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New York Times Bestseller • Notable Book of the Year • Editors' Choice Selection
One of Bill Gates' "Amazing Books" of the Year
One of Publishers Weekly's 10 Best Books of the Year
Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction
An NPR Best Book of the Year
Winner of the Hillman Prize for Nonfiction
Gold Winner • California Book Award (Nonfiction)
Finalist • Los Angeles Times
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"Overground Railroad chronicles the history of the Green Book, which was published from 1936 to 1966 and was the "Black travel guide to America." For years, it was dangerous for African Americans to travel in the United States. Because of segregation, Black travelers couldn't eat, sleep, or even get gas at most white-owned businesses. The Green Book listed hotels, restaurants, department stores, gas stations, recreational destinations, and other businesses...
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Perry Wallace was born at an historic crossroads in U.S. history. He entered kindergarten the year that the Brown v. Board of Education decision led to integrated schools, allowing blacks and whites to learn side by side. A week after Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, Wallace enrolled in high school and his sensational jumping, dunking, and rebounding abilities quickly earned him the attention of college basketball recruiters from...
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Fifty years ago Malcolm X told a white woman who asked what she could do for the cause, 'Nothing.' Michael Eric Dyson believes he was wrong. Now he responds to that question. If society is to make real racial progress, people must face difficult truths, including being honest about how Black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.
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"A powerful, impactful, eye-opening journey that explores through the Civil Rights Movement in 1950s-1960s America in spare and evocative verse, with historical photos interspersed throughout. In stunning verse and vivid use of white space, Erica Martin's debut poetry collection walks readers through the Civil Rights Movement-from the well-documented events that shaped the nation's treatment of Black people, beginning with the "Separate but Equal"...
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The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from Reagan to Obama to Trump, as proof of the power of American democracy. This fable, featuring dreamy heroes and accidental heroines, has shuttered the movement firmly in the past, whitewashed the forces that stood in its way, and diminished its scope. And it is used perniciously in our own times to chastise present-day movements and obscure contemporary injustice. In A...
7) Double victory: how African American women broke race and gender barriers to help win World War II
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An account of the lesser-known contributions of African-American women during World War II reveals how they helped lay the foundations for the Civil Rights Movement by challenging racial and gender barriers at home and abroad.
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The saying is: Knowledge is power. The secret is: Knowledge, applied at the right time and place, is more than power. It's magic. This is the story of the Black Panther Party: Huey and Bobby, Eldridge and Kathleen, Elaine and Fred and Ericka. The authors introduce readers to the committed party members, their supporters and allies. The Free Breakfast Program and the Ten-Point Program. Their book is about Black nationalism, Black radicalism, about...
9) King: a life
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"The first full biography in decades, "King" mixes revelatory and exhaustive new research with brisk and accessible storytelling to forge the definitive life for our times"--
10) I have a dream
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Illustrates the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, jr., as they were presented in his "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28, 1963.
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"A profound new rendering of the struggle by African-Americans for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that resubjugated them, as seen through the prism of the war of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind. The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century...
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In a time when discussions of race are once again coming to the fore, the event that launched the civil rights movement -- the 1955 lynching of a fourteen-year-old black boy named Emmett Till -- is now reexamined by an award-winning author with access to never-before-heard accounts from those involved as well as recently recovered court transcripts from the trial.
13) The children
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From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Fifties: An “intimate and monumental” account of the people at the core of the civil rights movement (Publishers Weekly).
The young men and women at the heart of David Halberstam’s brilliant and poignant The Children came together through Reverend James Lawson’s workshops on nonviolence. Idealistic and determined, they showed unwavering...
The young men and women at the heart of David Halberstam’s brilliant and poignant The Children came together through Reverend James Lawson’s workshops on nonviolence. Idealistic and determined, they showed unwavering...
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"How the automobile fundamentally changed African American life--the true history beyond the Best Picture-winning movie. The ultimate symbol of independence and possibility, the automobile has shaped this country from the moment the first Model T rolled off Henry Ford's assembly line. Yet cars have always held distinct importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and...
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" 'If you want to understand the massive antiracist protests of 2020, put down the navel-gazing books about racial healing and read America on Fire.' -Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Library Journal "Books and Authors to Know: Titles to Watch 2021" From one of our top historians, a groundbreaking story of policing and "riots" that shatters our understanding of the post-civil rights era. What began in spring...
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When it was first produced in 1959, A Raisin in the Sun was awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for that season and hailed as a watershed in American drama. A pioneering work by an African-American playwright, the play was a radically new representation of black life. "A play that changed American theater forever." The story tells of a Black family's experiences in south Chicago, as they attempt to improve their financial circumstances...
18) Ali: a life
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"The definitive biography of an American icon, from a New York Times best-selling author with unique access to Ali's inner circle. He was the wittiest, the prettiest, the strongest, the bravest, and, of course, the greatest (as he told us over and over again). Muhammad Ali was one of the twentieth century's greatest radicals and most compelling figures. At his funeral in 2016, eulogists said Ali had transcended race and united the country, but they...
19) Mirror girls
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Biracial twin sisters--one who presents as black and the other as white--are determined to put the ghosts of the past to rest and to uncover the truth behind their parents' murders in the Jim Crow South.
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For twelve history-making days in May 1961, thirteen black and white civil rights activists, also known as the Freedom Riders, traveled by bus into the South to draw attention to the unconstitutional segregation still taking place. Despite their peaceful protests, the Freedom Riders were met with increasing violence the further south they traveled.