Freedom Civil

On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York's Greenwich Village, was raided by police. But instead of responding with the typical compliance the NYPD expected, patrons and a growing crowd decided to fight back. The five days of rioting that ensued changed forever the face of gay and lesbian life. In Stonewall, renowned historian and activist Martin Duberman tells the full story of this pivotal moment in history.

More than 40 years after President Johnson signed the landmark Fair Housing Act into law, residential segregation in America remains unresolved. Designed to help dismantle the nation’s racially divided housing patterns, the act has gone largely ignored by every presidential administration - Democrat and Republican alike - since 1968. In Living Apart, ProPublica investigates this failing.

Mary Hamilton grew up knowing right from wrong. She was proud to be Black, and when the chance came along to join the civil rights movement and become a Freedom Rider, she was eager to fight for what she believed in. She was arrested again and again—and she did not back down when faced with insults or disrespect.

Susan Burton's world changed in an instant when her five-year-old son was killed by a van driving down their street. Consumed by grief and without access to professional help, Susan self-medicated, becoming addicted first to cocaine then to crack. As a resident of South Los Angeles, a Black community under siege in the War on Drugs, it was but a matter of time before Susan was arrested. She cycled in and out of prison for over 15 years; never was she offered therapy or treatment for addiction.

As the United States marks the 150th anniversary of our defining national drama, 1861 presents a gripping and original account of how the Civil War began. 1861 is an epic of courage and heroism beyond the battlefields. Early in that fateful year, a second American revolution unfolded, inspiring a new generation to reject their parents' faith in compromise and appeasement, to do the unthinkable in the name of an ideal.

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.

Activists from Henry David Thoreau and Mohandas Gandhi to the Movement for Black Lives have long recognized that there are times when, rather than having a duty to obey the law, we have a duty to disobey it. Taking seriously the history of this activism, A Duty to Resist wrestles with the problem of political obligation in real world societies that harbor injustice. Candice Delmas argues that the duty of justice, the principle of fairness, the Samaritan duty, and political association impose responsibility to resist under conditions of injustice.

For five long years in the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy and his anti-Communist crusade dominated the American scene, terrified politicians, and destroyed the lives of thousands of our citizens. In this masterful history, Haynes Johnson re-creates that time of crisis. Johnson tells this monumental story through the lens of its relevance to our own time, when fear again affects American behavior and attitudes.

The acclaimed author of the “stirring, definitive, and engrossing” (NPR) The Woman’s Hour returns with the story of four activists whose audacious plan to restore voting rights to Black Americans laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement. In the summer of 1954, educator Septima...

From its origins in the 1750s, the White-led American abolitionist movement adhered to principles of "moral suasion" and nonviolent resistance as both religious tenet and political strategy. Through tactical violence, argues Carter Jackson, Black abolitionist leaders accomplished what White nonviolent abolitionists could not: creating the conditions that necessitated the Civil War.

How were human rights invented, and how does their tumultuous history influence their perception and our ability to protect them today? From Professor Lynn Hunt comes this extraordinary cultural and intellectual history, which traces the roots of human rights to the rejection of torture as a means for finding the truth. She demonstrates how ideas of human relationships portrayed in novels and art helped spread these new ideals and how human rights continue to be contested today.

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.

The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. Even as state violations of political rights garnered unprecedented attention due to human rights campaigns, a commitment to material equality disappeared. In its place, market fundamentalism has emerged as the dominant force in national and global economies. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn analyzes how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of a broader social and economic justice.

On May 4, 1961, thirteen activists—black and white, young and old, male and female—board two buses in Washington, D.C., for New Orleans, Louisiana. Their Freedom Ride will last just twelve days. But their mission is clear. The laws prohibiting segregation on buses crossing state lines and at bus stations are being violated. These Freedom Riders are determined to draw attention to the laws’ lack of enforcement. But what starts as a peaceful protest turns violent as they travel deeper into the South. This is their story.

Wie kann es sein, dass die Meinungsfreiheit in liberalen Gesellschaften wie in Deutschland an ihre Grenzen stößt, obwohl wir keine eingeschränkten Grundrechte und unendlich viele Möglichkeiten der Meinungsäußerung haben? Im Zuge der Entwicklung der Individualität seit Beginn des bürgerlichen Zeitalters ist im 21. Jahrhundert eine neue Verletzlichkeit entstanden, die unsere Gesellschaft vor eine Zerreißprobe stellt. Je mehr wir unsere Individualität ausdehnen und die Dinge "persönlich" nehmen, umso leichter fühlen wir uns gekränkt, beleidigt oder missachtet.

Two great social causes held center stage in American politics in the 1960s: the civil rights movement and the antiwar groundswell in the face of a deepening American military commitment in Vietnam. In Peace and Freedom, Simon Hall explores two linked themes: the civil rights movement's response to the war in Vietnam on the one hand and, on the other, the relationship between the black groups that opposed the war and the mainstream peace movement.

An expert on American authoritarianism offers a searing rebuke of the exceptional narrative that dominates our understanding of US history. In 12 lessons, Matthew C. MacWilliams' On Fascism exposes the divisive rhetoric, strongman tactics, violent othering, and authoritarian attitudes that...

The inside story of how our political class enabled an era of unaccountable corporate might that left ordinary Americans isolated and powerless—and how we can fight back—from the acclaimed author of The Unbroken Thread “In Tyranny, Inc., Sohrab Ahmari, one of the leading thinkers of our...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The New York Times bestselling author of George Washington's Secret Six and Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates turns to two other heroes of the nation: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. In The President and the Freedom Fighter, Brian Kilmeade tells the...

No Campus for White Men shines a bright light on the growing obsession with diversity, victimization, and identity politics on today's college campuses, and shows how it is creating an intensely hostile and fearful atmosphere that can only lead, ultimately, to ever greater polarization in American society.