American Civil Rights

A gripping and genre-defying novel by a rediscovered great of twentieth-century Black American writing, about what it means to be a writer at the dawn of a new era In this masterpiece of metafiction set in the Rome of the tumultuous 1960s, Black American expatriate Bill Demby narrates his...

From the New York Times best-selling author of Stony the Road and one of our most important voices on the African-American experience, a powerful new history of the Black church in America as the Black community's abiding rock and its fortress.

When Ed Goodwin moved with his parents to the Greenwood neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his family joined a community soon to become the center of black life in the West. But just a few years later, on May 31, 1921, the teenaged Ed hid in a bathtub as a white mob descended on his neighborhood, laying waste to thirty-five blocks and murdering as many as three hundred people in one of the worst acts of racist violence in U.S. history. The Goodwins and their neighbors soon rebuilt the district into “a Mecca,” in Ed’s words, where nightlife thrived and small businesses flourished. E

The first comprehensive collection of writings by the Black Panther Party founder and revolutionary icon of the Black liberation era, The Huey P. Newton Reader combines now-classic texts ranging in topic from the formation of the Black Panthers, African Americans and armed self-defense, and FBI infiltration of civil rights groups with never-before-published writings from the Black Panther Party archives and Newton’s private collection, including articles on President Nixon, prison martyr George Jackson, Pan-Africanism, affirmative action, Cuba, and more.

"Once begun, listeners will find narrator Maggie Thompson unstoppable."—School Library Journal (Starred Review) Noni Reid has grown up in the shadow of her mother, Dr. Radiance Castine, renowned scholar of Black literature, who is alarmingly perfect at just about everything. When Dr. Castine...

Even without the right to vote, members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy proved to have enormous social and political influence throughout the South - all in the name of preserving Confederate culture. Karen L. Cox's history of the UDC, an organization founded in 1894 to vindicate the Confederate generation and honor the Lost Cause, shows why myths surrounding the Confederacy continue to endure.

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER! · A heart wrenching and hopeful novel from the USA TODAY bestselling author of The American Queen "Absolutely worthy." --Booklist, starred review "Should be required reading." --Library Journal, starred review "Resilience, faith, and grit." --Jodi Picoult, #1 New York...

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice For decades, affirmative action reshaped not just American higher education but the broader society, opening doors that had been closed for centuries and transforming who entered the pathways to power. But the Supreme Court in 2023 killed...

Years after his tragic death, Trayvon Martin’s name is still evoked every day. He has become a symbol of social justice activism, as has his hauntingly familiar image: the photo of a child still in the process of becoming a young man, wearing a hoodie and gazing silently at the camera. But who was Trayvon Martin, before he became, in death, an icon? And how did one Black child’s death on a dark, rainy street in a small Florida town become the match that lit a civil rights crusade?

“Narrator Dion Graham is a masterful and much-loved narrator whose voice will pull listeners into the story of one of the 20th century's most important people.” —Booklist "This gripping biography of a revolutionary leader flies by. Listeners interested in a new perspective of Martin Luther...

On the morning of June 1, 1921, a white mob numbering in the thousands marched across the railroad tracks dividing black from white in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and obliterated a black community then celebrated as one of America's most prosperous. The Burning will recreate the town of Greenwood at the height of its prosperity, explore the currents of hatred, racism, and mistrust between its black residents and neighboring Tulsa's white population, narrate events leading up to and including Greenwood's annihilation, and document the subsequent silence that surrounded the tragedy.

American culture loves Blackness. From music and fashion to activism and language, Black culture constantly achieves worldwide influence. Yet, when it comes to who is allowed to thrive from Black hipness, the pioneers are usually left behind as Black aesthetics are converted into mainstream success - and White profit. Weaving together narrative, scholarship, and critique, Lauren Michele Jackson reveals why cultural appropriation - something that's become embedded in our daily lives - deserves serious attention.

A breakdown of the economic and social injustices facing Black people and other marginalized citizens inspired by political activist Kimberly Jones' viral video, “How Can We Win.” “So if I played four hundred rounds of Monopoly with you and I had to play and give you every dime that I made...

The Far Right's rise to power has ignited a digital civil war that rages across multiple fronts and multiple platforms. It is waged with words and images that are designed to inflict psychological harm, to injure through verbal violence, to intimidate and incite, to wreak havoc with rhetoric. The combatants are citizens, activists, politicians, pundits, coders, conspiracists, trolls, agitators, hackers, and journalists. At stake are the nation's bedrock principles: equal rights, fair elections, freedom of speech, racial justice, and the rule of law.

For fans of Bridgerton and The Davenports comes a sweeping historical novel from bestselling author Veronica Chambers about courageous (and flirtatious) Ida B. Wells as she navigates society parties and society prejudices to become a civil rights crusader. Before she became a warrior, Ida B...

Millicent E. Brown's family home at 270 Ashley Avenue in Charleston, South Carolina, was a center of civil rights activity. There Brown gained intimate knowledge of the struggle for racial justice, and those experiences set her on a life course dedicated to the civil rights struggle. Best known as the named plaintiff in the federal court case that, in 1963, forced the initial desegregation of public schools in South Carolina, her experiences as an activist range across years and well beyond her native state. Another Sojourner Looking for Truth is Brown's insightful reflection.

Drawing on private correspondence, notes from secret meetings, unpublished articles, and interviews, veteran journalists Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff go behind the headlines and datelines to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmen - first black reporters, then liberal Southern editors, then reporters and photographers from the national press and the broadcast media - revealed to a nation its most shameful shortcomings and propelled its citizens to act.

The grandson of a slave, Dr. Ossian Sweet moved his family to an all-white Detroit neighborhood in 1925. When his neighbors attempted to drive him out, Sweet defended himself, resulting in the death of a white man and a murder trial for Sweet. There followed one of the most important (and shockingly unknown) cases in Civil Rights history. Also caught up in the intense courtroom drama were legal giant Clarence Darrow and the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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...

Earphones Award Winner In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Robert Francis Kennedy’s death, an inspiring collection of his most famous speeches accompanied by commentary from notable historians and public figures. Twenty-five years after Bobby Kennedy was assassinated, RFK: His Words for...