Civil Rights Fiction

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer edits a collection of Alain Locke's influential essays on the importance of the Black artist and the Black imagination A Penguin Classic For months, the philosopher Alain Locke wrestled with the idea of the Negro as America's most vexing problem. He asked how...

With the freeing of four million enslaved people after the Civil War, the Reconstruction period brought new victories and challenges in the fight for Black rights. Learn more about this crucial period in US history.

Jackie is a poor boy from Harlem and the victim of abuse from his widowed, alcoholic father. But everything changes on the day he discovers the power of comedy. When his classmates make fun of his tattered clothes, Jackie turns everything around by freely poking fun at himself and soon has everyone on the floor with laughter. His amazing talent, and raging ambition, take him through the local club circuit to become the most sought after comedic entertainer in opulent, '50s Las Vegas and beyond.

After serving in the Civil War as a Confederate officer and then achieving business success in the North, Colonel Henry French returns to his hometown of Clarendon, North Carolina, and dreams of building a better future. In his absence, Clarendon has endured as a deeply prejudiced place—still permeated by systems of racist oppression even after the Civil War—but Henry believes he has what it takes to make a difference.

Two Black sisters growing up in small-town New England fight to protect their home, their bodies, and their dreams as the Civil Rights Movement sweeps the nation in Promise, a “magical, magnificent novel” (Marlon James) from “a startlingly fresh voice” (Jacqueline Woodson). A KIRKUS...

Poetry. Literary nonfiction. Fiction. Drama. LGBTQIA studies. Women's studies. Compiled in one book for the first time, featuring both new and out-of-print pieces, the contents of The Judy Grahn Reader span four decades of work by the prominent writer and activist. This volume contains writing from every phase of Judy Grahn's career, including poems from all of her major poetry collections, a number of her groundbreaking essays, as well as selected fiction and the full-length play The Queen of Swords.

Powerful, thought-provoking, and heartfelt, this debut YA novel by author Autumn Allen is a gripping look at what it takes (and takes and takes) for two Black students to succeed in prestigious academic institutions in America. In ALL YOU HAVE TO DO, two Black young men attend prestigious...

Perfect for fans of Sawkill Girls, Bone Gap, and Dark and Shallow Lies, this suspenseful contemporary mystery delves into a small town’s supernatural, multigenerational curse—and the girl determined to break it. Mercy was named for her mother’s hopes. Mercy, in the hope that the...

America was founded on the concept of the innate and inalienable rights of humankind. Many Christians see an echo of the imago Dei—that every human being carries the image of God—within those ideals. Yet these rights were systemically withheld from the Black and enslaved residents of this country for centuries. Through it all, Black people have proclaimed the truth of their dignity and personhood in powerful and profound ways. Crowned with Glory collects many of the writings of these men and women, both familiar and lesser-known, to shine a light on what has always been there.

Nineteenth-century art expert Derryn Witt documents an impossible find: gorgeously detailed paintings depicting the modern world…from 1859. But when a massive solar flare forces a shutdown of all integrated technology, her discovery is jeopardized. The threat intensifies when a group of rebels attack the college, their movement resting upon the rejection of technology. Derryn flees to New York with the help of a sympathetic Sovereign, under the guise of being one herself.

The Water Dancer meets The Prophets in this spare, gripping, and beautifully rendered novel exploring love and friendship among a group of enslaved Black strivers in the mid-19th century. They call themselves the Stolen. Their owners call them captives. They are taught their captors’ tongues...

Ruthless defense attorney Tatum Graham has been living large in Miami, but when his recently acquitted client claims another victim, Tatum has a crisis of conscience. Disillusioned, he heads to his small Utah hometown for a simpler life...but that’s not what he finds. Soon after he arrives, Tatum’s childhood crush offers him a job at the county attorney’s office and assigns him a murder case.

It's 1969 when 15-year-old Huey Fairchild begins high school at Claremont Prep, one of New York City's most prestigious boys' schools. His mother had uprooted her family from their small hometown of Akersburg, Georgia, a few years earlier, leaving behind Huey's white father and the racial unrest that ran deeper than the Chattahoochee River. But for our sharp-tongued protagonist, forgetting the past is easier said than done. At Claremont, where the only other nonwhite person is the janitor, Huey quickly realizes that racism can lurk beneath even the nicest school uniform. After a momentary slip of his temper, Huey finds himself facing legal charges.

From the critically acclaimed writer of A Different Sun, a Southern coming-of-age novel that sets three very different young people against the tumultuous years of the American civil rights movement... Tacker Hart left his home in North Carolina as a local high school football hero, but returns...

From the acclaimed author of “the most compelling new series in crime fiction” (Michael Koryta, New York Times bestselling author) comes “a sharply observed novel” (New York Times) that explores race, law enforcement, and justice in mid-century Atlanta. Officer Denny Rakestraw and...

“American history comes to vivid, engaging life in this tale of two interconnected families (one white, one black) that spans from the 1950s to Barack Obama’s first year as president. . . . The complex, beautifully drawn characters are unique and indelible.”—Entertainment Weekly “An...

An exhilarating debut novel set under the dazzling lights of late 1950s Broadway, where a controversial new musical pushes the boundaries of love, legacy, and art. Growing up in rural Wisconsin, Eleanor O'Hanlon always felt different. In love with musical theater from a young age, she memorized...

A brilliant debut novel from a New York Times bestselling author about a transplanted wife from Boston who arrives in Florida in the 1960s, starts a literary salon, and shakes up the status quo. Eighty-year-old Dora, the narrator of a story that began a half century earlier, is bonding with an...

Debut novelist Lisa Lewis Tyre vibrantly brings a small town and its outspoken characters to life, as she explores race and other community issues from both the Civil War and the present day. Lou might be only twelve, but she’s never been one to take things sitting down. So when her Civil...

Dovey Johnson Roundtree was most famous for her successful defense of an indigent Black man accused of the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, a prominent White Washington, DC, socialite, in 1965. Despite her triumph in this high-profile case, Roundtree continued to represent the poor and the underserved. She was the first lawyer to bring a bus-desegregation case before the Interstate Commerce Commission, clinching the ruling that enabled Robert F. Kennedy to enforce bus integration. She was also among the first Black women to enter the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.