American Civil Rights

After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War. Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation's capital. Red Summer is the first narrative history about this epic encounter.

Richard A. Serrano reveals how racial discrimination in the US military criminal justice system determined whose lives mattered and deserved a second chance and whose did not. Between 1955 and 1961, a group of white and black condemned soldiers lived together on death row at Fort Leavenworth military prison. Although convicted of equally heinous crimes, all the white soldiers were eventually paroled and returned to their families, spared by high-ranking army officers, the military courts, sympathetic doctors, highly trained attorneys, the White House staff, or President Eisenhower himself.

From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act traces the fight for free speech from the turn of the 19th century through the War on Terror. Christopher Finan has given us a vital history of our most fundamental, and most vulnerable, constitutional right.

Mass incarceration has become a lucrative industry, and the criminal justice system is plagued with bias and unjust practices. And the church has unwittingly contributed to these problems. Dominique Gilliard explores the history and foundation of mass incarceration, examining Christianity's role in its evolution and expansion. He assesses our nation's ethic of meritocratic justice in light of Scripture and exposes the theologies that embolden mass incarceration.

More than 50 years ago, an assassin's bullet robbed us of one of the most eloquent voices for 20th-century human rights and justice. Drawing on a new generation of scholarship about the civil rights era, To the Promised Land goes beyond the iconic view of King as an advocate of racial harmony to explore his profound commitment to the poor and working class, and his call for "nonviolent resistance" to all forms of oppression, including economic injustice.

At the historic Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, Anita Hill spoke out courageously about workplace sexual harassment. Now she turns to the topic of home. As our country reels from the subprime mortgage meltdown and the resulting devastation of so many families and communities, Hill takes us inside this “crisis of home” and exposes its deep roots in race and gender inequities, which continue to imperil every American’s ability to achieve the American Dream. In this period of recovery and its aftermath, what is at stake is the inclusive democracy the Constitution promises.

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.

Kate, a recent college graduate, is still reeling from the deaths of her beloved parents when the discovery of hidden letters forces her to re-examine everything she knew about her family. Tacker, a young engineering student and all-around boy-hero, has returned from a West African odyssey where he fell in love with the local culture but was sent home in shame. Kate's and Tacker's stories come together when, on the same day and in different moments, they encounter a young African American man named Gaines. The relationship that develops between the three is complicated, as each one searches for love, freedom, and new beginnings.

Michele Norris, host of NPR's All Things Considered, set out to write a book about “the hidden conversation on race” that is going on in this country. But along the way, she unearthed painful family secrets. In what became an intensely personal and bracing journey, Norris traveled from her childhood home in Minneapolis to her ancestral roots in the Deep South to explore “things left unsaid” by her family when she was growing up.

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee are legendary stars of the American stage, television, and film, cherished not merely for their gifts as actors but also for their lifelong commitment to human rights, family values, and community. Now, in a joint memoir that celebrates half a century of successful marriage, they look back on the extraordinary careers that earned each a Presidential Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

Magnolia Grove: The Story of Rear Admiral Richmond Pearson Hobson concerns a charismatic American whose colorful life at the beginning of the 20th century reflected the rapidly changing politics and romance of his time.

A major literary figure tells “a searching tale of loss, recovery, and déja vu that is part memoir and what-if speculation, part polemic and exposé” (The Washington Post) about two generations of one family - civil rights martyr Emmett Till and his father, Louis - shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee are legendary stars of the American stage, television, and film, cherished not merely for their gifts as actors but also for their lifelong commitment to human rights, family values, and community. Now, in a joint memoir that celebrates half a century of successful marriage, they look back on the extraordinary careers that earned each a Presidential Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee are legendary stars of the American stage, television, and film, cherished not merely for their gifts as actors but also for their lifelong commitment to human rights, family values, and community. Now, in a joint memoir that celebrates half a century of successful marriage, they look back on the extraordinary careers that earned each a Presidential Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts.

In January 2007, Deval Patrick became the first Black governor of the state of Massachusetts, one of only two Black governors elected in American history. But that was just one triumphant step in an improbable life that began in a poor tenement on the South Side of Chicago, taking Patrick from a chaotic childhood to an elite boarding school in New England, from a sojourn doing relief work in Africa to the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, and then to a career in politics.

Stevie Wonder is one of the most successful singer-songwriter-musicians of our time. Signing his first record deal when he was only 11, he had his first number one hit when he was 13. Since then he has had 30 US top 10 hits, won a range of awards for his music and his civil rights work, and created such iconic songs as "Isn't She Lovely" and "I Just Called to Say I Love You". Stevie Wonder is a beloved entertainer who continues to tour and perform around the world.

Less than three weeks before the 1960 presidential election, 31-year-old Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested at a sit-in at Rich's Department Store in Atlanta. That day would lead to the first night King had ever spent in jail - and the time that King's family most feared for his life. Based on fresh interviews, newspaper accounts, and extensive archival research, Nine Days is the first full recounting of an event that changed the course of one of the closest elections in American history.

Mahalia Jackson was known as the queen of gospel music. A close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s, she was also a civil rights activist who sang at the March on Washington. And she traveled the world, too! Experience all the inspiring moments in Mahalia's big life in this thrilling biography, packed with fun facts, like who invented rock and roll! Short and engaging chapters are interspersed with special lists and other information made to order to engage kids, whether they're already biography fans or "have to" write a report for school.

Centering Black voices and the narratives of enslaved people, Breaking the Chains offers a thoroughly researched account of the ways people in bondage were themselves a driving force behind their own emancipation.

The recent Hollywood film Hidden Figures presents a portrait of how African American women shaped the US effort in aerospace during the height of Jim Crow. In Storming the Heavens, Gerald Horne presents the necessary back story to this account and goes further to detail the earlier struggle of African Americans to gain the right to fly.