Civil Rights Biography

Three simple words that provided Kathryn Johnson, a reporter for The Associated Press' Atlanta bureau, unprecedented access to the grieving widow in the days following her husband's death. Johnson was on her way to a movie date when word came from Memphis that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. She immediately headed for the King home where, despite resistance from authorities on the scene, she was the only reporter allowed inside.

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...

“Alex Mar’s bold yet sensitive account of one of America’s youngest death row inmates—and the people whose lives she forever changed—is intimately reported, deeply moving, and unforgettable.” —Robert Kolker, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road “An absorbing...

The life and 1984 murder of a beloved Black grandmother that changed community activism forever—and sparked the ongoing movement against racist policing and brutality #SayHerName: The story of Eleanor Bumpurs, told for the first time by decorated historian and Bumpurs's former neighbor LaShawn...

This inspiring work profiles sixteen heroic Catholic men and women who defied the odds to advance civil and human rights around the world. Spanning from the birth of the United States to World War II Germany to the current Latin American immigration crisis, this book features people whose faith drove them to courageously defend the dignity of the children of God, especially the most vulnerable, transforming many lives and paving the way for a more equitable society.

In her “witty and searing” first essay collection, award-winning poet Morgan Parker examines “the cultural legacy of Black womanhood and the meaning of finding ‘well-being’ in a world that wasn’t built for you” (Vogue). “Riveting and deeply personal . . . filled with poignant...

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was only 25 when he helped organize the Montgomery Bus Boycott and was soon organizing black people across the country in support of the right to vote, desegregation, and other basic civil rights. Maintaining nonviolent and peaceful tactics even when his life was...

Mary Jane Seacole (1805­-1881) was a British Jamaican nurse, author, world traveler, and businesswoman renowned for her work with the soldiers of the Crimean War.

An engrossing social history and memoir of the unsinkable Mollie Moon, the stylish founder of the National Urban League Guild and fundraiser extraordinaire who reigned over the glittering ""Beaux Arts Ball,” the social event of New York and Harlem society for fifty years—a glamorous event...

Chosen by the Guardian as one of the one hundred best nonfiction books of all time, Olaudah Equiano’s searing first-person account helped awaken contemporary readers to the nightmare of slavery.

This is the story of Condoleezza Rice that has never been told, not that of an ultra-accomplished world leader, but of a little girl--and a young woman--trying to find her place in a sometimes hostile world, of two exceptional parents, and an extended family and community that made all the...

A story about the trials and triumphs of a Black chef from Queens, New York, and a White media entrepreneur from Staten Island who built a relationship and a restaurant in the Deep South, hoping to bridge biases and get people talking about race, gender, class, and culture. NAMED ONE OF THE...

These are the firsthand accounts of sisters Helen and Barbara Shores growing up with their father, Arthur Shores, a prominent Civil Rights attorney, during the 60s in the Jim Crow south Birmingham district—a frequent target of the Ku Klux Klan. Between 1948 and 1963, some 50 unsolved Klan...

On growing up in the American South of the 1960s—an all-American white boy—son of a long line of Methodist preachers, in the midst of the civil rights revolution, and discovering the culpability of silence within the church. By the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and columnist for The...

The first Black mayor of Montgomery, Alabama, shares his story of making his way in a world that wasn’t built for him, drawing on his rich heritage as the son of a civil rights leader. As a proud son of a civil rights leader, Steven L. Reed grew up hearing stories about how his father...

A young reader's adaptation of Mighty Justice: My Life in Civil Rights, the memoir of activist and trailblazer Dovey Johnson Roundtree, by Katie McCabe. Raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, in the heart of Jim Crow, Dovey Johnson Roundtree felt the sting of inequality at an early age and made a...

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...

Jess Phillips - no stranger to speaking truth to power herself - will help you dig deep and get organised, finding the courage and the tools you need to speak up and make a difference. As well as offering inspiration and hope from her own experiences Jess talks to the accidental heroes who have been brave enough to risk everything, become whistle-blowers and successfully fight back....

Free speech as we know it comes less from the First Amendment than from a most unexpected source: Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. A lifelong skeptic, he disdained all individual rights, including the right to express one's political views. But in 1919, it was Holmes who wrote a dissenting opinion that would become the canonical affirmation of free speech in the United States.

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.