American Civil Rights

*From the Viral Clark Atlanta University Commencement Speaker* *From the Georgia Author of the Year Award Winner* *A Zibby's Most Anticipated Book of 2023* *A "Next Big Idea Club" Must-Read Book for January* *An Essence "Books by Black Authors to Read This Winter" Pick* *An Ebony...

Despite fierce prejudice and abuse, even being beaten to within an inch of her life, Fannie Lou Hamer was a champion of civil rights from the 1950s until her death in 1977. Integral to the Freedom Summer of 1964, Ms. Hamer gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention that, despite President Johnson's interference, aired on national TV news and spurred the nation to support the Freedom Democrats.

A work of riveting literary journalism that explores the roots and repercussions of the infamous killing of Eric Garner by the New York City police—from the bestselling author of The Divide NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST On July 17, 2014, a...

An incisive, intersectional essay anthology that celebrates and examines romance and romantic media through the lens of Black readers, writers, and cultural commentators, edited by Book Riot columnist and librarian Jessica Pryde. Romantic love has been one of the most essential elements of...

“A moving and beautifully crafted memoir.”—SCOTT TUROW “A daring act of justified defiance.”—SHAKA SENGHOR “Nothing less than heroic.”—JOHN GRISHAM He was seventeen when an all-white jury sentenced him to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Now a pioneering lawyer, he...

An authoritative exploration of how Black Americans have shaped baseball from its emergence after the Civil War to the Negro Leagues and Jackie Robinson’s breaking of the color barrier, up to today’s game—by award-winning author Gerald Early in collaboration with the National Baseball Hall...

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.

Curtis J. Austin chronicles how violence brought about the founding of the Black Panther Party in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, dominated its policies, and finally destroyed the party as one member after another - Eldridge Cleaver, Fred Hampton, Alex Rackley - left the party, was killed, or was imprisoned.

An authoritative history of the overlooked youth activists that spearheaded the largest protests of the Civil Rights Movement and set the blueprint for future generations of activists to follow. Some of the most iconic images of the Civil Rights Movement are those of young people engaged in...

In this evocative and affectionate memoir, Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith, the last surviving child of Joe and Rose Kennedy, offers an intimate and illuminating look at a time long ago when she and her siblings, guided by their parents, laughed and learned a great deal under one roof. Prompted by...

Social justice leader Tamika D. Mallory states her case for action and reveals “the power we all have to win transformative change” (Marc Lamont Hill, New York Times bestselling author) in this searing indictment of America’s historical, deadly, and continuing assault on Black and brown...

Sally Harrison and her family are slaves on a plantation in Georgia. But when Master decides to sell Sally and her brother, the family escapes to seek shelter with a tribe of Seminoles who are rumored to adopt runaway slaves. After a perilous journey, Sally’s family finds and joins the tribe...

Originally self-published to enormous acclaim and demand, Sacred Pampering Principles is a beautifully written guide with hundreds of easy and innovative ways for on-the-go women to pamper their bodies and nurture their spirits. With her holistic approach to filling your life with comfort...

Desmond Meade was chosen as a MacArthur Fellow in 2021 The inspiring and eye-opening true story of one man’s undying belief in the power of a fully enfranchised nation. “You may think the right to vote is a small matter, and if you do, I would bet you have never had it taken away from you...

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. In Our Lady of Liberation, social psychologist and author of God is a Black Woman Christena Cleveland brings forth the Black Madonna...

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...

A powerful biography of the influential civil rights leader and multitalented musician Coretta Scott King, with illustrations by Caldecott Honor winner Cozbi A. Cabrera. Young Coretta Scott was a gifted musician, learning multiple instruments and breaking barriers to study music in college...

A dynamic, timely history of nineteenth-century activists—free-lovers and socialists, abolitionists and vigilantes—and the social revolution they sparked in the turbulent Civil War era “In the tradition of Howard Zinn’s people’s histories, American Radicals reveals a forgotten yet...

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.