urban schools, a tactic that ignores...