Civil Rights History

With security scares like the Heartbleed bug (which compromised even supposedly safe internet behemoths like Google and Yahoo!) becoming more commonplace, this book is a must-listen for anybody who values their privacy in a wired world.

From America’s foremost constitutional scholar, the definitive history of how the ideal of birth equality reshaped the American Constitution, from antebellum debates over slavery and secession, to the Civil War and emancipation, to women’s suffrage In 1840, millions of Black Americans...

"Powerfully insightful reading." —Kirkus Reviews How would you like to be judged for the rest of your life by the worst thing you’ve ever done? We all think we are compassionate just like we all think we are honest. But true compassion is not innate. Compassion for others, especially those...

A deep dive into the institutional racism and prejudice in the sport of hockey that persists across all levels - and how it will impact the future of the sport While professional sports leagues claim to promote diversity and inclusivity, institutional racism remains apparent in all sports, but...

An intimate and revealing portrait of civil rights icon and longtime U.S. congressman John Lewis, linking his life to the painful quest for justice in America from the 1950s to the present—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Soul of America John Lewis, who at age twenty-five...

Impassioned antislavery rhetoric made antebellum Boston famous as the nation’s hub of radical abolitionism. In fact, the city was far from a beacon of equality. In No Right to an Honest Living, historian Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small—a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Highlighting the everyday struggles of ordinary Black workers, this book shows how injustice in the workplace prevented Boston—and the United States—from securing true equality for all.

Noam Chomsky’s backpocket classic on wartime propaganda and opinion control begins by asserting two models of democracy—one in which the public actively participates, and one in which the public is manipulated and controlled. According to Chomsky, "propaganda is to democracy as the bludgeon...

A groundbreaking exposé of racism in the American taxation system from a law professor and expert on tax policy NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND FORTUNE “Important reading for those who want to understand how inequality is built into the bedrock of American society, and...

Today he is known as Dr. Q, an internationally renowned neurosurgeon and neuroscientist who leads cutting-edge research to cure brain cancer. But not too long ago, he was Freddy, a nineteen-year-old undocumented migrant worker toiling in the tomato fields of central California. In this gripping...

Most Americans still see Brown v. Board of Education as a triumph - but was it? James T. Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case. A wide range of characters animates the story, from the little-known African-Americans who dared to challenge Jim Crow with lawsuits; to Thurgood Marshall, who later became a Justice himself; to Earl Warren, who shepherded a fractured Court to a unanimous decision.

Explore the trailblazing lives of 30 trans people who radically change everything you’ve been told about transgender history Highlighting influential individuals from 1850-1950 who are all but unknown today, Eli Erlick shares 30 remarkable stories from romance to rebellion and mystery to...

A powerful memoir by Nury Turkel lays bare China’s repression of the Uyghur people. Turkel is cofounder and board chair of the Uyghur Human Rights Project and a commissioner for the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. In recent years, the People’s Republic of China...

An “incredible, humane, insightful” (Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize winner) account of humankind’s battles with epidemic disease, and their outsized role in deepening inequality along racial, ethnic, class, and gender lines—in the vein of Medical Apartheid and Killing the Black Body. With...

Meet Harry S. Truman, Joe McCarthy, Ike, JFK, LBJ, Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, Elvis Presley, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton. Full coverage of everything, including President Clinton's impeachment trial.

The Alabama Communist Party was made up of working people without a Euro-American radical political tradition: devoutly religious and semiliterate Black laborers and sharecroppers, and a handful of Whites, including unemployed industrial workers, housewives, youth, and renegade liberals. In this book, Robin D. G. Kelley reveals how the experiences and identities of these people from Alabama's farms, factories, mines, kitchens, and city streets shaped the Party's tactics and unique political culture.

Few politicians have risen to national prominence as quickly as Marco Rubio. Here is the full story of his unlikely journey. Florida Senator Marco Rubio electrified the 2012 Republican National Con­vention by telling the story of his parents, who were struggling immigrants from Cuba. They...

From leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., to lesser-known figures such as Barbara Rose Johns and Jim Zwerg, each man and woman made the decision that something had to be done to stop discrimination. These moving accounts of the first decade of the civil rights movement are a tribute to the people, black and white, who took part in the fight for justice and the struggle they endured.

Audio Journeys are exploring the National Civil Rights Museum Memphis Tennesse. Forty-one years ago on April 4 1968, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated as he was leaving the Lorraine Motel in Memphis Tennessee to join the city's sanitation workers' striking for better working conditions and pay.

The moving, inspiring David-and-Goliath true story of freedom and justice involving one tiny nation in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa, and the extraordinary woman, a descendant of slaves, who dared to take on the Crown and the United Kingdom—and win a historic victory In 1973, on the...

One of NPR's Best Books of the Year A finalist of the for the 2022 Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime The inside story of how a courageous FBI informant helped to bring down the KKK organization responsible for a brutal civil rights–era killing. By early 1966, the work of Vernon Dahmer was well...