Women's History - Tennessee Edition

A frank examination of Aretha Franklin, Mark Bego's definitive biography traces her career accomplishments from her beginnings as a twelve-year-old member of a church choir in the early 1950s, to recording her first album at the age of fourteen and signing a major recording contract at eighteen, right up through untimely passing in 2018. Originally positioned to become a gospel star in her father's Detroit church, Aretha had a privileged urban upbringing;...

In November 1944, eighteen-year-old June Walker boards an unmarked bus, destined for a city that doesnt officially exist. Oak Ridge, Tennessee has sprung up in a matter of monthsa town of trailers and segregated houses, 24-hour cafeterias, and constant security checks. There, June joins hundreds of other young girls operating massive machines whose purpose is never explained. They know they are helping to win the war, but must ask no questions and...

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...

A collection of ghost stories with African American themes, designed to be told during the Dark Thirty--the half hour before sunset--when ghosts seem all too believable.

A Diary from Dixie is the Civil War diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut, society matron and wife of United States senator and Confederate general, James Chesnut, Jr. As an active participant in her husband's career, accompanying him to postings in Montgomery, Richmond, Charleston, and Columbia, Chesnut became an eyewitness to many important events of the war, and, despite being a member of the privileged class, managed to convey the Confederacy's struggle

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A wily fox, notorious for stealing eggs, meets his match when he encounters a bold little girl in the woods who insists upon proof that he is a fox before she will be frightened.